If your direct email marketing program is intended to drive traffic to a landing page or website, chances are you have abandonment issues. Not because you’re doing anything inherently wrong, mind you. It’s just the nature of the online world. Some people will show up at your website and simply not buy. Even the best email marketing will have people abandon their shopping after following through on a call to action. In fact, 88% of online shoppers abandon, according to a 2009 Forrester Research estimate.

It might be the prospect lands at a page then clicks away without buying (called up funnel abandonment) or it might be the prospect goes as far as starting to buy from you--or register with you--then clicks away (called down funnel abandonment).

Either way, they’re clicking away. And every click on the Back button is a lost revenue opportunity for you.

Is that it? Are you done? Must you stand idly by and let them go? Not if you use a strategic email abandonment campaign to re-engage those who clicked away.

At ClickMail Marketing, we’ve been partnering with Smarter Remarketer, helping clients use re-engagement campaigns that kick in when a prospect abandons a landing page or website. During that time, we’ve realized there are two vital reasons for implementing an abandonment campaign: relevance and ROI.

1. Relevance: Emails that follow up on a specific prospect action, such as clicking through to a landing page or adding an item to a shopping cart, are by default highly relevant to that prospect. We can’t know the reason for not following through and purchasing. For all we know, the cart was abandoned because company showed up unexpectedly or the boss called the prospect into her office. It might not be a decision not to buy. It might be real life got in the way. So imagine the relevancy of an email sent to a prospect who was that close to purchasing? The email could remind them of the selected items or even offer a discount if purchase is made within a certain time.
2. Return on Investment: The same logic we apply to factoring the real cost of email deliverability issues applies when computing the real cost of losing a customer because they’ve abandoned your website. Simply look at your abandonment rate and multiply that by your average sales amount to get an idea of the money you’ve left on the table. Chances are, you’ll see a potential ROI that makes the time and cost of implementing an abandonment campaign make both dollars and sense.

In addition to the immediate benefits of higher ROI, consider the longer term benefits of brand and customer relations, plus having a bona fide reason to send that prospect an email. And not just any email, but a very targeted and relevant email, one very likely to get opened, which in turn will help your email deliverability by showing the ISP a high level of engagement.

Getting started
Due to the importance of adding a re-engagement element to your email marketing program, you want to be sure you’re using the best email service provider you can, one that maximizes deliverability and helps automate or simplify abandonment and other triggered emails. Make sure your current vendor (or any ESP you are considering) has a proven record of actual, real life successes too. Ask about measuring and tracking results, and how the vendor will be held accountable for helping you to implement such a campaign. You can learn more about abandonment emails and get advice on choosing a vendor here.

There’s more to reaching out to abandoners than a simple, “Hey, what happened?” email. Adding an abandonment and reengagement email program into your mix makes sense, not only because abandonment emails are perfectly relevant, but because they make an essential tool for ROI, thanks to their ability to reclaim what would have been a lost sale.

 

Marco Marini, CEO
ClickMail Marketing

In the B2C space if a message hard bounces it could be because of a bad address or maybe some ISP blocking.  In the B2B space if a message hard bounces it could be a bad address or a former employee or maybe some corporate firewall or filter blocking.

When I worked for FreeCreditReport.com we were in the same building as Pfizer.  We’d email each other all day about credit, and I’m sure they had some emails back-and-forth about Viagra.  I know that our corporate filters blocked anything mentioning Viagra and would guess they felt the same about credit.  The point is, corporate email is filtered based on the needs of the business and edicts from on high.  Unlike an ISP, there isn’t anything that we could have said to Pfizer, or them to us, to allow mail into each other’s Inboxes.

One B2B client I had a while back sold specialized gazillion-dollar electronic test equipment.  

Because of that there were a couple of things that we had to look at, the first of which were channel success metrics.

This organization measured email program success by the amount of seminar attendees and White Paper downloads, knowing that each played an important and measurable role in the sales cycle.

After an individual would register to download a White Paper they would be taken to a download page and sent an email to thank them and reiterate the download link.  I’m simplifying here for time….  For each White Paper download was a series of follow-up emails and surveys regarding the paper to help segment and qualify within the sales cycle.

Another success metric was seminar registrants from emailed event invitations.  This program was even expanded out to where registrants were entered into the data stream as signing or not signing into attendance at the event, and as the event was ending, those in attendance were receiving a Thank You for Attending email recapping the event; and those not in attendance were receiving a “Sorry You Couldn’t Make It” message and a recap of the event tailored to those non-attendees.

So what does this have to do with recapturing B2B bounced emails?  I’m getting there….

Because this B2B sold a very high-end niche product each and every prospect and customer attached to an email address was critical to selling and supporting the company’s products, we couldn’t let one person fall through the cracks. 

To recapture those individuals whose email address had bounced back, we created an internal program that would join the bounce logs with the master data table to create a file that contained the intended recipient’s name, company, phone number (when available), and the descriptive reason that the message bounced back, and then mail those records daily (or weekly) to a designated representative who would then route that information to the appropriate out-bound telesales group.

Of course, those records that were returned as hard bounced addresses would be removed from the email channel and pursued by different means.

So what did it take to do this?

First of all the client had an email tool that would allow us to insert the record data into an email message.  That made things a little easier.

The email tool also provided access to system files like the Bounce Logs, and this particular vendor also allowed for SQL through the UI.  Our SQL statement that pulled bounced records daily read something like:

SELECT a.EMAIL_, b.FIRST_NAME, b.LAST_NAME, b.COMPANY, b.PHONE, a.DESCRIPTION_ , a.TIMESTAMP_ FROM $A$ a INNER JOIN $B$ b ON b.EMAIL = a.EMAIL_ WHERE TRUNC(a.TIMESTAMP_) = (TRUNC(CURRENT_DATE) – INTERVAL ’1′ DAY)

Where $A$ is the Bounce Log and $B$ is the Master Data table.

While not all ESPs allow for SQL via the GUI, most of the better tools will provide you some sort of access to the Bounce Logs via a “wizard” that will allow you to join or at least reference other data tables.

Even if your email tool doesn’t provide the ability to create this type of automated internal email program, that doesn’t mean that you can’t pull the hard bounced records from your email tool – provided that you’re vendor allows you access to those records – and do the record matching outside of the tool, and then pass those records along to your out-bound sales staff.

In the B2C world it’s a little easier to let go of some bounced records here and there.  In the B2B world that can get expensive.  What could it be worth to your B2B organization to recapture even 10% of the leads whose email addresses were bounced back?

 John A. Caldwell, Red Pill Email

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.

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

The trend for several years now has been away from building and toward outsourcing, yet some organizations still think building an in-house email marketing solution is the way to go. The market offers numerous ways to build your own in-house solution. But what's the real cost?

Some organizations have so much IT talent that they think they can build their own email marketing system. A perceived cost savings typically drives this decision. Would they consider building their own print shop? Probably not. It's a matter of sticking with your core business vs. being your own vendor.
 
There are so many possibilities for email platforms these days. ESPs have been around for over a decade. They are a tried-and-true way to go as the "buy" option for companies preferring to outsource the infrastructure. If an ESP isn’t for you and your organization plans to build, I offer some factors to consider to help you determine the real cost.
 
There's a real cost to building that must be considered. It's a capital expense vs. an operations expense. But building comes with operational expenses too…and the cost of not having certain competitive capabilities.

"Building" can mean a variety of approaches to your email marketing system. It might mean you're buying a server from StrongMail or using an online solution like Amazon Cloud. It can also mean you’re building from scratch. There are sending solutions where sending is hosted but you still have to do the front end. No matter the route you go, if you build, you will have to manage the hosting, maintenance, firewall, integration and more. Much more. When you “buy,” you’re outsourcing the infrastructure and getting invaluable additional benefits as well, including deliverability, currency and relevance-enabling tools.
 
Deliverability
Deliverability is critical. It directly impacts your email marketing ROI. If an email isn't delivered, you have zero potential for an impression or sale. In fact, you don't even get to work a little brand awareness in there. An undelivered email might as well not exist. When you buy—meaning outsource—your email solution, you get a team of postmasters who will keep your email deliverability rate up. When you’re doing this in-house and you run into an email delivery problem, you’ll either have to  hire a consultant to help or be willing to dedicate your IT team’s time to figuring out the problem – which is not easy to say the least.

Currency
Plus there's staying current. ESPs are constantly evolving, continually adding new features to keep up with email deliverability requirements and consumer expectations. If you build your own, you are essentially freezing yourself in time. For some organizations, the incremental cost for email goes away. But you still have IT costs. It's a business decision and there are tax implications as you consider capital vs. operating expenses.
 
Relevance
To compete in the inbox in 2011, you must have relevance-enabled tools. Those tools used to cost thousands of dollars. Today they cost hundreds...when you outsource. Relevance-enabled technologies include trigger-based and event-driven emails, lifecycle and drip campaigns, and dynamic content. You can build out these capabilities, but the undertaking is massive. And massive means pricey because you're talking payroll costs and lost opportunities while you wait for your solution to be built and deployed.
 
Top-tier ESPs have this relevance-enabling technology built in to their platforms. That means "buying" instead of "building" lets you take advantage of these competitive advantages from day one.
 
Relevance also requires website analytics resulting from a recipient interacting with an email. Many web analytics platforms can track this at a macro-level, but the real value comes when the data is tied to a specific email address. If you don't have the tight integration required to give you insight from web analytics, or integration with your CRM system, you won't be able to do truly relevant, targeted email marketing.
 
How long will it take to build and deploy?
If your IT department says it will take six months to build, plan on 12 to 18 months before you're fully functional with all the features you want. Can you wait a year and a half for a good email marketing system? While your competition is emailing your target market, you won’t be…or at least you won’t be at the level of effectiveness you want, meaning your competition will likely win out.
 
Don't forget the payroll costs
Consider the staff time and associated payroll costs. If you're going to build and maintain in-house, you’ll need at least two staff people trained so you'll always have someone on hand if problems arise. In addition to the IT aspects of building and maintaining an email solution, at least one of your employees must have expertise in email areas like privacy, working with ISPs, deliverability issues, protecting your online sending reputation, being CAN-SPAM compliant and more. If you plan to design your own emails or use rich media email, you’ll also need someone who is an expert and who will take into account rendering issues in different email clients and on handheld devices too. That’s three staff people. What does that add up to when you add in all the benefits, taxes and other costs of adding a body to your payroll?
 
Unless you are sending hundreds of millions of emails monthly, outsourcing is cheaper...and safer. Building might look cheaper at the outset, but the cost is going to be higher than you anticipate. If email isn't core to your business, outsource. If it is core to your business, absolutely critical, maybe build. Maybe. But consider every single cost.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

 

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

 

 

As he launches his own newsletter for the email marketing industry, Ken Magill gives the eec his thoughts on the state of the state – with or without his commentary.

Q1. Why does the email industry need another newsletter?

I actually don’t see it as “another” newsletter. I see it as re launching something I’ve been putting out for several years, except this time I own it. I’ve been covering e-mail and other forms of online marketing for going on 14 years now and, as a result, can offer perspective and insight that others can’t.

As long-time readers know, I’m not afraid to offend, am not afraid of backlash—in fact, I really like backlash—and will write about subjects others hesitate to touch. I don’t do it just to stir up trouble, though stirring up trouble is fun.

This industry is still fledgling and has a lot of growing up to do. The fact that the first question out of so many marketers’ mouths about email is “Where can I buy lists?” is proof positive of that. Controversy keeps people’s interest and robust debate is the straightest path toward industry maturity.

Q2.  What has changed in the email world during your "quiet period"?

The discourse has been a lot more civil:)

Q3.  What's the coolest thing you see happening in email in the next year?

I think making predictions is generally a prime opportunity to make an ass of oneself, so I generally don’t make them. When I have, I’ve generally been wrong. In 1994, I predicted the new VW Beetle would flop, for instance.

That said, I think it’s safe to say marketers will increasingly embrace engagement email—or messages sent based on previous interactions—as vendors prod them in that direction and they begin to see the undeniable results. That will be very cool.

Two weeks ago, Ben & Jerry’s announced they were “giving up” on email marketing in favor of social media. Note: Later that day, the @cherrygarcia Twitter account reported that this was a UK-only change.

Update: Our friends over at The eMail Guide took the time to email the PR folks at Ben & Jerry’s. Here’s what their PR Director, Sean Greenwood, had to say – personally, I don’t think it changes the story dramatically.

As you can imagine, the email marketing industry was up in arms. There was a collective “Noooooooooo” followed by “Are they kidding?” The Inbox Insiders – an email marketing list created by Bill McCloskey that boasts some of the sharpest marketers from many of the largest brands in the world as well as a host of vendor side (email service provider) folks – decided to weigh in. Here is what a few of them had to say…

    21st century brands need to ‘behave’, not just tell stories, as behavior is tangible and real, and empowers Consumers to shape their own brand experience. That shaping is what drives advocacy and rampant love of the brand. Ben & Jerry’s clearly has heard what their customers want, and currently do not want, and are behaving accordingly. Sweet, creamy customer-centricity!

Andy Goldman*
SVP, Strategy & Integration
RAPP

————-

    The same discussion now about social vs email took place decades ago regarding radio vs newspapers and TV vs radio. History repeats itself. Of course some social evangelists and fan boys/girls will hoot about this vindicating social as better than any other medium, but comments such this are not motivated by any kind of insight. At this point they are driven by wishful thinking and personal agendas. In other words, this recurring discussion is more political than practical. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are proprietary platforms controlled entirely by their owners, while email is a standard supported globally and that sets it apart.

Jim Ducharme
Editor
The eMail Guide

————-

    While Ben & Jerry’s UK marketing department is listening to their customers, which is always applauded, this is shortsighted from a business perspective. Email and social media are significantly more powerful when used together versus independently. Further, with email marketing, you own your email list, whereas Facebook and Twitter followers are owned by those respective properties. Rather than replacing email with social media altogether, Ben & Jerry’s should focus on improving the value of their email programs for their subscribers by integrating social elements and exclusive offers (e.g. use a 24 hr. “flash” discount to drive traffic into retail stores or use email to launch a social word of mouth campaign.)

Kristin Hersant*
Director, Corporate Marketing
StrongMail

————-

    Facebook and Twitter may be working well for them now, but will that hold true into next year? The year after? Five years from now? And if they disband their email program now and decide they need it later, how easy will it be to resuscitate those email relationships? I’m not anti-social media. It’s just that I’ve been on panels where the topic is “Email is Dead, Long Live X” where X = RSS/Blogs/MySpace, etc. And none of them have actually, to date, replaced email.

Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Email Marketing Strategy
JeanneJennings.com, Inc.

————-

    The “inbox” – defined as a destination for content from both people we know and brands we like – has fragmented.  It’s online, on my device, in Facebook and Twitter and at a business address.  Great email marketing has always been about great content, and that is more true today as email marketers compete for budgets and customer attention with social, mobile and even offline marketing.  Why keep your investment in email?  Frankly, the question must be, How can we best utilize email to connect with customers and prospects in ways that help achieve our business KPIs?

    If you can’t come up with a strong strategy to answer, then you are either missing a big opportunity or won’t find ROI in the channel.

Stephanie Miller*
VP, Global Market Development
Return Path

————-

    Ben & Jerry’s made a bold move and now they are getting the media benefit of that decision. In the short run, I think they will benefit from this move. However, in the long run, they have made a decision that abandons a lot of paying customers that may have wanted to hear from them, but don’t actively engage in social media. In our research on how consumers engage brands through Email, Facebook and Twitter we see consumers layering these activities to get closer to brands. Consumers don’t operate in silos and marketers shouldn’t either.

Morgan Stewart*
Director, Research and Strategy
ExactTarget

————-

    Part of me has to think (hope?) that Ben & Jerry’s UK has run the numbers and determined that forgoing email marketing in favor of social media is the best option for them. I don’t understand why they’d abandon email marketing altogether. Why not give their subscribers a choice?

DJ Waldow*
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

————-

    Such a shame that brands can’t think “one to one” in the digital age and have to kiss goodbye to a fantastic relationship-building channel.  The skills needed to make a success of social media are not that different to email marketing, so I fear that B&J may be running away from email to an equally unforgiving world of Facebook and Twitter.  Lucky for them that the ice cream’s so good.

David Hughes
Founder
The Email Academy, Ltd

————-

    Most CPG brands struggle to create robust CRM programs with very tiny budgets. It sounds as though B&Js has simply made a budget-related decision to move to the least expensive channel available so they can reach out more often to their customers.  Email will still have a place in their communications arsenal despite the announcement – after all, how do all their Facebook fans know when they have a message from B&Js? Email. Of course, it’s an email that doesn’t cost B&Js anything to send – though it goes to a much smaller audience than they could likely send to directly.

Gretchen Scheiman
Partner, Associate Director, CRM
OgilvyOne worldwide

————-

    I applaud Ben & Jerry’s for getting customer feedback before making a very strategic decision. However, I think the mistake is that they abanonded email rather than letting customers choose their preferred communication channel. After all, this is a company that offers 108 flavors. Since many customers prefer chocolate to vanilla, are they going to eliminate vanilla now too?

Simms Jenkins
CEO
BrightWave Marketing & EmailStatCenter.com

————-

    Email is a core driver of many successful social marketing programs.  I’m just not sure if anyone has articulated this to Ben & Jerry’s or showed them an effective way to integrate email & social into an effective program.

Chris Baggott*
CEO/Co-founder
Compendium

————-

    Their decision certainly seems shortsighted. Are they completely overlooking email as a coupon distribution channel? If their subscribers were getting high-value coupons exclusive to being on the list, maybe they’d have liked the program more.  Although B&J doesn’t have quite the same distribution model as ColdStone Creamery, they could take a few lessons from their competitors in the retail ice cream space (I’m thinking of Rita’s Ice too).

Karen Talavera*
Email & Digital Marketing Coaching, Training & Strategy
Synchronicity Marketing

————-

    Each year Ben & Jerry’s kills 8 to 12 ice cream flavors. In 2010, at least in the UK, it looks like Email Marketing has gone to the ice cream Flavour Graveyard just like Peanut Butter & Jelly did more than a decade ago. But Ben & Jerry’s decision in the UK to pull back on Email Marketing and focus on new marketing flavors like Social Media speaks to their unique customers and marketing approach, not to any decline in email marketing’s popularity and effectiveness. After all, while Cherry Garcia is Ben & Jerry’s top seller, vanilla is still the most popular ice cream flavor in the world.

Loren McDonald*
VP, Industry Relations
Silverpop

————-

    Totally abandoning email in favor of social is short sighted and antithetical to Ben & Jerry’s efforts, since email marketing can be and is one of the most powerful drivers of social media participation. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive last year found that 96% of Americans were willing to provide companies with their email addresses in order to receive offers and discounts, compared to just 12% that were willing to provide their social media “digits” to do the same (e.g., their Facebook handle). Smart marketers are using email as the gateway to social — acquiring customers’ email addresses first, and then directing them down the funnel towards social media channels.

Jordan Cohen
VP, Business Development
Pontiflex

————-

Where do you stand? What is your take. Good (strategic) decision by Ben & Jerry’s or just plain madness?


- DJ Waldow
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

Read the original post.


*eec Member

I’m a lover of magic.  When illusions appear creative, bold, and clever, they seem worthy of being shared with everyone.  On the other hand, if it’s a trick that everyone knows, the “magic” becomes cheap and hollow, unlikely to fool anyone. When it comes to the standardization of email metrics, the question arises: is this truly noteworthy, or simply another case of “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?”  Smoke and mirrors won’t work in this case; complete transparency is necessary to address this issue.  It’s time to put all of our cards on the table and examine various aspects of the argument surrounding standardization.

As co-chairs of the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable, independent email consultants John Caldwell and Luke Glasner have marshaled a group of industry players to launch an email standardization project.  For what it’s worth, that project is gaining momentum and earning some serious ink within the industry.  This is not the same old dog and pony show we’ve seen in the past; these guys really have their act together.  Think of them as Siegfried and Roy of the email industry.  Their S.A.M.E. project (Support Adoption of Metrics for Email) has bent the ears of industry pundits, and their formula for encouraging ESPs to adopt the standards seems to be fooling everyone.  And in this context, deception is a good thing. Learn more about the S.A.M.E. project here. 

Sleeveless in Seattle
As with any new industry-related project, many challenges surface, but without early adopters, we’d be left sleeveless, a nightmare for any magician.  Two ESPs, MassTransmit/EmailTransmit and AllWebMail have already committed to adopting the industry standard for metrics which was released by the DMA/eec in March 2010.  Since then, a dozen other high profile ESPs have committed to adopting the standards within the next six months.  When you think about early adopters, companies like these help pave the road for the rest of the industry.  As interested ESPs begin to track the progress and milestones achieved by the S.A.M.E. project, momentum will build and the benefits will begin to blossom around the industry.

“Adoption is not just a semantics game,” says Stephanie Miller, Vice Chair of the eec and an active member of the Roundtable (her day job is at inbox deliverability solution provider, Return Path).  “Marketers usually find out that there are no standards when they go to benchmark their performance, or when they change vendors and realize that all those numbers they’ve been betting their bonus on – they don’t mean what they thought they meant!

“It’s about time our industry stepped up and supported standard metrics just like any other direct marketing discipline,” she says.

Deliverability Will No Longer be a Selling Point for ESPs
Once the implementation of email standards leads to congruency across the industry, ESPs and marketers will find themselves on a level playing field.  This means marketers may spend more time searching for the right ESP, but once a match is made, marketers will be less likely to move from one ESP to another due to inconsistency in metrics.  This means attrition rates for switching ESPs will fall, and in turn, ESPs will focus on services that will keep customers longer and help them achieve a higher ROI. Examples of such services include compelling creative copy and perhaps even a SWOT analysis every month/quarter provided by the ESP to each marketer.  Higher performance of the channel benefits all of us.

S.A.M.E. Project Goals
Once a magician takes his oath, he must never reveal his secrets.  However, if aspiring participants are willing to learn magic, they, too, can join the “magic club.”  ESPs face a similar choice.  They can remain on the outside looking in, simply observing the progression of the S.A.M.E. project, or they can choose to be an active part of the club.  John and Luke's first goal is 10-15% of the ESP market adopt the standards.

Nowadays, when an ESP reports on the “state of the industry,” they analyze metrics only of their own campaigns, like a magician who looks in the mirror and declares himself successful.  Industry standardization will introduce accountability to the industry, providing the digital marketing community with sterilized benchmarking and consistent reporting.  The spotlight now shines bright on John and Luke and the eec Roundtable, along with other industry veterans and aspiring ESPs involved with the S.A.M.E. project. It is their mission to deliver what the email industry yearns for: a final levitation act that will wow the crowd and inspire mass adoption.  They hope to prove that they are master magicians—if they perform their act well enough, even the skeptics will believe. 

Get Involved

Marketers:  Send this article to your ESP and encourage them to adopt the standards.
ESPs:  Study the new standard definitions and set a goal for yourself to adopt them.  Be part of the program.

Now, where did all the Rabbits go?


- Fred Tabsharani
Port25 Solutions, Inc.
@tabsharani

I'm new here, but I've been around a long time. I've seen the confusion and frustration that non-uniform report metrics can cause, both for marketers and for agencies and vendors providing email services and technology.

Email marketers are almost universally judged based on program performance. For them, every click, open, delivered, bounced and sent matters. So when there are multiple email systems in play or marketers are considering a new email solution from a different vendor, there are always headaches around what the report metrics are and why they don't match.

The marketer gets mad because things are different and there's no way to compare apples to apples. The vendor gets mad because some performance metric in their system is not coming out as well as some other vendor's, so they look bad. The marketer's boss gets mad because the numbers don't match up between systems, so they lose confidence in ALL of the metrics.

It's all-around bad for everyone.

I volunteered for the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable because I believe that accurate and consistent reporting is key to improving not only email marketing programs, but all marketing programs. Metrics that marketers have faith in and trust provide the data they need to do more advanced targeting and segmentation, which creates a unique and more engaging experience for recipients.

Isn't that what email marketing has promised all along?

Accurate and consistent metrics give marketers the confidence to add bold elements to their programs because they can count on the data on which they make their decisions. Reporting data that is consistent across programs and providers lets businesses make informed decisions about which solutions best serve their needs, not just which one has the most forgiving formulas in their reports.

But now I put on my vendor hat and say, "Why should I do this? It's not a competitive differentiator. I haven't seen this on any RFP. What's in it for me?"

On the surface, nothing, but underneath, it says a lot about what's important: the email marketer. Your customers. Your users. Your industry.

Sure, as a vendor, there are a ton of new features, enhancements, and fixes that need to be added to the application, but this one is not just about your current users or prospects. It's about the email community. It's about making A = A. It's about fixing something that is broken with our industry.

What will you do for your industry? Will you join us in helping fix a long-time issue that affects all email marketers? Together, we can do it!

- Ivan Chalif
Director of Email Product Marketing
Alterian

Read Fred Tabsharami's post on the SAME project.

Read more about standard email metrics.

1. Online Privacy Protection Bill:  A “Discussion Draft” of a bill to require notice and consent to any individual PRIOR to collecting or using personal information was released in early May in the US House of Representatives from Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL).  Industry and consumer groups alike are not happy with the draft, including the DMA.  Although it may seem at first that the so-called Boucher Bill was just about online behavioral advertising conducted by large marketers; it turns out that it’s very broad and far-reaching on privacy and data security.  During the webinar, Jerry Cerasale, VP, Government Relations for the DMA, gave a very good overview of coverage, exceptions and terms of notice.  Basically, it impacts nearly all kinds of “first party” senders as well as any other company that has access to that data as a “third party.”  It proposes coverage of an extensive list of “unique and persistent” personal data on consumers.
   
   “One potentially bad impact this could have on the email industry concerns the scope of covered data, including email address, IP address, and other unique, persistent identifiers,” says panelist Tom Bartel, CIPP, VP, Receiver Services at Return Path.  “If the exceptions for transactional and operational purposes and for service providers are not effective and clear, this bill could interfere with many industry collaborations.  This includes IP-based reputation systems – data that determines if email messages reach the inbox or not.  It may also impact the operation of Feedback Loops provided to email senders by mailbox providers like Yahoo! and Hotmail.  These feedback loops are a key component in how the industry keeps bad actors out of the email ecosystem."
   
   Both Representatives Boucher and Stearns have indicated a willingness to work with industry and have requested comments on the bill, due by June 4th.  Cerasale said the DMA will be commenting.
    
2. Expansion of FTC Powers: Congress is also considering significantly expanding the powers of the FTC as part of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (HR 4173).  There is not a corresponding bill in the Senate, although Cerasale said in the webinar that one may be introduced later this year. 
   
   Part of the proposed regulation would give the FTC “unbridled authority” to create rules around “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” for many industry sectors.  Cerasale expressed concern about this, and said that more checks and balances are needed.  It is also unclear how this expansion will impact emerging technologies like social or mobile, he said.
   
   Another part of the proposed bill increases the FTC’s enforcement powers to seek civil penalties.  “That may be helpful in catching spammers and other abusers of email marketing,” said Rick Buck, CIPP and VP, ISP Relations and Privacy at e-Dialog.  “Marketers who feel they are exempt from prosecution because they are legal under CAN-SPAM may be following the letter of the law, but not the spirit.  I encourage everyone to go beyond the legal requirements and aim to provide email experiences that are welcome and engaging to subscribers.”
   
   The FTC’s Greisman said only that, “We welcome any support from Congress that helps the agency be more effective and efficient.”  There are some “tools that we lack which Congress may grant us the power to use,” she said.
   
   A third element to this proposed legislation is on responsibility/liability of the delivery provider (broadcast vendor, ESP, MTA Vendor) if their clients do not follow CAN-SPAM or other regulations.  “This aiding and abetting aspect is very concerning,” said webinar panelist, Dennis Dayman, VP, Privacy & Online Security at Eloqua.  “Blurring the lines between purveyor and sender may place an undue penalty on others in the ‘chain of responsibility’ for all brands involved in online advertising or other online acquisition efforts, like third party email senders and publishers,” Dayman said.

Greisman also reported in the webinar that there is no significant update on the behavioral targeting protection guidelines that the FTC has had out for comment for over a year. “Nothing will happen without input from industry,” she said.  Since the mandate from the FTC has been, “self regulate or else,” the webinar panelists Buck, Bartel and Dayman had a number of suggestions for marketers to follow best practices, including:

1. Ensure transparency in disclosure and notice of permission and use of data.
2. Be very clear about opt out vs. opt in.  CAN-SPAM requires only an opt-out, but that is the “bare minimum,” Buck advises.
3. Update your Privacy Policy and provide prominent links.
4. Audit your data usage practices.
5. Be clear on use of data in all web forms and at the point of collection/sign up.

Marketers and everyone in the email industry can support the FTC, Greisman said.  She suggests:

1. File a complaint.  When those complaints are also referred by the DMA, they are particularly helpful, Greisman said.
2. Make sure your opt out mechanisms are working.  (e-Dialog’s Buck recommends checking this at least annually, and preferably monthly.)
3. Be clear about the sender and the advertiser relationships.  (Return Path’s Bartel recommends first party senders consider “framing” the content from third parties or advertisers and clearly distinguish between editorial (original content) and advertising.)
4. Keep data clean, particularly around new sources.  (Eloqua’s Dayman also recommends care around affiliates’ use of data.)

The legislative update webinar was sponsored by Eloqua, e-Dialog and Return Path, with technology sponsor GoToWebinar.  The recording of the full event is free for eec members.  More details on these and other legislative issues important to digital and direct marketers is in the DMA’s quarterly government affairs newsletter, Politically Direct.

- Stephanie Miller
Return Path & eec

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.

 

 

Choosing a top tier email service provider (ESP) can be tough. With so many ESPs to choose from, each with their strengths, it can be challenging to make head-to-head comparisons.

That's why last year we published a seminal whitepaper on how to rate ESPs, to help email marketers make an ESP choice based on the factors most important to their own organization and their unique requirements…not on any one ESP's selling points. The whitepaper was immediately popular. Apparently marketers were hungry for that kind of objective information.

This year we updated the whitepaper and turned it into an annual guide, to stay current with the ever-changing world of email and ESPs. This new free, vendor-neutral guide to ESPs offers an unbiased yet exhaustive list of criteria complete with explanations about the significance of each factor.

It's so impartial, it doesn't even mention a single ESP by name. Rather than focus on telling you what this or that ESP can or can't do, we've focused on your needs. We have 19 different things to consider when choosing an ESP based on what you need, not on what a particular ESP offers. It's unlike any other ESP selection guide you've seen and its based on our 10 years of reselling and implementing the industry's top-tier solutions.

To revise the whitepaper and make it new and improved as an annual guide, we:

• Re-evaluated all 20 factors in light of email marketing in 2010. Based on that assessment, we significantly beefed up the integration information throughout
• Removed four factors and added three:

1. Data management tools
2. Integration with add-on services
3. Social media integration

• Reorganized the factors alphabetically for better usability and objectivity

The guide now covers 19 of the most important considerations involved with ESP selection. For each of the factors, we've included details about why it matters and what to look for. The significance of each will vary from organization to organization. That's why we've also kept the scoring sheet that was included with the original whitepaper. It will help you compare ESPs based on what's important to your organization and your goals.

Publishing an updated ESP guide annually—rather than one whitepaper once—will enable us to keep the guide up-to-date with shifting trends and technologies, so no matter the year, you'll have a vendor-neutral guide to, well, guide you.

Your ESP choice is critical to your success. Choose wisely. Choose well. And choose to start your selection process with this guide in hand.

Download the 2010 guide to choosing a top tier ESP.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

I've been in the business of delivering email now for quite a long time. I've spent more than 10 years managing, creating, or observing email communications in some fashion. I have worked on the client side, with partners, with vendors, and on the ESP side. This week while I was reflecting on what I've learned (don't laugh, I can get introspective), the thing that kept coming back to me was one word…process. Process is such a basic thing that is so often ignored. We have very little margin for error when delivering an email. If you make a mistake it is out there for the world to see, usually with bells and whistles as Mr. Murphy seems to take over. I wanted to talk today about how solid process can help eliminate errors, increase productivity, and boost morale within an email team.

I am going to give away an interview secret of mine here for everyone to see. I guess that means I will have to make up another one, but here we go. I always ask candidates to tell me if they have multiple tasks to do, how do they stay organized? I am not looking for any specific answer, just an answer. A person who has a clear method of organization can go a long way in our business. You can use a white-board, sticky-notes, calendar, reminders, you name it. The key to organization is an understanding of how to prioritize and remind you of critical tasks as crunch-time nears. All email campaigns have a moment of truth where everything has to come together. I believe that predetermined process is the single most important factor in making that moment of truth a smooth one.

Here are the main areas where it is important to inject process:

Planning – It's a great idea to have a rolling calendar. Plan for the future.

Templates – Don't start every campaign from scratch. Develop and test solid templates for future mailings. Good templates take a lot of QA out of the picture.

Content Gathering – You must have a repeatable process for gathering your content. Copywriters, designers, revenue management, database, and management are all groups who may be involved.

QA – Crucial to have a documented process for QA.

Approvals – Do you know who must approve an email before a launch? Do they know they are supposed to approve them?

Launch – Taking the stress out of the decision by having a clear path to launch.

Analysis – An overlooked area sometimes. Process should be defined so testing, and analysis metrics have meaning.

Document, document, document all of these processes. Putting down the process on paper helps you on a number of fronts. Writing down responsibilities on paper will allow everyone involved to make sure they feel comfortable. Having a documented process also makes training new team members easier. I would recommend that the "Email Team" have regular meetings to plan for future campaigns and review past campaigns. Continuous open dialogue with all involved in the email creation process can help smooth out any potential problems that may arise. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it is important to be a team when it comes to email. I have seen many a campaign come unhinged because of small issues.

Making mistakes in email is just about unavoidable. Things happen, and as long as we humans are still in charge, it will continue that way. An important thing I have learned from these mistakes is that almost all the time, the mistake can be traced back to a process breakdown.

Take a good look at the way you take an email from concept to production. Are you capable of developing the process discipline necessary to execute the vision? A little bit of work in planning and teamwork will pay dividends each and every time you launch a campaign.

- Kevin Senne, Premiere Global Services

There is a consensus among email marketers that keeping uninterested subscribers on your email lists does more harm than good. Before your unengaged subscribers unsubscribe or – gulp! – report you as spam, take measures to reengage them and reinforce their positive relationship with your brand.

Here are a few ideas for keeping your subscriber base active and excited about your email:

• Run a relevant, engaging email program in the first place. The most important way to keep subscriber attention is, of course, to pay attention to your whole email program at each step. Maintain relevant content, design creatives that subscribers enjoy seeing, and refrain from overmailing.

• Send a "We Miss You" message with a special offer to inactive subscribers. When you know you have unengaged subscribers on your list, show them that you still care. One way to do this is with a "missing you" message, sweetened with a special offer. Smith-Harmon clients Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids added a dynamic "We've missed you!" banners to emails sent to inactive subscribers.

• Involve subscribers by inviting them to help support a cause. Strengthen subscriber relationships with your brand by encouraging them to help you support a cause. This shows subscribers that you care about more than just dollars and also fosters a sense of investment in your brand's efforts. For example, Lucy has encouraged subscribers to help support the Breast Cancer Network of Strength, and PetSmart has invited subscribers to join them in helping homeless pets.

• Run contests or sweepstakes that encourage interaction with your brand. Everyone loves to win. If the reward is enticing enough and the process is simple enough, subscribers will jump at the chance to enter your brand's contest or sweepstakes.

In a recent contest, The Cheesecake Factory asked for new flavor idea submissions from subscribers and then went a step further by letting other subscribers vote for the winner (I'm particularly pleased, since my pick won. Yum, Red Velvet).

Last winter, Urban Outfitters enticed subscribers to create a holiday wishlist by allowing them to enter a drawing to "win their wishlist." Even the contest losers (such as myself) received an email with a discount offer to keep them shopping.

• Marketing a good or service your subscribers aren't familiar with. By showing your subscribers something that they may not have known you carried, you may inspire them to revisit your site. For instance, The Container Store took Earth Day as an opportunity to reveal themselves as a vendor of environmentally-conscious storage options.

Hopefully your email program is so relevant and engaging that no subscriber would ever DREAM of hitting the unsubscribe button. But if you happen to be seeing a high number of inactive subscribers, give some of these ideas a try and see if you can recapture some attention.

Always Active & Engaged,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

The email marketing industry has never had a consensus around metrics, something that contributes to its reputation as an immature marketing channel. When I heard about the Measurement and Accuracy Roundtable at the eec I was excited to join the metrics conversation and help contribute to solidifying some table-stakes metrics.

Less than a year later we've come up with a proposal - one that represents a large step forward for email marketers. However, it also means a good bit of work. Many email marketing service providers (ESPs), email marketing vendors and individual marketers now have to start considering some new numbers.

This proposal not only calls out where everyone should eventually be, it also provides consistent names for related metrics. For us at ESPs, it means that we can immediately make it clear to our clients where we stand.

A great approach is to embrace an "Educate, Enhance and Evolve" approach. What does that entail?

1. Educate your clients on where they currently stand
Is what you've been calling 'Opens' now defined as the Action Rate? If so, then let them know, that doesn't mean you need to change the name right away, but you should provide a tool tip or a more detailed description in your help guides. Also link to the new standards, or provide your own copy of them within your application. This will empower them to do more with their data.

2. Enhance your current reports with some of the new metrics
You may have been showing just one number, the one you thought best represented 'Opens'. But we've opened the door, there are a number of different metrics which each tell a different story. By providing more of this information you allow your clients to dig deeper into their statistics and gain a better understanding of their recipients. Of course with more information comes more questions; be sure to provide detailed information about how these numbers are calculated as well as why they are important.

3. Evolve from the days of 'Opens'
That's right, the goal here is to stop reporting 'Opens' at all. Do we expect the industry to forget about 'Open Rates' by tomorrow? No, but we do expect the experts to start moving away from it soon. When industry leading ESPs follow suit it will help to create momentum and drive the whole industry forward.

By defining and adhering to industry standards we are enabling all email marketers to converse with the confidence that they are comparing apples to apples. This is a big step in the move towards getting email marketing the respect it deserves as a mature marketing channel.

- Adam Covati, Bronto Software

It's not surprising that a recent study of UK email subscribers finds that most email marketing is pretty terrible – it's irrelevant, untargeted and poorly timed. What the study really points out is that consumers notice.

Put out by Emailcenter, an ESP in the UK, the study polled British consumers about their inbox habits and preferences. The report (free registration required) is full of wonderful ideas to improve email marketing response and deliverability. One thing that struck me is the data to support what we know intuitively from our own inboxes: we all get a lot of email, and many marketers take a short term, aggressive approach to content and frequency. Luckily, all the factors that go into reversing this trend and improving both the subscriber experience and response rates for marketers are under the control of the marketer.

Almost 64% of the respondents in the Emailcenter survey say that only a quarter of the marketing messages they get are relevant to them. Just a half a percent of them said all of it was relevant. With targeting, segmentation and dynamic content technology integrated in most email broadcast vendors and all the in-house software solutions, there is no reason why email marketers have to compromise any longer.

Using segmentation helps solve another big challenge for email marketers: frequency. In the study, 62% said that high frequency is a factor in making them wish to stop marketing messages. More than half say they got more than expected at sign up – with 36% reporting they got "more" and 16% reporting "far more." We know from our Return Path data that high frequency and low relevance are key factors in complaints to the ISPs – which depress deliverability and lower response further. The Emailcenter report also has some good suggestions about educating executive management about the perils of overmailing.

Beyond too frequent messages, another 70% say that "no relevant products" was a factor in making them wish to stop receiving marketing messages. A sizeable minority, 43%, said that their requirements changed. Again, these are all factors that marketers control. Frequency is important not only because it encourages a "delete" (the rolled eyes of subscriber feedback), but it's also the most commonly cited reason for an unsubscribe request. And it's a big reason why subscribers click the "report spam" button, depressing inbox deliverability and lowering response rates across the entire file. A quick way to check if volume and high complaints are a concern for you is to check your sender reputation for free (free registration suggested for deeper data, but not required).

Subscribers aren't asking that much of marketers. Sixty-five percent said they signed up to get exclusive discounts. A full 75% of respondents said that "special offers" is a key factor in their response to a marketing message. Another 55% said "relevant products." My goodness! All we have to do to engage a majority of our subscribers is identify what products they are in market for and provide a compelling offer that makes them feel special and valued? Certainly that is within our grasp.

What happens when we push the limits? A full 75% of these respondents said they unsubscribe (this is much higher than the studies I've seen in the US, and more than twice that found in our US consumer study). Another 40% say they just delete – which is like an emotional unsubscribe and they are lost subscribers. Only 14% said they click the "report spam" button; again, significantly less than studies of US consumers – our own study last year showed 33% click the "report spam" button when messages are not relevant.

Keep in mind the key finding here: consumers notice what email marketers do. When we send something interesting and relevant at a good pace, they are happy to stay active with our programs. When we don't… well, then we've lost them, perhaps for good.

- Stephanie Miller, Return Path

The eec blog post introducing the new "render rate" (by the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable) has drawn dozens and dozens of comments to date – from supportive to some that question the value of the standardization initiative.

There were also a number of comments and questions that indicate many people still don't understand what the open rate does and doesn't measure and how open rates are actually tracked. This blog post will be the first of a series from various members of the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable that address the comments and questions posted on the blog.

Before diving into a detailed explanation of how the open rate works and what it does and doesn't measure, I wanted to remind everyone of the core objective and purpose of this initiative.

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable was formed with two primary purposes:
1) To ensure that email industry metrics that were widely adopted accurately measured what they were designed to measure;
and
2) That the metric was measured consistently by vendors and marketers. The intent was not to eliminate metrics or pose our opinion or preferences on email marketers.

With that background and reminder, let's dive into the basics of the open rate, which hopefully conveys why the eec took up the initiative to standardize this popular email metric…

How open rates are measured: Your email technology automatically inserts html code that references an invisible (often referred to as a "clear" or "1×1″) tracking image in your email, usually at the bottom of the email.

Like the other images in your HTML emails, they are actually hosted on a server, not embedded within the email. When a recipient opens the email, and images are not blocked, the image is called/pulled into the html message from the hosting server. As the image is pulled into the message, it is appended with a unique identifier that is associated to the receiving email address. That rendering of an image associated to an email address has been commonly referred to as an "open." Now, it gets more complicated.

When an "open" is counted: With the above definition in place, let's look at the scenarios in which an open is counted or reported:

Images are not blocked when the recipient fully "launches" or opens the email.

Images are not blocked when the recipient views the email in a preview pane (a feature on an increasing number of email clients and services).

A recipient scrolls through the inbox slowly enough to allow the tracking image to load, even though the email was not actually viewed in full or in the preview pane.

A recipient clicks on a link in a text email. This particular email service provider or software counts the clicked link as an open. Even though there is no way to track whether the text message was opened (because it has no tracking image), we assume the recipient had to open the message (or view in preview pane) to view the message or click the link. Note: In this example the email tracking software would report one and open and one click.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email that is fully opened, but images are blocked or disabled. The text-email logic applies here.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email viewed in a preview page, but images are blocked or disabled. The text-email logic applies here, too.

A recipient views an HTML email on an iPhone, iTouch or other mobile device that automatically renders HTML emails with images enabled.

A recipient clicks on a link on a text or HTML email on a mobile device that does not render images. The text-email logic applies here.

When an "open" is NOT counted: OK, with me so far? Now, it gets even more confusing. Here are the scenarios when an open is NOT counted or reported:

Images are blocked when the recipient fully "launches" or opens the email.

Images are blocked when the recipient views the email in a preview pane (a feature on an increasing number of email clients and services).

A recipient scrolls through the inbox so fast that the tracking image doesn't have time to load.

A recipient clicks on a link in a text email. This particular email service provider or software does NOT count the clicked link as an open. In this case the rationale is that although an open can be inferred, it was not actually captured. Thus, the metric is kept "pure" and the open not counted.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email that is fully opened, but images are blocked or disabled. The same text-email logic from the previous example applies here.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email that is viewed in a preview page, but images are blocked or disabled. Again, the text-email logic applies.

A recipient clicks on a link on a text or HTML email on a mobile device that does not render images. The text-email logic applies here, too; thus, no open is tracked. The same text-email logic applies.

The HTML or text version is read on a BlackBerry or similar mobile device that does not render images.

An HTML email is viewed on a Blackberry (as above) and is later opened in Gmail (or other email service/client) with images blocked. The email has been opened and read twice, but no open has been counted.

I could probably come up with more scenarios that show how inconsistently an open is or isn't counted or reported, but you should have the gist by this point.

My fellow Measurement Accuracy Roundtable members will contribute a follow-on series of posts to further explain our rationale for the proposed render rate.

In the meantime, if anyone still doesn't understand how opens are tracked and reported, please post your question in the comments, and I'll give it another shot.

Lastly, I'd like to personally, and on behalf of the entire Measurement Accuracy Roundtable, thank everyone for their feedback and comments posted on the eec blog. Are you really passionate about this and other email measurement topics? Join the eec and our Roundtable!

- Loren McDonald, Silverpop
Co-Chair of the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable

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

Last November I wrote about The Forgotten Pages of Email Marketing, those lonely and neglected pages in your email processes that haven't been updated in two years or more or—gasp!—haven't been altered from the default template set by the vendor. Unless you routinely subscribe to, unsubscribe from, forward, etc. your emails or manually check those pages, these lapses are difficult to detect—that is, until they're pointed out to you by one of your subscribers. That's what happened to us recently, courtesy of Benjamin Fitts of CustomCardGuy.com, who emailed me saying:

"I've been enjoying your blogs and plan to join the eec later this week. The funny thing was as I signed up for your email from the emailexperience.org blog I realized you guys are committing a faux pas! When subscribing I get a nice page that tells me I should be expecting a confirmation from you shortly. The problem is that when I get the confirmation email and click the link, I get the exact same message letting me know I should be receiving a confirmation email shortly. I'm sure this is just a mistake on your part but I wanted you to know how silly it seems for an organization helping us with email standards who can't get the basics right."

We immediately checked things out…and he was dead right. Our sign-up confirmation page and subscription confirmation page for our confirmed opt-in process were the same, which was definitely confusing. Because of the duplication we also missed out on the opportunity to confirm that they were subscribed and to tell them to expect a welcome email. While reviewing the process, we decided to make a few other changes as well.

Hoping to inspire you to review your own subscription processes, here are the improvements that we made:

1. Sign-up Confirmation Page. After signing up for our newsletter, you're taken to a sign-up confirmation page. It originally said:

"A confirmation email has been sent to your inbox from enews@emailexperience.org. To confirm your subscription please click on the link enclosed in that email."

We made some minor tweaks to make it clear more quickly that the subscriber needs to take an additional action. The new wording is:

"To confirm your subscription, please click on the link in the confirmation email that we just sent to you from enews@emailexperience.org. Thank you."

2. Subscription Confirmation Email. The only change we made to this email, which is triggered by a sign up, was to change the subject from "New subscription to Email Experience Council Email List" to "Please confirm your subscription to the Email Experience Council newsletter". The previous subject line seemed like it was intended for the email administrator, not a new subscriber. Plus, the new subject line again reinforces the message that an additional action is needed to complete the subscription process.

3. Subscription Confirmation Page. When you confirm your subscription by clicking on the link in the subscription confirmation email, you're taken to the subscription confirmation page. This was the element that our previous process lacked. Here's the wording we devised for this page:

"Thank you for subscribing to our weekly newsletter. A detailed welcome email has been sent to you from enews@emailexperience.org. Please add that address to your address book to ensure that you receive future emails in a timely fashion. Thanks and welcome to the Email Experience Council community."

It thanks them for subscribing, tells them to expect a welcome email and asks that they whitelist us—very concise and to the point.

4. Welcome Email. We had redesigned the body copy of our welcome email many months ago, so that copy was fine. However, we hadn't scrutinized the subject line enough. It said, "Welcome to The Email Experience Council," which was very misleading because while all eec members are eec subscribers, all subscribers are not members. So we changed that subject line to "Welcome to the Email Experience Council community!" which echoed the final line of the subscription confirmation page.

Thanks again, Ben, for helping us do a better job of practicing what we preach.

—Chad White of the Email Experience Council