Can Email Work as a Customer Acquisition Channel?
A lot of savvy email marketers ask the question of whether email can work as an acquisition channel. Because the power of email marketing is based on permission (which can’t be transferred), the assumption is that email can’t be used to acquire new customers.

In reality, email can be a tremendously powerful customer acquisition channel when it’s handled right. I am, of course, biased, since ividence is an ad exchange for acquisition email. Still the numbers bear me out.

Acquisition Email by The Numbers
The DMA found that the average return on investment for every $1 spent on email was $40.56 in 2011. That number far outstrips other marketing channels. Though that number is an average that includes retention email, it gives a good idea of the potential that email has as an acquisition channel.

 

Additionally, click through rates on email beat out those for display. The average CTR for online display ads is 0.09%.

Email by contrast has an average CTR of 5.2% according to Epsilon’s most recent data. Acquisition email CTRs are lower on average (because there’s not an established relationship with the recipient). Still, ividence’s average CTR for acquisition email is 1.5%, or more than 16 times the CTR on display.

Facebook ads have an even lower CTR than display—0.051%—or 30 times lower than the acquisition email CTRs that we see.

And last, but not least, eMarketer’s 2011 figures show online ad spending up by 23% YOY, which an anticipated growth rate of 23.3% for 2012. That means more advertising dollars available for trying new, efficient channels.

So if email can work as a customer acquisition channel if done well, how do you do it well?

Getting Acquisition Email Right
Because the inbox is a very personal space, email marketers must work very hard to respect consumers in that space. That’s never truer than when you’re introducing a brand to a consumer via email. For acquisition email to work for all parties (the brand, the consumer, and the list owner), there are three concepts that must be followed:

1. Respect subscribers
Email marketing derives much of its power from permission and trust. When a consumer subscribes to an email list, there’s an implied expectation that the list owner respect that trust. For acquisition email to be effective, it needs:

 • Permission – Just as retention campaigns should only be sent to opt-in subscribers, acquisition email campaigns should only be sent to subscribers who have given the list owner permission to send third-party offers. There also needs to be an option for the recipient to unsubscribe from advertiser’s offers or to unsubscribe from the list all together.

• Clarity – Only the list owner has permission to send emails to their list, so their brand name (or the name of the list) should be in the mailfrom and mailfrom friendly fields. This makes it easy for the subscriber to understand why they’re receiving the email, reducing spam complaints and increasing open rates.

2. Ban “batch and blast” from your vocabulary
To be welcome, emails need to be relevant to the recipient. Send too many emails that a subscriber doesn’t relate to, and they’ll become an unsubscriber (or worse, will report your email as spam).

Any acquisition emails needed to be carefully targeted to the recipients most likely to be interested. Behavioral targeting is among the most effective segmentation techniques, driving higher open, click through, and conversion rates.

However, if the publisher you are working with can’t offer behavioral targeting, you should at least narrow by demographics or geographic data. Alternatively, you could send different offers to different targets: a clothing retailer could segment by gender or an insurance company could include different package options to people at different income levels.

3. Continually optimize
Just as importantly, don’t send to the entire (targeted) list at once. If you send in smaller waves, you can use the information gathered at each stage to optimize your target. If you’re testing two different creatives or subject lines, you can also pause the losing treatment once you have enough data to select a winner and get a better response from the full campaign.
 

An example of how this played out for a real brand is a bank client that we worked with at ividence. Our client was looking to drive acquisition of new real estate loan prospects.

In addition to the typical challenges that all brands face with deliverability and following legal requirements, financial institutions are very sensitive to concerns about phishing and fraud as well as the unique regulation around the banking industry. In a study by David Daniels of The Relevancy Group, 41% of banks and credit unions surveyed said they were somewhat to very challenged in overcoming fears of phishing and fraud.

Using the above approach of respecting subscribers, targeting smaller email sends, and continually optimizing the campaign, we were able help them drive new leads. The ividence team and platform monitored and adjusted the targeting of the campaign after its launch, which resulted in an over 1800% increase in the number of leads generated by the campaign between its first and last month. There was a simultaneous 233% increase in effectiveness (ratio of leads generated to emails sent).

Unsubscribe rates for the campaign were in line with those of retention campaigns in finance, and abuse complaints were below the average seen in retention campaigns (below 0.01%).

 

Have you used acquisition email to grow your business or to generate revenue from your email list? What tips would you add to this list?

Eric Didier, ividence

Five Ways to Improve Email Deliverability with Gmail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Colleen Petitt, Aprimo

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 eec hosted a webinar this month highlighting the role of video in email.  Luke Glasner of Red Pill Email moderated and Justin Foster of LiveClicker and Rory Carlyle of Carlyle, Inc. contributed to the panel discussion.  The audience was engaged throughout as we learned about video email best practices, case studies, and technical requirements to achieve strong deliverability with video in email.  Download the webinar recording.

Top 10 takeaways from video email webinar:

1.  Video is a growing trend that email marketers need to pay attention to.  Video viewing time increased 26% year-over-year in the USA from August 2010 to August 2011.  180 million people, or 86% of the US Internet audience, viewed online video in August of 2011, according to comScore.  Marketers are taking notice, with video ad spend projected to increase 22% from 2011 to 2012 (eMarketer).  An August 2011 report by Forrester Research showed online video was perceived as the channel most poised to increase in effectiveness over the next three years by interactive marketers, behind only mobile marketing and created social media.

2.  Using video for video's sake is not a good enough reason to use video with email.  Marketers need to decide whether the application of video creates additional value for subscribers before deciding to employ this tactic.  Simply using video because it is "cool" is not a good enough reason; marketers need to first consider whether the storytelling power of video can be used to more effectively entertain, engage, or excite subscribers, build trust, stir the imagination, or persuade the subscriber to take an action vs. other techniques.

3.  Video is proven to be an effective tactic to boost email campaign performance, but only when best practices are applied.  Simply using the word "video" in the subject line of email has been demonstrated to help achieve increases in open rates of up to 20% vs. an identical message body without the word "video" in the subject line.  Video in email examples illustrated a 200% increase in CTR in a controlled A/B split in one example, 67% higher CTR v. average campaigns in another.  Still, if best practices are not used, video can annoy subscribers, distance marketers from subscribers, and even drive up negative metrics like unsubscribe rates.

4.  Video does not alter the fundamental rules of smart email email marketing. Relevance still rules.  Marketers need to think about who to engage with video; use of past clickthrough data, web analytics data, or customer demographic data are all possible sources of valuable targeting information.  Knowing which subscribers have watched video in the past can be especially helpful when developing segments for video email.

5.  Video production does not need to be difficult or expensive; marketers can make it so.  There are several techniques that can be used to minimize the amount of time required to generate videos for campaigns, such as: 1) use existing content developed in-house or by partners (just make sure you have permission) 2) If your brand is tolerant, carefully assess the production values you really need to accomplish the goal of the campaign.  It is possible to create HD video content in-house, with a full camera setup and set, for $4,000 - $5,000.  Hiring a professional or an agency is also an option, but many marketers make the mistake of thinking that video has to be expensive, when in reality video is only expensive when the marketer's production requirements make it so.

6.  Choosing which technique to use for leveraging video "in" email is a creative and cost decision.  Period.  There are benefits and drawbacks of each method of including video in email.  Concerns over deliverability, campaign send speed, or mail client support should not dictate the decision of "in" or "with" because technologies exist in the market to detect what email client a subscriber is using, and then automatically serve a compatible version of the video asset, animated .GIF video, or still image directly in the email based on what the mail client supports.  If a marketer has a creative aversion to using any of these creative treatments, it is easy to exclude the use of that treatment without having to cut the list.  Further, deliverability concerns can be alleviated simply by employing best practices in coding email messages.

7.  If using video in email, internal education is key.  Not all mail clients support full video in email, including Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.  If you use one of these programs at your place of work, consider setting internal expectations so that stakeholders know what to expect.  While video in email support is not yet consistent across mail clients, as of June 2011 an "average" B2C marketer could expect to deliver "full" video in email to approximately 37% of the list, animated .GIF video to 50% of the list, and static image to 13% of the list.  Your results will vary based on your list's composition.

8.  Email marketers need to treat video as more than a "one off" experiment.  Since we belong to a metrics-focused industry, many email marketers choose to "one off" test video in email to see if it "works."  This is a terrible mistake because it does not allow the marketer to understand what about the video is driving results.  There are many different types of video content; some videos will work better than others.  Therefore, it is important when testing video to at minimum test over a series of campaigns (I recommend at least 3).  Only by looking at video in the context of several campaigns will marketers begin to discover what works and doesn't work for the brand.

9.  Know the lead times involved.  Most email marketers have not used video with email before.  If it's your first time, consider planning the video a full two months prior to the campaign launch.  Since video requires different techniques and tools to create and encode, try to give yourself a buffer and a Plan B far in advance.  If you already have access to video content, plan on adding an additional three to four hours per campaign for any testing or troubleshooting.

10.  Follow best practices.  Among them: 1) set the subscriber's expectation for video by calling the video out in the subject line (this is especially important for animated .GIF videos, which auto-play)  2) Use a "play" button in the video "player" to signal the subscriber can play the video.  3) Highlight in the email what "happens" when the video is clicked.  Because watching a video requires the subscriber to invest his scarce time, it is important to communicate the value you are promising up-front to prevent disappointment 4) Serve a "right click to play" message as the first frame of the video for Hotmail users (because player controls aren't supported yet in Hotmail) 5) Keep animated .GIF videos to 30 seconds or less.  Since animated .GIF videos don't support sound, they are most effective as "teaser" content.

BONUS TAKEAWAY:  Be clear with your campaign goals up front and do not over-hype or over-promise results.  Video email is still new and best practices are still emerging.  In my experience, the marketers that have gone on to be most successful with video email are those who took the time to learn about video in email, took the time to educate their managers and peers, and treated video email as an "experiment."  If you promise the moon, you'd at least better be able to jump off the ground.

My point to this post is this: all the marketing chatter around “email marketing best practices” and related subject matter are mostly garbage.  It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in “email,” how many emails you’ve sent in your career, what company you worked for, how well you code, and I definitely don’t care if you’re an “expert.”  At the end of the day, it’s about data; it’s about results and overall achievement of the channel in conjunction to the goals set for it.  If you don’t have goals on your email channel – start tomorrow.

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

You have probably heard about the recent data breaches and have most likely received at least one email on the issue.  We'd like to share more information with you so here are two articles that cover the situation:

• Are you being a hyper-transparant brand? by Dennis Dayman, Chief Privacy Officer at Eloqua
• The Security of Customer Data has Become the Defining Issue for our Industry by Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop

This week's events are a good reminder that authentication is one of the simplest things all marketers can do to help protect their subscribers and the email ecosystem.

When LinkedIn hit 100 million users a couple of weeks ago, they did something really interesting: They sent out “Thank You” messages to all of their early adopters. I was not among them (I was still a college student (yes, I’m younger than you think) when LinkedIn came around), but many of my colleagues in the email marketing community did. It even became a competition to see who was the “earliest adopter.”

Good stuff, right? Absolutely. And I’ve always been a fan of how LinkedIn very subtly uses email.

Which is why the message I received today from LinkedIn was very, very surprising. See below:

SUBJECT LINE: Introducing the Student Job Portal on LinkedIn






































Let’s examine this message for a minute. Here’s what’s good:

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

Here’s what’s not so good about this email:

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

But let’s speak to the larger picture, and why I think this is a miss: LinkedIn has all of the tools to be relevant in their messages, and they forgot that. They have my job history, the types of companies I’ve worked for, the searches I’ve done in the past. All of those could have been used in this message.

At the least, LinkedIn could have sent two versions of this message: one to those in the market, and one to those who might be offering those internships and entry-level jobs.

Those “Know what you’re looking for?” Those could have been targeted to the occupations that the individual was most interested in.

Why does relevancy matter? Because the power of email marketing resides in your ability to provide your recipients with the information they want (and need). Your email program should be about what those wants and needs, and your messaging needs to at least try to hit the right tone each and every time.

The chief takeaway here: Utilize your data and resources to make your messages strike the correct chord with your subscribers.

For a company that usually utilizes email very efficiently (in my opinion), it’s surprising to see this kind of miss. Particularly for a new product that could be very beneficial to many individuals and companies.


- Scott Cohen
VP, Managed Services
Inbox Group (a new eec sponsor!)

This week at our European Email Marketing Conference in London, we caught up with Eloqua's Chief Privacy Officer, Dennis Dayman.

Read on for his predictions for 2011 as well as some information on Canada's new anti-spam law, C-28.


1) What are some of your top takeaways from this week's conference?

This year's European Email Marketing Conference (EEMC) was a great success! Marketing and email professionals from all over the world came together to discuss issues and challenges they face.

For myself and others, one of the known mountains we have to climb in the European Union (EU) is required permission for marketing. Marketing itself is the same throughout the globe, but in the EU, collection, processing and transferring of marketing information can be much more "difficult" at times due the privacy requirements that surround it. This means to many here that new things like social media sharing have to have a new and different way of thinking when the uses are for marketing purposes. 

Many companies like Eloqua are global in nature and when launching marketing programs across their brands and customers, they have much more to think about than just hitting the "send" button; for example, explicit opt-in.

This week's conference really helped expose these known - and sometimes complicated - matters for global companies and how to solve them.  Lots of stories and examples were shared freely at the event, allowing others to get an idea of how to properly run a campaign no matter where you do business.

Thanks to all the participants for being so helpful to each other and participating at such a personal level. I am certainly looking forward to the Email Evolution Conference in Miami!


2) What are your predictions for compliance and privacy changes in 2011?

There are some major changes coming to the world of marketing in 2011.  Today, most of the world has some sort of privacy data protection in place, but many of the laws are being updated to keep up with changes in the industry and ways in which data is used. 

Here are some items to keep on your radar:

• In the EU, starting in May 2011, dropping and accessing a tracking mechanism like a cookie will become illegal without explicit permission to do such.
• US legislators might attempt another go at federal privacy legislation in 2011 which would require an opt-in to collect and process data.
• By the end of this year, Canada is looking at putting into place an anti-spam law that will make the sending of "spam" illegal and prosecutable.

Over the next few years marketers can expect to see more privacy requirements imposed on marketing processes.  Much of this is due to the sheer volume of information being kept on individuals and this isn't something that shouldn't be feared as most of today's marketing best practices already ask you to obtain permission to collect and use data on individuals.

As these issues come up, be assured that we in the industry along with the eec/DMA will look out for your best interest.


3) Can you please provide an update on the recent anti-spam legislation in Canada?

As a quick recap, anyone sending commercial email from Canada or to someone in Canada will be subject to C-28 (formerly known as Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act - FISA). FISA requires marketers to get permission, either implied or expressed, before sending commercial email to Canadians.

While at EEMC this week, there was some good news that came from Canada.  Canadian anti-spam bill C-28 passed through House of Commons Industry, Science and Technology committee in 48 minutes (WOW!).  One objection was made to the short title (FISA) and it was removed from the bill. The bill now goes back to the house for a 3rd and final reading and a vote which means Canada might have anti-spam legislation by end of the year.

For more information about what is coming in the law, visit:
http://www.theemailguide.com/email-marketing/canadas-new-law-restricts-“spam-haven" and
http://www.thindata.com/aboutus/resourcecenter/fisa/pdf/The_Marketers_Guide_to_Applying_FISA.pdf


- Dennis Dayman
Chief Privacy Officer
Eloqua

Thoughts from the first meeting of the Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable
co-chaired by Jeff Chamberlain of Aprimo and David Hibbs of Responsys.

The charter of the Roundtable is to explore cross-channel integration to provide education and/or information that would help eec members and the larger email marketing community in pursuing this goal.  Here are the themes to what we are trying to accomplish:

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

Our initial group (still welcoming new members) had a discussion on cross-channel integration. I’ll introduce the team through the discussion summary.  eec Vice Chair Stephanie Miller of Aprimo kicked off the call and started us down the road to group discussion.

Challenge #1 – What is Cross-Channel Integration??

Jeff Chamberlain of Aprimo suggested that cross-channel integration spoke to presenting a marketing message via multiple communication channels to address the different needs driven by preference, buying cycle stage, etc.

Sheryl Biesman of Pharmavite pointed out the channel also refers to distribution from a CPG perspective so we need to be clear about integrating communication channels or distribution channels.

Dwight Sholes of Sholes LLC offered the perspective to focus on direct channels (those designed to directly influence action or response such as email marketing or direct mail as opposed to awareness like print ads or signage).  We accepted the fact that there is a large definition of cross-channel integration and that we would narrow down our target as we come up with different projects…which led to some discussion/brainstorming on possible projects we could do to pursue our charge as a group (trumpets blaring charge heard in the distance…). 

Here is a sampling of the ideas discussed:

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

This would force us to think through the aspects of cross-channel marketing and define some logical next steps.  It could be a good way to gather status and thoughts from others.  Let's do it!

And so there you are…our first challenge…define the aspects of a Cross-Channel Maturity Audit.  We’ll dive in at our next meeting in November.

Intrigued and want to join us?  Contact Ali at the eec.


- Jeff Chamberlain, Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable co-chair
VP, B2B Solutions Marketing
Aprimo

We all want a big email marketing list, but we also want to respect subscriber interests, protect the assets of our email program and maintain a solid foundation for revenue growth.  There is a bit of a high wire balancing act sometimes when our organizational goals include having *both* a large and active file.

At this month’s meeting of the eec's List Growth & Engagement Roundtable, a group of industry practitioners discussed a common – and often uncomfortable – situation of email marketers everywhere.  The boss says in that big, growly voice, “Get me a big file of email subscribers - now!”  Yet, the types of tactics that grow a list aggressively can have real risks for response, loyalty and inbox deliverability – which puts your entire program in danger.  No level of growling will change that result.  Here are some ideas from the group about how to approach this somewhat tricky balancing act.   

“I remember a million member push program from one of our clients that was successful in building a big file, but created inbox deliverability and sender reputation problems for many, many months,” says Nancy Harris, Sr. Manager of Deliverability at Fishbowl.  A restaurant wanted to get one million subscribers in their restaurant e-club (a loyalty program).  The promotion was intended to encourage current members to invite lots of friends in order to win a big cash prize. The new member would receive a free meal for joining the program.  “It worked on one level,” Nancy says.  “It was successful in reaching a lot of people and they did reach their goal of one million subscribers.. 
 
“The problem was that the list quality was terrible.  We immediately saw blocking and blacklisting due to unknown users (bounces) and complaints, which took us more than a few months to correct.   Not only did this client have ongoing inbox deliverability issues, but there were also questions about the quality of the people who became new members.  They were not really interested in dining at this restaurant regularly, or receiving ongoing email communications from them.”
 
If that restaurant did the math, they may find that this program was successful in the short term. It cost them some number of tens of thousands of dollars to set up and run the promo and they got a million new members.  Remember, too, that email is a lot cheaper to send than printed postcards – and it’s very efficient in terms of time to market, so this ROI was returned quickly. The cost per new member was very small.    Short term, that could make sense.  However, long term, they destroyed their sender reputation and did not receive revenue from the majority of the new members – these people were not committed to the restaurant and did not frequently dine there.
 
This business cycle issue haunts many an email marketing decision, says Stephanie Miller of Return Path.   “Short term, you can broadcast to your file and you earn revenue.  Long term, however, you may see serious consequences, all of which have a real cost.”
 
Consider these factors in determining the cost of the new subscriber acquired through a sweeps or promotion like the million member push described above:

1. Depressing your sender reputation due to high complaints (which limits your email marketing opportunity for all subscribers by limiting access to the inbox) – this could be a drop in inbox placement of 10% - 50% of your file every time you mail;
2. Churning your file – people who leave by complaints, unsubscribe or filtering – and need to be replaced at some cost per subscriber;
3. Lower loyalty of good customers by bothering them with irrelevant promotions – the cost of this could be a penny a person or it might be higher depending on the type of brand relationship you need for your business;
4. Losing the opportunity for future email marketing because they unsubscribed, complained or are just ignoring you from now on.

“When you calculate the true cost of the aggressive list growth program, factor in these costs as well.  And then make a business decision based on long term customer value and satisfaction,” Stephanie says.
 
“We run into this balancing dilemma when we suggest a list hygiene or list cleansing audit,” says ExactTarget's Nate Romance who is also co-chair of the Roundtable.  Most clients see value in doing a re-engage and send a win back campaign to the portion of the file which is non-active, Nate says.  “However, many will opt for reduced frequency as opposed to suppression of those subscribers who have not responded in a long time. That allows them to keep a big number for list size.”
 
Nate says that when he starts to discuss these issues with marketers, some see the value in keeping “dead” or “nearly dead” records on the file because with a baseline of zero, any interaction will be a rise in response.  However, usually it takes more than just continued hammering at the inbox door, he says.  “Sometimes sending the best of the best offer that month rather than weekly will increase response rates,” he recommends.  The rest of the group agreed, however, that dialing back frequency has not ever significantly improved response rates.  “The risk to your sender reputation is real when you keep non responsive records on the file,” adds Stephanie of Return Path.  “I never think that risk is worth the small chance that a couple people will respond at some future point.”
 
Nancy from Fishbowl adds that a similar practice is common when marketers try to build a list quickly – they sacrifice quality for quantity.  “I see a lot of what I call ‘deceptive list building,’” she says.  This is when a marketer does a sweeps or promotion with vague email permission just to build the file quickly.  “That lack of express consent can be a problem for deliverability and response rates and has a real cost for determining the value of such a venture.”
 
Such practices often are not well measured, and so it’s hard to determine the impact – good or bad.  “When someone gets more aggressive they might do campaigns that are intended to build the list quickly and then they don’t track by source so that we can’t always associate the promotions with complaints and response (or lack of),” Nate from ExactTarget says.  “I always recommend that we tag these folks or track source so that in six months we can check the quality of the list and the real success of the campaign.” 
 
“It’s so interesting that we marketers are good at thinking about LTV of a subscriber when we pay for them – as in a media buy or PPC search campaign,” Stephanie adds. “But when we acquire email subscribers through these “organic’ measures, we don’t always track by lifetime value, we track by the initial sign up.” 
 
Nancy agrees.  “The value of someone when they are new to the file may be different than the same person six months down the road.  We often see that there comes a point, especially for smaller files, that the file stabilizes at a certain number because of loss. New subscribers come in at a steady pace, but subscribers are also lost due to list aging and fatigue,” she says. 
 
That is a very good argument for making sure that list growth is an ongoing commitment, and not a onetime promotion. 
 
What are you doing to consistently grow your email file with active subscribers? Do some of these points resonate? Please comment below, or join the eec List Growth & Engagement Roundtable to participate in future discussions like this.


- Stephanie Miller
Vice Chair, eec
VP, Global Market Development, Return Path

When it comes to creating a successful email campaign and achieving the best possible delivery rate, your reputation is your key component.  A good reputation will keep you in the various ISPs' good graces, and a bad one can get you banished, blocked or blacklisted.

• Number of spam complaints generated – too many complaints lead to being blocked by ISPs
• Volume of email sent – dramatically boosting frequency can cause your reputation to plummet 
• Method used to process bounces – invalid email addresses need to be removed promptly as part of essential list hygiene
• Sending to invalid or old email addresses – could cause your campaign to be caught in a spam trap at some ISPs
• Appearance on any blacklists

• The delay between senders receiving a complaint and unsubscribing the complainer
• Repeat complaints 
• Complaints tracked to ISP/mailbox provider 

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

ClickMail Marketing 

 In one of his many brilliant quotes on modern life, George Carlin mused, “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” The difference is purely perspective.

Your business needs the highest possible email deliverability rate in order to maximize your email marketing ROI. And there are many steps you can take to incrementally improve that deliverability rate, including adding an email preference center to your website. That’s where you establish the foundations of the relationship between your email marketing program and your subscriber, to ensure you’re delivering the most relevant emails possible, thereby meeting their expectations.

But how do you build a preference center that will do what you need it to do, primarily improve your communications with your subscribers so your email marketing is more relevant? How do you know what to offer as choices and what kind of information to ask for?

Below are 5 steps to building a preference center that will give you the information you need, and your subscribers the relevance they want.

Step One: Determine what information to collect
There are two reasons for offering a preference center: to improve your ability as a marketer, and to improve your subscriber’s experience as a recipient. Before you start building your preference center, make sure you are clear on why you are building it, and what information you hope to gain from it…always staying focused on how that information will help you do a better job of serving your customer or subscriber. What segmentation ability do you want and how granular should it be? Also keep in mind what your staff is capable of doing. Review your technology and staffing to determine what is possible as far as dynamic content, existing preference center limitations, etc.

Step Two: Spell it out
Tell them why you are asking for the information in the first place. When offering more than one newsletter or email type to subscribe to, be detailed in explaining what they will get and how often and allow them to sign up only for the newsletters and/or emails they choose.

Step Three: Give them some choices
A little choice can go a long way toward making subscribers feel heard! Even standard choices like these can make people feel like they have some say in how you will communicate with them:

• How they want it: html, text or mobile
• How often they want it: daily, weekly or monthly

Depending on your staff’s capability, time and resources, you can offer as many choices as makes sense (per Step One). Maybe they subscribe only to one of your newsletters, or maybe they only want to get emails about promotions. Or let them segment themselves geographically, or by gender, or age, or interest. Whatever you’re capable of doing plus whatever makes sense for your program equals the choices to offer.

Step Four: Make sure you’re asking for subscriber-centric information
Don’t view your preference center as a way to gather massive amounts of self-serving data about your customers. Ideally the data you collect serves you both: you as the marketer so you can be more targeted, and them as the subscribers so they can get what they want.  If data like gender, income or age helps you with your demographics but doesn’t affect your email program segmentation, don’t ask for it.  But if certain information helps you do a better job at delivering relevant content, do ask.  You might need a ZIP code to segment geographically, for example. If you publish a parenting email newsletter, you’ll want to know how old the kids are. Or maybe you ask about their interests, if that ties into how you segment your content.

The options offered via your preference center will differ depending on whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, too.  Asking for a job title makes perfect sense for a B2B preference center, but no sense at all for a B2C one.

Step Five: Make sure it works
After building, test it from the user’s perspective and pay attention to what happens after it goes live. Does your sign-up rate go down? You might be asking for too much information. Scale back and see what happens. Does your unsubscribe rate go down? Congratulations, you’re doing a better job of meeting your subscribers’ expectations!

Email marketing doesn’t work unless it’s delivered. Give your subscribers some control over how and when they hear from you, and you’ll do a better job of keeping them happy, which in turn will keep your unsubscribe rate and spam complaints down.  Ultimately, what you prefer is a great email marketing ROI, right?

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

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.