Test These Email Campaign Elements to Optimize Performance
Author: Stephanie Miller, co chair, DMA/eec and VP, Aprimo

Email marketers always are on the hunt for ways to optimize performance.

In fact, a study from Marketing Sherpa found that most marketers routinely test at least four different email campaign elements:

 Which of these should you pay attention to? What are the most important email elements to test?
Usually, the answer is in finding the right combination and optimizing over time.  Let’s take a look at the top five.

Subject line
The best guide in subject line writing is that, “Clarity trumps clever. “ Say what you mean, say it succinctly and say it with gusto.   Avoid lots of punctuation or aggressively spammy techniques like repeating the word “Free” six times or using symbols to replace vowels like  “Vi@gra.”    Other than that, feel free to be a marketer and tell me about the offer and the sale prices.  You may find that  shorter subject lines  outperform longer ones – depending on the type of message.   You must test this, as we see results favoring both styles win.  Optimal performance depends on a variety of subject line factors.  Consider: 

• Don’t wait until the last minute to write subject lines. Craft them as a key part of the creative process.
• Focus on clarity, and front load subject lines with the most important information as many email clients and mobile devices will truncate longer lines

• Use longer subject lines  whenever  there is a compelling reason to do so, or if you have multiple offers in the same message
• Test!

Message Format
Be sure to test your message template every quarter to be sure it continues to serve you well.   Test for spam filters, but also for response.  Is your navigation in the way of offer prominence?   Would a sidebar serve you best, or does it distract from the core message?  Does your footer have the correct legal mumbo jumbo and privacy/compliance links?  The DMA/Email Experience Council released a number of Design Checklists for this purpose. Download them (free for members) in the Resource Room.

Calls-to-Action
Relevant content is essential. Subscribers are too busy –and too overwhelmed with digital content –to read messages that aren’t specifically related to their needs/wants. Make sure your message is meaningful and that it stays true to your brand’s voice.  I just published Seven Tips for Higher Click Through Rates on the Aprimo blog  (LINK:   http://blog.aprimo.com/seven-ways-to-improve-email-click-through-rate).   Consumers are savvy and impatient, so  entice them with information that’s relevant and specific.  Consider that there are many elements to a message:

1. Button.   Perhaps rather than “Click Here,” your readers would like to be invited to “Learn More” or “Get Discount,” instead. Be realistic about what your readers are prepared to do (not everyone will be ready to “Buy Now!” after reading a few lines of email copy) and be clear with your directions.
2. Message type.  Design calls-to-action customized to each email type and purpose. As always, , pay careful attention to their frequency, font, color and location on the page.
3. Offer.  Testing offers is not specifically on the Marketing Sherpa list, but I can’t imagine it isn’t a key aspect for optimization.  Automation technology and the use of personas can guide you in putting the right offer in front of the right person at the right time. 

Layout and images
Email layout and images are more important than ever. Odds are, many (if not most) of your subscribers use an email preview pane feature that displays horizontally. It’s also likely that they block images by default and access email on mobile devices. Plan accordingly. Opt for more horizontal v. vertical elements. Don’t count on images to convey your message. Create content that can be read in different formats and on smaller sized screens.

Day of week sent
As my fellow columnist Simms Jenkins concludes at ClickZ, there is no magic bullet for timing emails. Today’s subscriber lists are typically diverse, and they’re likely to include international customers, people who can/can’t access email during the work day, those who read email on mobile devices, various age groups, etc. Obviously, trying to pinpoint an optimal send times across this wide-range of readers can be problematic. You have to use some judgment , of course–I wouldn’t choose Monday morning to send out a coupon for a Saturday night dinner special, e.g.  –but don’t expect a one-size-fits-all solution for every email campaign.

In all marketing, Your mileage may vary.  Testing will give you the insights needed to determine optimal send times for your particular message types and audience profiles. Marketing automation plays an increasingly important role, as well, as it allows you to track performance, integrate email communication with other marketing tactics, manage campaigns and change responses based on reactions from the marketplace.

In a recent poll* of some of the top marketers in the country (client side, vendor side, agency side, thought leaders, former clients and colleagues), the following question was posed:

What Are the Top Five Challenges You or Your Clients Face Today?

Below are the top five answers along with ten extras we just couldn't leave out.

This year, email and digital marketing seminars and conferences abound: EEC, Sherpa, MAAWG, EIS, DMA and dozens of others.

Each of these conference committees works hard to try and bring relevant content to attendees.  A lot of of these events are expensive, and these are hard economic times.  The committees try to secure speakers, panelists, keynotes and content, in addition to paid attendees and new membership.  Whast do the attendees want?  What are they looking to learn?  What can thought leaders provide?

As a marketer, new technology and marketing channels are critical.  As a vendor, exposure to new prospects, technology and social integrations are key for lead generation and PR.  As a business, you have an opportunity to learn about solving your own challenges and explore companies who might have solutions, and to learn about new channels and technology everyone says is critical, but you don’t exactly know how to put them all together, or just don’t know much about a specific channel…and you are charged with learning it now.

From the poll* of ~300 people – marketers, vendors, clients, former clients and agencies, the aggregate top five challenges for 2012 are (drum roll please):

1. Internal bandwidth and budget on marketing, vendor and IT sides – clients and vendors are looking to “up their game” with limited resources.
2. Marketing integration and optimization with new technologies into their existing platforms (and lack of knowledge base in new channels) – Mobile and Social lead the pack right now -and integrating email marketing with other traditional, and new channels.
3. List/Customer Acquisition and eAppend via any channel (the latter has truly become a 4-letter word these days.  It has 7 letters, actually).  How can I grow my list in accordance with the law and not lose a good portion of my list if I port vendors?  How can I utilize different channels to grow?  How do I acquire solid new customers?
4. Managing multiple “partner/vendor” contracts (sometimes 5 or 6 at a time) and those vendors’ unique abilities, and the failed efforts in wasted bandwidth to try and integrate them  with IT, their CRM databases and marketing into one email or other platform, including call centers.
5. Privacy: Interpreting Privacy Policies from social groups and global rules (EU, APAC, etc., Google, FB, Twitter – they have all been in the news, as has SOPA, ACTA, PIPA), yet internal bandwidth issues remain.  Clients do not have time to filter through 40 articles, nor read the laws.  And how do they have to change their web privacy policies to conform?
   
   This wouldn’t be complete without the next ten:
    
6. RFP help.  Or RFI help.  Email Service Provider Comparisons. This happens, quite often, in three areas of involvement on the client level: procurement, IT and/or marketing (or a combination).  They often work against each other with different goals, or have problems coming to fruition with marrying their multiple goals, cost-efficiently.
7. Mobile: Everyone has seen slides and knows the potential positive impact.  Some have seen case studies, but they don’t know how to go about it.  They look for aggregators, efficiency and ease of use.  QR codes and how to utilize them is included.
8. Loss of experienced professionals due to economy, and replacement with lower-paid/less expensive and less experienced staff who has to learn the “game” all over again – back to marketing 101 educations, diversification and separation of “duties” (e.g., a Social Media Manager, an Acquisition team, etc.).  Often working toward common goals, but at cross-purposes in the leadership/budget chain.
9. Combating declining channel effectiveness, and how to measure and test for increased adoption and engagement.
10. Utilizing analytics to full advantage.  All analytics, and how they can be integrated (from each channel) easily for a “one view.”  What do they all mean and how can I make sense of them and how do I marry them?
11. How to build effective messaging in a highly competitive marketplace.  How to leverage the ability to profile data for more relevant dialogues across all channels.
12. Utilizing analytics to full advantage.  We have web analytics, integration analytics, email analytics, social analytics, mobile analytics – basically this was a “HELP!”
13. Video.  How can I integrate video into my channels?
14. Increased use of triggered/automated email or other channel messaging – mostly with implementing automation, updating systems to handle, or creating the right rules and programs.
15. Testing.  Putting together a cross-channel testing methodology, including frequency/cadence.

And outsourcing is an issue as well.  To outsource or not to outsource?  A good question.

Email marketing is quickly overtaking a larger slice of the overall marketing budget as a cost efficient and effective channel.  Immediate visibility into data is key.  With companies becoming more competitive, each looks to grab as much of the "pie" as possible, increasing their capabilities and partnerships to alleviate some of the pain marketers feel, and be more "channel-ready."

While many of the above challenges seem iterative, these are the many of the topics that were the most pressing.  Everyone agrees email as an effective channel is not going away.  However, the commonality is that marketers feel the pressure to have all channels at their ready in a complex marketing stream and clients want help with streamlining this process and utilizing every resource they have to optimize every channel.  Together.

*This was an internal study conducted by information era marketing + consulting, llc (EIMC) in 2012, and represents a compendium of marketers’ and thought leaders’ top challenge opinions in a limited study.  Of ~300+ surveyed, response rates were ~48%.  This was a private study, and is proprietary to IEMC, llc.  Dori Thompson is a results-driven executive consultant with 19 years of experience in direct and online marketing, ecommerce, sales, strategy, and research.  She is also the co-chair of the eec Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee.

• 92% plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2012
• 60% plan to increase email marketing budget; 54% social media; 37% mobile/search (tied)
• 45% cite data integration as primary email marketing challenge in 2012; 43% lack of resources/staff; 40% content management
• 48% cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2012 email marketing initiative; 44% improving segmentation/targeting; 32% growing opt-in email list
• 68% plan to integrate email marketing with social media; 45% with mobile; 17% with search

• 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.

• The product being announced can and likely will be very useful.
• The social sharing buttons at the top.
• A very simple call to action.
• The “know what you’re looking for? Jump right to it” section.
• The headline and supporting copy gets straight to the point. Nice job.

• First and foremost: I’m not a student or an entry-level grad. And LinkedIn knows that. The message is for these people, not “Hey, if you’re looking for interns, we have this new portal.”
• The guy is clearly too old to be in the demographic they’re looking for.
• The blueprints of the cars, while cool, doesn’t really match the “start blazing your trail” meme in this email. Imagery that speaks to trailblazing and paths would be much more effective, in my opinion.
• A clear-cut CAN-SPAM violation, with no mailing address to be found in the message.

The email marketing industry needs standard reporting and metrics.

Today it is impossible to compare and benchmark response and deliverability rates across the industry because marketers get reports with different terms based on different calculations. Marketers are restricted in comparing reports and synchronizing data when looking to evaluate or change email broadcast vendors.

Inaccurate or inconsistent metrics diffuse the credibility of email marketers.  If our own metrics cannot conform to benchmarks, we lessen our ability to convince senior management and fellow digital marketers of our success.  It also hinders our ability to negotiate for resources.

You can help.  Read the quick background here and then take action with the links below.

The email marketing industry may be ignobly unique among direct and online marketing disciplines for our lack of measurement standardization.  For the past two years, the members of the eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable (a volunteer member committee)  have wrestled with the problem of a lack of a consistent and unified standards for the most basic email metrics such as delivered, open and click.

 
Through our work, the Roundtable has built a foundation for industry standardization for these basic but important metrics.

We have created (and vetted) new definitions of key measures so that they are not only accurate, but the names accurately reflect the measure.  (You can read in past eec blog postings about the struggles and debates to come up with terms we could all support.)  Latest definitions are here.

We have surveyed dozens of email broadcast vendors (ESP's and MTA/on-premise providers) in order to audit existing reporting and gauge the level of variance across the industry.  Please note that the eec Roundtable does not support or claim that any one provider's method of calculating common metrics is better than any other.  Many ESP's and other broadcast vendors participated in the development of these definitions.  We are very grateful for their support.

The Roundtable has repeatedly come to the industry – practitioners, eec members and thought leaders – to gather feedback and insights.

Now it's time for action.


Here's how you can help us start the ball rolling.  Join our launch efforts now.

Voice your support (or dissent) for standardization of metrics in our industry.  Take this one question survey.

Read the definitions

Tell us your thoughts and send in any corrections to the Roundtable.

Commit.  Sign the petition to advance standard metrics now.

Join the Roundtable (eec members only).  Just email Ali at the eec.

Please place your comments below.  And stay tuned!

Thanks to the hard working members of the eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable! 

- John Caldwell & Luke Glasner, eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable Co-Chairs

1. Address the needs to “get started” by helping marketers understand the initial steps that might lead to integrated marketing leveraging an existing email channel.
2. Utilize email marketing best practices to help inform what we decide to provide to the community.
3. Look at simple tools that are easy to apply rather than just focus on deep insights or case studies that are interesting but don’t inform clear action for marketers.

• Focus on nuts & bolts…how to get started…benchmarks…how to get it done.
• Provide metrics for how to measure success and case studies on how it has been successful.
• How to get it done easily.  Much of the material out there is intimidating on getting the resources (people, money) to get going.
• Create a checklist to help people know they are addressing the right issues - a Cross-Channel Maturity Audit
• Help people learn how to unify a single communication piece & communicate it across multiple channels.  Keep in mind how a message differs for different channels.
• Help people test.  How to choose the right channels.  How to choose the right campaigns for testing cross-channel integration.
• Focus on how to best combine traditional and new marketing channels (e.g. email marketing and social media, blogging and events)
• Since we are doing this for email marketers, maybe we should investigate whether one channel (e.g. email marketing) should be the hub of your cross-channel marketing strategy.

Email marketing, like any career, is likely to include working and collaborating with people who are not in the same physical office.   If you are the remote person, you probably have concerns about keeping in touch with others on the marketing team or in your department, and if you are managing people who are remote, you have to pay special attention to keeping them in touch with the rest of the group.

In an eec Member Initiatives Advisory Committee meeting on the Career Paths project last month, we discussed the impact of this dispersed workforce, and how it affects an email marketing team.

Angela Baldonero, VP, People of Return Path, reviewed four broad trends for career development among the diaspora:

1. Technology keeps us connected, and enables a broad dispersion of the workforce.  However, it also causes some practical issues. For example, we have an employee in Berlin reporting to a manager in California. It raises the question:  Is Skype enough?
2. Social interaction is good for the business.  Bringing on people in new geographies can be challenging for on-boarding as well as collaboration.  It's harder for new people to be remote.  However, people who have already built relationships in a core office and then move away can be successful in a remote environment.
3. Dispersion affects the talent development lifecycle.  For example, the key needs of top talent are relationships and recognition and it's hard for people to build relationships if they are not there.  Lots of good work happens when you are in the same room – including discussing the creative for the email campaign while you look over my shoulder, or brainstorming subject lines by the coffee machine.   Plus, it's hard to "make your mark" if you do not have access to casual interaction, and the only time you "see" colleagues is in formal business meeting situations.
4. It is easy to confuse connections with relationships.  It's easy to have connections. It's harder to build relationships.  However, it's relationships that drive recruitment as well as career advancement. Geography supports or inhibits relationship depth and meaning.

As the group discussed these ideas, we realized that these are challenges for workforce, but also for proving the value of email marketing within the organization.  We can't earn the respect we need for resources and a seat at the table just from the numbers; the relationships matter, too.

Other impact areas:

• Geographic dispersion and even business unit silos within the same geography also affect the collaboration and governance of different brand/business unit email programs.
• Participation in eec meetings is a way for geographically or functionally isolated professionals to network and be educated. It's also always helpful to hear that other marketers have the same challenges!
• Remote employees don't have access to impromptu conversations which can help your career and move your projects forward.  Baldonero quoted, "A lot of work gets done when you talk about nothing."  Relationships are not built just talking about business and trust is built when you know the whole person.  If you just talk business, you may actually have less trust, because you only know one aspect of that person.
• Sometimes there is a perception that if you are working at home you are not working as hard.  Jennifer Carmichael of Tenet Healthcare noted, "Some remote employees work harder or longer hours because they're 'always on.'"
• Relationships drive loyalty and the extra effort needed to get something done.  If I need help with a project or getting something run up the flagpole, it's a lot more successful to stand in that person's office, than to IM them.

In all this, we discussed that building relationships is a shared responsibility.  If you work remotely, you need to make time for making these connections since they don't happen organically. This is both the responsibility of the individual and the organization.  If a business hires people remotely for email marketing or any task, there needs to be a commitment to support this relationship building.

Some ways to build your own long distance relationships or help make it easier for remote employees to engage:

1. Stay an extra day when you do visit the office. Make time for coffee and hello's.
2. Corporate social networks can help facilitate information across offices.
3. Seek out similarities – find the connections outside the office with your colleagues. This might mean taking a bit of extra time on the phone or in an email to get to know the person.
4. Managers can facilitate team building prior to the business meetings. Build time into the weekly phone calls or hold quarterly in-person meetings that have time for socializing.   "This is a great idea that I can implement tomorrow," Carmichael said.
5. Conferences like the Email Evolution Conference are a good way to meet new people.   However, we are all busy; we have to make time for establishing these connections.  Nancy Atwood of Anchor Computer said, "In some ways, we are victims of technology – we can work all the time and we are always connected. So the "doing the work" is taking priority over "building a network."  We invest our time in replying electronically rather than establishing a personal connection."
6. Corporate HR or someone needs to accept some level of administrative support and education, as well as the remote employees themselves.  Be proactive. If no one is reaching out to you, reach out to your manager or the HR team, Baldonero recommends.
7. Working long distance is a reality for most email vendor/marketer relationships. Many of these same principles apply to good account management and client service. "Think of your colleagues as clients, and that might change the way you relate to them," Atwood said.

Lastly, we discussed some things that the DMA/eec can be doing to help facilitate career growth and help us all build these relationships internally and around the industry:

1. A member directory of names, company, industry, geography. Restricted access and "no sales calls."
2. Local events for members to meet and network and learn from each other. Perhaps in cooperation with local DMA groups.
3. Ensure there are strong networking opportunities prior to and during the main DMA conferences.

What are you doing to build relationships with remote colleagues, clients and employees?  What else would you like the DMA/eec to do to help the industry? Please leave your comments below or email Stephanie Miller at the Member Initiatives Advisory Committee.

1. The Internet has become the premier resource of information amongst C-Suite executives with search engine first for information. 
2. Digital marketing – in its myriad forms – along with email marketing, form an important part of B2B marketing outreach to generate leads and facilitate sales growth.  
3. Online social networking is emerging as an important tool in business-to-business marketing.  
4. Usage of blogs, microblogs, and RSS Feeds – currently segregated by generation – may eventually become essential contact points in maintaining B2B brands. 
5. Mobile marketing or the “mobile web” seems to be in its genesis amongst B2B marketers. 
6. B2B branding is growing in importance and directly correlated with increases in top-line revenue and market cap. 
7. Accountability is predominant – from analytics and front-end campaign tracking to back-end lead nurturing.
    

This week the Inbox Insiders, an email marketing discussion group, had a lot to say about the Kevin Smith vs Southwest Airlines debacle. 

Here's what DJ Waldow of Blue Sky Factory, an eec Silver Sponsor, shared with us: 

I'm more interested in how Southwest handled the situation from a social media perspective. I can't speak to all channels, but I'll start with one of the most visible - Twitter. It started with a tweet from Kevin on Feb 13th at 6:52PM:

Dear @SouthwestAir - I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?

@SouthwestAir replied 16 minutes later with this: @ThatKevinSmith hey Kevin! I'm so sorry for your experience tonight! Hopefully we can make things right, please follow so we may DM!

I personally think SWA's reply on Twitter was really good. Without knowing the full situation, they did a nice job in replying by acknowledging the issue, apologizing and offering to carry on the conversation privately (via DM).  From there it started to get ugly as Kevin Smith began to tweet like a madman using a ton of profanities.

The one issue I do have with how SWA handled this situation is that they may have jumped the gun a bit with their initial blog post.  It seems as though they might not have gotten all of their facts straight.

Takeaways, Lessons Learned, etc. (just my opinion here):

• Social Media is alive and well.
• People tend to use social media to either sing praises (We love you!) or complain (I was wronged. I hate you!).
• While it is important to reply promptly, be sure to have all of your facts straight.
• Remember that people will be quick to form their own opinions, take sides, and are not afraid to voice their thoughts publicly.
• Twitter is not always the answer; it often takes real humans.
• Sometimes it makes sense to "take it private" (as outlined by Amber Naslund).
• Responding to customer service via social media channels is not really that different than how it "used to be done."

A few resources:

• CNN
• Initial SWA blog post
• 2nd SWA blog post
• Kevin Smith's Side

For more details, check out DJ's blog post.

eec'ers - What do you think?

Did Southwest handle the situation properly? 
Is this all a publicity stunt for Smith's new movie?
Do you think companies should publically respond to customer service issues?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Email done quite well
Is loved by ISPs
And subscribers too

Okay, so I'm not the Shakespeare of the haiku world yet. If you can do better, your creativity could win you a one-year membership in the Email Experience Council, a $399 value and a great way to connect with your fellow email marketers, download resources and improve your email skills.

To say nothing, of course, of the thrill of seeing your content entry displayed on the eec site for the world to appreciate and envy (more on that later).

It all started when a group of self-described "email snobs" started talking via Twitter and blog posts/comments about the language we use to talk about email marketing. Some of the conversation was inspired in part by my latest Email Insider column, "Warning: Blasting May Be Harmful to 'Our' Health."

On an email discussion list, someone posted a response to the conversation about language in the form of a haiku, which begat more haikus and eventually drew the eec into the fray. Now the eec is sponsoring the (sort of) official 2009 Haiku Slam, with eec members voting on the winners.

We're still working out the details, including the page at the eec site where you can view other entries. In the meantime, you can track various fun and serious discussions on email marketing via the hashtag #emailsnob - or Twitter search. Follow me - @LorenMcDonald – and @Silverpop and other participants, and we'll pass on the particulars as they become available. Feel free to contribute to the discussion, too.

Once you have crafted your contest entries, send them to Ali at the eec - aswerdlow at the-dma.org. Post 'em in the comments section here, too, if you're especially proud of them.

Here is another of my planned entries that might inspire your own creativity or your competitive spirit:

Blasts are from the past
And relevance they will kill
ROI, think not

Now, put down that coffee cup and start haiku-ing!


- Loren McDonald, Silverpop, an eec Silver Sponsor

In what we believe to be the first collection of bounce codes in one public location, the Get Satisfaction site is now the official home to the eec's Deliverability Roundtable bounce string project.  It is the culmination of many months worth of effort from industry veterans with experience in email deliverability and the technical aspects of sending and receiving email.  We decided to place it here since the site allows for dynamic updates as codes change in time and also provides a forum in which users can discuss deliverability issues and receive insight from folks in the industry. 

Why is this useful?
The most common form of communication for an ISP to communicate with a sender on a one-to-one ratio is a bounce message.  If an email is successfully handed off to an ISP, a success bounce is issued (250 ok).  However, if the message is not successfully handed off, an ISP will usually put pertinent information into a bounce message letting you know what the issue is and, in an ideal setting, what you need to do to avoid that bounce in the future.  The more failure bounces you collect, the less mail is getting through to your recipients.  If you're concerned about the highest level of delivery penetration, you'll review the bounce codes to spot trending and actionable items you can do to get your mail through to an ISP.  That's where this site comes into play.  We've amassed a list of the following ISPs that have standard bounce codes you should be aware of.  If you see a bounce from one of them, you should check the Get Satisfaction site to see if more information is available. 

• Hotmail/Live
• Comcast
• ATT/BellSouth/SBC
• Yahoo
• AOL

Who should use it?
Anyone who has a responsibility around message delivery, most likely your IT or development team, will want to take a look at this.  Bounce messages are collected at the email server level so, unless your email application allows easy access to data in a useable format, you'll need to have someone review the bounce messages at the server level to see the actual ISP message. 

How do I use it?
Let's say you send out a mailing today.  After watching the initial delivery numbers, you see that Yahoo has taken a dip in delivery (meaning there's a delta between the delivery numbers you're seeing and what you usually expect).  Either by using the ESP's delivery tools or by having someone on your team provide the information, you discover there's an accumulation of the following bounce strings queuing up on your outbound email server. 

"451 Resources temporarily not available - Please try again later [#4.16.5]" 

You then go to the new bounce site and search for this string.  You should find the following match: 

"What does bounce code 451 Resources temporarily not available - Please try again later [#4.16.5] from Yahoo mean?" (check it out). 

After you click on the link, you see that this is a bounce message Yahoo! will serve up if their servers are over capacity and are pushing back on mail to allow them to catch up.  This is not a sender related bounce but rather a Yahoo! infrastructure one – all you can do is retry the message later and hope Yahoo! has some available cycles at that time (which you should be doing on most soft bounces anyway). 

See?  It's that easy.  And in most cases there's a link to the ISP's postmaster page which will provide further information on what to do or context around why you're receiving this bounce. 

How can you help?
There is no uniform standard amongst ISPs mandating that certain bounces be stated a certain way.  As such, you see a huge variety of bounce messages and what information an ISP will provide.  Also, as ISPs deem necessary, bounce codes change over time making existing ones outdated and adding new ones.  Please help the email community stay on top of the changes by contributing to the GetSatisfaction bounce project site when you see new bounce codes that aren't listed or know one that's already listed has changed.  By making this an industry effort, we can ensure all of us are up with the latest news.  Feel free to ask questions on the site as well.  We have a few deliverability folks monitoring it.

Who put this together?
The following folks were involved with this project and we extend our gratitude!

• Joshua Baer - Founder & CEO - OtherInbox/Chief Evangelist - Datran Media
• Dennis Dayman, VP, Privacy, Eloqua
• Michelle Eichner, VP, Pivotal Veracity and Co-Chair, Deliverability Roundtable
• Stephanie Miller - VP, Global Market Development - Return Path
• Jack Sinclair - Co-Founder, COO & CFO - Return Path and Co-Chair, Deliverability Roundtable
• Chris Wheeler - Director of Deliverability - Bronto Software
• and other members of the eec Deliverability Roundtable

- Chris Wheeler, Director, Deliverability, Bronto Software and Member, eec Deliverability Roundtable

If you have ever dealt with onboarding at an ESP, you probably know one of the main topics of discussion around scalability and reputation is whether to go with dedicated or shared (pooled) IPs.  Are you ready to "drive solo" with a dedicated IP, or do you stick with the "carpool," an IP pool.  It can be daunting and sometimes a bit ambiguous as to which model fits your needs best.  With that in mind, here are the top 5 factors you need to keep in mind when determining which path to go down.

1. How much mail are you planning to send?
The way email is relayed from sender to receiver is fundamentally based on the IPs (or network fingerprints) involved in the handoff.  The more IPs you have, the more inroads you can create with getting mail delivered to an ISP (such as Yahoo!, Gmail, etc.).  Many ISPs have hard requirements around how many messages will be allowed through and how many active IPs you can use at one time.  If you're looking at sending more than 20,000 per week, you should see if having your own IPs to send through will give you the scalability needed to match that.  However, if you're not going to be sending at least that much, you might have more horsepower than you need which is where a pooled group of IPs helps – it spreads the load like peanut butter over the different IPs from the grouped senders.

2. What is the deliverability impact?
Email deliverability, at least right now, is heavily weighted on IP reputation.  What does this mean?  Like a credit report, ISPs will determine what sort of mail they can expect from an IP based on the history of mail that's been coming from it.  If you have mail that is strong enough reputation wise, which includes low bounce rates and end recipient complaints, a dedicated IP might work.  You will only have to worry about your own mail's impact as opposed to allowing the possibility of other mail going out the same IPs impacting your delivery.  But, proceed at your own risk – when using a dedicated IP, you determine your own fate.  Pooled IP senders usually rise and fall with each other depending on the sum total of mail being sent out where one particular sender won't necessarily sway the pool as a whole.  This is why choosing an ESP that has good deliverability rates on a pool is of paramount importance – you'll be judged by your peers.  A bad reputation will cost you in the long run.

3. How is dedicated v. pooled different in implementation?
Typically, a new IP will be warmed up (or pulled from an already warm pool) and allocated to a sender on a dedicated system.  This means special attention should be given to initial sending and ISP feedback.  Dedicated IPs also require a bit of inflight tweaking as the ISPs learn what sort of mail will be delivered.  But, once this initial ramping has completed, you're free to do as you like as long as you don't violate any ESP best practices.  You also have more wiggle room for making your IP specific to you since you're the only one it's representing.  Pooled IPs generally don't require much technical implementation since the sending IPs are ready to go and have a critical mass of mail already being sent out.  However, the business investment with vetting and passing certain ESP requirements can be heavy since the new sender has to prove they won't do anything to risk the pool's reputation and thus the existing senders using it.

4. Does the cost make sense?
Dedicated IPs require more time, effort and maintenance to get everything setup.  They use their own bandwidth which subsequently means the cost isn't shared.  Most ESPs charge for this as a result.  Pooled IPs?  There's usually no cost associated above and beyond the normal sending charges.  This means money saved for smaller sender.

5. How much autonomy do I want?
This is a critical question for anyone sending email.  Do you care if your messages go out with custom or group headers?  Do you want to be able to send on your own schedule whenever you want (again, as long as you stay within the ESP's published best practices)?  How about not having to worry about what other senders in the same pool are doing?  With dedicated IPs, you get to be in control of a lot more of the decisions around how email is actually delivered.  Many clients don't care, though, as email is just a component of a much larger marketing strategy and as such, they don't have the resources or capitol to afford dedicated IPs.  In a pool, you're more heavily scrutinized depending on any hiccups along the way impacting the greater good.

There's a tendency for email marketers to see the issue as black or white wherein they fall into one or the other side with strong convictions.  It's not that simple and as email becomes more widely adopted as a marketing and end customer communication vehicle, taking into account the above points will help you achieve success no matter where you land.

- Chris Wheeler, Director of Deliverability, Bronto

Chris is leading the charge to ensure both Bronto's customers and staff are well-informed about email marketing practices and technology as well as being the face of Bronto deliverability externally.  Previously, he created the internal deliverability program at Amazon.com alongside program managing the operations of the email team and was at an ESP leading a team of deliverability consultants.  Besides being a frequent contributor on Deliverability.com, Chris is a part of many email industry forums, both business and technical.

I've been hearing a lot of questions surrounding the best application of social media to the marketing mix, but one that has been slightly overlooked and under-discussed is who should really own it within an organization. And until you can figure that out, it is really difficult to hold any one internal resource responsible for devising a solid and actionable social plan.

To that end, StrongMail Systems recently conducted a survey to see how marketers were approaching the social space and who planned to own the channel. More than 500 marketers responded, and the results validated our suspicions. Social media is emerging as a direct marketing channel, and marketers are planning significant investment in email marketing and social media programs in the second half of 2009.

One thing the survey clearly conveyed is that ownership of social media within the various facets of marketing is still up for grabs, with 29% of respondents stating that responsibility is owned by multiple departments. But for 36% of the respondents, social is owned by the direct marketing organization, which allows for significant alignment with email marketing efforts. Social media was initially seen as a terrific vehicle for public relations, but surprisingly only 9% of respondents reported PR organizations owning the social media channel, which suggests that marketing teams value social media more for its demand generation potential than awareness building. A paltry 5% have a dedicated social media department.

Other notable facts from the survey include:

Last month I was delighted to learn that one of my clients, Sony, won the gold award at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami for best automated series. The winning campaign was a serialized message stream developed to welcome, educate, and engage individuals who had just joined the Sony Rewards loyalty program. We executed the new strategy though a simple test plan to quantify the impact of the new messaging, and were quite pleased by the results.

The new messages, a series of three, sent over the course of seven days, enjoyed significant increases in click-through rates over the control group, and drove an exponential lift in site visits and online engagement. Sony has taken the learnings from this test and extended them through similar serialized message streams targeting other segments.

If you're not currently leveraging a multi-message or serialized welcome strategy, I strongly suggest you develop a plan to test one. The bottom line is that new members of your list have unique needs and are likely to be up to five times more responsive to the messages they receive during their first few weeks as subscribers. It simply makes good business sense to address these needs and ensure that messaging critical to your core business objectives makes its way to the inbox during this time when recipients are most likely to respond to it.

Where do I start?

If you have any welcome message success stories, please share here, look me up on twitter [@neinstein] or email me.

- Nicholas Einstein
Datran Media

With over 150 email service providers (ESPs) to choose from, how can you possibly pick the best one? Or be confident that your current ESP is the best fit for your business and email marketing initiatives? There's no single right answer. ESPs differ from each other in many ways, meaning you can't make an apples-to-apples comparison.

Despite the overwhelming number of choices and the complexity in making a choice, there is an email service provider that's right for you and your company's email marketing program. Determining which one means knowing what matters most when shopping around or evaluating your current ESP.

Every email service provider has its strengths and weaknesses. You can't change that. But you can be aware of which strengths are absolutely critical to your business and which weaknesses you are not willing to accept. That means you have to start your ESP search internally, by really delving into what drives your email marketing program now and in the future. You also must take a hard look at your company's capabilities, including that of your staff and any existing technologies you'll want to integrate with. (For advice on evaluating your needs, see the ESP RFP tips from a recent presentation by eec member, Kara Trivunovic, and reiterated in the ClickMail Marketing blog.

For help in evaluating what matters most to your program and knowing how to score ESPs on those factors, download "Choosing the Right Email Service Provider: The top 20 factors to consider when shopping for a top tier ESP."

This whitepaper is a compilation of a decade's worth of knowledge and insight, gleaned while helping clients choose ESPs that fit the email service provider to the client's needs. This comprehensive whitepaper covers 20 factors for you to consider when choosing an ESP, including why each factor matters and what to look for. It also includes a scoring sheet you can use to evaluate ESPs against these 20 factors. This resource will help you take a thoughtful, informed approach to your ESP selection, so you can compare apples to oranges and still make a wise choice, Whether you're in the market for a new ESP now or want to see how your current one stacks up.

When every marketing dollar matters now more than ever, every little improvement you make to your email marketing program matters too. Choosing the right ESP, or being sure the one you're with now is the best fit, is one critical component in making sure you're maximizing your program's effectiveness…and ROI. Don't overlook the importance of this partnership. Use every resource you can to ensure an informed decision.

- Marco Marini, CEO, ClickMail Marketing

This week we released the Deliverability Resource Guide written by the members of the Deliverability and Rendering Roundtable. This 30-page report, now available in the eec's Whitepaper Room, consolidates the most important aspects of managing an email marketing program. It offers in-depth information on key topics such as: infrastructure, reputation, risplay, and mail policies. Kudos to the Deliverability and Rendering Roundtable for their phenomenal work. Get the report here.

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