In his recent Predictions & Unpredictions for 2013 blog post, Return Path CEO Matt Blumberg talked about how brands’ marketing and security functions will need to join forces to fight phishing. One key reason is that phishers and spoofers are continually getting smarter, applying an impressive range of best practices to make their emails ever-more compelling and believable.

• The subject line inspires real concern (especially if you really are a YBS customer!)
• The “Friendly From” is believable (see inset)
• The sender domain is correct (because the real sender is spoofing it!).
• Branding is consistent with the real YBS website.
• The language is professional sounding and there are no spelling mistakes.
• There is a strong, visible call to action – “Click My Account Activity”
• The disclaimer and contact details all appear to be 100% correct.

• It generated a perfectly respectable Spam Assassin score of only 1.5
• It only identified one potential spam trigger word – “Disclaimer”
• It even rendered well on most major mobile devices!

• Nearly 1 in every 20 of these emails successfully bypassing spam filters successfully delivering to recipients’ inboxes.
• Average Read Rate for these emails is 3.66%. This is is particularly startling given that:

1. YBS is a relatively small player in the UK with approximately 1% market share. Assuming that non-YBS customers will almost certainly ignore these emails because they are not relevant, Read Rates for the remainder can be inferred as actually being much higher.
2. In a number of instances the Read Rate is higher than the Not Filtered rate, implying that recipients are recovering these emails from their spam/junk folders and responding to them!

• An authoritative report produced by Cisco Systems shows that on average 99% of phishing emails get filtered, with the remainder generating a 3% open rate. This implies the YBS phishing emails are highly effective, out-performing the Cisco benchmark by a factor of 6.
• Cisco also calculated the commercial impact of a phishing attack at $250 (£155/€190) per compromised recipient. Using the report’s average click-to-open rate of 5%, with 50% of clickers giving up personal data, we can extrapolate the Inbox Insight data to infer an estimated commercial impact in the UK of over £1M pm – for this single scam alone!

• Read our Anti-Phishing Guide which contains actionable advice on how to achieve brand protection and secure your email channel.
• Make use of Return Path’s APS suite of tools and services to:
  • Identify potential brand abuse (Email Brand Monitor).
  • Proactively block phishing and spoofing activity (Domain Protect).
  • Facilitate prosecution or phishing site take-down efforts (Domain Secure).

 

It's darn inspiring.  Toby Fallsgraff, email director for the Obama-Biden 2012 campaign, made it clear that email marketing was not just a key channel for the President's reelection campaign, but was a central, essential and integral factor in the success of the campaign.  Wow - lowly email marketing re-electing a President?  That's something to mention next time someone responds with languor when you say what you do for a living!

One of the coolest things that Toby shared is around the challenges of using email marketing to do the hard work of a campaign:  Defining a competitor, and establishing a candidate position.  Email marketing done well, and with high frequency, can actually shape the conversation, not just reflect the brand. "We created a way for ordinary Americans to be involved and actually move the needle on the campaign success," Toby said.

The numbers are crazy.  One mailing could generate up to 2 million dollars in donations.  So the stakes - and rewards - were high.  No wonder the team worked crazy hours and gave up so much personal time for the success of the program.  There were 4.5 million donors over email, donating on average a $53 gift (many people gave more than once) generating more than a half a billion dollars online.

No question:  Email marketing has changed how political campaigns are funded.

One key to success is focus and clarity of vision.  There were four email objectives: Messaging, Mobilization, Money & Metrics, Toby said.

Some of the secrets of their success include the kinds of best practices that we talk about all the time, and especially here at the Email Marketing Summit.

•Treat subscribers like people, not data. Assumption that anyone who was on the list, was supportive. Messaging addressed supporters as knowledgeable insiders.  "We know you know about Obamacare, but your friends may not."  A series called, "You should forward this" is a great example of enabling social sharing.

•The subject lines were a huge buzz factor in the campaign.  Some positive and negative social activity helped raise awareness of the program and entice people to actually open some of those multiple messages they received every day.   Subject lines like, "Listen,"  "Hey" and "Say you're with me" were incredibly successful.  Continual testing was key to subject line success.

•Use a field localization approach for mobilization.  The Campaign relied on the States to know what worked best in their area.  Enablement of those programs helped improve the response to local activity.

•Lots of testing in the strategy.  They found that staff was terrible at predicting what would work or not work - just like every marketing team I've ever seen. "We had to test and test and never be satisfied," Toby said.  "Innovation and metrics became an objective in itself."

•Reliance on segmentation.  For example, on Oct 17, 166 individual email segments were sent something unique, and 84 of them were tests.
 

•Staffed for success.  "Some people had to sleep, which I don't buy,"  Toby said.  Still, of the 30-member Outbound messaging team, 22 people worked on email, 14 of them worked with the state programs.  There were four people working on social.  "We couldn't hire people fast enough. So we hired smart people who were good writers," Toby says.  It led to a very collaborative culture with cross functional teamwork, as well bubbling up of many new ideas.  "It's incredibly important to have a team that can rally around a vision, and be empowered to achieve it," he says.
 

•The program was very mobile friendly and responsive from the beginning.
 

•Continual honing of the test groups. For example, just taking out non-donors and west coasters (who were not awake when the tests went out in the morning) improved testing results and is attributed with millions in additional donations.  Testing elements also had to be changed frequently. "Novelty is highly effective but can also be highly fleeting," Toby says.

Segmentation based on demographics was not nearly as effective as past behavior.  What mattered was what you donated and when.  "We were not being creepy, people liked that we knew they had recently donated or recently signed the President's birthday card."  Toward the end of the campaign, "we put that strategy on steroids."  What happened is that the program achieved what many of us strive to do: To be personal.  The email marketing was in a voice that was authentic and honest.  Plus, it recognized the donor and celebrated and enabled them.  That is a great lesson for all of us.  Big data is not always creepy data. Consumers are okay with marketers using information that we should know - and use responsibly.

A great validation of the success of this personal connection, is the emotional and heartfelt reactions from subscribers when the campaign sent out, "Goodbye inbox" messages at the end of the campaign.  Subscribers would truly miss hearing from the campaign "personas."

Toby described what we all want to have, and often don't for many reasons: Knowledge, resources, time, technology, lack of vision.  Theirs was a very data driven program.  "We tested and tested because we had to, we used A/B testing as our bread and butter,"  he says. Routinely this meant dozens of segments and 3-4 subject lines to test.  When you are projecting several million dollars in return from an email mailing, a few points can make a huge difference.

Thank you, Toby.  For doing great email marketing, and for your generous sharing of the campaign approach and success with us this morning!  Readers, watch the video if you can!  So many great lessons for all of us who want to be smarter about email marketing.

by, Stephanie Miller

"Originally posted on the Mediapost LIVE site from the Email Insider Summit in Park City Utah this week.”  (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/189012/a-wow-re-election-story-email-marketing-essential.html#axzz2Eh3krlWd)

 

 

Five Ways to Improve Email Deliverability with Gmail

Email remains one of the most focused, effective ways to get your marketing message exactly where you want it to be: in the hands—well, inboxes—of your current and prospective customers.

Unfortunately, there’s also a dark side to this “clutch” marketing tool. In addition to legitimate email marketers, spammers send billions of messages to consumers every day, leading harried recipients with little to do in response but send everyone to “Report Spam” oblivion. 

So how do you avoid “guilt by association?” How do you ensure that your valuable messages make it past junk filters and reporting buttons?

If your recipients are using Gmail—and it’s likely many of them are, since it’s the email client of choice for more than 350 million users worldwide—here are some useful tips to improve Gmail deliverability. Although these strategies are smart for Gmail, they are good to keep in mind for other ISPs as well.

1. Ask your users to mark your messages as “not spam.” If your email happens to trip some junk filters and get put in your recipient’s spam folder, ask your readers to click on the “not spam” button to let Google know you’re an approved sender—not just for that user, but for other users, too. Google puts a premium on user input, and trusts their devoted Gmailers to tell them what they want to receive . . .and what they don’t!

Likewise, if you do get to their inbox but have your display images filtered, encourage readers to click on the “Always display images from this address” button. This lets Google know that you’re a valid sender, and enables your recipients to see your carefully constructed emails in all their HTML glory.

2. Ask your readers to add your sending “from” address to their Gmail contact list. This is a simple way to ensure all your emails get delivered, as it puts a big seal of approval on everything you send. If at some point you change your sending address, be sure to let your recipients know—they’ll have to add that address, too!

3. Keep a close eye on recipient behavior. Recipients who open your emails and click through your links are engaged users. Their behavior indicates they want to receive messages from you. Recipients who never open your messages (and miss your links entirely, as a result) could become an issue for you if they decide to report you as spam --even though they signed up to hear from you in the first place. 

ISPs, and we believe especially Gmail, use “engagement metrics” as a factor to determine if your recipients are interacting with your email (clicking and opening), just deleting it, unsubscribing, or reporting you as spam. If a subscriber hasn’t clicked or opened your email in the last 45-60 days, or 2+ publications, you should consider a reengagement strategy and ultimately remove unengaged users from your list. Monitoring your list and segmenting out unengaged subscribers will help your inbox placement across the board.

4. Make it easy—and as quick as possible—to unsubscribe from your emails: The easier you make it to leave your messages behind, the less trouble you’ll see from frustrated recipients. At first, it might seem like a good idea to bury your unsubscribe link somewhere easy to miss. But, if someone who doesn’t want email from you can get rid of you that way, they’ll simply report you as spam, which will subsequently affect your reputation and inbox placement for users who want to get your email.

This also goes for senders who don’t have an automated unsubscribe function, or who take too long to scrub unsubscribes from their lists. Your recipients aren’t going to be too happy when you pop up in their inbox after they took steps to banish you.

5. Monitor Domain Level Engagement Reports and Third Party Data: Even though Gmail doesn’t offer a feedback loop for complaints, you can assume that Gmail subscribers would behave about the same as the active portion of your other webmail customers (*not ALL those subscribers, but the active ones).  You should create a domain level email metrics report and monitor clicks, opens, bounces (by type), unsubscribes, opt-outs and spam complaints for your top sending domains. You can use this data to make judgments about engagement at Gmail, too and to determine if a specific campaign is causing higher complaints.

In addition, you should seed your lists using a product like Return Path to monitor inbox vs. bulk placement.

By putting these simple tips to work in your email marketing campaigns, you’ll increase your conversion possibilities in a big way by getting into the inbox and stay where you want to be, on the good side of one of the biggest email providers operating today.

 Colleen Petitt, Aprimo

Wow, that hour went fast!  The estimable Shaun Brown, partner, nNovation LLP, a law firm based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, spoke about the new Canadian privacy legislation – referred to as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL – an acronym that many speak like the word “castle”) – that has many email marketers confused on compliance requirements and timing.  Listen to the November 10th webinar (and we highly recommend it) for free here.

Brown compared CASL to something many of us already know – the U.S. CAN-SPAM law of 2003.   Bottom line:  In many areas – permission, notice, coverage and risk – CASL is much broader.

• 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.

Compliance with the anti-spam aspects of CASL encompasses three broad categories:

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.

CASL was created with both public and private enforcement opportunity.  The Canadian Radio & Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is charged with enforcement.  This is a civil enforcement agency, there are no criminal provisions.  There is a private right of action available to any individual impacted.

Right now, the law is not in force.  It was passed in December 2010 and regulations were published for comments this past summer. The Government is still working through those comments (there were many!).  No timetable is published for a second set of regulations; however Brown expects something by early 2012.   The government is also setting up a Spam Reporting Center, which will be a website to gather evidence and monitor trends as well as provide consumer education.


In preparation for enforcement, Brown recommends three primary areas for marketers and senders:

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.

As with any legislation, the devil is in the details.  The Email Experience Council recommends that you have legal counsel review the law and determine the next best steps for your organization. In the webinar, Brown gave his thoughts on some key business issues and applications:

• 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.

Many thanks to Shaun Brown and nNovation LLP for an excellent presentation and generous review of so many audience questions. nNovation LLP is a pre-eminent Canadian law firm that advises companies, industry associations and other private and public sector parties in their business relationships and practices, and in connection with a broad range of Canadian regulatory regimes. With several years of experience both in the public and private sectors, Shaun’s practice focuses on emarketing, ecommerce, privacy, and access to information.   

Thanks also to the eec's Deliverability & Compliance Roundtable, led by Matt Rausenberger of Return Path and Dennis Dayman of Eloqua, for sponsoring and organizing this event.

If you are not an Email Experience Council member, please join us for free access to these kinds of event and resources.  If you are a member and would like to join one of our member Roundtables (committees), please email Ali.


- Stephanie Miller
eec Co-Chair

 

Sometimes email is too inexpensive for our own good.  It sure is tempting and certainly is very easy to send too frequently or assume permission or "just mail that generic sale notice/product announcement to everyone."  

Now, I get a lot of postal mail that is not that interesting to me.  And surely most of the tweets I see are not that relevant.  Even search results can be off target.  Yet, there is a penalty for not respecting and delighting our email subscribers that does not exist in other direct channels:  It's called the "report spam" button.  Even a small number of those spam complaints will get all your messages blocked by the ISPs like Yahoo!, Gmail and Hotmail, as well as corporate systems. 

It happens to the best of us.  Turns out that, despite all we've learned about email marketing best practices and the rules of engagement  for getting past the spam filters, the average inbox deliverability is still only about  80% according to a new Return Path study.

Leaving 20% of your marketing messages on the spam pile is like leaving 20% of your revenue behind.  Don't stand for it.  Complacency or thinking that "it's the other guy" is just not valid.  This study looks at commercial senders like you and me – branded companies with permission grants and a desire to do the right thing.  And we still lose an average of 20%!

The good news is that averages can be beat.  Respect your subscribers, curb your frequency, target and customize, keep your list clean, authenticate, process bounces correctly and maintain a solid infrastructure.  You will lower complaints and improve your inbox reach.  When you reach the inbox, you can earn a response and revenue.

- Stephanie Miller, VP, Market Development, Return Path, Inc.

 

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:

66% of respondents plan to integrate email and social channels in 2009

48% of respondents have already formulated a strategy for achieving email and social integration

Of marketers planning to increase budgets in 2009, 83% will increase spend in email marketing, followed by social media at 62%

If you are asking yourself where to start, don't worry, you aren't alone. 55% of respondents report that one of their biggest challenges with integrating social media and email marketing is determining metrics by which to measure success. At 48%, establishing business goals for the program is a close second. So here are a few tips on where to start:

Establish goals for the social channel. Is it your objective to use the social outlets for brand building, email list growth or increased revenue? While your objectives could be multi-fold, understanding what they are is the right place to start.

Prioritize your social goals. Now that you have your goals established, apply some logical business measurements to effectively prioritize the goals. Which objectives will require the least start-up versus the need for longer lead times coupled with programmatic implications that can result?

Develop an action plan. It is not realistic to think that you can hit the social world and accomplish all of your objectives by simply posting a Facebook page. Devise a plan and put your best foot forward – you don't want to rush to market with a half-baked plan in any marketing channel, but the viral aspect of social magnifies those mistakes multi-fold, so be cautious.

Based on these findings and what is known about the power of social media, it's clear that it deserves some serious attention and has grown to the stage where it needs an owner and a purpose within marketing.

- Kara Trivunovic, StrongMail Systems

There's plenty of information on the Internet about how to manage bounces, but not much about why it's so important to do so. And if you don't know the why, will you follow the how?

Although email marketing has countless moving parts to it, one part is key: Deliverability. This can't be overstated. Email marketers live and die by their delivery rates. You have to do everything you can to maximize your deliverability. Your deliverability is affected by your reputation, and your reputation can be tarnished by a high bounce rate. If you're at all concerned about your delivery rate, and you should be, take a look at your bounces and how they're impacting your reputation.

A bounce means your email didn't get delivered. That's easy enough to track as far as knowing how many of your emails made it to the inbox. But you need to know why an email bounced and you need to have a plan for managing bounces so you can reduce their occurrence, and therefore work to protect your reputation.

First, understand the difference between a soft bounce and a hard bounce. Think of a soft bounce as temporary: an employee is on vacation and her mailbox is full, meaning there's no room for your email. Think of a hard bounce as permanent: the employee left her job and the email address is no longer valid.

You'll get a message from the ISP when your email isn't delivered telling you why. That will tell you whether it was a hard or soft bounce. Look to those messages to figure out why your emails didn't go through.

A soft bounce, being temporary, means the email address is still valid and you can try resending your email again another time. That's a name that stays on your hard-earned in-house list. But a hard bounce might not mean one less name to market to. While there are sometimes 'false positives' with hard bounces, most ESPs typically automatically block hard bounces. A hard bounce might occur because the domain name doesn't exist, the recipient is unknown, or there's some type of network problem on the recipient's end. In this last case, there might be a temporary issue that will be resolved so if you're confident the email is valid, you might want to consider emailing it one more time.

On the other hand, if the email address is a bad, you have to remove the name from your list a.s.a.p. otherwise too many bad addresses could result in an ISP blocking or even blacklisting your IP address. You will always have bounces. The trick is to minimize them and delete the bad emails right away.

Now that you know the "why" behind managing bounces, you're ready to search the Internet for all the advice on "how"!

- Marco Marini, ClickMail Marketing

More heartbreaking news from a study that drills into a critical aspect of email marketing: the unsubscribe process. Apparently, some very smart marketers are not giving the unsubscribe the attention it needs as a valid part of their customers' holistic email brand experience.

Return Path's new study Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After "Unsubscribe Me" found that marketers may be considering the unsubscribe process as more of an afterthought vs. giving it the attention that it deserves (and that is required by law).

We found that 20% of top brand marketers sent additional emails to subscribers after confirming an unsubscribe request, and 11% of the companies studied emailed subscribers more than 10 days after confirming an unsubscribe request—a violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act.

But here's one stat that definitely caught my attention—only 2 of the 45 companies we studied offered subscribers the option to change the frequency of their emails. We've discussed over and over again the risk that consumers are too inundated with email and just tune out. If a customer or potential customer is interested in your products but they'd rather hear from you once a month vs. once a week, by all means please give them that option and keep them on your list.

—Stephanie Miller of Return Path

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.

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

2008 Retail Email Rendering Benchmark Study
Message Integrity & Email Design Issues in an Images-Off Environment

Women's Bean Project Case Study
The Results of the eec's 2007 Nonprofit Project

FreshAddress: Build or Buy?
Real-Time Email Address Validation

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

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission announced that it has approved four new rule provisions under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003. Intended to clarify CAN-SPAM's requirements, the new provisions address four topics:

1. An e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender.

2. The definition of "sender" was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act's opt-out requirements.

3. A "sender" of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act's requirement that a commercial e-mail display a "valid physical postal address."

4. A definition of the term "person" was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM's obligations are not limited to natural persons.

The Direct Marketing Association is hosting a conference call, which is only open to Email Experience Council and DMA members, to brief members on what the new CAN-SPAM rules mean.

FTC's New CAN-SPAM Rules
Hosted by the Direct Marketing Association
Friday, May 16 at 1pm EST

–>If you are an eec or DMA member, you can register by emailing government@the-dma.org.

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

Earlier this month a federal judge ordered a Las Vegas-based company to pay a whopping $2.5 million fine for making false advertising claims and sending illegal email messages in violation of the FTC Act and the CAN-SPAM Act. The company was sending unsolicited email to people promoting human growth hormone (HGH) related drugs (you know, the stuff that Roger Clemens never took).

The judge found that the defendants violated the FTC Act (which outlaws fraudulent and deceptive business practices) because their ads falsely claim that the drugs cause rapid, substantial and permanent weight loss, in addition to having anti-aging qualities.

But what makes the case most interesting for our Roundtable's members, of course, is the CAN-SPAM component. The violations cited by the FTC are very basic; they're not "high-tech" offenses such as using open relays or forged headers to physically distribute spam. What this particular company got hit for was, in large part, three very simple CAN-SPAM violations: (1) using misleading subject lines; (2) not including a valid postal address in their emails; and (3) not including—or facilitating—opt-out functionality.

So for anyone who ever doubted that the CAN-SPAM Act had "teeth," make no mistake about it: The FTC can and will make use of the full scope of CAN-SPAM to bring cases against offenders, and it ain't hard to do so.

Our advice: Never overlook the basics. Check, check and check again to make sure that your email programs are 100% compliant. Make sure strict governance and procedures are in place. Because all it takes is one untrained new email marketing associate to click "send" without including a postal address and the FTC will come knocking on your door.

You can wag your finger at the camera and claim "misremembrance" all you want, but regardless of whether you're pushing HGH in baseball locker-rooms or email inboxes, no one's going to believe you.

—eec Advocacy Roundtable co-chairs Jordan Cohen of Epsilon and Robb Walters of Costco

–>Read other issues of the The Email Advocate.

It sounds like I'm trying to curse in codespeak, but I'm not thinking the words you likely are (bad, email marketer, bad). However, I'm thinking "strategy" and "deliverability." The Email Insider Summit validated something we email "thought leaders" have been predicting for a while—the importance of strategy is trumping the importance of deliverability as the topic on the forefront of emailers' minds. Not that deliverability isn't important anymore, only that it has been superseded by the need to create a comprehensive plan for the email channel that moves marketers beyond segmented campaigns into behavioral messaging. David Daniels' "Leveraging the Power of Email into the 21st Century," David Baker's "The Democratization of Email" and the HP case study presented by Daryl Nielson and Jared Hansen all drive home the point that strategy is imperative to channel success and retaining internal resources required to optimize email for any organization.

—Tricia Robinson of StrongMail Systems

A debate raged in a meeting last week that I'd love your ideas and feedback on. We were talking about the duplicity found in so many permission practices—particularly in ecommerce sites.

Yes, I know that duplicity is strong word. But consider that most retailer email programs are opt-in—until you buy. Then, it's either a pre-checked box on the checkout form—easy to miss and decidedly opt-out—or worse, it's a notice buried in the fine print. Since these folks are buyers, they are by nature pretty active with the brand and products, so there isn't a huge penalty for this practice in ISP complaints or unsubscribes. In many cases, these buyers are sometimes the most active folks on the file.

So what is wrong with that? I say nothing, if the marketer is clear about it. They no longer have an opt-in permission file. Don't claim it in your promotions or when dealing with ISPs on deliverability. Worse, subscribers have no input into the frequency, content or value of the program—which is easily corrected.

I'd feel a lot better about these practices if marketers also sent a very clear welcome message and gave these buyers some control over their inbox. There was some heated debate that these buyers should be permissioned in via a double opt-in mechanism after the purchase. Personally, I feel that is not necessary if the marketer follows best practices for confirming the subscription with a welcome message that arrives instantly and provides both clarity around the program pace and content and a chance for subscribers to quickly unsubscribe or change preferences. The welcome message is also a great opportunity to encourage another purchase.

Double opt-in (sometimes called confirmed opt-in) is the highest level of permission. Double opt-in will ensure that your subscribers are more actively aware of your program (but not that they will be active—you still need to create relevant, compelling subscriber experiences), but it also pretty much guarantees that you'll have a smaller file. Small but active is a pretty good deal, but it's hard to sell internally. And I think many marketers still resist anything that reduces the size of the file. If you offer any marketer a million records that are untargeted vs. 100,000 very targeted records, most of us will go for the million every time.

We are ever hopeful, we marketers. Someday, we think, that person just might want my product! I can't let go of the opportunity to remind them I'm here, even if they will ignore my email messages.

So what do you think? Is it important or a mandate that marketers double opt-in these buyers?

For purposes of discussion, here is what I'm using to define the four permission levels:

1. Opt-out: The assumption is that you are on the file, until you unsubscribe—usually a pre-checked box or use of a customer file/
2. Single opt-in: The subscriber actively requests to be on the file—usually an un-checked box.
3. Confirmed (or validated) opt-in: After requesting to be on the file, a confirmation email is sent.
4. Double opt-in: After the initial request, a confirmation email is sent requiring a second action to be placed on the file.

—Stephanie Miller

Aside from testing, are there any minimal requirements that any email marketer can follow that will improve display on a Macs, PCs, and/or mobile devices? Or are there completely separate standards for each email client? —K.G.

The Voices of Email had this advice:

Deirdre Baird: First, ensure the HTML is valid according to either W3C or WDG standards. This is the single best protection for universal rendering.

Second, try to ensure the integrity of the message (branding, calls-to-action, etc.) are communicated even if images do not display. While alt tags are useful, they do not display universally in all email clients, so do not rely exclusively on alt tags as an alternative to image display.

And third—and this is more of an FYI—some mobile readers display the HTML version as text instead of displaying the Text part of a multi-part message (as many assume). If a significant percentage of recipients are assumed to be using mobile devices to read emails, then consider not only the text part of your multi-part but also what the HTML part will look like when rendered as text. If possible, ask customers at sign-up if they'd like a "mobile version" of the email and/or create a mobile version that folks can subscribe to.

Chip House: The goal is properly recognizing the differing needs of your subscribers and customizing the content and format to best meet their stated or observed needs. The first way to do this is to ask their preferences (HTML or text) at the time you capture the opt-in. If you don't get that information, then you have to try to optimize for how you want your subscribers to use and/or respond to your communication.

Let's look at mobile first. The challenge appears bigger than it actually is. For example, when you look at the total possible number of rendering combinations for mobile devices, which vary by mobile phone manufacturer, top ISPs, mobile data providers and mobile operating systems, you get 3,780 unique rendering possibilities. However, what we've found via our research is that 56% of users are less likely to read commercial email and/or newsletters on their mobile phone as they are on their laptop or desktop. The message there is you need to optimize the email for both the mobile and laptop/desktop computer environment. In fact, our testing showed that commercial email sent using multi-part MIME (includes both text and HTML parts) was the most versatile format. By this I mean it is most likely to render as HTML only for those systems that can display HTML well, and render as text elsewhere—such as on many mobile devices. However, the advantage of multi-part MIME over text here is that when a user saves or flags your email to look at it on their desktop/laptop, they'll get the graphic-rich HTML version you'd love them to see—which is also likely to deliver a higher click rate.

Testing the rendering of your email campaigns across a number of email clients and ISPs is the best way to overcome the difference in those systems. We use Pivotal Veracity's eDesign Optimizer heavily for this purpose, which allows for preview in a number of different mail clients (including Mac). Each has its own unique page break and image rendering rules, for example, which need to be optimized around. With a little testing, however, you'll be able to get your HTML in tip-top shape for nearly all recipients.

Stephanie Miller: Let me focus on optimizing for mobile. What actually renders on a PDA or Smartphone is determined by four factors:
1. The operating system and software (e.g., Palm OS, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile)
2. The service provider (e.g., Sprint, Verizon, T-mobile, etc.)
3. The device itself (e.g.: Treo, Blackberry, HP IPaq, iPhone, etc.)
4. The user's settings

Yes, it's messy. And totally different than reading email on a PC. There is a temptation to just deliver text to mobile users, but I don't recommend this. First, because it's hard to know who is a mobile user (there is unfortunately no "sniffer" that tells the sender what device is being used (PC vs. mobile). Second, because mobile users are not just mobile users. They also read email in their PC-based email clients, where a nicely formatted HTML email still yields higher responses in most cases.

The best bet is to rely on Marketing 101—Know Thy Customer. Ask subscribers if they regularly read your newsletter or promotions on their PDA. Many mobile device users sync their device back to the PC and read newsletters there rather than on the road. If you believe that many of your subscribers read your email on their mobile device, then offer a mobile-friendly format (simple HTML with text) that can be selected at sign up or in your preference center. If you believe that many of your subscribers are sometimes mobile readers but often PC readers, then format your HTML (particularly the masthead and preview pane) to minimize the number of image links and other code that readers must scroll past to see the actual content.

Have some good advice that we missed? Please add a comment and take part in the conversation.

Have a question for the Voices of Email? Email Chad your question at chad@emailexperience.org and we'll REPLY TO ALL by posting the answers so everyone can benefit.

–>Read other Reply to All posts

We had a good debate yesterday about whether email could be helpful in a website customer-review strategy. Three guesses as to where my votes were: squarely with email as a powerful tool for both invitation, dissemination and recommendation.

Customer reviews on websites are hot—because they work. A recent survey by Bazaarvoice and Vizu Corp. shows that three out of four shoppers say that it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase, and they prefer peer reviews over expert reviews by a 6-to-1 margin.

(Note for our U.K. readers: Ratings and reviews by U.K. consumers were important for over 50% of online shoppers. In contrast to U.S. shoppers, privacy and security information took center stage when making a purchase by over one-third of U.K. shoppers rating this as the most important site feature.)

Email is the perfect medium for attracting and distributing this important content. Consider these opportunities for your own program:

- Use email to solicit customer reviews from recent customers. Trigger a feedback survey after select purchases, along with an appropriate upsell offer. For multiple-purchase buyers—who we assume are more loyal and engaged—make the request for a review more explicit.

- Use the content from customer reviews to convert prospects to buyers. Prospects are in greater need of validation for making a purchase, and if the Bazaarvoice survey has any sway, prospects prefer customer reviews six times over company promotions or marketing. Feature customer reviews in your welcome message as well as throughout the first five to six email touchpoints.

- Feature customer reviews in newsletters as a current and dynamic source of testimonials. Many marketers struggle to come up with relevant content (outside of pure promotions) for newsletters. Customer reviews are relevant, engaging and can be extremely good ways to provide product recommendations that don't feel like sales pitches. These are also a great way to continuously solicit more reviews. Everyone likes to see their name in "lights"—even if it's HTML.

- Highlight customer reviews as a secondary promotion in promotional emails. Make it a regular feature (monthly or quarterly) to highlight top selling items. Reviews promote your products without feeling like a promotion. Perfect balance for sales messages.

- Use customer reviews as a trigger for lapsed buyers. Send a special email with customer reviews of targeted products. This new approach to the same promotional messages may break through the lethargy.

—Stephanie Miller

Our creative team here at Bulldog recently passed around this compelling post on the value of spending time considering the preview pane view of your emails. Not because they aren't already sold on making message choices that take the preview pane into account, but because there is nothing better than having reliable statistics to back up your actions. One stat cited in this post: 64% of people who are offered preview panes start using them as their default (MarketingSherpa, 2007).

The editor of our monthly newsletter, Marketing Watchdog Journal, was particularly enamored of the post (she's the one who sent it around) because it validates the time we've been spending on the preview pane view of the newsletter. For the past several months we've been playing with rich media, adding a relatively simple video component to the newsletter and watching the effect on metrics such as open rates and clickthroughs. Video is a more and more compelling part of the online marketing experience, and the technology and availability of production facilities are making it more accessible to marketers (see my earlier post on embedded video in other areas of our prospect engagements). So it's really not a question of whether we were going to add video to the newsletter, but how to go about it.

In our June newsletter, we combined the ongoing video testing with a preview pane message that highlighted the availability of said video. A simple text message, appearing at the top of the newsletter, highlighting the availability of video: "In this issue of Marketing Watchdog Journal, you'll learn how to apply social media to BtoB marketing. View the video introduction for more!" The results: Open rates up 30%, clickthroughs almost double the previous month.

I'm not ready to isolate that preview pane message as the sole reason for the open rate jump. The topic, the subject line, the deliverability of the newsletter all play a role, and Bulldog's analytics manager would pass out if I announced I was ready to draw conclusions after a single test. But those numbers were certainly gratifying—the seeds of our own reliable stats to back up our actions.

—Amy Bills

The convergence of online, offline and face to face—it's happening this week!

For those of us who have been working in email, on the service provider side, for a long time, we know it can often be a challenge to get marketers to agree to integrate email into all of the other channels they are using. Many times, clients want to use email first, and then use a different channel when they run out of names with email addresses.

It's been proven time and time again, that while email is a very powerful response vehicle, it is also even more powerful when combined with other channels and sent to the same target. This week, at the Email Insider Summit we are doing just that!

Attendees of the summit will have face-to-face interactions with speakers about key email topics. They can also then leave the presentations and pick up a printed whitepaper that extends the discussion of the panel just conducted. And…if two channels aren't enough, these same people can request an "email" of all of the relevant whitepapers and case studies shared at the EEC whitepaper room by choosing all of the content located under this title: "Email Insider Summit - May 2007."

This will be a great validation of the power of combined channels and I am very much looking forward to seeing the impact and results.

—Jeanniey Mullen