This year was my first trip to the Email Evolution Conference in Miami Beach Florida. I know, you’re thinking how tough it must be to pick up and fly down there from Toronto, but you gotta do what you gotta do. While there I had the pleasure of interviewing several email marketing thought leaders. Today, I thought I’d share a few of my favourite videos from the event. You can catch all the interviews at http://www.GetResponse.TV.

Dela Quist
Dela is always provocative in his thinking on email marketing. If there’s one guy in this whole business who keeps the rest of us on our mental toes, it’s him. He’ll challenge any idea and plays the devil’s advocate so well; you swear you can see horns growing out of his head. In this interview he explains the logic behind what is known as the “Open Reach Metric.” This is a metric which, according to Dela, will fundamentally change how you do your email marketing.
http://getresponse.tv/watch/r3C4I-DmomM/

Jonathan Margulies
Jonathan Margulies is a Partner at Winterberry Group and he feels we don’t have the optimum terms to best illustrate what we do and what we want to do with online marketing. You know the term, multi-channel, but is it really accurate? Jonathan doesn’t think so! He believes that the term “omni-channel”   or if you prefer “omnichannel” marketing is more fitting. In this video he explains why using better terminology is critical to the marketing industry.
http://getresponse.tv/watch/iQUb-8MejG0/

Sundeep Kapur
Sundeep Kapur is a marketing thought leader and all around nice guy. What I love about Sundeep is his genuine enthusiasm for helping others understand email marketing and online marketing in general. At his EmailYogi.com blog, Sundeep dispenses wisdom and insight on a daily basis. In this video we talk about the top 3 challenges facing email marketers this year and what you need to do to meet them.
http://getresponse.tv/watch/hyW9Mcxhl-Y/

Stephanie Miller
Stephanie Miller, VP of Member Relations DMA, is simply an amazing person. She loves email marketing and is devoted to helping email marketers navigate the rapids of legislation and succeed. The Email Experience Council (part of the DMA) has a lot to offer you if you are an email marketer. In this video, Stephanie lays out what’s in it for you and why you should be involved with the EEC too.
http://getresponse.tv/watch/zOEaNdwjXqM/
 

Matt Blumberg
Matt Blumberg, CEO of ReturnPath and Chairman of the Board with the DMA and the perfect guy to ask what are the biggest challenge is in 2013 for email marketers. Funny I should say “biggest” because as it turns out, Matt wanted to talk about something you’ve likely been hearing a lot about lately, “big data.”
http://getresponse.tv/watch/H4CF_j_rNhM/

John Caldwell
John Caldwell runs Red Pill Email and is a go-to guy for people looking for sage advice on email marketing solutions. He’s also an uncompromising voice for email marketing best practices. I asked John about the three most important things one should consider when choosing and email service provider.
http://getresponse.tv/watch/QZ1C4kn0ySU/

Chris Baggot
Content marketing is a big buzz term in online marketing today, but what’s it all about? I was lucky enough to corner Chris Baggott of Compendium at EEC 13 to talk content marketing, demystify it and offer some tips on how to make it work for your business.
http://getresponse.tv/watch/6vLSrmQyIPY/

Ken Magill
Ken Magill is not known for pulling his punches. In my opinion, he’s email marketing’s answer to 60 minutes and the Colbert Report, all rolled into one. This is the first time I had the pleasure to meet Ken in person and I jumped at a chance to engage him on what Ken calls the “Conventional Wisdom Buzz.”
http://getresponse.tv/watch/94dJbOdFHvw/

Jim

Jim Ducharme
Community Director
GetResponse Email Marketing
www.GetResponse.com
@hugeheadca
 

If your business is seasonal, back-to-school time and the pre-holiday months of late summer and early autumn are likely major tipping points for driving revenue and ensuring you end the calendar year on a high note. More than ever, this is the time that marketers, especially those with a retail and/or e-commerce business, need to harness all the tools they have at their disposal and implement smart email program decisions.

After all, the bottom line isn’t graded on a curve and there’s no such thing as summer school when it comes to missed opportunities for recognizing ROI from the email channel. When Sam Cooke sang, “Don’t know much about history. Don’t know much biology…” his “Wonderful World” put academics second and love first. Unfortunately, email marketers can’t afford to ignore their IQs when it comes to email intelligence.

While being an A+ student in all aspects of email marketing might be unrealistic, there are a few subjects that marketers definitely shouldn’t ignore:

1. Security: Phishing and spoofing activity has never been more rampant and marketers need to be proactive in protecting their brands. Contrary to popular belief, fraudsters aren’t just going after financial institutions like banks, payment services providers and credit card companies; they’re targeting any legitimate brand that subscribers may be familiar with. This includes social networking sites, shipping companies, wireless phone and internet providers and many more. A phishing or spoofing attack has the power to undo all of the good ground work that has been laid for optimizing inbox placement rates and performance metrics. If a subscriber’s personal details or finances are compromised as the result of clicking on a link in an email that pretends to come from your brand, you’ve not only lost an email subscriber and potential (or existing) customer, but your brand reputation has plummeted. In this age of social sharing, that negative outcome likely includes anyone in that subscriber’s network of friends and family as well. What can you do? Protect your brand by using an anti-phishing and anti-spoofing tool that monitors fraudulent activity and blocks any attempts to hijack your domain. Learn more about Return Path’s solution here.


2. Inactivity: Having a large portion of non-responsive addresses on your file is the equivalent of blaming the dog for eating your homework. Not only does this segment reflect poorly on your list hygiene practices, but the inactive portion of your file isn’t going to diminish by ignoring it or pretending it isn’t there.  Most major ISPs such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL are factoring engagement metrics into their filtering decisions. This includes metrics like whether or not the message was opened, replied to, clicked on or added to a subscriber’s address book. The more messages being sent to inactive addresses, the greater the likelihood that sender reputation and inbox placement will be impacted, negatively affecting response rates and overall program performance. In addition, depending on how long these addresses have lingered on the file, there could be a large percentage of spam traps. When it comes to email intelligence around inactivity, marketers should have a solid and ongoing plan in place for communicating to pre-defined inactive segments with a specific strategy to reengage and ultimately remove any persistent non-responders.


3. Skimmability: Optimizing your creative templates has never been more important as subscribers increasingly use their mobile devices to check email. Return Path’s latest research study “Mobile, Webmail, Desktops: Where Are We Viewing Email Now?” shows that email opens on mobile devices grew 82.4% year-over-year and Apple devices account for 85% of all mobile email opens. Designing email for mobile viewing has its own unique set of best practices to experiment with based on the devices your subscribers are using to view email. Whether it’s testing single-column or multi-column layouts, trying a variety of “finger-friendly” sized buttons that allow for easy clicking, using a text size that can be easily read on a variety of screens or designing mobile-friendly landing pages and websites that support on-the-go conversions, email messages read on mobile devices need to work even harder to be skimmable. The decision to click-through on an email viewed on a mobile device is made in a split-second, so the clearer and concise your message is, the better.

When it comes to realizing ROI from the email channel, what you don’t know can definitely hurt you. The good news is that with a little studying (along with testing, adjusting and optimizing), you can go a long way toward ensuring your program makes the grade for the back-to-school season and beyond.

Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
Return Path

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

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:

• The changing face of email (literally) - a look at how ISPs are allowing more scope to email design, including dynamic content.  
• Are you getting the most out of your newsletter content; such as using it to reach beyond the inbox and attract new subscribers?
• How’s your in-house list doing? Growing? Stagnant??? Need some tips to kick start it? Collecting permission everywhere you can.

We exist in a best-practices driven industry. Email marketing has many variables and it's a constantly changing landscape with ISPs and regulations changing rules on us on a consistent basis. We crave the tried-and-true rule, the best practice known to deliver the best result, the sure thing.

We have plenty to learn and use, to be sure! Search for "email marketing best practices" in Google, and you’ll find far more than you could ever digest among the search results.

Best practices for using social tools in email, however, are yet to be clearly defined. In fact, given the pace of change in social media, with constant Facebook updates and new technologies like Google+, these so-called best practices might forever elude us.

Those proven techniques we can turn to with confidence, however, are common sense and come from the email marketing world. Today I offer you four common-sense tips for using social tools that will help you maximize your results: 1) Offer great content. 2) Be very, very clear. 3) Test everything. 4) Go both ways.

Offer Great Content

No matter how much the email marketing industry changes, this common-sense tip will always be. And when you're seeking sharing to social, your content has to be so great that people want to and willingly share it. That idea isn't new. We've strived for "share worthy" content in the past. We had another name for it was all, because what we want back then was a forward. Now we want a share. Great content leads to greater use of your social media links by your subscribers who want to tell their network about your email.

Be Very, Very Clear

When you include social media buttons, be sure to ask for the action you want and let the person know why they should click. A plain, standalone Facebook button will garner only so many clicks compared to a Facebook button with words that ask for action and offer a benefit: "Like us on Facebook for fabulous fan pricing." Everybody knows what a Facebook button is, but not why they should click on it. Ditto for Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social media buttons.

In addition, words help you to be clear on the purpose of a button. A button for sharing is not the same as a button for liking, after all.  

Also be sure to put the buttons where they make the most sense...for your subscribers. Figure out when/where in your email your subscribers are ready to take action. This you might only be able to determine by testing, which takes us to...

Test Everything

Is there a magic spot for your "like" button that will generate the highest number of new Facebook fans? Probably. Can I tell you where that is within your email? No. As far as best practices on technical details when using social media tools, these can only be determined by you. If I could sit here and tell you placing the Facebook icon in the lower right corner will drive the most "likes" on your Facebook wall, I would. But I can't. It all depends. Testing is the only way to optimize placement of social media tools like a Facebook button for your particular business and audience. In fact, testing is the only way to optimize every aspect of your social media tools, from where you put the links to which links you offer. So test. Everything.

Go Both Ways

Yes, using email to drive subscribers to your social media sites or to share is smart marketing. Also be sure your email to social works as your social to email, as well. Your social sites can promote your email subscriptions and offer email signup forms.

And One Last Note...

Even when integrated as part of your marketing matrix and going both ways, email and social differ. And taking a customer relationship into the social realm can certainly alter customer expectations. Once you’ve crossed the social media line, you might need to revisit the tone and personality of your email communications. You've taken the relationship to a new level of intimacy via social channels, and using a corporate or more formal tone in your email marketing might run counter to the warm fuzzies a subscriber now feels for you.

Following these four tips should help you determine your own best practices for using social tools in email...meaning those practices which work best for you and your goals.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

• Nominate a deserving individual for the eec's Stefan Pollard Marketer of the Year Award.  Read the criteria and submit your nomination.
• Join us in Miami and register for the Email Evolution Conference 2011.
• Read up on holiday season email marketing tips.

When do fewer emails mean higher ROI? When your emails are hyper-targeted and truly one-to-one. That doesn’t mean you need a huge team of people contacting customers one at a time, like the telemarketers of old.  It only requires you to tap into existing technology and know-how to make it happen.

I like to say “happy birthdays mean happy profits” because birthday emails are a perfect example of this concept. When someone subscribes to get your emails, you get their birth date along with the other data you gathered about them upon signup. That date goes into your system and on or near the customer’s birthday, depending on how you have it configured; an email is automatically triggered offering a birthday bonus of some kind, like a free ice cream cone if you work for a chain of sweet shops, or a free movie rental if you’re marketing your video stores.

These emails get a remarkably high response rate because they are so targeted…and therefore, welcome.

You’re not limited to birthday emails, however, nor are triggered emails only appropriate for B2C marketing. Triggered emails come in three types—recurring, transactional and threshold—and can be used in a variety of circumstances:

• A recurring email can be a birthday email like we’ve described above, or could happen a certain period after a purchase, to remind a customer that it’s time to renew
  
• A transactional email can be one email, like a follow up to a purchase or download, soliciting feedback, or even a drip campaign following a purchase, giving tips on how to use the product (and also up-selling)
  
• As a threshold email can occur when a customer’s behavior has gotten to a certain point, say if they’ve purchased three songs from one album, you offer a discount on the album

In the past, marketers resisted moving from batch-and-blast to this kind of targeted, triggered approach because the cost seemed prohibitive. Between building the API and the software to handle the emails the technological cost made any chance of an ROI a slim one. Today, however, all top-tier ESPs and many secondary ones offer triggered messaging capabilities. That means you can make your email marketing program even more relevant without increasing your staff or IT costs.

Before we dive into the benefits and how-to’s of triggered emails, let’s review the terminology:

• Triggered means triggered by an event: A trigger based message is one sent out in response to a certain action within an email or on a website
  
• Targeted means segmented, with dynamic content, so different recipients get different email content and even colors and graphics
• Drip marketing is a series of messages triggered by an event, such as a purchase or whitepaper download (also known as lifecycle messaging)

You’ll also need to define the event or events that trigger the website. The event might be a click on a website, time spent on a page with no shopping cart activity, a coupon download, or a link clicked in an email. Or, to return to our earlier example, it might be date driven like a birthday or anniversary.

One-to-one triggered emails have a much higher ROI so even though you’re sending out fewer emails, you’re making more money off the targeted ones. But what do you need to do to be set up for that kind of triggered email?

1.    An ESP or in-house solution that enables triggered messaging

2.    An API to automate the flow of data from your CRM or in-house database to your ESP or internal ESP

3.    A content library, so your system can take from it to place the appropriate message in each email

Also consider that these types of emails typically use a transactional delivery engine vs. a marketing delivery engine, i.e. point-to-point transmission vs. one-to-many broadcast.

The one caveat happens when you start to collect the data upon which to define your rules. Do not ask for too much. You can ask for up to four pieces of information upon sign up, but any more than that, and your abandonment rate will soar. Instead, be very clear what information you want to start out with and only ask for that (based on what you can really use). Then over time you can ask for more information, and append that information to that subscriber later.

The idea of this kind of targeted email marketing might be daunting, but it’s really not difficult given today’s technology and pre-existing services. As a result, your triggered email messaging can be as sophisticated as you want to make it, to get the most ROI from your highest value customers. For example, your system can score a customer based on behavior, such as purchasing a higher-priced item, and offer an exclusive and limited price on another item as a reward.

Marketers have to start automating their email campaigns based on customer behaviors, such as shopping cart abandonment. Companies who’ve done this have experienced higher click through rates and conversion rates, without increasing staff costs. Alternatively, automating email programs around customer behaviors with hyper-targeted messages will result in a higher email marketing ROI.

And it leads to a higher engagement index, which means more of your subscribers are engaging with your email, which in turn will give you a better standing in the eyes of the ISPs…which in turn will improve your email deliverability and get you into more inboxes…and so on and so on and so on.

Sounds pretty happy to me!


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

• 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).

First a disclosure: I love Target with a passion. I will drive past the local Super Walmart and go 10 miles out of my way to go to Target. As a result, I signed up for Target's email program approximately four years ago. At the time, I filled out a profile with demographic data and provided my zip code when I signed up. I began to receive specials and personalized content based on my location for my local Target.

Fast-forward four years: I no longer live in that city or near the local Target. However, I am still receiving special email offers for my (old) local Target (see below):

While I applaud Target for sending geo-targeted content to subscribers to increase relevancy, they have never once, in four years, asked me if my profile data is still accurate. Boat, missed. As I'm still committed to my long-term relationship with Target, I decided to scroll to the very bottom of the email.

If I were the average subscriber, would I know that behind the "My Account" link I could also update my profile data? Tip for marketers: Have a loved one or friend not affiliated with your brand "secret shop" your emails and site to ensure the average user understands your terminology.

I clicked through and was taken to a page to sign in.

Another opportunity missed to reduce the barriers for subscribers to update their profiles. Listen: Your subscribers are constantly evolving and making lifestyle changes (more on that in a moment), so you have to be sure you are still providing targeted, relevant, valuable content that hits them at the right time. For now, I'm either going to continue to receive no longer relevant content based on profile data from four years ago, or I'm going to unsubscribe.

On a side note, in addition to localized emails, Target has begun sending me messages targeted to new parents.

Now, when I signed up, I believe I provided my birth date and maybe Target decided now is the time in my life when I should/would be having a baby. However, this is not the case. Granted, I am going in with the assumption that they only send targeted and segmented emails. An email entirely focused on babies, again with no option to tell Target that these emails are not relevant, may cause many subscribers to hit the "spam" button (because remember, spam could also mean "not relevant"), unsubscribe or disengage from their emails. Don't miss the boat on ensuring you're hitting the right audience with the right, most valuable and relevant message, at the right time.

Target, I love you, but let's take this baby thing one step at a time, okay? Give your preferences center a little TLC and your subscribers will love you that much more.

Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto Software
@KNLorenz

If you attended this week's Email Nirvana Webinar, you heard eec member Loren McDonald and founder Jeanniey Mullen give quite a presentation. It was so captivating that they almost didn't have time for questions. But they wanted to make sure everyone's concerns and questions were heard and so they agreed to answer some of the most frequently asked questions right here on the eec blog! More questions and answers can be reviewed on the Silverpop and OMS blogs as well. We will add the links soon.

Now, on to the questions...

How many words do you recommend for effective subject lines? I would think it would be 7 or less - any suggestions?

This is a great question, and one that can't really be answered easily. The real answer is, it depends on what the message is that you are trying to convey. Key points to remember when determining subject lines are: 1) Don't be cute- while you know what is inside the email and why your subject line might be a pun on the contents, no one else has opened it yet. They wont get the joke. The more direct the better.  2) Get to the point. Whether 7 words or 11, covey the main reason why you want people to open your email to avoid disappointment when they actually do. 3) There is no need to put your company name in the SL unless it is not in the from address. They just saw the email was from XYZ. They don't need to see that in the SL too. Start with these points, and test your way into improvements. Also- check out the eec whitepaper room for more subject line specific research and case studies.
 

What do you do if your emails are only relevant for a certain amount of time?

I love this question. Actually… emails never die. You might have seen this on TV in Law and Order, or some other crime show. You know, the part where the crime lab takes a computer that was on fire and somehow is able to restore emails? Well, believe it or not, the same is true for marketing emails. We have done studies at the eec where people show they will store an email from a brand that interests them for up to 2 years. The messages specific relevancy by that point has come and gone, but the brand impact is everlasting.  If your emails are only relevant for a short time you have one of two options: 1- add value added help links that make the content evergreen and give someone a reason to save your emails for years, or 2- test swapping out the non-relevant images behind the scenes and create and email that updates it's own content whenever opened, every so often.
 

Tips for B2B?

Anything you heard or saw in the webinar is true for B2B as well. B2B readers are also customers dealing with the same overloading email boxes, priority pressures and need to feel special that we all do in our personal lives. Start with a great B2C concept and email the eec for help if you need to/want to adjust for B2B.


What is the importance of the metrics particularly if you are emailing from a non-profit?

Metrics are important for any industry or vertical when it comes to email. They enable to you to, at the very least, set a benchmark for how your effort compare to other entities. One key measurement I enjoy reviewing is the click to open rate (what percentage of people who open your email click on the link). This lets you gauge how well your segmentation and targeting strategy are working. If less than 25% of these who open click, you are not reaching an engaged audience. Every year, the eec gathers a volunteer team of the best minds in email to help a npf improve their email. You can read the case studies right here on the eec site.

 
Are subscribers likely to fill out a form with all of those questions? How do you entice them to do so without making them skeptical about why you want the information?
 
This is always a tough question to answer because it is a business decision. Shorter forms get more completes, but lower quality. Longer forms drive more serious traffic. MotleyFool is one company who manages long forms very well. They incent people part way through. Ex Give us your email and name and get our email newsletter. When you do they say "thanks, now give us your mailing address and we will also send you a free whitepaper…. This happens many times until you unknowingly and happily have given every piece of personal information you have in small bits in return for value added products. Definitely worth a test.

So we are deep in a recession economy, marketing budgets and headcounts are being cut, yet we are seeing an increase in requests for the outsourcing of email production and campaigns. Why is this?

Well let's take a little time to explore the variables in play here.  As marketers turn to more cost effective channels, email is becoming more popular than ever – according to a recent Forrester study the number of marketing messages for the average email user is predicted to double by 2014.  This makes the email channel even more competitive and crowded, causing a dilution of open, click and conversion rates.

The only way to genuinely attract attention and boost performance is to send more relevant and personalized mails.  To experienced email marketers this will not be news, and it is common wisdom nowadays to absolutely progress beyond broadcast (or blast) mailing tactics to attain any kind of click thru and conversion response.

There are a number of campaign types that increase relevance beyond broadcast, such as 'life cycle', 'clickstream' and 'targeted'. JupiterResearch states that these types of campaigns are up to 18 times more profitable than broadcast.  Each of these types leverage known intelligence about the recipient, whether based on a user triggered event, online behavior, or persona driven.  BUT in order to actually create a highly relevant campaign, each mail needs to be customized to each identified audience segment and ideally personalized for each recipient - both of which increase the number of steps and effort in the overall process of producing a campaign from start to finish. 

You have a choice here: do you create individual email templates for each audience segment, or minimize the number of actual email templates and leverage conditional email content for a more dynamic 'data driven' approach.  More email templates means more production effort to create, optimize and test each and every template – whereas the data driven approach needs more advanced skills/technology to design and test more complex templates. 

Are we at a tipping point?  Has the amount of extra effort, technology and skills required to execute more advanced email campaigns pushed email campaign production to a point where outsourcing makes more strategic and tactical sense?  Perhaps.  Organizations need to be competitive and need to consider ways to execute these types of campaigns.  The tremendous ROI (as stated by Jupiter) more than outweighs the additional operating cost, so each and every marketing department who takes the email channel seriously will need to formulate a strategy here.

With headcounts diminishing, outsourcing is an obvious path forward.  Having a tried and tested production team getting your mails out of the door in good time, with great quality (...under SLA), allows you to not only benefit from advanced campaign performance, but to focus your time on higher value marketing initiatives!

- Andy McCartney, Vice President of Strategic & Account Services, Premiere Global Services

Andy runs a team of email marketing gurus and specialists who help clients of all shapes and sizes with their emarketing initiatives.  Advice and service engagements are delivered in areas such as strategy, campaign production, list health and deliverability.  Andy has over 20 years of experience in marketing and services with hi-tech companies, including 10 years in business intelligence and analytics and 12 years in interactive marketing leadership roles.

I've been hearing a lot of questions surrounding the best application of social media to the marketing mix, but one that has been slightly overlooked and under-discussed is who should really own it within an organization. And until you can figure that out, it is really difficult to hold any one internal resource responsible for devising a solid and actionable social plan.

To that end, StrongMail Systems recently conducted a survey to see how marketers were approaching the social space and who planned to own the channel. More than 500 marketers responded, and the results validated our suspicions. Social media is emerging as a direct marketing channel, and marketers are planning significant investment in email marketing and social media programs in the second half of 2009.

One thing the survey clearly conveyed is that ownership of social media within the various facets of marketing is still up for grabs, with 29% of respondents stating that responsibility is owned by multiple departments. But for 36% of the respondents, social is owned by the direct marketing organization, which allows for significant alignment with email marketing efforts. Social media was initially seen as a terrific vehicle for public relations, but surprisingly only 9% of respondents reported PR organizations owning the social media channel, which suggests that marketing teams value social media more for its demand generation potential than awareness building. A paltry 5% have a dedicated social media department.

Other notable facts from the survey include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Adam Covati, Bronto Software

With over 150 email service providers (ESPs) to choose from, how can you possibly pick the best one? Or be confident that your current ESP is the best fit for your business and email marketing initiatives? There's no single right answer. ESPs differ from each other in many ways, meaning you can't make an apples-to-apples comparison.

Despite the overwhelming number of choices and the complexity in making a choice, there is an email service provider that's right for you and your company's email marketing program. Determining which one means knowing what matters most when shopping around or evaluating your current ESP.

Every email service provider has its strengths and weaknesses. You can't change that. But you can be aware of which strengths are absolutely critical to your business and which weaknesses you are not willing to accept. That means you have to start your ESP search internally, by really delving into what drives your email marketing program now and in the future. You also must take a hard look at your company's capabilities, including that of your staff and any existing technologies you'll want to integrate with. (For advice on evaluating your needs, see the ESP RFP tips from a recent presentation by eec member, Kara Trivunovic, and reiterated in the ClickMail Marketing blog.

For help in evaluating what matters most to your program and knowing how to score ESPs on those factors, download "Choosing the Right Email Service Provider: The top 20 factors to consider when shopping for a top tier ESP."

This whitepaper is a compilation of a decade's worth of knowledge and insight, gleaned while helping clients choose ESPs that fit the email service provider to the client's needs. This comprehensive whitepaper covers 20 factors for you to consider when choosing an ESP, including why each factor matters and what to look for. It also includes a scoring sheet you can use to evaluate ESPs against these 20 factors. This resource will help you take a thoughtful, informed approach to your ESP selection, so you can compare apples to oranges and still make a wise choice, Whether you're in the market for a new ESP now or want to see how your current one stacks up.

When every marketing dollar matters now more than ever, every little improvement you make to your email marketing program matters too. Choosing the right ESP, or being sure the one you're with now is the best fit, is one critical component in making sure you're maximizing your program's effectiveness…and ROI. Don't overlook the importance of this partnership. Use every resource you can to ensure an informed decision.

- Marco Marini, CEO, ClickMail Marketing

Email marketing copy can sometimes start to feel stale. For instance, how many ways can we say "sale"!? It's often necessary for us to actively seek ways to refresh our messaging. As spring begins, let's take a look at some strong, unique copy treatments. Let's look at words with fresh eyes.

Choosing from our favorite brand "artists," we've compiled a "mix tape" (or, these days, an iPod playlist) of copy treatments. Check it out and see if it inspires any new moods.

I Saw the Sign: Subject Lines

• Boden subject line: "A Boden offer to get your knits in a twist." Including branding at the front of the subject line has shown to boost open rates in some studies, implying that some subscribers just scan subject lines without looking hard at the "from" name. Boden picks up this tip and also entices subscribers with the promise of an offer inside. Love the "knits in a twist" rhyme .

• Sephora subject line: "Pick 5 samples!" This short subject line stands out amongst the longer ones and engages the subscriber with a direct call-to-action and a fun offer. While there's some debate around subject line length best practices (check out Chad White's Email Insider article), most email marketers aim for between 35 and 45 characters. Some of the most attention-catching subject lines are shorter than that, though, like this one.

• Nordstrom subject line: "Dive In: New Swimwear from Miracle Suit." The subject line is clear about the email content, and the unique punctuation and fun intro "Dive In:" may garner some extra attention.

RESPECT: Preheaders

• Staples: Last week, Chad White blogged about Staples' preheader in his Retail Email Blog. Staples used clever copy to appeal to their subscribers' point of view, asking them "Is your coupon not displaying correctly? Prompt to view." as well as prefacing their whitelisting request with "Don't miss the savings." Staples recognizes that their subscribers don't care about missing emails, they care about missing savings, and the copy conveys this understanding.

• Piperlime: Because their (adorable!) headline "Tailor Made" probably wouldn't make sense to someone viewing the email without images, Piperlime writers include a different headline for the preheader text, which maintains the playful tone but adds clarity: "Turn it up in menswear-inspired heels. Shop now."

I Heard it Through the Grapevine: Forward to a Friend
Most "forward to a friend" links are direct and clear, but some brands spice it up.

• J.Crew asks subscribers to "spread the word" to their friends as a main CTA in this message.
• giggle includes their FTAF link prominently at the bottom of their email and prefaces it with "Psst," to give the impression that they are inviting their subscriber to pass on a secret.

Greased Lightning: Headlines

• Apple always has great headlines. Their recent email for iPod Touch games is particularly genius: "Score major points this Valentine's Day." The play on "scoring points" is fun and, coupled with the image of the iPod Touch Scrabble game spelling out "LOVE YOU," the whole message is playful and engaging.

• Urban Outfitters: The headline on this email, "YOU LOST" is hilarious. It came long enough after I entered this sweepstakes that I'd forgotten all about it, and the headline caught my attention and led me to read the rest of the email, which contained a special consolation prize discount offer.

• J.Crew's headline "On it way…" freshens up a shipping message that would otherwise be drab. Cool copy can make the simplest messages satisfying for the subscriber.

Baby One More Time: Subheadlines

• Barneys New York's subheadline, "You really need to read today's barneys babble," sounds like an urging from a friend. The subscriber feels like she'd be missing out if she didn't check it out.

• J.Crew gets a third shout-out for their subheadline from a while back. It reaches subscribers right where they are—on their computers, presumably working on something—and invites them to take a quick shopping break.

Twist and Shout: Body Copy

• Land of Nod has some of the most consistently strong copy in the industry. The body copy in this email reaches out to its audience of mamas by making it clear that Land of Nod really understands what it's like to have a newborn. "We know it'll be hard to put the baby to sleep", they're saying, "but at least you'll have this cute bedding to look at."

• Sephora's body copy in their main message and submessages often appeals to the senses, enticing subscribers with quick snippets.

Jack and Diane: Personalization

• Virgin America (whose copy always rocks!) took a fun approach to personalization in this message. Saying "Hey Darrah," instead of "Hi," or "Hello," is conversational enough to immediately engage the subscriber in a dialogue. While "Hey," doesn't fit the voice of every brand, it's worth considering the perfect form of personalization for your subscriber base.

Where Are You Going: CTA

• Piperlime: Piperlime shows some sweet spring sandals and then calls subscribers to "Find Yours". The CTA make sense coming off the body copy. We feel like the perfect sandals are awaiting us if we just click.

• Anthropologie's "See for Yourself" CTA fits nicely into the theme of this email, which introduces some loud and unusual prints and challenges potentially-skeptical subscribers to see how good they'll look.

• Backcountry uses the straightforward-and-proven "SHOP NOW" CTA in their primary message area, but they get creative in their secondary messages with "Get Layered", "Skin Up" and "Little Stuff." A nitpicky point is that the third CTA would have been stronger as a verb phrase for the sake of consistency, but we'll let it go since all three links are so fun and inviting.

Bye, Bye Baby: Conclusion
All brand "artists" mentioned above have consistently on-brand, unique and compelling copy. If you aren't already on their subscriber lists, you might consider signing up for some new ideas. The most important consideration, of course, is the harmony between the design and the copy, so get collaborating and see what jives.

Dance party, anyone?

Feeling the Beat,

Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Test, test and test again.
- Spencer Kollas, StrongMail

View your campaigns through the eyes of your recipients. Test out your from name, subject line, creative, call-to-action, etc on subscribers who are *not* in your office or affiliated directly with your product/brand.
- DJ Waldow, Bronto Software

"Focus on reducing opt-in friction by testing and optimizing preference centers and other points of data collection – new signups will be especially critical to your business in 2009."
- Nicholas Einstein, Datran Media

Predictions for 2009:
1. Preheader text will be used by the majority of email marketers.
2. More email marketers will launch preference centers, giving subscribers more control of the content and frequency of the emails they receive.
3. Marketers will experiment with videos embedded in emails.
- Chad White, Smith-Harmon

It's harder than ever to convince consumers and business professionals to part with their dollars and euros and yen—a global recession, tightening belts and everyone afraid of layoffs and the possibility of more bad news. The only number that hasn't gone down lately is our quarterly forecast number—and for many email marketers this is even increasing.

Now more than ever, we email marketers are being asked to deliver more than ever—higher revenue, larger subscriber files, more active lists and longer lifetime value. None of our bosses will invest in this channel or support our efforts unless we can prove that the channel deserves more resources and more careful segmentation and content strategy.

It's never been a better time to stand up for your subscribers. Advocate for them, because the only way to increase revenues from email marketing is to create great subscriber experiences. And that means email messages that are not just frequent, but relevant, timely and targeted.

There are two things to focus on now, in order to shape up your email program success for Q4 and 2009:

1. Improve relevancy in small steps. We all know about the behavior triggers that help make our programs more relevant. Basically, you change your contact strategy and cadence to send more email when subscribers are more inclined to buy. This is effective, but can require additional resources or technology. What to do if you don't have those resources or technology? A great way to improve your program without new technology or data integration is to think about a content strategy that improves the value of your email messages over time. Adding value to just some of your messages, even SOME of the time, will improve response to ALL your messages. So instead of just sending promotions over and over, replace some of them with messages that feel more custom, even if they are still sent to large segments of your file. Insert a few tips in your next promotion or business newsletter. Host a poll. Say "thank you" to everyone who bought this past quarter. Send a no-strings-attached whitepaper to everyone who visited the website last month. Encourage everyone who uses Product A to take a free trial of Product B. Help subscribers network with each other.

2. Reach the inbox. There is no better way to boost response and revenue than to make sure you reach the inbox consistently and avoid the junk folder or going missing altogether. Reaching the inbox is based on your sender reputation—the "score" that ISPs like Yahoo!, Hotmail and the others give to you. It's based on your practices, including the number of times subscribers complain about your email by clicking on the "Report Spam" button. First thing is to know your sender reputation by visiting www.senderscore.org or www.dnsstuff.com. Work with your email broadcast vendor, IT team or a deliverability expert to address the root causes of deliverability failure.

—Stephanie Miller of Return Path