Weekly Whitepaper Room Refresh

April 21, 2008

Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

Chad White: Sender Line Branding Tactics In Retail Emails
Solid Branding in the Sender Lines of Promotional Emails; Less So in Welcome Emails

*Have a whitepaper you’d like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.

Comments (0) | Posted on April 21, 2008 9:17 AM

Newsflash: Brand Matters in Email

June 26, 2007

A recent DMA Report, “The Integration of DM and Brand,” makes the case that brand and direct marketing are converging—where direct marketers are building brand value and brand marketers are influencing sales. (The report surveyed 296 marketers, 56% of whom combine direct and mass marketing and 44% just do direct marketing.)

I believe that email is one of the channels where this line is blurred most—in a really good and powerful mix that benefits marketers and subscribers. In fact, it benefits marketers BECAUSE it benefits subscribers! But that is a future blog post.

In the survey, nearly 70% of brand marketers rate personalization as having a positive or strong positive effect on brand and 64% rate targeting as having a positive or strong positive effect.

Clearly, these two methods—personalization and targeting—are keys to creating relevance in email, and the smart marketers who employ them to build satisfying and engaging email experiences for their subscribers enjoy higher response and ROI. Recently, a client added personalization to their email program and found that it boosted customer response by 6%, but dropped prospect response by 5% (and boosted prospect unsubscribe rates by 2%). Wow. That is pretty powerful—and really illustrates that when the subscriber has a relationship with your brand, customization and a personal approach are very powerful. When the prospect didn’t have a relationship with the brand, the intimacy assumed by the marketer bombed.

In fact, Return Path surveys show that brand and the subject line are the two of the most influential reasons why a subscriber decides to open and email. More so, it’s not just that particular email or the fact that the subscriber knows the brand, it’s the fact that the email program itself has value—the brand of the email program (what we at Return Path call “prior value”) matters most. In that 3–5 second decision to open or delete, the brand value of your email program—that you’ve sent me email in the past that was interesting, helpful and relevant—is what drives the open.

Brand matters in email, but it doesn’t trump relevancy.

—Stephanie Miller

Comments (0) | Posted on June 26, 2007 6:45 AM

the voice of email

Welcome to the Email Experience Council's blog, a forum for the email marketing industry's leading voices. On these pages, you'll find the opinions and thought-leadership that's driving the next evolution of email.

feed sign-up

Subscribe via RSS or email.

newsletter sign-up

After subscribing to this blog feed, also sign up for the Email Experience Council's weekly newsletter, which contains information on the latest email marketing initiatives, research, news and events.

Become a Sponsor of the Email Experience Council

search this blog

May 2008

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the eec’s founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire. Read more.

Chad White is the EEC’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.