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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what did it take to do this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 John A. Caldwell, Red Pill Email

The DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council maintains a blog featuring Council members writing about a wide range of topics relating to email marketing.

This month’s highlights:

• Strategic approaches can be overlooked in an effort to get the next email out the door.  Here are five realistic resolutions for an email marketer.
• The world of email is constantly changing both from the sender and the recipient’s perspective.  However, there are some basics that don't change.
• Because of the way consumers interact with brands via email and social media, it's important for digital marketers to effectively integrate their marketing channels.

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.

Mobile email...it's more than just your emails delivered via a smartphone. To succeed as email marketers on the little screen (as opposed to the big screen), we have to change our mindset.

We have to have a Mobile Mentality.

That means everything we do in email we do while considering mobile at the same time. Everything, including:

- Subscription process
- From name
- Subject line
- Copywriting
- Offer
- Headline
- Banner
- Design
- Graphics
- Call to action
- Buttons
- Frequency
- Testing
- Design
- Rendering
- Links
- Landing page
- Metrics and benchmarks
- Reporting

In particular, pay attention to your From address, subject line and headlines. These are the items subscribers are going to initially react to when viewing emails on their mobile devices (and in that order), so it’s important the appropriate message is relayed in the space provided to achieve the most optimal results. An underlying message here, pardon the pun, is that the message must take priority over the design on a mobile device. You won’t have the screen space to wow with pretty pictures or glitzy graphics. When it’s mobile, you must wow with words.

Your From address must make sense. If you haven’t yet tackled the From conundrum, do it now. The From address is the first item people look at when deciding whether or not to open an email. Yours needs to be clear and compelling. Would someone rather open an email from donotreply@yourdomain.com? Or Frank@yourdomain.com? It matters on the PC, but it might matter more on the mobile.

Keep subject lines short-er. You’re used to writing short subject lines for your emails, right? Now you get to write even shorter ones so they’ll be attention grabbing on the small screen. If the first few words of your subject line are just the buildup to the last few words of your subject line, then the buildup might be all the subscriber sees on their iPhone or Droid. Make those few words count by making them words that hook, interest and compel the subscriber.

The headline is now the headliner. Graphics aren’t going to cut it on the mobile device if you’re relying on them to earn you a click through and conversion. Plus you’re dealing with an even shorter attention span. Your headline is doing even heavier lifting than before. In fact, it might be all they see if they decide to open your email! It absolutely must compel the reader to scroll down the email for more.

You're not limited by mobile, only required to think differently. Your email rendered on a smartphone or PDA is not an end in and of itself, only one step in the process you ultimately hope will lead to a conversion. Where does one go from an email? To a landing page...
 
Mobile-friendly emails need mobile-friendly landing pages. Otherwise, you might lose that hard-won click through. Some might wait until in front of a computer before clicking through, but if someone wants to take action while on the go, we want to make it easy for them by designing a landing page that works on a mobile device. With that in mind, here are a few tips for making landing pages as mobile friendly as your emails.

Design your landing page for mobile with the same mindset as your email design, with narrower widths and a single column.

Be brief when it comes to copy...and make that copy count. Consider using two landing pages, the first which is optimized for mobile and says the bare minimum and a second they can click through to if they need more information.

Make everything shorter: headlines, line lengths, chunks of text. As with the email, think bare minimum to get your point made and your prospect clicking.

Avoid using Flash. Replace it with HTML5 or JavaScript. For best results across devices, our design team recommends building landing pages optimized for mobile as straight HTML, CSS, and minor amounts of Java.

Design for fingers, not mice. Make links and buttons a size that is easy to read and easy to navigate with a finger. You don’t want someone getting frustrated when they are trying to click through and the button or link is too small! Also remember there’s you don’t get a hover state for a touch screen on a smart phone.

If you have a form, ask for as little as possible. Ask only for an email address if you can.

You must test the rendering of both your emails and your landing pages.  You can put countless hours into the From line, subject line, headline and design of that email so it will have maximum impact on a mobile device, but if you don’t test and check how it renders in real life on all kinds of devices, all your work could be for naught. Ditto for your landing page. Test, tweak, test again.

Also remember the growing use of iPads and other tablet PCs. Smaller than a laptop, bigger than a smartphone, it’s hard to know yet where these computing devices fit into the scheme of things, how people will use them, and the best way to market to people who use them.  Don’t overlook them, however.  Being prepared for these smaller devices is only one part of having a Mobile Mentality.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

In email marketing, relevance continues to drive success. No matter what happens in the marketing space or technology space, successful email starts with relevance.

But true relevance means being relevant to every subscriber, and that's a tall order! With 5,000 or 50,000 or even 500,000 names in your database, how can you be relevant to all of them, all of the time?

By tapping into your data sources. You have the data needed—or can gather it. Then put it to use to be relevant. That data can shape your communications with each subscriber, making relevant one-to-one communications possible. And that means you’re going to have database infrastructure needs that you may not have set up today: a relational database or data mart. 

Relational databases are necessary when you have one-to-many type relationships, which most email marketing is. The days of one message to many recipients are over. To be relevant when you're communicating as one company or brand to many subscribers, you must get different types of data into one common view so you can segment and target those communications. That’s what a relational database can allow you to do. 

A relational database is useful for the segmentation and targeting required to be relevant. You want database segmentation and targeting because smaller, more targeted email lists consistently perform better in terms of opens, click-throughs and conversions. Using a relational database, you should be able to search and select based on date ranges, values and value ranges. This enables you to send the right message at the right time to the right audience.

Unless you have an extremely small database with not many fields, you simply can't manage this with a regular database. For example, if you have a flat database file with one record per person, but for each person you have three actions to keep track of, you have to have three records for each person. In a relational database, you can have a table with one record per person, tied to another table containing the actions. Without this, you'd have to merge that data and each instance would have a unique record. One subscriber record could easily turn into many, and you wouldn't necessarily know the relationships between them. 

If you decide a relational database is the way to go, make sure your ESP is part of your conversation from the get go. There are some pieces you'll need from them to make it all work. You’ll want to know what kind of data management tools the ESP offers, and if they support relational databases. You'll also want to know if they can create a data mart or offer integration to a data mart solution, if that makes more sense for you. 

You'll also want to ask your ESP about subscriber keys. How do you—if you have different lists and you different databases—keep track of subscribers? How do you know that the person in database A is same as person in database B? There needs to be one field for that person that ties it all together. That’s what we call a subscriber key. 

A subscriber key is a field that contains a value to uniquely identify each subscriber in your system. It enables you to associate different values to that one subscriber. It's the "key" to making separate relational databases work. If you’re going to use a relational database, make sure your ESP supports a subscriber key other than email address for uniquely identifying a record. 

Relevance continues to drive success in email marketing, and it's ever more important as our emails vie with social media, growing inbox clutter and shorter attention spans. A relational database can improve your relevance…and ROI.

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

 

The email marketing industry needs standard reporting and metrics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now it's time for action.


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

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

Read the definitions

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

Commit.  Sign the petition to advance standard metrics now.

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

Please place your comments below.  And stay tuned!

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

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

 

 

Despite some of the buzz you might be hearing, don’t think the “best time to send” discussion can be tabled as no longer relevant. To maximize your email marketing ROI, you must still discover the day and the time that give you the highest response rate and return on your investment.

Are you already operating off of some “best time to send” assumptions? As marketers, we want to default to industry best practices and well-publicized case studies. But as email marketers, we are able to—and must—test, not take for granted. Rather than rely on the results of others, we must discover our own. And there’s a real danger in following the crowd. When they say Tuesday is the best day to send and then everyone sends on Tuesday, then what? Tuesday leads to crowded inboxes.

The fact is, the industry doesn’t determine your best time to send; your audience does. And you can only learn that by testing.

Beyond knowing it’s the audience who decides, you must also be clear about what you’re measuring. Number delivered? Opens? Click-throughs? Conversions? Total revenue? Then instead of asking “What’s the best time to send?” the question could be, “Which day and time gives us the highest (insert metric here)?”

Know what your metrics really mean. If your metric is revenue, remember that an email opened is not necessarily an email acted upon. The recipient might be curious enough to look beyond the preview pane, but not ready to buy.

This is especially true with mobile devices. Sure, mobile means 24x7 access to email but that probably doesn’t impact your optimum send day. Just because people see their email 24x7 doesn’t mean they respond to it or even really pay attention to it. A relatively safe assumption is that people are less likely to respond to a marketing email on their PDA or BlackBerry. They’ll wait until they are back at their computer to actually respond to—or buy—something.

Also keep in mind that depending on how your audience is segmented, you might have more than one best time to send. For example, the stay-at-home mom can get your email during the day because she’s online and checking her inbox while the kids are at school. But the working mom has to get it after the kids are in bed and she’s catching up on personal email before she turns out the lights.

To determine your own best time for sending by testing, first be clear on your goal. Which metric are you aiming to improve? Then test to that metric, segmenting as much as you can to optimize the delivery day and time for each of your different audiences.

One of our clients is a national home builder. Through testing they’ve learned Friday is the best day to send emails about open houses because they know their audience is planning to spend Saturday touring new home models. Or consider the outdoor equipment retailer that also sends their promotional emails on Friday afternoons. They’ve learned their young, male audience doesn’t plan their weekend activities until Friday afternoon, so the retailer times their emails to coincide with when their audience is beginning to think about Saturday’s fun. If these two companies followed the crowd, imagine the negative impact on their email marketing ROI. They’d be emailing on Tuesdays…and getting totally ignored.

The success of these email campaigns is testament to the importance of knowing when your audience will be most likely to respond to your promotional email. Maybe it’s time for a better “best time to send” discussion, not an end to the discussion.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mets from day one;
The team was old, injured and worn,
Yet I was optimistic, without any shame;
A new season of baseball, my favorite game.
I went online to purchase team gear,
The retailer sent confirmation emails, calming my fear.
But by the time it arrived, my team was in last;
If I expected a winner, I’d have to live in the past
And now just as the dastardly Phillies have won the division
That very same retailer has made an awful decision
They sent me an email promoting their big win
50% off merchandise, from hats to a pin
Don’t they know I’m a Mets fan, what’s this about?
There is no joy in my inbox – this mighty retailer has struck out.

“Casey at the Bat,” it’s not.  But hopefully it makes my point.

Perhaps I’m being a bit overdramatic with that colorful prose, but I cannot help myself.  When I woke up the other morning to see an email in my inbox promoting Phillies NL East Championship merchandise, I first thought it was one of my friends trying to rub it in my face.  But alas, it was sent by a retailer; a retailer I have previously done business with!  I thought they knew a little more about me.   Apparently this major sports retailer does not understand the fine art of email segmentation.

While the mailing list is the foundation for any email marketing campaign, in order to actually be successful with email, the list must be segmented and broken into multiple groups.  An optimal segmentation strategy can lead to better email responses, providing marketers with higher open rates, and increased conversions.  In this specific instance, I was just another name on this retailer’s email list.  Marketers cannot let this happen.

Email marketers must look at personal interests, behavior, geographics, and demographics before they deploy an email.  This should be the first step after initial contact with a customer.  When I first made my purchase with the retailer, I specifically requested to receive updates from them.  My first email from them was a confirmation email about my order.  Over the next few months, I received a coupon and an alert about free shipping.  But not once did they do anything to learn more about me. 

There are a number of things this retailer could have done to better segment its mailing list based on my interests. Perhaps the most effective thing they could have done was ask me to select my favorite sports teams.  This is a sports retailer after all.  The same type of questioning can be applied to any type of business.  It’s really quite simple and it would have come off that this retailer actually cares about its customers.

But even missing this crucial step, all they had to do was look at my purchase history.  Seeing as I bought a retro New York Mets 1986 Keith Hernandez jersey, the easy assumption could have been I was not a Philadelphia Philly fan!

The more data a marketer has on its customer, the more relevant subsequent email campaigns will be.  Segmenting your mailing list allows you to better hone in on your audience to help increase lifetime engagement.   My own engagement with this specific sports retailer is over faster than the Mets season – I have since unsubscribed from their email list and won’t be visiting any of their retail stores. If you want to avoid alienating your customers, make sure each segment has its own unique message that reaches out to the reader in a personal way so you can knock that next email campaign out of the park.


- Michael Goldberg
Director of Marketing
StormPost, a Datran Media Company
Email Michael

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 

This week, the eec was a proud partner for ClickZ's Connected Marketing Week.  During yesterday's eec workshop, Optimizing Your Email Campaigns, 3 email experts led by eec founder, Jeanniey Mullen, gave us their top 5 do's and top 5's don'ts of email marketing.

Below you'll find the complete list from:

• Sundeep Kapur,  VP, Strategic Marketing, NCR eCommerce
• Debbie Kane, Director, Web & Partnership Marketing, Active Interest Media
• Aaron Smith, Director, Professional Services, Smith-Harmon, a Responsys Company

Do

1. Ask yourself, "why should my consumer sign up for my email?"
2. Use intrigue versus incentive.
3. Build up 'reverse preferences' (track what people do & don't do).
4. Run subject line tests.
5. Use social media to increase open rates.
6. Test.
7. Analyze.
8. Use web and email designers.
9. Use clear calls to action.
10. Keep important content/messages above the fold.
11. Do respect image blocking and the preview pane.
12. Do render tests.
13. Do create an iron-clad email production process with tasks, individuals, and even days of the week associated with each milestone.
14. Do run a test with every send – and (this is key) – share your results with your stakeholders for short-term visibility; archive them for long-term learnings.
15. Do ask yourself these three questions:
           (1) What is this email about?
           (2) Why do my subscribers care?
           (3) What do they do about it?

Don't

1. Don’t assume something works.
2. Don’t convert print promotions directly to email campaigns.
3. Don’t overcomplicate your email creative.
4. Don’t over-mail your list.
5. Don’t under-mail your list.
6. Don’t make subscribing – or unsubscribing – too complicated.
7. Don’t try to say too much with a single email.
8. Don’t silo email – remember your other channels, both offline and digital.
9. Don’t forget about the landing page!
10. Don’t assume what worked yesterday will work today, or tomorrow. Keep testing and evolving!
11. Don't ignore your reports & front line.
12. Don't badger the lifeless (don't over-mail your non-responders).
13. Don't say everything in the subject line.
14. What should I do next? (no call to action)
15. Don't forget to be timely.

Remember - the don'ts will lead to do's!

Plenty of databases house valuable information that could help marketers do a better job with their email programs. Here are some data points to consider bringing into your email platform to take your marketing up a notch:

1. Last Purchase Date -  I believe this is perhaps the most powerful data field of all as it has tons of revenue-generating and relationship-building marketing potential.  Ideas for messages based off this date (and all can be automated) include:

• product review requests.
• “getting started” guides or how-to tips for using the product purchased.
• product care messages (tips to maintain or clean the product).
• coupon for next purchase.
• product refill requests (after estimated use time as passed).
• non-purchaser series – sending “We miss you” emails with increasingly valuable offers to push folks back into purchasing after a certain amount of time has passed.
• non-purchaser series for those who have NEVER purchased (i.e. the last purchase date field is empty).

2. # of Purchases Made By Contact - This can help you identify single-buyers and try various tactics to push a second purchase. You can also identify your most frequent purchasers and create VIP offers just for them.

3. Lifetime Value/Total Purchase Amount - This data can also help you recognize and segment out your top spenders and create a strategy specifically for them. Make these customers feel special. Welcome or invite them into an elite group where they can get access to products before others, receive exclusive offers, have a voice in product development (perhaps they get to vote on product features/colors!) and so on.

Sephora has a V.I.B [Very Important Beauty Insider] program where customers who spend more than $350 in the calendar year get royal treatment (10% welcome coupon, access to products pre-launch, special holiday gift cards, exclusive offers and more). You can set up a similar program and target folks who are near or on their way toward that VIP amount, reminding them of the benefits. (Sephora isn’t currently doing this as far as I can tell.) Doing so could spur more purchases through YOUR business versus a competitor in hopes of reaching that elite level. To run this kind of program, you’d want to track the total purchase value over a calendar year.

4. Average Sale Value (or at minimum, last purchase value) - Knowing what customers spend on average can help you be smart about the offers you present. If someone spends $110 on average every time they purchase from you, you can feel confident they may take advantage of a deal offering a free gift or free shipping for purchases over $100 or you can try to push them a bit further than normal with a special offer at a purchase of $150 or more.

5. Dominant Product Category - If someone tends to focus their purchases in one of your categories - say outdoor & gardening out of all your home décor options or only clothing in your bike shop - you should consider targeting that customer with messages featuring that area of displayed interest.

The revenue you can create by implementing this kind of savvy marketing will likely be well worth the effort/investment necessary to bring this data into your email platform.

Have you already set up some messaging based on these data fields? What results are you seeing?

- Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto Software
@kristengreg

 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.

I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable of the Email Experience Council (eec) for the last few months. One of the goals of the Roundtable is to promote a new set of email marketing measurement standards called the Support Adoption of Metrics for Email (SAME). The new standards are a dramatic improvement over original metric definitions. They provide more insight into the true results of a campaign and paint a more accurate picture of your campaign performance.

It’s important that all Email Service Providers (ESPs) adopt these new standards so that we have a common set of definitions industry-wide. Right now its not possible to compare campaign results from one system to another as they don’t follow the same calculations in their metrics. And forget aggregating any industry-wide metrics, even something as simple as an open rate, because that metric is calculated differently by various ESPs.

Earlier this week the Roundtable announced that Email Transmit was one of the first two ESPs to adopt the new metrics standards. Read the press release and the DMNews article, "Inbox Insider: E-mail measurement should be standardized". They also mentioned 11 more ESPs have committed to doing so in the next six months.

We’re clearly at the beginning of a significant improvement in our industry. With the work of the Roundtable members we hope to get other ESPs to adopt the new standards and for other email platforms to use the metrics in their reporting definitions too.

If you’re interested in supporting the S.A.M.E. Project, start by signing the petition, then read the definitions. Make sure your ESP or email delivery platform has plans to implement the new metrics into their system. Hopefully in the near future we’ll all be able to abide by a common set of metrics and have usable industry-wide benchmarks based on the same definitions.

- Adam Holden-Bache
Email Transmit

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

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

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

It's all-around bad for everyone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Ivan Chalif
Director of Email Product Marketing
Alterian

Read Fred Tabsharami's post on the SAME project.

Read more about standard email metrics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Stephanie Miller
Return Path & eec

While each B2B marketer must consider its unique situation – products, purchasers, sales cycle, etc. – there is ample evidence of a shift from traditional media to digital tactics to facilitate growth for business marketers.  In fact, there are, in my analysis, seven trends in B2B marketing strategies and spending starting with …

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

What happens after you send out that carefully crafted email campaign? What do you look for beyond open rates and click throughs? What do people actually do when they get to your landing page or website? And are you able to not only track that information, but put it to use in your next campaign?

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

When your email and web analytics are integrated as a closed-loop process, it should be seamless. Your ESP sends an email and links within the email include identifiers of who that recipient is and the campaign they’re being sent. When they click on a link, the ESP feeds that information over to the analytics provider on a batch basis. You’ll learn about the campaign performance, but also specific metrics about who did what individually once on the site. But that’s not the end of it. The web analytics can also feed information back to your ESP, enabling automated responses or other email messages appropriate to a customer’s particular actions. Then you take all you’ve learned and tweak your next campaign accordingly. 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few resources:

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

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

eec'ers - What do you think?

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

Leave a comment below with your thoughts.