• Scope:  CASL covers not just anti-spam, but also anti-malware, anti-hacking, and through related amendments to other legislation, control of content and misleading information, as well as privacy of personally identifiable information (PII) (harvesting, dictionary attacks).
• Application/Jurisdiction:  CASL covers any message sent from or accessed by a computer in Canada (regardless of where the sender is located).  We are talking about all electronic messaging – email, instant messaging, SMS, social – plus anything new that comes along.  (Fax and voice are covered by Canadian do no call regulations.)
  1. Note that there is no minimum number of messages. So sending one message is enough to put you under jurisdiction of the law.
• Coverage:  CASL applies to commercial activity, defined pretty broadly.  For example, Brown said in the webinar, if you are promoting a person who normally promotes a product or service or business opportunity -  even if you are not specifically promoting that product, service or business opportunity in the message -  then your message is covered.  
  1. Note also that any message sent to seek consent is considered commercial – so you can’t send a request for consent. There are no exceptions for research studies, for example. “This will have to play out in the courts in deciding what is ‘commercial,’” Brown said.  “I would not be surprised if this was challenged.” As the law is enforced, Brown says, we will have more guidance on what is considered “commercial” under the Act.

1. Prior consent – defined as either express or implied.  Both are acceptable for all situations and of equal value.  (Implied does expire, though.)
   
   a.    Express: Must include clear notice and the provision of a set of prescribed info from subscribers when providing consent.   The owner or any authorized user of the email address must give the consent.
   b.    Implied:  The Act deems implied consent when there is an existing business relationship (e.g.: a customer who has purchased in the past two years, or if there is a contract or a subscription which has been active in the past two years.)
   c.    Once consent is implied (e.g.: a purchase), you generally have two years to send messages in compliance (or obtain an express opt in).  An express consent never expires, and is valid until the individual withdrawals consent.
2. Information
   
   a.    Must include contact information for the sender and the subscriber.  It is not clear in the law what this must include.
   b.    Regulations are expected to define this further.
3. Unsubscribe
   
   a.    An unsubscribe opportunity must be provided in all messaging and be available for  60 days post delivery.
   b.    Unsubscribe requests must have no cost, and use the same means by which the message was sent (unless impractical), either via replyto: or a link.
   c.    Must be processed “without delay” (and within 10 days) with no messages sent after the request.  This aspect may also be defined further with regulation.  “Senders must be able to demonstrate that you put forth a best effort to act on unsubscribe requests quickly, with the intent to stop messages,” Brown advises.

1. Check your lists. Do you have consent – and evidence of consent?  The burden is on the sender to prove consent.
2. Check location of subscribers where possible.  The law doesn’t care what the domain of the address is, or if the sender has a clue where the recipient is.  If the message is received on a computer in Canada then it applies.  If a sender does make an attempt to gather this data, This may be a factor in exercising the due diligence defense, where no one can be charged if they have shown due diligence to comply.  “Be sure you have a business objective in NOT complying with the Canadian legislation,” Brown says.  Note that reconfirmation of some permission grants may be necessary.
3. Watch for regulations re: content of messages. The regulations will clarify the information required when obtaining consent as well as when sending a message.

• Liability of service providers.  Telecom/ISPs are generally going to be exempt from liability under the anti-spam provisions where they merely provide the telecommunications service allowing the message to be delivered. However, it’s not clear if this applies to email delivery service providers.  “If you are merely providing a ‘do it yourself’ service and the customer manages the list and the unsubscribe, then it may be that the delivery provider is covered under the Telco exemption,” Brown says.  “This may be different if you offer a full service offering.”
• Ownership of the message, for example, placing ads in an editorial newsletter or providing the name of the email delivery vendor in the message itself is not directly addressed in the law.  “In my view it doesn’t make sense from any perspective to say that the ESP is sending on your behalf, for example identifying the ESP in the message,” Brown says.  There were a number of comments on this as the regulations were reviewed this past summer, and Brown hopes that some clarity will be offered in future revisions.
  1. This brings out the question of where an agency or service provider is vulnerable by trusting their client.  If the agency or ESP sends unsubscribe data to the sender, is the agency responsible if the client doesn’t take action?  “The law is broad, so if you are aiding or causing company to avoid compliance, then you are potentially responsible.  The way to manage risks like this is to inform your customers of their obligations, make sure you have the appropriate language in your agreements, and ensure the relationship agreements are clear who is taking responsibility for managing unsubscribes requests,” Brown advises.
• Transactional messages.  The legislation does not refer to “transactional” messages.   The law does cover some types of messages that could be considered transactional (e.g.: service notices or warranty information).    The law states that these types of messages require an opt out.  “This somewhat confuses the issue, by listing out messages that, in many cases, are likely not commercial electronic messages and therefore not covered by the Act to begin with,” Brown explained.
•   Point of Sale.  What if you ask verbally for consent at the POS?  Brown says that the original draft regulations from the summer declare that consent must besought in writing only.    However, this may be removed based on the amount of comments against it. “I would like to think that if you are entering this into a system form, and there is a date stamp, that this would meet the evidentiary burden under CASL,” he says.
  
  1. There is no legal requirement to send a follow up message, but “It’s always good idea to remind people of their subscription and why they have provided consent.  It’s more of a relationship issue than a compliance issue,” Brown says.
•  Is list rental dead?   A properly compiled permission based list is quite valuable, and the law does not forbid the rental of them.  “It’s not dead, but CASL places a higher onus on list owners and senders to make sure it’s done properly,” Brown says.
  1. The act of appending is not covered under CASL. It is likely covered under privacy laws, particularly if you are making changes to PII footprint without consent.  There may be some situations where appending data is allowed under CASL.   If you have a business relationship – e.g. purchases in the past year – then this append may be in compliance with the CASL legislation.
• Mobile Access.  No one anticipates that certain one-off situations will be covered under CASL (e.g.: a US citizen goes to a coffee shop in Toronto and checks his Gmail account).  Brown expects that the government also did not intend to the law to apply to Blackberry users worldwide when accessing email (e.g., through RIM servers located in Canada).   “I think the intention is not to apply the legislation so broadly,” he said.  It’s not clear how data centers for companies that are not Canadian based will be treated – although Brown expects that they will need to comply just as if the entire company was based in Canada. Messages sent from those centers will be “Canadian” under this law.

• You need to build an interested base of fans/subscribers.
• You need to interact with those fans/subscribers.
• You need to publish quality, targeted, relevant content to your fans/subscribers.
• You build your fan/subscriber base though natural and incentive-based growth tactics.
• You need to show the ROI for the marketing dollars spent – those who say social isn’t about the ROI are dreaming.  Eventually the C-suite will want numbers that aren’t a guess.
• You need to identify the uber-fans/subscribers and reward them.
• Both can (and should) be an avenue for customer service.
• Both can (and should) drive traffic to your website/ecommerce/blog.
• Both can help and hurt your reputation, though Social in a more public way.
• Both can (and should) increase revenues. (Again, social tracking for revenues can be a little tricky.)
• Both can (and should) start conversations and keep them going.

Email marketing and blogging share one core feature that neither can exist without: content.

Creating content takes time and effort. For email, you have offers to formulate, copywriters to hire, drafts to review, words to tweak, calls to action to polish. For blogs, you have keywords to use, writers to manage, and frequency to maintain.

You can save yourself time and effort by repurposing content between your email marketing program and your blog program. 

When you create something once and use multiple times, you’re getting more bang for your buck. You can also get more out of user-generated content, and other types of content like video and photos this way.  Since blogs require a lot of content to be effective, you want to tap into every source possible, including your promotional emails and your informative, newsletter-style ones.

At ClickMail, we archive every email newsletter on our website, write a follow up blog summarizing the article and provide a link on our blog to the archived issue. We’ve served our list by providing valuable content with the newsletter, we get the SEO benefits of the additional content by posting the newsletter on our website, and we get the blog content, additional SEO benefits, and a link back by posting a blog. We’ve accomplished all this by simply repurposing one newsletter article.

You can also save money while generating blogs and emails by tapping into your customers for free content. For this user-generated content—which tends to be more relevant to your audience, as well as objective—solicit feedback post-purchase using email. Use any testimonials in your blog, email newsletters, and promotional emails; or let customers contribute to your blog and draw from that content to repurpose it for email content, too.

To save even more time and money by repurposing content, think beyond posts and articles to announcements, webinars, podcasts, video, photos, press releases, customer testimonials and reviews. Consider all content potentially email and blog-worthy with edits to make it appropriate to the channel. If it works in your blog, it can probably be repurposed in your email. If it works in your email, it can probably be repurposed for your blog.

Also remember that your blog works as an SEO tool, helping people who don’t know about you to find you. This may lead them to sign up for your emails when they see your blog on the search results page, click through to it and then your website, and like what they see. So repurposing email content in your blog might just help you grow your in-house email list, too.
 

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing


 

When do fewer emails mean higher ROI? When your emails are hyper-targeted and truly one-to-one. That doesn’t mean you need a huge team of people contacting customers one at a time, like the telemarketers of old.  It only requires you to tap into existing technology and know-how to make it happen.

I like to say “happy birthdays mean happy profits” because birthday emails are a perfect example of this concept. When someone subscribes to get your emails, you get their birth date along with the other data you gathered about them upon signup. That date goes into your system and on or near the customer’s birthday, depending on how you have it configured; an email is automatically triggered offering a birthday bonus of some kind, like a free ice cream cone if you work for a chain of sweet shops, or a free movie rental if you’re marketing your video stores.

These emails get a remarkably high response rate because they are so targeted…and therefore, welcome.

You’re not limited to birthday emails, however, nor are triggered emails only appropriate for B2C marketing. Triggered emails come in three types—recurring, transactional and threshold—and can be used in a variety of circumstances:

• A recurring email can be a birthday email like we’ve described above, or could happen a certain period after a purchase, to remind a customer that it’s time to renew
  
• A transactional email can be one email, like a follow up to a purchase or download, soliciting feedback, or even a drip campaign following a purchase, giving tips on how to use the product (and also up-selling)
  
• As a threshold email can occur when a customer’s behavior has gotten to a certain point, say if they’ve purchased three songs from one album, you offer a discount on the album

In the past, marketers resisted moving from batch-and-blast to this kind of targeted, triggered approach because the cost seemed prohibitive. Between building the API and the software to handle the emails the technological cost made any chance of an ROI a slim one. Today, however, all top-tier ESPs and many secondary ones offer triggered messaging capabilities. That means you can make your email marketing program even more relevant without increasing your staff or IT costs.

Before we dive into the benefits and how-to’s of triggered emails, let’s review the terminology:

• Triggered means triggered by an event: A trigger based message is one sent out in response to a certain action within an email or on a website
  
• Targeted means segmented, with dynamic content, so different recipients get different email content and even colors and graphics
• Drip marketing is a series of messages triggered by an event, such as a purchase or whitepaper download (also known as lifecycle messaging)

You’ll also need to define the event or events that trigger the website. The event might be a click on a website, time spent on a page with no shopping cart activity, a coupon download, or a link clicked in an email. Or, to return to our earlier example, it might be date driven like a birthday or anniversary.

One-to-one triggered emails have a much higher ROI so even though you’re sending out fewer emails, you’re making more money off the targeted ones. But what do you need to do to be set up for that kind of triggered email?

1.    An ESP or in-house solution that enables triggered messaging

2.    An API to automate the flow of data from your CRM or in-house database to your ESP or internal ESP

3.    A content library, so your system can take from it to place the appropriate message in each email

Also consider that these types of emails typically use a transactional delivery engine vs. a marketing delivery engine, i.e. point-to-point transmission vs. one-to-many broadcast.

The one caveat happens when you start to collect the data upon which to define your rules. Do not ask for too much. You can ask for up to four pieces of information upon sign up, but any more than that, and your abandonment rate will soar. Instead, be very clear what information you want to start out with and only ask for that (based on what you can really use). Then over time you can ask for more information, and append that information to that subscriber later.

The idea of this kind of targeted email marketing might be daunting, but it’s really not difficult given today’s technology and pre-existing services. As a result, your triggered email messaging can be as sophisticated as you want to make it, to get the most ROI from your highest value customers. For example, your system can score a customer based on behavior, such as purchasing a higher-priced item, and offer an exclusive and limited price on another item as a reward.

Marketers have to start automating their email campaigns based on customer behaviors, such as shopping cart abandonment. Companies who’ve done this have experienced higher click through rates and conversion rates, without increasing staff costs. Alternatively, automating email programs around customer behaviors with hyper-targeted messages will result in a higher email marketing ROI.

And it leads to a higher engagement index, which means more of your subscribers are engaging with your email, which in turn will give you a better standing in the eyes of the ISPs…which in turn will improve your email deliverability and get you into more inboxes…and so on and so on and so on.

Sounds pretty happy to me!


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

• How often data is flowing from the analytics provider to your ESP and how quickly do you need to make decisions based on that data? If you can wait 24 hours to get data back, then a batch process is fine. However, if you’re looking at shopping cart abandonment, and you need to react right away to a behavior, you need something more real-time so you’ll want an inline process that allows immediate reaction, without the delay of a batch process.
• What segments are important, and what information do you need in order to allocate or define the segments?
• What is your internal availability for building an API now plus supporting it later? Do you want your IT team to take this on, working with your marketing team? Do they know the ESP well enough, and can they support the integration when something goes wrong? Or should you outsource this?
• How easy is it to migrate if you switch ESPs? You have to make sure your new ESP can tag links to where your analytics package can easily identify the same information for a person, and for a campaign. That new ESP is also going to need to be able to consume data from the analytics company, send and consume data back and forth from the analytics package.
• As a preventive measure, your marketing department needs to acid test the solution. You have two separate systems operating relatively independent of each other, but you need to regularly make sure the information going back into both systems is accurate.

Christine Borgia from AOL announced this week that the long-standing Report Card program has come to an end.  For those of us who have been in the email marketing world for any period of time, we know this marks the end of an era.  I go way back with AOL from my previous role running email operations at Travelocity.  I started back at the dawn of "email time" in 1999.  I had the privilege of sending AOL Travel email, in addition to my regular Travelocity mail.  This gave me some insider type access to the Postmaster Team at AOL.  I won't tell you that everything was always smooth.  In fact, I had a pretty rocky year, one that I've tried to delete from my memory banks.  Looking back, that was when the discipline of deliverability was born.  AOL was way ahead of the curve in the implementation of the Report Card program.  If you aren't familiar with the Report Card, here's a sample:

You are receiving this message via AOL's automated "Report Card" process because our available data indicate that in the last 24 hours your domain's mail stream has exceeded an inbox complaint rate of 0.30%.  This email is only an indication that your domain's mail stream has exceeded a pre-defined complaint threshold; it is not necessarily indicative of a spam problem. We send a report card to every domain that exceeds this threshold, regardless of what type of mail is sent. We hope that it may be useful to help identify potential issues. For additional information please visit our http://postmaster.info.aol.com Postmaster website, where one can find a more detailed explanation of how the Report Card system works, AOL's technical requirements for sending email to us, AOL's best practices guidelines for bulk-mailers, and more.

This was really great stuff!  Imagine an ISP sending you an email each day warning you that you had slipped into the danger zone.  You didn't have to build any reports, aggregate any data, or haggle over "hanging spams!"  This kind of service just isn't around anymore, and I fear we took it for granted.  It means we're back to "new school" techniques with AOL.  Their feedback loop program is top-notch and has always been the leader in FBL technology.  (You are signed up and watching your FBL complaints/statistics…aren't you?  Of course you are, because we all know that complaints are the bellwether statistic for email marketers.)

Goodbye, AOL Report Card.  I will miss you.  Actually, I will miss those days from long ago when a day without a Report Card meant we had aced our promotion.  We were good enough, smart enough, and AOL liked us!!


- Kevin Senne, Director, Deliverability & Social Networking, Premiere Global Services, Inc.

This special edition blog post is by eec Consumer Education Roundtable member Mindy Dolan, Director of Marketing for TailoredMail.

It's probably fair to say that most of us who are members of the DMA's Email Experience Council are passionate about email marketing in some sense or another. Sometimes we're so passionate about it that we assume everyone else in the world knows what we're talking about when we say the words "email client", "spam" or "phishing". But what if you asked your parents, grandparents or friend what those words meant? What do you think they'd say?

The eec Consumer Education Roundtable wanted to know just that in order to make sure we were speaking the right language when developing a new website to help consumers become more aware of email's do's and don'ts.

Working with Roundtable chairs Jason Baer of Convince & Convert and DJ Waldow of Blue Sky Factory, Roundtable member Stephanie Miller of Return Path put together a quick survey asking questions about email clients, spam and phishing. Roundtable members sent it to friends, family and Facebook/Twitter followers specifically looking for people OUTSIDE the email industry. More than 65 people took the survey.

What we found is that in general, people are catching on to email and the lingo used. They knew the harder terms like phishing, but no surprise, they don't think like marketers! When we asked the question, "What name or phrase do you use to describe the type of company that provides you an email address? Note that we aren't looking for the name of the company like Yahoo! or Cox, but the "category or type" of company that this represents." we got a mixed response. Most people outside of the email industry really don't know the definition of an email service provider or an email client. They just think of the company that provides them with an email address as Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc. There were some in the bunch who recognized it as an email service provider, but this helped us realize that when we are referring to an "email client" or an "email service provider", we need to be very clear and give examples of what we're talking about (i.e. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc).

And when asked how they defined spam, a whopping 76% of the participants responded saying, "Any email I didn't ask for, even if it's from a brand I know." So what do you think they do with that email once they see it in their inbox? Participants could choose multiple answers, and 71% of the participants said they'd delete an email they don't want, 39.3% said they'd mark it as spam or junk, and another 39.3% said they'd unsubscribe.

So what does this tell us? Our perception of what consumers know and don't know about email helps prove the need for an educational website that's written by email experts, but speaks to consumers in their language. Good thing we are building one!

How do we get this message out to consumers once the website is live? That's where our eec followers like you come in. We're looking for you to help us spread the message. Once the website is ready, we'll send you a link to the site, and ask you to add this to your email marketing messages, websites, and anywhere else you think consumers would be able to find it. In the meantime, if you would like to help us build the site, we can still use writers, editors and user experience support.

Help us get the word out and educate consumers about email! Contact Ali to join this Roundtable.

Though growing your email database takes time and effort, when done correctly, it will house your most qualified and responsive leads. A well structured email database will enable you to boost sales with more targeted messages and offers, extend the lifecycle of any campaign and increase customer retention with regular and relevant communications.

Consider the following techniques to acquire new leads and grow your email list with success:

1. Who is your ideal lead and how do you reach them? Create a profile for your best customer(s). This should include things such as age, gender, hobbies, job function, how they shop (online or at stores), where they shop, what they read, what websites they visit, etc. Depending on the product or service you are marketing, some of the above will be more relevant than others. For example, if you are marketing a clothing line, job function will be less relevant than where and how they shop, where as if you are marketing a trade publication, job function and industry will be extremely important.

2. Analyze your competition. Take some time to find out what your competitors are doing to build their email lists. Start off by going to their websites. Then do a web search on your competition as well as relevant key words, and take note of any banners / CPC ads that appear. Be sure to click through to check out what their landing pages look like and what type of information they are choosing to capture. If they have an e-newsletter, sign up for it. This is an easy way to start receiving their email campaigns. All of these steps will help you find out what type of promotions they are running, any marketing alliances they have formed, and how they are positioning their product or service.

3. Reach your best customer. Once you've created your customer profile(s) and finished your competitive analysis, you are ready to develop your list growth strategy. Your strategy can include initiatives such as: banner ads on websites that your target audience visits, a PPC campaign, direct mail or email campaigns to magazine subscriber opt-in lists, etc. You can also approach other products or service providers for co-promotions or mutually beneficial partnerships. Starting an e-newsletter or a blog for your company are great ways to grow your list as long as your content is desirable. The lifecycle of any campaign can be extended with behavior-based trigger emails.

4. Your offer is everything! Unless your offer is relevant to the recipient, they will not respond to your campaign. Your offer will need to prompt the recipient to make a purchase or willingly give you their information in exchange for something they want. For instance, you might send an email introducing your company to a magazine subscriber opt-in list that you know your target audience reads. By including a free downloadable premium such as an industry salary guide, a list of the hottest bars in town, or a best practices whitepaper – what ever might be most relevant to your target audience – recipients will need to provide their email address and demographic information in order to download the premium. Once you've captured their information and they've opted-in to your database, you will be able to communicate with that lead on an ongoing basis.

5. Your offer is almost everything! Unless the recipients receive your email, they cannot receive your offer. Therefore, be sure to comply with email marketing best practices: include a physical mailing address, an opt-out link and a subject line that reflects the content in your email. Also, when writing your email, try to stay away from words that are flagged by spam filters.

6. Create a landing page. It is extremely important to guide the campaign recipient through the entire process. By creating a landing page on your website that mirrors your campaign's message / offer, you will encourage the recipient to fill out the form with the ultimate goal of opting-in to your list.

7. Use a lead capture form. Your landing page can either link to a lead capture form or you can embed the form in the landing page itself.
a. Since people are more prone to filling out a short form than a long and drawn out questionnaire, limit the amount of information you are asking them to provide in exchange for their premium. Besides the basic name and email address, think of including one or two other demographic questions. These questions should be well thought out to provide you with information you can leverage for future email campaigns.
b. In addition to the demographic questions, your form should include a check box giving people the option to opt-in to your mailing list and receive information about your company and future promotions. According to the CAN-SPAM Act, if people do not explicitly say that they would like to receive emails from you in the future, it is unlawful to send them commercial marketing emails.
c. If you do not currently have a way to capture leads, an easy way to do this is through your email service provider. Most ESPs will provide you with both the lead capture form and a database to house the acquired leads. They will also manage your opt-outs for you.

8. Track your efforts. If you track your list building efforts, you will be able to pinpoint which initiatives are working the best and focus more of your energy on those. You might decide that others aren't worth your time. Easy ways to track your initiatives are:
a. Web Analytics: sign up for a free Google Analytics account. This will enable you to track how many people are visiting each page on your site and which campaign they are coming from.
b. In your lead capture form, include one question asking people how they heard about you with a drop down menu where customers can select from a list of your current list building initiatives.
c. Landing Pages: create a separate landing page for each marketing initiative so you can track page visits to these dedicated pages through your web analytics account.
d. Dedicated 800 numbers: there are services that will provide you with a range of 800 numbers that redirect to your main phone number. Including a dedicated 800 number on each landing page will enable you to associate each call with a specific campaign.

Remember, even if you are accurately targeting your best customer, your campaign will only be a success if you get them to act on your offer and opt-in to your database. Be sure to spend enough time tailoring your message and the offer to the people who will be receiving your campaign.

- Yael K. Penn, Founder and Principal, Imagine 360 Marketing

During the eec List Growth & Engagement Roundtable meeting this week, several DMA/eec members had a fascinating conversation about how to define consumer intent under CAN-SPAM as it relates to opt out for third party messages. The rules amended to CAN-SPAM which went into effect in July of 2008 say that there only needs to be one opt-out per message, and provides some guidance on the definition of the "sender" and "primary sender."

"Listen" in with me….

Arend Henderson of Q Interactive, an online consumer site that has a very large email list rental business: It's about the permission grant. If the message is from PublisherA, and the Friendly from is the publisher, along with the message header and footer – and significantly, the permission grant is with the publisher; but then the full message promotes AdvertiserB, then the opt out under CAN-SPAM should be from the sender and list owner, who is PublisherA.

Stephanie Miller (me) of Return Path, an email deliverability and performance company: The panel of privacy experts who spoke at the recent eec/DMA webinar with the FTC interpret the legislation that the opt out should be provided by the advertiser.

Arend: We interpret this as a protection of the consumer interest. We, the publisher, own the list, we own the relationship, and we care about those relationships. We believe that the opt out should be from the publisher, not the advertiser. It's our job to send subscribers messages.

Kim Santos, Reader's Digest: I feel the opposite. The opt-out has to be on the side of the advertiser. In list rental, where the advertiser is the sole focus of the message, that is what drives the unsubscribe request. If I'm a consumer, then I don't want the AdvertiserB advertisement. The subscriber wants out of the AdvertiserB messages. If the opt out is only with PublisherA, then AdvertiserB could just go rent another list from another publisher. It's a penalty for those subscribers who are on a lot of lists.

Arend: We feel strongly that the message is not from AdvertiserB. The permission grant is with us, the publisher.

Luke Glasner of Rodman Publishing: If you want to opt-out from AdvertiserB, you should be able to opt-out of those specific messages of the advertiser from PublisherA. The publisher like Rodman provides the opt out and we offer to manage the suppression file for advertisers who rent from us multiple times. Also for first time users we request suppression files - and we don't charge extra for them. Personally, I don't think list renters should charge to run a suppression file - since the person that benefits the most from reducing spam complaints is the list owner, even more so than the consumer of that email. It's not about protecting consumers from AdvertiserB in other areas of the Internet. If I walk around and see an AdvertiserB billboard, does that violate the opt-out? Does my email opt-out mean that I won't ever see an ad on the street or on TV or on a website?

Kim: No of course not, but there is so much transparency in email than in other channels. You can't suppress ads in those other channels, but in email you can. I as a publisher and someone who cares about my subscribers have a responsibility to protect my consumer. So I make sure that if you don't want to see AdvertiserB ads, you won't see them from me, ever.

Luke: I can only be responsible for my email program, not actions of every person that engages in online advertising. I do feel we have a duty to respect our readers and to give them control over their inbox. It is up the subscriber to tell me how much they want to engage with me. And it is up to me to respect their wishes. I think that email is privilege granted to senders by their subscribes not a right. Based on my experience I think that most consumers would agree with that.

Kim: What about when there are two opt-outs? One each for the advertiser and for the publisher? We often see that, and sometimes offer it.

Arend: Consumers don't think in our terms, they don't know why there are two opt-outs. They don't know who is "sender" under the law. This is why we never let the advertiser put AdvertiserB in the friendly from line. The messages come from Q Interactive, which is the brand you know and gave a permission grant to.

Luke: I will tell you what consumers do when they see two unsubscribe links. They go to the top of the message and click the Report Spam button. They won't bother to figure it out. It's not worth it to us as a list owner to work with advertisers who drive a lot of unsubscribe requests or complaints (when someone clicks the Report Spam button).

Arend: We agree. We do not work with those kinds of advertisers at all or at least for very long.

Luke: And the other side is true as well. Sometimes, the person who is sending this message and the sales person at the list owner have different agendas. If you are a buyer, be sure that the list owner can actually do what they promise.

Kim: We view this as a partnership. We want our advertisers to succeed. We had to put in an actual, official corporate marketing role so that we have an ombudsman around this area. That has helped to eliminate confusion.

Stephanie: How do you handle newsletters with multiple ads?

Kim: We treat these differently than full page email broadcasts. In this case, the opt-out is with Reader's Digest, the sender.

Arend: We do the same thing.

Luke: We also follow the same for our newsletters. An email newsletter's purpose is to provide (hopefully) engaging content to the reader. We support the newsletter financially by selling ad space so we can continue to provide our readers with newsletters.

- Stephanie Miller, Return Path

One of the largest problems facing email marketers today is the lack of industry standards for email metrics. One such much maligned measurement is the open rate. To help fellow email marketers, the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable was formed by service providers and other industry members of the Email Experience Council (eec). For the past several months, we have been working on finding a way to solve this problem, working specifically with the open metric. We have developed a group of definitions and standards to develop a new, better metric, the Render Rate. Through a lot of participation and hard work, the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable come up with what we believe is a clear and consistent definition, but we need the participation of one more person - YOU - our industry colleagues.

We seek feedback and input from email marketers, email solutions providers, agencies, publishers and other online marketing colleagues. You can download a copy of the definitions, how they are calculated and other information from the eec website here. Please post all comments here on the eec blog, so members of the Roundtable will have a depository of all industry comments to review and incorporate into this new industry standard.

The comment period for industry and other public feedback will run from today until the end of March. During April, we will assemble and review all comments, and revise the definitions as necessary to incorporate your input into this new industry standard. The final version is tentatively scheduled to be released in early May. We hope our fellow marketers and email solutions providers will support this initiative by adopting the new names and including them into their reporting systems.

Additional information will be posted on the eec website.

The Roundtable wishes to offer special thanks to the following members for their contributions: John Caldwell, Adam Covati, David Daniels, Luke Glasner (co-chair), Loren McDonald (co-chair), Stephanie Miller, Morgan Stewart and Chad White.

- Luke Glasner

It's harder than ever to convince consumers and business professionals to part with their dollars and euros and yen—a global recession, tightening belts and everyone afraid of layoffs and the possibility of more bad news. The only number that hasn't gone down lately is our quarterly forecast number—and for many email marketers this is even increasing.

Now more than ever, we email marketers are being asked to deliver more than ever—higher revenue, larger subscriber files, more active lists and longer lifetime value. None of our bosses will invest in this channel or support our efforts unless we can prove that the channel deserves more resources and more careful segmentation and content strategy.

It's never been a better time to stand up for your subscribers. Advocate for them, because the only way to increase revenues from email marketing is to create great subscriber experiences. And that means email messages that are not just frequent, but relevant, timely and targeted.

There are two things to focus on now, in order to shape up your email program success for Q4 and 2009:

1. Improve relevancy in small steps. We all know about the behavior triggers that help make our programs more relevant. Basically, you change your contact strategy and cadence to send more email when subscribers are more inclined to buy. This is effective, but can require additional resources or technology. What to do if you don't have those resources or technology? A great way to improve your program without new technology or data integration is to think about a content strategy that improves the value of your email messages over time. Adding value to just some of your messages, even SOME of the time, will improve response to ALL your messages. So instead of just sending promotions over and over, replace some of them with messages that feel more custom, even if they are still sent to large segments of your file. Insert a few tips in your next promotion or business newsletter. Host a poll. Say "thank you" to everyone who bought this past quarter. Send a no-strings-attached whitepaper to everyone who visited the website last month. Encourage everyone who uses Product A to take a free trial of Product B. Help subscribers network with each other.

2. Reach the inbox. There is no better way to boost response and revenue than to make sure you reach the inbox consistently and avoid the junk folder or going missing altogether. Reaching the inbox is based on your sender reputation—the "score" that ISPs like Yahoo!, Hotmail and the others give to you. It's based on your practices, including the number of times subscribers complain about your email by clicking on the "Report Spam" button. First thing is to know your sender reputation by visiting www.senderscore.org or www.dnsstuff.com. Work with your email broadcast vendor, IT team or a deliverability expert to address the root causes of deliverability failure.

—Stephanie Miller of Return Path

Email is perhaps the most transformative technology yet devised. It has changed the way we communicate, work and shop. Yet, despite its ubiquitous nature, widespread confusion remains about email in the minds of consumers. Issues of permission, privacy, technology and volume are pervasive with regard to email in a way that simply doesn't exist elsewhere in marketing. When was the last time you complained to DirecTV about getting channels for which you didn't opt-in?

The eec has taken on the sizable challenge of educating consumer users about all things email, and we need your help.

On Tuesday, Oct. 7 at 2pm EDT, DJ Waldow and I will be kicking off the newly formed Consumer Education Roundtable. The mission of this roundtable is to help consumers separate myth from fact and become better, safer and more responsible users of email. In doing so, we aim to provide an important feedback mechanism for the email industry, to assist them in understanding consumers' challenges and opinions regarding email. (Because let's face it, it's awfully easy for email professionals to lose sight of how tricky email can be for inexperienced users).

The first project (and it's a doozy) for this new roundtable is to build the definitive website where consumers can learn key truths about email topics such as opting in and out, phishing, inbox management and other elements critical to a successful and positive email experience.

We have secured volunteers to build the actual site, but we very much need eec members to assist in content creation. Again, our first roundtable conference call will be on Tuesday, Oct. 7 at 2pm EDT, and will be devoted to determining overall features and functions for the new site, and discussing specific assignments and timelines. This strategy brief outlines our current plan for the new site.

If you have a passion for making sure consumers understand our industry, please consider joining the new Consumer Education Roundtable. We'd love to have you. To join, simply contact Ali Swerdlow at ali@emailexperience.org.

—eec Consumer Education Roundtable chair Jason Baer of Convince & Convert

The Truth about Email Marketing, an email marketing book by Simms Jenkins, eec member and the CEO of BrightWave Marketing, will hit book stores on Aug. 1. Ahead of the release, the eec's Chad White had the opportunity to ask Simms about the book and the truths he reveals:

Chad: What is the most surprising "truth" in your book?

Simms: This will depend on the reader but for many email newbies making the transition from direct marketing or another world, Truth 21: Length and Your Call to Action may be surprising to some. So many emails I receive these days are brutally long and bury the calls to action. I think many major retailers are guilty of taking their offline ad campaigns and forcing them into email templates. Frankly, that doesn't work, so hopefully this truth sheds some light on optimizing layouts and messaging.

I also cover what the future of email (Truth 49) and what it may look like. This may have surprising thoughts for many. Here's the complete list of truths.

What are some of the email marketing myths that you debunk?

One of the most important and obvious to you and your readers may be the notion of permission email and how that draws a line in the sand of where you stand in utilizing email marketing. It must be a part of any conversation about email marketing regardless of your knowledge and experience. I think some people forget and that is an important part in setting up this book as an end-to-end guide about what makes a successful email marketing program.

On the other end of the spectrum, I address how email marketing can exist within the current world where social media grabs much of the spotlight (Truth 48: The Impact of Social Media on Email). The truth is we always hear about how email is on its deathbed but it still acts as the communication hub for many companies and specifically, should get a major boost because of the popularity of LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

Email marketing is evolving quite quickly. To which recent change have people been the slowest to adapt?

I am still utterly shocked about how email marketers fail to change and adapt to a world where 50% of consumers block images. One would think that companies would change their messaging strategy, optimize their creative and deal with this very significant and real challenge. However, many are not.

Your recent study that cited tangible revenue that is left on the table should get people's attention, but I have my doubts. I speak quite frequently to diverse audiences and meet with some of the top corporations and many are flying blind or clueless when it comes to how their emails render in many of their subscribers inboxes. What if their TV commercials were showing up blank during prime time? Do you think they would address that?

The most shocking aspect of this issue is when I am told that the company is aware of their emails showing up as a red X with no links, branding and messaging but they have their hands tied due to political and organizational issues. That screams to me the need for more education, awareness and participation with groups like the eec.

What's your best advice for folks that are new to email marketing?

The best part of our industry is the amount of great thought-leadership and free resources. Whether it is your blog, the eec newsletter, Email Marketing Reports, EmailStatCenter.com—the list goes on and on. You can find many of the best listed on the book's companion website's resource center. The amount of places to learn and network from peers is incredible. It is pretty unique to have an industry where so many high-level executives blog frequently—and not just fluffy PR-related blog posts.

The other exciting thing about diving into our industry is because it is still relatively a young one and changes so frequently, the opportunity to have an impact on your company and the industry is a very real and attractive one. We need so many more passionate and energetic professionals, so it is a place that one can enter today and become a leader rather quickly given the right situation. That can't be said for all industries.

Email marketing's reputation as being "cheap" often leads to budgets that are undersized compared to email's ROI. Do you have any advice for helping marketers communicate the value of email to their bosses so that they can get larger budgets?

The Truth about Email Marketing has two entire sections on budgeting and ROI and organizing a proper email team so this is covered in depth and is one of the most frequent issues that I tackle on a daily basis. We in the email marketing industry are certainly a victim of our own success, at times, as the depth of measurement and efficiency of email often overshadows the potential for deeper investment and greater sophistication, all of which lead to more relevant and valuable emails for subscribers.

I am a believer in using your metrics to champion your success and your potential. Not enough email marketing pros use their email analytics outside of showing open and click-through rates. The biggest breakthroughs we see with our clients is when we can show the impact email has on broader business goals, like product awareness, loyalty and revenue. CFOs don't care about open rates but you can have their ear when you show the crossover impact and power email can have on a business.

Thanks, Simms.

My pleasure, Chad. And as a special offer to the eec community, I've arranged an exclusive deal through the publisher to make The Truth about Email Marketing available for 25% off, plus free shipping. Just purchase the book through the FT Press store and enter the discount code Emailmark01 during the checkout process.

–>For more books on email marketing by eec members, check out our listing of Books on Email Marketing.

Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

FreshAddress: 2008 Email Address Validation Study of 50 Leading Retailer Websites
This study is the second in a series of examinations of the email validation practices of leading internet retailers.

Alchemy Worx: Subject Lines – Length is Everything
Conventional wisdom about subject line length is turned on its head.

StrongMail: The On-Premise Advantage for Marketing and Transactional
New perspectives on insourcing and outsourcing business-critical commercial email.

*Have a whitepaper you'd like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.

Sometimes people need a nudge to try something new, edgy or against the conventional wisdom. So here you go, we dare you—NO, we Double Dog Dare you—to consider this challenge from Stephanie Miller of Return Path:

If you include your website navigation bar in your emails, test to see if it's truly worth the real estate. I find it fascinating that many marketers have intense loyalty to including their website nav bar in their email templates, even if they have never actually done any analysis on the nav bar to see if it's (a) relevant and interesting or (b) ever clicked on. This is definitely worth testing, especially as so many of them take up a lot of key real estate in the preview pane. If the nav bar in your emails isn't driving significant clickthroughs, then I dare you to cut it.

If you take up this dare, let us know how it went by commenting below. And if you have a Double Dog Dare for the eec community, let us know about that too.

–>Consider more Double Dog Dares.

My little brother got tinted windows and rims on his sage green Chevy Malibu. (Sweet!) Just as he tricked out his transportation, so must we trick out our transactional emails, leveraging the opportunity to move the meter on the messages that generally enjoy the highest open rates (excuse me—render rates!) of almost any we send. Let's get to it with 10 top tips and several outstanding order confirmation examples.

10 WAYS TO TRICK OUT YOUR TRANSACTIONAL TOUCHPOINTS:

(1) Brand! Include your company logo and colors to make transactional communications feel consistent with your other marketing materials. Apple, Coach, Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma all do this. A metallic paint job and alloy rims produce a similar effect.

(2) Include navigation items relevant to the transaction, especially a link to the "Customer Service" section of your website, like Williams-Sonoma. (BTW— that is the best rice cooker ever. It plays an aweseome little song when your tasty rice is ready to eat.) This is the basic equivalent of vanity plates.

(3) Use text treatments, color and graphics to maximize usablity and legibility. This is just like hanging plush dice from the rearview.

(4) Add an upper-right "key details" module, making it easy to locate the most critical account and order details. Both Apple and Crate & Barrel pop the most relevant information up top, well within the preview pane. It's like…the opposite of tinted windows.

(5) Include customer service contact information…and not just a URL, but a phone number with hours of availability, like Williams-Sonoma. This is not unlike the famous bumper sticker: "How's my driving? Call 1-80…"

(6) Say "thank you." Don't forget your manners! Pay attention to tone and consider a letter format, which can feel more genuine and personal. Coach offers flowers with their thanks, which I find cute. They also get early-adapter points, as this particular order conirmation is from 2006. OMG…ancient! (Mariah Carey and I go way back.)

(7) Show product photography and link product names back to your website to reinforce excitement around the purchase. This is not unlike the sensation we experience when cranking up the bass on a souped-up sound system.

(8) Cross- and up-sell relevant products to already-engaged buyers. Apple does this brilliantly. (Not that I would ever listen to Bon Jovi! Must be a glitch in their recommendations engine, right? Ha ha ha…)

(9) Add valuable content and offers. Coach includes an option that allows belated gifters to send recipients an email announcing the soon-to-arrive prize. Just like triple tailpipes!

(10) Protect the primary purpose of the message—to communicate a transaction. Follow guidelines regarding transactional-to-promotional content ratios and offer placement. For instance, while Crate & Barrel does a lovely order confirmation, one wonders whether it isn't light on the confirmation and heavy on the order. Melinda Kreuger, "The Email Diva", wrote an excellent article about transactional email guidelines just this past Tuesday.

Plus, Email Marketing Reports has culled an exceptional collection of resources and articles around tricking out your transactional email.

A bobble-headed hula dancer isn't a bad idea, either.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

I was inspired by ExactTarget's recently published whitepaper, Subscribers Rule. "Subscribers Rule" is—in ExactTarget's words—"acknowledgement that we, as marketers, bear a responsibility to deploy one-to-one marketing technologies in ways that put subscriber needs first."

I went for a jog yesterday in my "Subscribers Rule" t-shirt and contemplated great ways for marketers to begin empowering individual subscribers. My starting-point pick: the Communications Preferences Center. This is the landing page on your website that allows your subscribers to control what, when, and how you communicate with them.

FIVE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR COMMUNICATION PREFERENCE CENTER POP!:

(1) Let subscribers decide what information they want to offer.
Tommy Bahama asks only the most basic details upfront, then layers in the opportunity to identify optional detailed preferences. This allows subscribers to decide how much information they want to disclose—and how much time they want to invest in the sign-up process. Asking for too much upfront can result in a lost email address.

(2) Provide clear descriptions of your content options.
BabyCenter publishes a variety of personalized email newsletters. They make it easy for subscribers to choose which they'd like to recieve by posting descriptions and examples of each publication. Content selection happens at step three of their simple, three-step registration process. BabyCenter includes an explanation around each step to help subscribers understand how providing data is to their benefit.

(3) Allow subscribers to select their preferred message format.
As more subscribers view email on mobile devices, it becomes important to ask them how they prefer to receive their emails—in HTML or Text format. The New York Times follows a three-step registration process similar to BabyCenter's; however, because they reach out to more business customers using mobile devices, they include a format preference option. I like that they include a "What's this?" link to explain the difference between HTML and Text; it's silly to assume that the general public understands the difference.

(4) Give subscribers control over frequency.
While your biggest fans might want to hear from you every day, your sunny-day subscribers might prefer to receive email from you only once a month. If you have the capability to deliver on the promise, offer frequency as an option on your communication preferences page… and, as a way to retain over-mailed subscribers, on your opt-down page, like in this Saks example.

(5) Make the experience pleasant and easy.
I like Louis Vuitton's Communication Preferences Center for its transparency and conciseness. Options to subscibe, modify and unsubscribe appear within a left-land menu bar, and each page lives succinctly above the fold. As we'd hope for a luxury brand, the pages are well-produced and attractive; the newsletter sample screenshot is a nice touch.

Tommy Bahama also presents a well-branded experience, from the design to the copy. Rather than just picking up default verbiage, they make the text paradise-appropriate: "Tell us what inspires you, and we'll create an email experience that's as perfect as a well-planned vacation."

Paradise delivered!

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

I want to share something inspirational that's happening in the email industry (Oh, and you can learn some best practices too!). It's a recap of the Email Experience Council's current Nonprofit Project. The project originated as a manner to enable peers and competitors in the email marketing industry to put business aside and work as a team to create the best email efforts for a good cause.

In 2007, the eec selected the Women's Bean Project as their project focus. Stephanie Miller, from Return Path, volunteered countless hours to lead this initiative and its team on behalf of the eec. I spoke with Stephanie about this effort to get the inside scoop on the project:

WHO IS THE WOMEN'S BEAN PROJECT?
The Women's Bean Project (WBP) helps women break the cycle of poverty and unemployment by teaching workplace competencies for entry-level jobs through employment and by teaching job readiness skills in their gourmet food production business.

WHY WERE THEY A GOOD CANDIDATE?
The WBP was sending one-off donor and volunteer announcements from a database created in FileMaker.

The WBP came to the eec with the following needs and goals:

1. Efficiency: Communicate effectively and efficiently with donors, volunteers and buyers (online and offline).

2. Impact & Choice: Retain donors and buyers through a higher number of touch points—ensuring that each touch is meaningful but also reducing costs and the amount of staff time required for each. Also, allow each customer/donor to select the method of communication (online or offline) that works best for them.

3. Cost Savings: Continue to reach every customer, even as the number of buyers increases by 30% each year (raising the costs of printing and postage significantly).

4. Practicality: Launch and manage a program on a very small staff—literally one-quarter of one person was dedicated to email marketing for all three audiences (donors, buyers, volunteers).

HOW DID THE EEC VOLUNTEER TEAM LOOK?
It is a testament to the email industry and the eec membership that very quickly we had 15 talented professionals volunteer to help, and several vendors step forward and to provide tools and services free of charge. ExactTarget provided a free basic sending license and also graciously donated nearly 15 hours of support throughout the project. Return Path donated a free rendering and deliverability account. Other companies represented included Blackbaud, BlueHornet, Future Integrated Marketing, Industry Mailout, Leapfrog Enterprises, Merkle and Wolters Kluwer Financial Services.

WHAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED?
The team focused on six specific areas to create the program—content, design, infrastructure and list growth.

Content Strategy:
● Identified ways that email can support the WBP mission
● Developed a content strategy
● Debated and finalized permission standards (DOI)
● Developed a calendar for promotions around the holidays, including promoting some local events and fundraisers
● Advised on sending an email counterpart for the annual appeal to donors (direct mail)
● Promotional content recommendations: (1) special offers: 10% discount for National Soup Month; (2) developed concept, copy and photography for a Valentine's Day email that would have viral impact; and (3) developed a year's worth of promotional themes based on holidays in order to boost sales during non-peak months (e.g., soup sales in summer are very slow)
● Set up Google Analytics so WBP could measure success of the email program for driving sales and page views
● Helped train the WBP team to review campaign results with an eye toward optimization

Design:
● Developed wireframes for four types of emails
● Designed templates for newsletter, postcards, DOI/welcome and donor appeals
● Loaded the templates into ExactTarget and tested them
● Helped launch an inaugural issue—which included list hygiene and deliverability with an old file, as well as an opt-out strategy for the existing database

Infrastructure:
● Worked with the team to set up an ExactTarget account
● Upload the templates; Access the self-service training
● Testing and mailing
● Course Correction: Aligning with with Yahoo! Store and cleaning up templates

List Growth:
● Starting point: 75% valid records
● Developed organic, offline and viral list growth ideas
● Recommended ways to optimize data capture on the website
● Reviewed the subscription flow for permission clarity and growth optimization

Wireframe Sample:

HOW DID IT TURN OUT?
Here's a quick rundown of the results:

1. We launched a program! It is practical, earns results, garners the praise and kudos of subscribers, donors and the WBP Board of Directors and has legs—the WBP can continue this email program when the volunteer team disbands.

2. Subscribers love it! The inaugural issue of the newsletter generated:
● 32% open rates
● 15% clickthrough rate
● 3.1% bounce rate on new data (25% bounce rate on old list data)

3. Subscribers are great WBP customers! Page views from email subscribers are two times higher than other sources.

For more details on our work with the Women's Bean Project and past Nonprofit Projects, visit the Nonprofit Project page on the Email Experience Council's website.

—Jeanniey Mullen of the eec