Unsubscribes. The dreaded rejection by someone who was once a willing recipient of your email marketing. Ouch.

Unsubscribes are often viewed as a necessary evil in the life of every email marketer, with emphasis on the word “necessary.” We not only offer unsubscribe links because people want them. We do so because the law requires them!

Rather than treat the unsubscribe like a freeloading, undesirable distant cousin we’d rather ignore, however, email marketers are better off making the most of the situation to be subscriber-centric and keep people happy by following best practices.

If you search for examples of unsubscribe worst practices, you’ll find plenty. I wish I could tell you all the worst examples come from small mom-and-pop operations that don’t know any better, but I can’t. Plenty of unsubscribe sins are committed by big, well-known brands that really should know better.

Two Big Reasons to Be Unsubscribe-able
The unsubscribe is required by law, yes, but beyond that, we suggest knowing and implementing unsubscribe best practices for two very important reasons:

1. When people can’t easily unsubscribe, they are more likely to simply report your email as spam which negatively impacts your email deliverability rate. And without the highest possible email delivery, you can’t have the highest possible ROI.
2. When people opt out, you want to leave them with good feelings about your brand. They might be unsubscribing now, but that doesn’t mean you have to lose them as a customer forever…unless you annoy them.

With those two reasons in mind, consider the following unsubscribe best practices and how well you are—or aren’t—adhering to them.

Make It Overtly Obvious
Make the unsubscribe obvious. This best practice probably seems obvious, yet you’d be surprised how many companies bury the unsubscribe link in an email. Look in your own inbox. Open a few random emails from companies and see.

How does it get hidden? It can be included in a list of links making it hard to spot among the clutter. It can be overshadowed by graphics or in teeny tiny font that’s hard too find. The unsubscribe link should appear at the bottom, where people expect to find it, without any clutter hiding it and big enough to be found a.s.a.p. when someone wants it.

Even when found in plain sight, sometimes it’s in obscure language, so it doesn’t look like an unsubscribe and is overlooked as a result. Words like “manage,” “delete” and “edit” aren’t clear enough. State it plainly, using words like “unsubscribe from these emails” or better yet, “stop getting these emails.” Don’t make people guess. They likely won’t. They’ll opt for the spam button instead.

Make It Easy as Can Be
Once it’s easy to find, make it easy to do. Are you making people log in to unsubscribe, really? It happens! Don’t ask for captchas, either. When they click the unsubscribe link, send them directly to that page, not to a page with a lot of other options. Or make them confirm their email address for you.

Your best practice is a one-click unsubscribe. That is all. They click a link, you take them to a page, they click on a button…done!

Give Them Another Chance
Now, this doesn’t mean you’ve lost them forever. If you have a preference center, direct them there to change the options. It could be they still want to hear from you, just not as often or with different content. This is after letting them unsubscribing easily, however.

If you don’t, you can let them know you are sorry to see them go and give them a chance to change their mind with the click of another button to resubscribe. You can follow up with an email confirming the unsubscribe and thanking them for being a subscriber. In that email, give them a resubscribe link. Whichever route you choose, remember that this is your last chance to leave them with good feelings about your company and word your message accordingly, in a friendly, helpful way. Avoid being apologetic or groveling. I’ve seen this in an unsubscribe confirmation. It’s not pretty.

Leave Them With a Loving Feeling
An unsubscribe doesn’t have to hurt. It can be a pleasant, even humorous, experience. My favorite unsubscribe experience had me laughing out loud: After clicking on the unsubscribe link, I was taken to a webpage and asked, “Are you sure?” To answer yes to that question didn’t mean clicking on a “yes” button. Rather the words on the button were “I’m out of here.” That was funny enough, but then a popup box appeared asking, “For the love of god, are you sure??” I laughed out loud at that. I still unsubscribed, but I enjoyed the experience. They made me go through two clicks for the unsubscribe, but I didn’t mind because it was playful and unusual.

You don’t have to be a comedian to be good at unsubscribes. I share this story because it illustrates how to leave them with warm fuzzies for your brand. Just because they don’t want your emails doesn’t mean they’re boycotting your brand altogether. And wouldn’t you rather leave them smiling?

Reduce the Urge to Unsubscribe
Unsubscribe best practices are smart marketing, but even smarter marketing is having fewer unsubscribes. You can decrease the number of unsubscribes you get by proactively managing and meeting expectations:

• Manage expectations by being clear from the very beginning what types of emails you will send and how often.
• Send a welcome email to reiterate these expectations.
• Deliver relevant, targeted and timely email messages that meet expectations.
• If it’s within your capabilities, offer a preference center on your website to give recipients more control over the content and timing of your emails.

Unsubscribes might not be fun for you as the email marketer, but you can lessen the pain for both you and the subscriber by following best practices and making the most of every situation.

Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

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.

 

 

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

eec Platinum Sponsor, StrongMail, today released the the results of its “2012 Marketing Trends” survey which provides unique insight into how businesses plan to budget and prioritize marketing dollars in the New Year.  Conducted in November 2011, 938 business leaders participated in the global survey.
 
Survey Highlights

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

Marketing Budgets Remain Healthy; Email and Social Media Attract Increased Investment
Email marketing (60%) and social media (54%) were cited as the top two areas for increased marketing spend. According to the survey, 51% of businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2011, and another 41% plan to maintain current levels.  Only 8% of respondents plan to decrease marketing budgets, which is a slight increase over the 7% reported in last year's survey. Other areas of increased spend included mobile and search, which are tied at 37%. Direct mail (28%) and tradeshows (23%) are top targets for decreased spend.
 
Subscriber Engagement is Top Email Marketing Priority; Data Integration is Top Challenge
The top email marketing initiatives for 2012 are increasing subscriber engagement (48%), improving segmentation and targeting (44%) and growing opt-in email lists (32%). Data integration is key to achieving these top priorities, but it is also identified as the primary email marketing challenge in 2012 (45%), followed by lack of resources (43%) and content management (40%). These opposing data points represent an opportunity for email service providers to fill the gap with relevant services.
 
Marketers Focus on Integrating Email Marketing and Social Media
More than two-thirds of business plan to integrate social media and email 2012, versus 44% for mobile and email. The strong ties between email marketing and social media are also emphasized by the 47% of businesses that plan to increase investment in using email to drive growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter pages.  The next popular areas of investment are batch promotional (44%) and newsletter (39%) programs, followed by real-time lifecycle marketing programs (35%), with an emphasis on winback (68%) and welcome (59%) programs.
 
Marketers Unclear on Value of Mobile Marketing
More than a third of businesses plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programs such as mobile apps (30%) and SMS alerts (20%), but there is a lack of consensus on the primaryvalue of this emerging channel.  Building customer and loyalty (35%) was identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach (29%) and awareness building (28%). However, this is offset by a similar percentage still trying to figure it out (24%) and a smaller percentage citing no value at all (7%).
 
"While email marketing leads the pack in terms of increased of investment in 2012, the data also reveals that marketers need to overcome key challenges around data integration and resource constraints," said Christopher Marriott, vice president of agency services at StrongMail. "Whether managing and optimizing existing email marketing programs or enabling integration with social media and mobile, there is a real opportunity for full-service email marketing providers like StrongMail to help companies get the most out of their interactive marketing investments in 2012."
 
Survey Data
Full survey data is available at: www.strongmail.com/2012marketsurvey

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

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

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

For years senders have been warned away from utilizing “spammy” words that could cause their emails to end up in the spam folder or outright rejected at ISPs. These words (and punctuation) include:

• “Free”
• “Percentage off”
• “Buy now”
• “Urgent”
• ALL CAPS
• Special characters (!, %, $, @, *….)
• “Click here”
• And on and on…

But, here’s the thing: They’re not hurting you and haven’t been for a while now. How do I know? Three reasons:

1. Experience with client emails that go out with so-called spammy words in both the subject line and email body and hit the inbox just fine;
2. ISPs have evolved to much more advanced tools to track and reject legitimate spam; and
3. We see delightful, engaging emails that toe the line of “spamminess” make it into the inbox everyday. Overstock is another great example of a marketer that consistently uses all caps in their subject line to great success.

These “naughty words” used to be the buzzwords of every spammer, but now many marketers are utilizing them to help spur action to push subscribers down the funnel to purchase because they work. Copy that pushes subscribers to take action immediately has a propensity to increase actions and conversions and you shouldn’t have to worm around the above words to include in messages.

ISPs have incorporated a massive toolbox of ways to monitor, track and ding senders through reputation and subscriber engagement. Complaints are your biggest enemy, not email copy. If you have a bad reputation at ISPs, regardless of how “clean” your content is, you’re likely not going to get through to the inbox and vice versa.

Worry about improving your list health and how to engage your subscribers with your content instead of laser focusing on what words are or are not kosher. Because ultimately end users, not ISPs these days, determine whether your content is deemed spammy.

One caveat is that individual and company filters are likely to be tighter on what content is and isn’t acceptable, so be aware of this, set up accounts at the major ISPs, partner with companies like Pivotal Veracity for reputation and deliverability monitoring, and test.

And there are a few content pieces you should still focus on when attempting to reach the inbox: incorporating a balanced image to text ratio, avoiding blacklisted urls/domains within the body of your email and ensuring you’re sending valuable, timely content to those subscribers that have opted-in.

Thoughts? Share them in the comments below.

- Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto Software
@KNLorenz

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

Are you struggling to increase your in-house email list in order to extend your marketing reach? There is a growing percentage of the online population that does not sign up for emails or newsletters. Instead they get their information predominately through social networking sites and portals. To reach them, one has to get to them either through their contacts, the groups they belong to, or those they follow. But email can be the vehicle to do just that.

Email can enable and even encourage content to be shared with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. This then allows for an extended reach to those people who haven't opted in to receive emails from you. Plus the marketer retains some control over what specifically can be shared. For example, it might be a video, particular imagery, or a special offer. You as the marketer get to decide.

In addition to getting your content exposed to a much broader audience, sharing email content gives those doing the sharing the opportunity to add value to their respective networks. This is a huge motivator for many social networkers because it puts them in the role of trusted advisor. (Consider how often a tweet from someone in your network is simply a retweet.) This also allows a marketer to enable their audiences to evangelize on your behalf. 

This opportunity to reach the previously unreachable, and to simultaneously empower your audience to demonstrate value to their network, can lead to very high conversion rates, especially if your goal is to not only reach new prospects but also to add new subscribers to your in-house list.

The latest statistics indicate that the number of people seeing content increases approximately 24% with social networking/email integration compared to relying on email alone. That's a massive increase for virtually no cost. FTF (forward to a friend) has been considered an email best practice for years, and it's one marketers should keep doing. But social forwarding features blow it away when you look at the extended reach enabled by social networking vs. FTF email.

The typical social networker has approximately 160 connections. When they share something in their network, the message they are sharing is exposed to their whole network. Compare that quantity to the person who forwards an email using FTF: Typically 1 in 1,000 email recipients actually forwards via FTF, and of those that do, the vast majority forward to 3 people or less. And hardly any of them subscribe as the result of getting the forward. It's easy to see that when you provide interesting, valuable and relevant content into a socially networked environment (i.e. content people will want to share), some of the new people you've just reached will sign up with your company directly for future news or shareworthy information.

When you add social networking integration via a tool like Share-to-Social or Social Forward, be sure to provide instructions to your audience about how to share specific offers or content, and help them understand why they should. Language such as "Click the Facebook icon to the right to share these recipes with your network" tells the user the action to take (click to share) and implies the benefit (you'll delight your friends).

All of this, however, is predicated on having information worth sharing. Your content has to have value. It must be relevant, interesting and appealing. Period.

The organic list growth opportunity is staggering too, as the latest research from MarketingSherpa and authors David Daniels and Jeanniey Mullen* show that the typical lifetime value of a new email address is between $120 and $180 each! Growing your list by just 100 recipients would play out to something like a $15,000 lift to the bottom line. Cha-ching.

Email marketing still offers the highest ROI. Imagine what you can achieve when you multiply its reach by integrating social networking features into your email campaigns!

*In their book, Email Marketing: An Hour a Day

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

This week Facebook will begin giving marketers the ability to collect email address from users of our Facebook applications.  This is welcome news and opens up a world of possibilities for creating integrated programs that leverage the strengths of each channel to drive business objectives and richer customer experiences.  Currently, applications communicate with users through Facebook notifications - a constrained inbox with few opportunities for meaningful direct communications and limited opportunities for monetization.  After Wednesday, marketers will have the ability to make email permission optional, or a mandatory requirement of an application, and may no longer post notifications from applications.  This development opens up an exciting new way for Facebook marketers to interact with and ultimately monetize social audiences.  

An example of the optional prompt:


 

And mandatory:


Facbook will be supporting this change by encouraging users to share their email addresses with applications, and will be posting dialog boxes like the one below on every canvas page a user visits for their first three sessions.


 

On the Developer wiki, Facebook clearly articulates the policies senders must adhere to:

Draft Policies

a. You must not give or sell users' email addresses to any third party or affiliate.
b. You must comply with the provisions of the Federal Trade Commission's CAN-SPAM Act and all other applicable spam laws (e.g., provide a visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism and honor opt-out requests within 10 days).
c. You must explain clearly to users, in a privacy policy or elsewhere in a conspicuous place, how you will use their email addresses.
d. Emails you send must clearly indicate that they are from you and must not appear to be from Facebook or anyone else. For example, you must not include Facebook logos or brand assets in your emails, and you must not mention Facebook in the subject line, "from" line, or body header.
e. All emails to users must originate from the same domain, and you must provide us with the name of that domain in the Facebook Developer application used to manage your application.

As we kick off 2010, it's hard to argue that the most exciting force in the email marketing space is the rapid adoption of social networks and the opportunities that exist for those who are able to develop truly integrated programs.  Much has been written in this blog about social media, and though virtually everyone is excited by the possibilities, most of us are still in the relatively early phases of determining the best strategies and tactics for our programs.  Few in the space can point to quantifiable success stories.  This development gives social marketers a powerful, proven tool for engaging and monetizing audiences, and I look forward to seeing how we capitalize on the opportunity.

Read more on the Facebook Developer Wiki and please comment below or reach out to me directly to continue the conversation - 2010 is going to be a big one for email [the original and largest social network].

 

- Nicholas Einstein
Director of Strategic & Analytic Services
Datran Media

 

 

 

It's time to shift your focus, folks, investment to interaction.

In the continually shifting world of email marketing, where nothing stays static for long, we're giving a new meaning to the ROI acronym. That's because the deliverability of your email is now being determined by the ISP based on the recipient's interaction with that email.

Goodbye, Return on Investment. Hello, Return on Interaction.

Or maybe it's more an evolution, of the term and of the email marketing industry. Before, you invested in the best ESP to ensure the highest deliverability. You invested in email designers who would make cleanly coded templates that would get past spam filters. You invested in organically growing your in-house, opt in list. You've protected your online sending reputation and kept your lists clean.

Now the bar is raised and your emails must rise above, too.

I think it will really boil down to relevance certainly, but in specific ways:

1) Content — Now more than ever you'd better be sending out emails that your recipients want to receive.
2) Frequency — And now more than ever, you'd better not be over messaging your list!

Some of the major ISPs are zeroing in on the inbox to decide whether or not your emails are to be considered worthy of being delivered in the future. How your recipients interact with your emails—and if they do at all—will now be taken into account. If you keep sending emails a certain someone never opens, the ISP is going to decide that in the eyes of that certain someone, you are in fact spam and should be blocked.

You are truly now at the mercy of the recipient, but don't worry: you have more power than you may realize. You are in complete control of your relevance, regardless of the size of your email list. You are in control because you can:

• Segment your list and target your messages to make them more relevant.
• Set up a profile page where subscribers can choose how often to hear from you and the type of information they want to get from you.
• Put your subscribers first, offering them the content they want, not the content you want to feed them.

Your goal has suddenly shifted from making money off your investment in an email campaign (the old ROI) to making sure you're relevant so you keep getting your emails delivered (the new ROI) but in the end – with a focus on relevance, you'll achieve both.


Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

 

Not every email marketing best practice is an obvious one. In fact, in our experience at ClickMail Marketing, there are quite a few best practices that companies seem to look over or deliberately ignore. The result? The opposite of best practices, or what we kindly call "common email marketing mistakes" rather than worst practices.

In an industry where a half a percentage point can make or break a campaign, it's our opinion that tweaking and optimizing every possible factor is worth the effort. With that in mind, I asked our staff to compile a list of the top 10 mistakes they see when deploying email campaigns on behalf of clients. The good news is that they only came up with nine. And the even better news is that these are all easy best practices to adapt and adhere to.

Below are the common mistakes seen by the staff at ClickMail, and what you can do to avoid them:

Common email marketing mistake #1: Sloppy Copy

• Check your spelling. Copy and paste into Word and run spell-check if you need to. Also check the spelling in your links. If your URL is wrong, so are you.
• Read the copy. Don't scam, skim or skip over. Reading is the only way to ensure proper use of language like "their" vs. "there" vs. "they're", missing words, incorrect punctuation or poor sentence structure. Best practice: Print it out to read on paper. Even better best practice: Read it out loud.
• Employ a second set of eyes for final review. Once you've written, read and edited the same piece of content many times, it is no longer fresh to you and errors are easily overlooked. Ask someone else to run spell check and read the copy. You may be surprised to see what you missed.

Common email marketing mistake #2: Crummy Coding

• Set the pixel width to 600. This prevents the need to scroll to the right—and the potential to lose interest if someone feels they have to do too much work to read your email.
• Don't use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in your HTML coding. It is stripped out by many ESPs, meaning your message can be lost. Even if you've spell checked it and done all the best practices described above!
• Many ESPs also suppress images by default, as do email clients (about 80%). Do not create your email message out of one big image or your subscribers may only see a blank page with a little, tiny red X. If you use any images, to be on the safe side, utilize a View Online feature so they have another way to see images if they are suppressed.

Common email marketing mistake #3: Cold Calls to Action

• Your call to action (CTA) should be in text format, not an image because—as mentioned above—images are suppressed by default by many email service providers and email clients.
• Include two to three instances of your CTA above the fold (in the first 300 pixels). Make sure to include at least one graphical and one textual CTA.
• The top one-third and the left-most area of your emails are the most valuable real estate. Try to place a CTA those areas, in text and as minimal images.

Common email marketing mistake #4: Poor Subject Lines

Your subject line should be seven words or less (or 35 characters). Most people know this but might not know that the following conditions in a subject line can be flagged as SPAM:

• Percent of Capital Letters: Too many uppercase letters compared to lowercase letters
• Repeating Capital Letter: Too many upper case letters in a row (e.g., SALE)
• Gaps: When the words have gaps between letters like s*t*y*l*e
• Repetition: When letters or characters are repeated (*****)
• Special Character Flag: Overuse of special characters (e.g., & $ # @ ( )[ ] !)
• Punctuation Flag: Too much punctuation (…) or the type of punctuation (!)
• Word/Space Ratio: Spammers use blank spaces to catch the recipient's attention resulting in a high ratio of spaces to words
• First Character Flag/First Word Flag: Subject lines starting with a special character or punctuation. Words like "Free", "hey", "Sale" etc.

Common email marketing mistake #5: Obscure "From" Label

Your From address is key information used by subscribers to determine if your email is spam or not. If it's not relevant or recognizable, they may mark it as spam, or just delete it without opening it.

Common email marketing mistake #6: Floating From Address and/or Domain

Keep a static "From" address and/or domain, and ask to be added to the recipient's Safe Sender list at the top of each email.

Common email marketing mistake #7: Lazy Lists

• Utilize the Forward to a Friend (FTF) feature to organically grow your list.
• Practice good and consistent list hygiene. Most people know to honor opt outs in 10 days to be CAN-SPAM compliant but you should also clean your list(s) of hard bounces after each send, plus monitor soft bounces and remove from your list as needed.

Common email marketing mistake #8: Competing Links

Don't include competing links, period. Unless it's a newsletter, most emails should be single subject with a single call to action. If it's a sale, link to the appropriate sale items. If it's an invitation, link to the registration page etc.

Common email marketing mistake #9: Unfair Unsubscribe

The unsubscribe link must be the first step, per CAN-SPAM. Don't make people jump through hoops to opt out.

Now, I hope you read the nine common email marketing mistakes above and nodded your head in agreement, confident you're innocent of all.  If not, if even one of those nine listed tripped you up, go fix it now and increase your ROI later as a result.

 

- Marco Marini, President & CEO, ClickMail Marketing

Marco Marini is an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

Though growing your email database takes time and effort, when done correctly, it will house your most qualified and responsive leads. A well structured email database will enable you to boost sales with more targeted messages and offers, extend the lifecycle of any campaign and increase customer retention with regular and relevant communications.

Consider the following techniques to acquire new leads and grow your email list with success:

1. Who is your ideal lead and how do you reach them? Create a profile for your best customer(s). This should include things such as age, gender, hobbies, job function, how they shop (online or at stores), where they shop, what they read, what websites they visit, etc. Depending on the product or service you are marketing, some of the above will be more relevant than others. For example, if you are marketing a clothing line, job function will be less relevant than where and how they shop, where as if you are marketing a trade publication, job function and industry will be extremely important.

2. Analyze your competition. Take some time to find out what your competitors are doing to build their email lists. Start off by going to their websites. Then do a web search on your competition as well as relevant key words, and take note of any banners / CPC ads that appear. Be sure to click through to check out what their landing pages look like and what type of information they are choosing to capture. If they have an e-newsletter, sign up for it. This is an easy way to start receiving their email campaigns. All of these steps will help you find out what type of promotions they are running, any marketing alliances they have formed, and how they are positioning their product or service.

3. Reach your best customer. Once you've created your customer profile(s) and finished your competitive analysis, you are ready to develop your list growth strategy. Your strategy can include initiatives such as: banner ads on websites that your target audience visits, a PPC campaign, direct mail or email campaigns to magazine subscriber opt-in lists, etc. You can also approach other products or service providers for co-promotions or mutually beneficial partnerships. Starting an e-newsletter or a blog for your company are great ways to grow your list as long as your content is desirable. The lifecycle of any campaign can be extended with behavior-based trigger emails.

4. Your offer is everything! Unless your offer is relevant to the recipient, they will not respond to your campaign. Your offer will need to prompt the recipient to make a purchase or willingly give you their information in exchange for something they want. For instance, you might send an email introducing your company to a magazine subscriber opt-in list that you know your target audience reads. By including a free downloadable premium such as an industry salary guide, a list of the hottest bars in town, or a best practices whitepaper – what ever might be most relevant to your target audience – recipients will need to provide their email address and demographic information in order to download the premium. Once you've captured their information and they've opted-in to your database, you will be able to communicate with that lead on an ongoing basis.

5. Your offer is almost everything! Unless the recipients receive your email, they cannot receive your offer. Therefore, be sure to comply with email marketing best practices: include a physical mailing address, an opt-out link and a subject line that reflects the content in your email. Also, when writing your email, try to stay away from words that are flagged by spam filters.

6. Create a landing page. It is extremely important to guide the campaign recipient through the entire process. By creating a landing page on your website that mirrors your campaign's message / offer, you will encourage the recipient to fill out the form with the ultimate goal of opting-in to your list.

7. Use a lead capture form. Your landing page can either link to a lead capture form or you can embed the form in the landing page itself.
a. Since people are more prone to filling out a short form than a long and drawn out questionnaire, limit the amount of information you are asking them to provide in exchange for their premium. Besides the basic name and email address, think of including one or two other demographic questions. These questions should be well thought out to provide you with information you can leverage for future email campaigns.
b. In addition to the demographic questions, your form should include a check box giving people the option to opt-in to your mailing list and receive information about your company and future promotions. According to the CAN-SPAM Act, if people do not explicitly say that they would like to receive emails from you in the future, it is unlawful to send them commercial marketing emails.
c. If you do not currently have a way to capture leads, an easy way to do this is through your email service provider. Most ESPs will provide you with both the lead capture form and a database to house the acquired leads. They will also manage your opt-outs for you.

8. Track your efforts. If you track your list building efforts, you will be able to pinpoint which initiatives are working the best and focus more of your energy on those. You might decide that others aren't worth your time. Easy ways to track your initiatives are:
a. Web Analytics: sign up for a free Google Analytics account. This will enable you to track how many people are visiting each page on your site and which campaign they are coming from.
b. In your lead capture form, include one question asking people how they heard about you with a drop down menu where customers can select from a list of your current list building initiatives.
c. Landing Pages: create a separate landing page for each marketing initiative so you can track page visits to these dedicated pages through your web analytics account.
d. Dedicated 800 numbers: there are services that will provide you with a range of 800 numbers that redirect to your main phone number. Including a dedicated 800 number on each landing page will enable you to associate each call with a specific campaign.

Remember, even if you are accurately targeting your best customer, your campaign will only be a success if you get them to act on your offer and opt-in to your database. Be sure to spend enough time tailoring your message and the offer to the people who will be receiving your campaign.

- Yael K. Penn, Founder and Principal, Imagine 360 Marketing

During the eec List Growth & Engagement Roundtable meeting this week, several DMA/eec members had a fascinating conversation about how to define consumer intent under CAN-SPAM as it relates to opt out for third party messages. The rules amended to CAN-SPAM which went into effect in July of 2008 say that there only needs to be one opt-out per message, and provides some guidance on the definition of the "sender" and "primary sender."

"Listen" in with me….

Arend Henderson of Q Interactive, an online consumer site that has a very large email list rental business: It's about the permission grant. If the message is from PublisherA, and the Friendly from is the publisher, along with the message header and footer – and significantly, the permission grant is with the publisher; but then the full message promotes AdvertiserB, then the opt out under CAN-SPAM should be from the sender and list owner, who is PublisherA.

Stephanie Miller (me) of Return Path, an email deliverability and performance company: The panel of privacy experts who spoke at the recent eec/DMA webinar with the FTC interpret the legislation that the opt out should be provided by the advertiser.

Arend: We interpret this as a protection of the consumer interest. We, the publisher, own the list, we own the relationship, and we care about those relationships. We believe that the opt out should be from the publisher, not the advertiser. It's our job to send subscribers messages.

Kim Santos, Reader's Digest: I feel the opposite. The opt-out has to be on the side of the advertiser. In list rental, where the advertiser is the sole focus of the message, that is what drives the unsubscribe request. If I'm a consumer, then I don't want the AdvertiserB advertisement. The subscriber wants out of the AdvertiserB messages. If the opt out is only with PublisherA, then AdvertiserB could just go rent another list from another publisher. It's a penalty for those subscribers who are on a lot of lists.

Arend: We feel strongly that the message is not from AdvertiserB. The permission grant is with us, the publisher.

Luke Glasner of Rodman Publishing: If you want to opt-out from AdvertiserB, you should be able to opt-out of those specific messages of the advertiser from PublisherA. The publisher like Rodman provides the opt out and we offer to manage the suppression file for advertisers who rent from us multiple times. Also for first time users we request suppression files - and we don't charge extra for them. Personally, I don't think list renters should charge to run a suppression file - since the person that benefits the most from reducing spam complaints is the list owner, even more so than the consumer of that email. It's not about protecting consumers from AdvertiserB in other areas of the Internet. If I walk around and see an AdvertiserB billboard, does that violate the opt-out? Does my email opt-out mean that I won't ever see an ad on the street or on TV or on a website?

Kim: No of course not, but there is so much transparency in email than in other channels. You can't suppress ads in those other channels, but in email you can. I as a publisher and someone who cares about my subscribers have a responsibility to protect my consumer. So I make sure that if you don't want to see AdvertiserB ads, you won't see them from me, ever.

Luke: I can only be responsible for my email program, not actions of every person that engages in online advertising. I do feel we have a duty to respect our readers and to give them control over their inbox. It is up the subscriber to tell me how much they want to engage with me. And it is up to me to respect their wishes. I think that email is privilege granted to senders by their subscribes not a right. Based on my experience I think that most consumers would agree with that.

Kim: What about when there are two opt-outs? One each for the advertiser and for the publisher? We often see that, and sometimes offer it.

Arend: Consumers don't think in our terms, they don't know why there are two opt-outs. They don't know who is "sender" under the law. This is why we never let the advertiser put AdvertiserB in the friendly from line. The messages come from Q Interactive, which is the brand you know and gave a permission grant to.

Luke: I will tell you what consumers do when they see two unsubscribe links. They go to the top of the message and click the Report Spam button. They won't bother to figure it out. It's not worth it to us as a list owner to work with advertisers who drive a lot of unsubscribe requests or complaints (when someone clicks the Report Spam button).

Arend: We agree. We do not work with those kinds of advertisers at all or at least for very long.

Luke: And the other side is true as well. Sometimes, the person who is sending this message and the sales person at the list owner have different agendas. If you are a buyer, be sure that the list owner can actually do what they promise.

Kim: We view this as a partnership. We want our advertisers to succeed. We had to put in an actual, official corporate marketing role so that we have an ombudsman around this area. That has helped to eliminate confusion.

Stephanie: How do you handle newsletters with multiple ads?

Kim: We treat these differently than full page email broadcasts. In this case, the opt-out is with Reader's Digest, the sender.

Arend: We do the same thing.

Luke: We also follow the same for our newsletters. An email newsletter's purpose is to provide (hopefully) engaging content to the reader. We support the newsletter financially by selling ad space so we can continue to provide our readers with newsletters.

- Stephanie Miller, Return Path

In last week's eec/DMA webinar, Peder Magee, Esq., FTC Privacy and Theft attorney for the Bureau of Consumer Protection joined DMA's VP of Government Affairs, Jerry Cerasale, and a panel of email privacy experts to discuss the latest thinking at the agency.

For now, that stance seems to suggest that the self regulation of the industry is working. Magee noted that some concepts "transcend the medium" when it comes to self regulation. "Transparency, prominent notice, use of personal data, and providing the ability to opt out easily" all are areas the FTC continues to watch.

Certification and feedback loop programs were noted by panelist Tom Bartel, CPO of Return Path, as an example of how the industry cooperates in order to make self regulation work. Especially for certification programs, "Email marketers put themselves forward voluntarily to be held to high standards," Bartel says. "Including the things Peder listed about prominence. Once they are vouched for by the third party, the ISPs can make good decisions about what to do with email from those senders.

"Participation in these programs shows marketers are willing to go way past the law, and well past best practices," Bartel states.

The FTC remains aggressive about prosecuting offenders under CAN-SPAM. Magee says, "CAN-SPAM and some of the filtering technologies have reduced the spam that consumers were getting a lot more of." He notes that the agency also brings cases against phishing scams, often initiated through email. Webinar moderator and DMA VP of Government Affairs Jerry Cerasale noted, "The FTC is the most active regulatory body in this area. Opt-in laws in Europe have not resulted in as many cases as the FTC."

Download the recording (free until this Thursday) and read the summary of the event.

One of my favorite quotes in the past few years is from David Daniels of Forrester Research who often says that "sending email to people that haven't opened or clicked in a year is like flying an airplane advertisement over a ghost town." Love it. That visual really brings the point home that mailing to seemingly unengaged subscribers is a waste of time, and often does more harm than good. I have always 100% agreed with it, however I now think it isn't always true. There may actually be life in parts of those seemingly deserted towns.

Let me start by saying that I still recommend all marketers regularly review engagement and modify content and/or frequency to those that haven't opened or clicked in 90 or 180 days. This is especially important for marketers that have deliverability problems, since many of them may improve their reputations and deliverability by cutting this dead weight. Unresponsive list segments, after all, are more likely to generate complaints or to contain spamtraps. In fact, earlier this year we were able to help a client get out of the bulk folder at Gmail by ceasing mailing any names that hadn't opened or clicked there in 90 days. Now, however, when I'm asked by a client if they should re-opt-in subscribers that haven't responded, opened or clicked for months, I'm forced to add the qualifier: "it depends."

Here's why it depends. There is growing evidence that many mailers have at least some subscribers that don't seemingly do anything, but they are valuable nonetheless. Here are a few camps to consider:

1. Hidden Segment #1: Subscribers that view and read emails with images off. There may be some email marketers that are in fact too good at rendering their email titles, main stories and calls-to-action in HTML text. I say "too good" since some (maybe lots) of their subscribers don't register as an open since they never enable images – yet they are actually engaged and reading the emails.

2. Hidden Segment #2: Mobile, invisible, but engaged. Mobile, email-enabled phones now represent a majority of some company's opt-in subscriber base. If they don't render images they won't render an open, but the recipient might be eating up the content day-in and day-out, and the marketer will never know.

3. Hidden Segment #3: Subscribers that never click, or shop online, but buy from your brick-n-mortar store. These actually could be some of your best customers, you just can't tell. Certainly there is life in this ghost town. Multichannel retailers should especially keep a watch out for these subscribers.

4. Hidden Segment #4: Fans that forward your email to friends, but don't use your forward-to-a-friend link. You can't track them since they are using the forwarding mechanism of their email tool, not your trackable link. Jeanniey Mullen's recent ClickZ article highlighted the story of Burntoast Marketing in Australia that had this problem. Some of their mailings to high-quality prospects had "…clicks come from other people both within and outside the same company who were not on the original mailing list."

The bottom line is if you're not looking at subscriber engagement, you are missing out on the ability to improve your deliverability, improve relevancy, and cut the unprofitable names from your list. However, beware of these hidden, engaged subscribers and develop strategies to make them visible.

First, rather than automatically re-opting in unengaged subscribers or discarding them from your list, try reducing frequency. A recent test of ours showed we were able to get 4 times the number of subscribers to reengage by reducing from weekly to monthly mailings when compared to sending a single re-optin campaign.

Second, entice your offline-only shoppers to use a coupon or other tracking code that will help them identify themselves.

Finally, provide a number of ways that recipients can share their emails with their friends – either standard viral links or via new technologies allowing sharing with social networks.

- Chip House, ExactTarget

Be sure to vote on the next best practice: single opt-in or double. Every vote counts so tell your colleagues!

At last week's Email Evolution Conference, the Great Email Debate sparked a ton of conversation.

We'd like everyone to have the opportunity to weigh-in on the three topics we established as best practices. This week, vote on the first topic, the opt-in box: checked or un-checked, and post your comments here.

Next week we'll tackle single opt-in or double opt-in and the following week we'll wrap up the debate with a question about keeping or deleting inactives.