Email Marketing Strategy

Julie Katz and Stefan Tornquist at Connections... Survey Says!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

ExactTarget is in full swing preparing for Connections 09. If Malcolm Gladwell, Marlee Matlin, They Might Be Giants, and Second City aren't enough, then how about a panel aimed at sorting through reams of email marketing research? (Okay, that may be a bit of a stretch.)

This week I have received confirmation from two of the industries most trusted experts on email marketing that they will be participating in the "Survey Says!" breakout session on Day 2. Stefan Tornquist from Marketing Sherpa and Julie Katz from Forrester will join me Wednesday October 14th with one goal--extracting the research insights that matter most when developing your 1 to 1 marketing plans!

If you haven't signed up for this event yet, register before July 10th to get a $200 discount.

Outlook 2010: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Friday, June 26, 2009 by Tim Siukola

There has been a great deal of discussion over the past few days concerning Outlook 2010 and Microsoft’s decision to continue to use Microsoft Word to render HTML emails. When Outlook 2007 was first released, Microsoft switched the email rendering engine used in previous versions of Outlook (2000, 2003) from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Word. This caused some major differences in the way HTML emails were displayed since the engine changed from a web browser to word processing software. As a result, support for a number of CSS properties, background images, HTML forms, and animated .gifs was removed.

The current email landscape is very unique and diverse. Emails clients and ISPs each display HTML emails differently due to varying support for HTML and CSS. Unlike the web, there are no set standards in place to govern which HTML attributes and CSS properties email clients should support. Efforts have been made over the past few years by the Email Standards Project to work with email client developers to improve the support of web standards in email. Much of the buzz surrounding Outlook 2010 is a result of the Twitter campaign the group behind the project launched to bring their concerns to Microsoft’s attention. Microsoft has responded with an explanation of their decision to use Word as Outlook’s email editor.

Based upon the Email Standards Project testing with the Outlook 2010 beta, no significant changes were reported. The same display issues that are present in Outlook 2007 remain in 2010. Thankfully, if you have optimized your emails to display properly in 2007 you should be in good shape when 2010 is released next year. Until the final version of the software is available, we won’t know for sure what other differences exist. However, the transition from Outlook 2007 to 2010 shouldn’t be as jarring as it was when we switched from 2003 to 2007.

It’s important to remember that the email landscape is in a constant state of flux, with email clients adding or removing support for various HTML attributes and CSS properties. Because of this, you must remain diligent in your testing efforts to ensure that your subscribers are treated to the most positive inbox experience. Regardless of the outcome, we’ll do our best to provide you with the information necessary to create emails that display the way you intended.

If you are looking for tips on how to code emails for proper display in Outlook 2007, please reference our whitepaper.

For other email design tips please read Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.

Embedded SMS and Voice - A Market Observation

Friday, June 26, 2009 by Bryan Wade

Most of you who read my blogs know that ExactTarget Embedded is for software companies, social networks and developers who want to Embed ExactTarget Email into their Applications using our SOAP API .

We have our first Embedded Partner that is not embedding email, instead they are only going to embed SMS and Voice into their platform using our Messaging Service.  What does this really say about ExactTarget and the marketplace?

I think it says that while everyone knows us for our email capabilities, there is pent up market demand for implementing mobile strategies.   I am running into this more and more in the marketplace where ISV's are launching SMS and Voice alerts, notifications and calls to action to cater to the emergence of our mobile culture.

Do the major ISV players in eCommerce, CRM, Marketing Automation, Customer Service...etc offer these SMS and Voice capabilities?   Almost none do and I think that's about to change.
On my next blog I will randomly pick a major software company and analyze their SMS and Voice (not email) strategy (or lack of one).

Bryan

CAN-SPAM and Bad Advice

Thursday, June 25, 2009 by Al Iverson

Be careful where you get your legal advice from. As Spamtacular reports, the Attorney General for the state of South Carolina isn't quite up to speed on CAN-SPAM, inaccurately reporting that it enables private right of action. Oops.

Some of the worst legal theories I've heard on the topic of CAN-SPAM are those spouted by the permission challenged. "What I'm doing is OK! This is perfectly legal! ISPs have to accept this mail!" This adds up to a whole big old ball of incorrectness. Sure, it's legal (repeat after me: SPAM IS LEGAL IN THE US). But it's very, very stupid, and ISPs block it whenever they can (repeat after me: IT'S PERFECTLY LEGAL FOR ISPS TO BLOCK YOUR PERFECTLY LEGAL SPAM).

Stop telling people that you are CAN-SPAM compliant. Instead, ask yourself:

How do people end up on my email list? Am I asking for permission, or just assuming?
Do I provide significant disclosure and notice at the time of signup, what mail they'll be getting and when?
What's my plan for subscriber lifecycle management? At what point am I going to drop people off the list when they're not responding?

If people are blocking your mail, even if it's CAN-SPAM compliant, that's where to start. Where do you go from here? Ask your ExactTarget contact for a copy of our Reputation Equation whitepaper, which goes into detail about what things govern your online reputation (and by extension, your ability to get mail delivered).

Why do we care about spam complaints?

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 by Al Iverson

When we receive a spam complaint from an ISP, network administrator or other "trusted source," we often fast track that complaint to the head of the queue. We reach out to the client directly. We explain who we are, and we ask the client to provide information to detail exactly where and when and how that recipient came to opt-in to receive those mailings. If that information isn't provided in a timely manner, a client is likely to find their account temporarily suspended, until we work together to resolve the issue to everyone's satisfaction. (And by everyone, I mean that this includes the spam reporter.)

Clients are sometimes confused by this process, and they often question it. Understandably so; email guidelines are sometimes clear as mud, and even though we spell them out in detail in every contract, and have a plan English version of our anti-spam policy online, it can be a lot of information to digest. And if you're one of our clients, you're probably more focused on marketing objectives and email success, which means that policy compliance may not always be at the forefront of your mind.

Investigating and resolving spam complaints is very important to us. It's not the only measure we employ to ensure that our clients comply with the law, and with best practices. But it's a very important measure. If we don't stay on top of things like this, bad things happen to your ability to deliver mail to the inbox. Don't believe me? Check out my recent example of how one single spam message caused a university to block all mail sent from the ExactTarget network. Part of the resolution process was having that administrator send me that spam complaint and his understanding that I will handle the complaint to his satisfaction and in line with our published guidelines. That means reforming and/or terminating a client sending non opt-in email.

Read that again - what I'm saying there is: Our ability to get your mail delivered is dependent upon our policy that we police our clients to ensure that they don't send spam, and that we demonstrate to ISPs (and blacklists and universities etc.) that we will shut off people who send spam.

It's that simple. It's that practical. We require permission because we know is a requirement to get your mail to the inbox. We prohibit spam because we know it is a detriment to the ability to get your mail to the inbox.

The admin should [not] be fired!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 by Al Iverson

A few posts ago I talked about how a single spam message got ExactTarget (temporarily) blocked at a rather large and well-known university.

A commenter replied with the following: "Great example of how positively bankrupt the anti-spam community is and how dramatically administrators fail their constituents. The admin should be fired."

I can understand that somebody might be upset that a single email administrator has so much control over a sender's ability to reach the inbox. However, it's not a productive response.

The fact of the matter is, this is how the world works. And the law is on the side of the receiver. Under US law, both the CDA (Communications Decency Act) and CAN-SPAM effectively allow receivers to block anything they want in their best efforts to try and stop the deluge of spam they receive.

And how exactly do you plan to get that administrator fired? You don't have much leverage. How far do you expect to get by sending an angry, blustery letter to the university? I suspect there is approximately a zero percent chance that you have enough persuasive power to get that email administrator removed.

So, I was never angry at the email administrator. Why would I be? I used to be an email administrator myself, and I've been in his shoes on many occasions.

Instead, I handled it the same way any reasonable and considerate person would: I sent a polite and reasonable message to the site's administrator, asking for his assistance in resolving the issue. I didn't bluster. I didn't accuse. I just explained what and who we are, how we work, asked him if he would be willing to work with me, and inviting him to respond. Which he did, in kind. It was a polite and reasonable discussion all around.

See, this is what the deliverability team does. We run interference for our clients. We know how to speak the same language as an ISP (or university). We've dealt with this before with many clients, and with many ISPs. That's why you should work with an ESP with a strong deliverability team. If they know what they're doing, they've been down this road before and know what to do.

Transactional Spam is Still Spam

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Al Iverson

“But this mail is transactional,” a client said to me today. “That means we don’t have to comply with CAN-SPAM.”

Not exactly true, and you're not necessarily asking the right question, I replied. Yes, transactional messages must comply with CAN-SPAM, though there is a different set of requirements for transactional messages. It’s true, you DON’T have to offer up an unsubscribe mechanism, nor do you have to respect unsubscribe requests. Meaning, you can send a transactional message to somebody who has unsubscribed.

But, BE CAREFUL! Keep in mind that CAN-SPAM is not the only consideration here!

ISPs will gleefully block transactional messages every day of the week, if they determine you to be a bad sender. They DON’T make a distinction between transactional and commercial sends. So if you end up with a crazy high spam complaint rate, you’re going to get blocked. No matter that those messages were transactional.

Also, be sure to make sure your messages really are transactional. How do you measure whether or not a message is transactional? Look to CAN-SPAM. It says: The term "transactional or relationship message" means an electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is-- to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender; to provide warranty information, product recall information, or safety or security information with respect to a commercial product or service used or purchased by the recipient; to provide -- (I) notification concerning a change in the terms or features of; (II) notification of a change in the recipient's standing or status with respect to; or (III) at regular periodic intervals, account balance information or other type of account statement with respect to, a subscription, membership, account, loan, or comparable ongoing commercial relationship involving the ongoing purchase or use by the recipient of products or services offered by the sender; to provide information directly related to an employment relationship or related benefit plan in which the recipient is currently involved, participating, or enrolled; or to deliver goods or services, including product updates or upgrades, that the recipient is entitled to receive under the terms of a transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender.

And finally, make sure you don’t accidentally send messages as transactional when you don’t mean to, as happened to one of my colleagues. The issue Liz ran into highlights for me how important it is to stop and think whether or not your message really counts as transactional. In Liz’s case, those messages might actually be transactional, so technically she would probably have been okay to continue to send them to recipients, even if they had unsubscribed.

But is it wise to send mail to people who don’t want it? Even if you're legally allowed to do so? Most of the time, the answer to that is a loud and clear NO.

It's June 16th - Are you registered for our List Growth Webinar?

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Liz Farrelly

It's already the middle of June - I can't believe it.

Want to know what made me stop and realize that? I was updating our graphics on ExactTarget 3sixty and realized that our next webinar was fast approaching. Just recently, we released a great whitepaper about list growth. And now, you can learn more about the results by signing up for a webinar with our very own Morgan Stewart! Joining him will be Tamara Gielen from Email Marketers' Club, and they are going to be highlighting the whitepaper, but also answering questions about creating successful, ROI-generating lists, that are also CAN-SPAM compliant. Want more info? Keep reading below for details and registration information:

When:
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 2:00 pm EST

Presenters:
Tamara Gielen, Founder, Email Marketers' Club
Morgan Stewart, Director of Research, ExactTarget

Description:
Get the inside scoop from ExactTarget’s Morgan Stewart and Tamara Gielen, founder of the Email Marketer’s Club, on developing a successful list growth strategy with examples and insights from experienced B2B and B2C marketers.

What are you waiting for?!? Register now!

A Single Spam Message Can Sink the Ship

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Al Iverson

Here's a tale that highlights why it's important never to send a single spam message. Every email message you send should be desired by and explicitly requested by the recipient. If not, you're going to end up doing something that upsets an email administrator, blacklist operator or internet service provider.

Last week, one of my coworkers approached me. She tried to forward a personal message from her work email account over to her university alumni account. That message was bounced back with "Message rejected due to spam policy." She sent it to the deliverability team, and I investigated. Here's what I found:

Some client of ours sent ONE SINGLE MESSAGE to a bad address at that university.
The university's email server caught the spam message and routed it to an administrator for review.
The administrator reviewed the message and saw that there is no way that recipient could have legitimately opted-in. It wasn't a valid address; it didn't belong to a person.
The administrator then immediately blocked ALL emails from ExactTarget.

Thankfully, we picked up on this very quickly. I contacted the university, who kindly worked with me to resolve the issue, and the block was quickly removed. I won't always be that lucky, though. Some administrators are not always so friendly, not always so willing to address an issue and remove a block. If that administrator had been unwilling to help, mail sent by other clients would have been negatively impacted.

As a result, that client found their ability to send email messages suspended, while they work with us to figure out what the heck went wrong, and implement a resolution plan to help ensure they're not mailing any other non opt-in email addresses. (And if the client won't do what we require, they won't find their ability to send re-enabled.)

This is the kind of thing we're trying to prevent with our anti-spam policy and opt-in contract clauses. Simply put, opt-in matters. Wander away from opt-in and stuff like this is going to happen, and you're going to end up blocked, maybe even causing other people to get blocked. This issue shows that there is a direct correlation between opt-in and the ability to deliver mail.

In a perfect world, the university would have notified us before blocking. But, the university administrator (whom I actually know from industry circles) is overworked, just like every other spam fighter. He knows me, but he didn't remember that I worked at ExactTarget. Nor does he have the time to notify every single company who he's blocking for sending spam. If he did, his workload would explode exponentially, and he would be deluged with replies from bad guys wanting to debate him on the merits of their send practices. (Seriously, nobody sending spam ever admits that it is spam. They always lie. Get lied to a couple dozen times a day, every day, by every spammer you talk to, and eventually, you stop listening. This is why ISPs work from complaints and statistics, not your personal assurances.)

What Gen Y Wants - ExactTarget Slingshot Interns Talk

Monday, June 15, 2009 by Katie Lindahl

“They want to be advertised to on Facebook.” Wrong.

I have watched Facebook take-off over the past few years. What once started as a tool that required a college email address, then expanded to include high school students, is now open to anyone, anywhere. This change has significantly increased the way companies are using this popular social networking tool and I am not sure all the experts have it quite figured out.

I get tired of marketers assuming they know what I want. I think it’s time to start asking. The talk right now is that teens and college students are looking for business ads in the midst of a wall post to their best friend—really?

I don’t buy it and I don’t buy it.

For me, there is an indirect relationship between the amount of time I spend on Facebook and the number of ads I have to bypass every time I log-in. As a college student, I use Facebook for one primary function: staying connected to friends. I can view my freshman roommate’s spring break pictures from Costa Rica or see that my sister’s new favorite movie is The Green Mile. I’m staying up-to-date with people I don’t see all the time.

So, where does business advertising fit into that?

I’m not entirely sure.

I do not go to Facebook looking for ads or coupons and the ones on there aren’t urging me to click on them. For me, the companies with the cheesy banner ads on the sides of a Facebook page lose credibility points in my book.

Where I do see potential is if companies can help transcend their corporate culture onto these social networks. Companies have the ability to set up a company page where they can describe them self, post links, make comments, and join in this community of friends. I am a fan of Papa John’s Pizza Facebook page and see comments from their 297,827 other fans that really love their pizza—and aren’t afraid to say it. After viewing their Facebook page, I see that I can opt-in to their email program and receive coupons each week. So in this simple way, Papa John’s caught my attention and added a new subscriber, all without a banner advertisement.

I see potential here. There has to be a careful strategy on how this is approached, but if an effort matches the target market, I think there would be significant advantages. I don’t think it would just be in customer sales but I think it would be in building loyalty.

This has opened a lot of different topics that I think college students have thought about. We do have an opinion about. It looks like I have a few more things to share.

Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern

Effective List Growth Webinar

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Tamara Gielen, founder of the Email Marketers' Club, and I will be presenting highlights from the 2009 List Growth Study in an upcoming webinar Effective List Growth: Insights from the 2009 List Growth Study. If you have already downloaded the whitepaper, you know that it is full of charts and analysis of current trends in email list growth. Believe it or not, less than one half of the charts we created from the study made it into the final whitepaper.

During the webinar, we will provide actionable strategies, examples, and tips for growing and nurturing your most precious asset--your subscriber database! We'll also have a time for Q&A. If you have a question you would like to submit in advance, leave a comment or send me an email at mstewart(at)exacttarget(dot)com.

Register here!

Details

When:
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 2:00 pm EST

Presenters:
     Tamara Gielen, Founder, Email Marketers' Club
     Morgan Stewart, Director of Research, ExactTarget

Duration:
     1 hour

Description:
Join ExactTarget’s Morgan Stewart and Tamara Gielen, founder of the Email Marketer’s Club, as they present highlights from the 2009 Email List Growth Study whitepaper. Get the inside scoop on developing a successful list growth strategy with examples and insights from experienced B2B and B2C marketers. You’ll learn:

Keys to developing a sustainable list growth strategy
How to find the right subscribers for your list
The hot new tactics you should consider trying in 2009
What both B2B and B2C email marketers around the world consider the best list growth strategies
Which list growth tactics you should approach with caution

If you’re ready to create a successful, compliant, ROI-producing list growth strategy, be sure to attend this information-packed webinar. Sign up today!

How would college students target their peers?

Monday, June 8, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Seems that everyone is talking about how to target college students these days. No doubt it is a challenging demographic for those of us who have been around a while. And since these digital natives tend to be early adopters of technology and like socializing via the internet, it seems only logical to us 'old guys' that the best way of reaching this target demographic is through the internet, right?

As Katie Lindahl pointed out earlier this week, Gen Y folks are "tired of fifty-year olds standing in front of a group of us and telling us what we want." Ouch! Fortunately, Katie and I had already been thinking about this.

Last month, finals for the Advanced Media Planning class at Ball State University were held in the ExactTarget office. Their final was to present a detailed media plan to help launch an online brand specifically targeted to college students. A real ExactTarget client provided very detailed specifics about what the brand was, it's intent, current challenges, and a budget to help drive awareness. The final presentation was made to ExactTarget executives, executives from the client, and the students' professor. (Much more intimidating than any final I took in college!)

Setting the Stage

Students provided their assessment of the target demographic. On one hand, they were providing statistics from research they found describing the college student target. On the other, they ARE the demographic being described. In essence, this acted as a selection criterion of it's own. The stats they cited seemed legitimate to them, and so, I give the stats they selected some extra credence.

Here are some of the stats they provided:

98% use mobile devices
70% own a laptop
Multi-tasking between media is common
High Social Media Interaction
Heavy convenience oriented media usage
Early adopters of new technology
Emphasis on personalized technology and media
Growing preference for web connected technology
Spends a lot of time socializing via internet

Top 10 websites among college students in 2008:

Facebook
Google
Yahoo!
MySpace
YouTube
LiveJournal
ESPN
eBay
Amazon
CNN

Last, the students reiterated that this target is not terribly receptive to online advertising. The keys to grabbing their attention: relevance, providing useful information, entertainment, and exclusivity. (Does this really sound unique to college students? Hmmm.)

Breaking through the Clutter

Until this point, most of us in the room were simply taking in information, but when it came time to hear how these students would develop media plans, those of us in the audience leaned forward on the edge of our chairs. I, for one, was impressed. Here are a few of the things I heard:

“College students want to be taken seriously as consumers and future employees, out with the hip looking graphics and logos, in with creative that recognizes their intelligence and value.”
“Unless you sell beer or swimwear, don’t advertise at Spring Break, we are on vacation”
“Have a good website where college students can go to learn more about you. Have a Facebook page so they can check you out. But don’t expect these things to be a draw, you still need to get them there by driving brand awareness!”
“College newspapers are an effective and cost efficient way to reach our target market.”

College newspapers? Really? Doesn’t this fly in the face of everything we have heard about this demographic? Maybe it does, but the more I pressed, the more I was convinced. Here are some of the reasons provided:

71% of undergraduates read their campus newspaper at least once per month. This is higher at larger and higher end universities.
Browsing the newspaper is a common way of passing time between classes.
Students are encouraged to read campus newspapers, while accessing Facebook in class is not acceptable.
Where to place an ad? Next to the crossword or soduku. Students spend a lot of time looking at those pages.
$20-$60 CPM for very targeted audiences
Target specific campuses that 1) have large student bodies, and 2) are influential. Students even highlighted specific campuses to target such as Texas, Illinois, Michigan, NYU, UCLA and my alma mater – Berkeley (Go Bears!) If they pick up on it, your brand is likely to become known across the target demographic at large.

Thanks again to the 2 presentation teams. If it were up to me, you would all get A’s. (Hope you all did!)

Should You Provide an Incentive for Email Registration?

Friday, June 5, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Marketers often use incentives to encourage registration on their website. Question is whether or not it is a good idea? (Actually, it was framed in terms of best practice, but this is one of those gray areas.) [See Your opinion is not “Best Practice”! (and mine isn’t either)]

As background, I dug a bit deeper into data from the 2009 Email Marketing List Growth Study to look at how marketers compared the performance of non-incented site registration versus incented site registration. There are significant differences between B2C marketers and B2B marketers. The numbers for B2C marketers are shown in the chart.

As expected, marketers report higher performance for incented registration for the number of new subscribers, but there is a tradeoff in the quality of those subscribers. Also as expected, the ROI is lower since there are costs associated with providing the incentives. The numbers for B2B marketers are better—they reports 43% higher performance in terms of quantity, but only sacrifice 7% in quality compared to non-incented site registration. So it is no surprise that incentives are used much more often in B2B email marketing than they are for B2C email marketing.

43% better quantity for 7% worse quality makes this is straightforward decision for B2B marketers. For B2C, the tradeoff of 24% better quantity for 18% worse quality makes for a tougher decision.

Recommendation

Often when companies turn to incentives to drive registration it is because they are compensating for poor strategy somewhere else. Non-incented site registration works if you have developed your value proposition and program messaging. If registrations are not happening without the incentives, then there is a problem with how the program is being sold to site visitors. This may be tactic placement on the site, but it is likely something more. If this is you, I recommend focusing on the value proposition of your program for a while by TAKING THE INCENTIVE AWAY.

Ask customers what they want, adjust, refine, and repeat as necessary. You will know you are on track once the stream of non-incented registrations picks up. At this point, open the subscription floodgates by adding the incentive back into the mix. Now the incentive is not the main draw, it’s simply a tool for helping get prospective subscribers off the fence!

Email Design Tip of the Week: Considering the Preview Pane

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 by Justine Jordan

In a recent post, we quoted a Nielsen Norman Group study which indicated that users, once engaged, spend an average of 51 seconds on each newsletter in their inbox. There is an important distinction to note here, and that's the "once engaged" portion of the statistic. How exactly do you engage the subscriber? My answer? It starts with the preview pane.

What is a preview pane?
The preview pane is a small horizontal or vertical strip in the inbox that allows the user to “preview” an email without clicking or opening the message. When you take both vertical and horizontal orientations into consideration, the cross-section yields an approximate 4-5 inch square (288-360px).

How can I best utilize this space in my email design?
Your primary goal in maximizing the preview pane area is to catch your reader's eye with compelling and relevant content, leading to that oh-so-important engagement (which equals clicks, opens and conversions!)

For longer emails or newsletters, start by completing a content hierarchy exercise. Gather your internal team and determine what types of content have primary value and high click-through. Consider adding a "Table of Contents" or "In This Issue" area, and place these elements near the top of your email in the preview pane space.

For shorter emails, make sure your primary message and/or call-to-action is visible in the preview pane area. Text-based headlines, buttons and links are great additions to this space.

On all communications, streamline and optimize the header and preheader areas of your email to make way for relevant, clickable content. Consider moving whitelisting (or "add to address book") language to your welcome campaign or email footer, and test to see what types of teaser and "view as a webapge" strategies work for your audience.

Which email clients or programs use preview panes?

The bottom line?
Preview panes are becoming the norm, significantly reducing the real estate you have to capture attention and generate response. More than 9 out of 10 email users have access to a preview pane, and 7 out of 10 say they frequently or always use it. Use the preview pane to your advantage by designing for the space. Download our design whitepaper for more tips on driving subscriber engagement.

BMA Annual Conference is Officially Sold Out

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Joel Book

Gary Slack, Vice Chairman of the BMA, reports the national BMA conference, June 10-12 in Chicago, is SOLD OUT and that a wait list is now open. http://www.marketing.org/waitlist.

As I post this, more than 300 marketers from 200 B-to-B companies have registered. This is a phenomenal achievement, and one look at the program tells you why. It’s a great line up!

On Thursday morning, June 11th, I have the pleasure of leading a terrific session titled, Best Practices in Digital Direct Marketing, which will feature two ExactTarget clients who are among the industry’s sharpest email marketing professionals, Sallie Anthony of Genworth Financial and Dave Wieneke of Thomson CompuMark.

Sallie and Dave will take you inside their company’s email communications strategies and provide practical advice on how to design and execute email programs that deliver bottom-line business impact.

If you want to see first-hand how to use email – in combination with CRM – to accelerate the sales process, maximize customer retention, and support the direct selling efforts of resellers, do not miss this session. In addition, we’ll discuss how email has become the #1 tool for nurturing leads and keeping prospects engaged throughout the buying lifecycle.

Check out the full agenda for the BMA Annual Conference, and if you have not registered and want to be added to the wait list, go to this link: http://www.marketing.org/waitlist.

Email Marketing & Social Media Webinar

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Scott Roth

Looking for innovative ways to take your 1-to-1 marketing strategies to the next level and put new technologies to work for you? On Wednesday, June 3rd at 2:00 EDT I'm hosting a webinar on how to leverage email marketing and social media together.

Joining me will be Emily Riley, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research and Lauren Kufta, New Media Coordinator from Roadrunner Records. Emily from Forrester will share some valuable research on the topic as well as some examples of companies that are on the cutting-edge. Lauren from Roadrunner will talk about their social media strategy overall and how they are using email marketing in conjunction with social media sites to connect fans with music artists.

Lastly, I will share some thoughts about how linking email marketing and social media initiatives is not only good for extending the reach of your message, but also a great source for acquiring new and highly engaged opt-ins for your email programs. I'll also touch briefly on our new Social Forward feature (including ShareThis integration, Direct to Social, and Forward to a Friend) that is quickly making its way through the ExactTarget Innovations Lab and is slated to be released to all of our customers in our Summer 2009 Release.

Learn more about the webinar and register now

Key Points in the Evolution of Your List Growth Effort

Monday, June 1, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Following the the recent release of our latest whitepaper on email list growth, it seems a good time to highlight some of the key points in the development of a list growth strategy. Evolution is not a matter of time -- so that in the first year you do X, in year 2 you do Y, and so on. It is more appropriate to think of major milestones as the markers of when it is time to adjust your approach to email list building.

Phase 1 - From Zero to Cash Flow: The first step in the development of a list growth strategy is to reach the point at which the program starts to pay for itself on a monthly basis. This is achieved when the revenue or number of leads associated with the program exceeds the cost of running the program—taking hard costs (e.g., cost to send email, cost of names acquired, COGS, etc), and soft costs (e.g., content development, programming, oversight) into account.

This phase of the program should focus on putting tracking mechanisms in place and optimizing organic list growth efforts such as onsite registration. The temptation may be to look to list rental or other non-organic tactics to jump start the program. However, by starting slower, you decrease the likelihood of wasting money promoting a program that consumers aren't interested in. While optimizing onsite registration, you get to test different ways of positioning the program (i.e., value proposition) to get people signed up, plus you keep costs relatively low as you get your footing.

This process can take some time, but if done right, it will provide the foundation for exponential growth in Phase 2. Jumping the gun and simply gathering too many names too early puts marketers in a position where they need to make painful adjustments later.

Phase 2 - Growth: Once the program starts to generate cash flow, the next phase of list development involves accelerating growth by amplifying what you learned in phase 1. Take successful value messages to additional channels. Integrating search with landing pages that sell the benefits of registration, collecting email addresses during inbound calls, and integrating email with social networks all help build out organic list growth programs and can rapidly accelerate the growth of your list.

If these tactics do not generate the results you are looking for then move onto the second part of the growth phase by adding in non-organic list growth tactics, such as sweepstakes or co-registration. By employing these tactics later in the process, you dramatically increase the likelihood that these efforts will be successful.

Phase 3 - Maintenance: When lists get large, there is a point at which it becomes unprofitable to add names faster than natural attrition occurs. Imagine a list with 5MM subscribers. If natural attrition (due to email addresses going bad and unsubscribes) is 1% per month, then that program must add 50,000 people per month just to maintain list size. Email marketers never arrive at the end of their list growth efforts, but there is a point in the life of every program where revenue growth is going to be achieved more efficiently by optimizing other aspects of the program such as improving relevance through segmentation, personalization, etc.

Don't Propose Marriage on the First Date.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by Chip House

Executive Summary: Leverage Opt-in Tactics to Grow Your Email List the Right Way.
The lesson couldn’t be clearer, or more common sense. Yet, many marketers feel they need to lead with the close. As Seth Godin says in the landmark book Permission Marketing, “ Don’t propose marriage on the first date.” So, goes the metaphor, why do you think someone you just met will want to buy what you’re selling?

A similar theme was uncovered when ExactTarget , Ball State and the Email Marketers Club collaborated for the 2009 Email List Growth Study. The study was based on a detailed survey of U.S. and international email marketers and the tactics they found effective in 2008 and the opt-in list growth methods they planned to use in 2009. As many publications like marketingcharts.com and directmag.com can attest, many marketers are focusing on tactics that other marketers say aren’t worth the time.

As Ken Magill boiled it down in his newsletter yesterday: “Thirty two percent of marketers either rarely or never track the performance of their e-mail names by source...The troublesome statistic means almost a third of e-mail marketers could be throwing money away on bad sources of e-mail names. Moreover, bad list sources can lead to garbage addresses being introduced into marketers’ house files resulting in deliverability problems.”

In my own words, and as reported by marketers around the globe, the best way to grow your list often isn’t the fastest. Rather, it is subscriber by subscriber in a conversation that is initiated by the subscriber in the first place. Some might call this true opt-in. We call this Subscribers Rule! If you aren’t familiar, head on over to subscribersrule.com. It is more than a philosophy, it is a directive that marketers in 2009 need to follow to be successful. It is the recognition (in some cases resignation) that the subscriber is in control. With all of the din created by 20,467 marketing messages a week, consumers can’t take it all in.

Subscribers rule, a concept in list growth and profiling based on subscriber intent and initiation, says it all. Funny thing is, many marketers still won’t believe this study. They’ll continue to focus on quantity rather than quality of names. To them I say, please read what 351 other marketers say the best way is to grow your email list.

Relevancy = Subscriber Engagement

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 by Angela Khan

Most of the time we can build better lists by making our current ones even more effective.

Start by identifying each target audience, as well as finding behavioral patterns that change over a specific time frame. For example, note individuals who attend a webinar but don’t sign up for the newsletter, and vice versa. Once you’ve determined these patterns, you can begin planning how to increase engagement with a specific target audience using the power of ExactTarget’s technology.

Remember, when you focus on a targeted, highly engaged subscriber list, you’re bound to see substantial increases in list growth as you send more relevant email messages. Below are some Use Cases to get the creative juices flowing; along with the ExactTarget features that will help you get the job done.

Use Cases To Get You Started – B-to-B
ExactTarget Formula to Recreate: AIM (Activities, Programs, Data Extensions, and Send Classifications) + Filters, Measures & Groups

“Re-engagement” List Build a list from subscribers that clicked through a webinar email, but never registered for the event. Encourage them to register for upcoming webinars, or provide a link to slides from the webinar they missed.
“Newsletter Survey” List Query a set of subscribers who consistently open a newsletter but never click through. Send a survey asking them which topics are most important to them, ensuring relevant content as you build your one-to-one communications.
“Highly Engaged Renewal” List Segment subscribers coming from particular domains to determine which companies are most engaged in email campaigns. Target those companies for renewal strategies.

Use Cases To Get You Started – B-to-C
ExactTarget Formula to Recreate: AIM (Activities, Programs, Data Extensions, and Send Classifications) + Filters, Measures & Groups

“Second Hit” List for a Promo about to expire Schedule a program (using filters with a measure) that triggers an email to those who haven’t clicked through a promotional offer, reminding them that the offer is about to expire. By leveraging data extensions, you could further segment those that did click-through to provide a cross-sell offer. This can also be done using Live Offers.
“Up-Sell” List Leverage data extensions, activities, and programs in AIM to import subscribers who have clicked through to a previous item. Send another email featuring an up-sell item to those who have clicked through emails featuring similar items in the past.
“Message Medium” Lists Target subscribers viewing via mobile devices by looking at your open rates, singling out the percent of subscribers who clicked through an email but didn’t open the email. This can be an indicator that these subscribers view emails via mobile devices. Create more text-friendly emails for this segment and more graphic-friendly emails for this segment.

Better Than an IPO

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by Tim Kopp

ExactTarget investor Scale Venture Partners told CNBC’s Squawk on the Street today that the current IPO market is “tight”, and ExactTarget’s decision to seek venture capital funding was better than an IPO. She noted the approach provides ExactTarget with a predictable source of capital to fuel our growth, and it positions us better to go public as an even better and bigger company. It’s a strategy that is allowing us to accelerate our innovation and deliver customers the most advanced one-to-one platform to connect with their clients.

Check out the below video featuring Kate Mitchell, Managing Director of Scale Venture Partners.

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