E-Mail Marketing Best Practice

3sixty Live User Groups Gives Digital Marketers a Local Forum to Collaborate

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Amanda Berkey

ExactTarget is excited to offer 3sixty Live user group program. In the past week, ExactTarget customers from California, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Ontario and the United Kingdom have signed up to become members or leaders in their local cities. The user group program offers a local collaboration forum for 1 to 1 marketing strategies. Go to exacttarget.com/3sixtylive to learn more about the program and register to join the user groups. We're looking for members and leaders!

As a product marketing manager at ExactTarget, I collaborate with my team all time right in our office to brainstorm solutions to everyday marketing challenges. We realize that many digital marketers using ExactTarget are working independently for their company. But you're not alone! 3sixty Live is a great opportunity to join other users in your city to share best practices and collaborate with other savvy marketers about drip marketing campaigns, CRM email integration, and social media integration. Check out our video to hear more.

ESPC Call: Cloudmark and Best/Worst Practices

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Al Iverson

As part of Cloudmark's ongoing ESP outreach program, where they work to help spread knowledge and understanding of best practices and bad practices, Jamie Tomasello of Cloudmark spoke to the ESPC (Email Sender and Provider Coalition) group on March 2nd, 2010. ExactTarget is an ESPC member, so I listened in.

Cloudmark is a really big spam filterer, protecting over one billion mailboxes across 190 countries. Successful delivery of email to the inbox depends on passing successfully through Cloudmark filters at a lot of different receiving sites that matter, both B2C and B2B. That makes it important to understand what Cloudmark considers to be good practices and bad practices, as these perceptions are likely to drive their filtering decisions and affect your ability to get mail delivered (or not).

Jamie explained that in the eyes of end recipients of email, the definition of spam is changing. It's not so much just "do you have permission or not" as much as it is now "is the mail desired and wanted." The underlying statement there is that unclear permission, third-party permission, co-registration, etc. are not best practices, and are likely to cause deliverablity woes. As she indicated, these are mailing practices that have been defended in the past, but they're no longer defensible. ISPs and end recipients only want to let desired mail through. Is your mail desired?

Here are just a few of the Cloudmark-preferred best practices that Jamie mentioned on the call.

At a minimum, compliance with CAN-SPAM. (Keeping in mind that CAN-SPAM is a starting point, not the finish line.)
Following MAAWG Senders Best Communication Practices document.
Implementing confirmed opt-in, also known as double opt-in, obtaining explicit permission confirming that every recipient really wants to be on your email list.
Segmenting or segregating marketing mail from transactional mail. Making sure you're not trying to dilute stats or get away with something by mixing mail streams. (Spam filterers are smart and will figure you out.)
Using consistent branding in content, sending domains, call to action domains, and reverse DNS.
Sending from dedicated IP addresses.
Utilizing feedback loop data to identify and solve problems. (What intelligence can you gather from the recipient response to the campaign? Don't just listwash.)

On the bad side of the practices spectrum, a few of the things that she mentioned that can damage your reputation include things like third party co-registration, email append (which consumers hate), list purchasing and mailing to inactive subscribers. She also pointed out that you're very likely to look like one of the bad guys if you're doing things like gaming reputation systems, distributing mail volume over a large number of IP addresses (also called snowshoeing), sending your mail via multiple ESPs or affiliates, or mixing non-relevant third-party mail in with relevant, permissioned messages-- a practice termed "spamouflage."

A lot of what was discussed is stuff that savvy ESPs (and savvy marketers) should know already. But, it's never a bad idea to remind folks of what the rules are, as new people and new companies enter the email space every day. I'm very glad that Jamie and Cloudmark are helping to raise the level of understanding of best practices among email marketers and their email service providers.

Start the month with ExactTarget 3sixty (and maybe a gift....)

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Liz Farrelly

The beginning of the week always feels like a new start – a blank slate to fill with projects and meetings. The first of the month also feels that way for me…like the opportunity for success, change, and new ideas is just waiting in the next 31 days.

Since today is March 1st, I took a few moments to reflect on the state of 3sixty. And I couldn’t believe what I saw! ExactTarget 3sixty is thisclose to have 20,000 members in the site. Pretty exciting and impressive for a little closed network that we launched 18 months ago!

I couldn’t let this milestone pass without a little excitement (as is the ExactTarget way!). So, to all of you (our fabulous blog readers) a challenge. If you aren’t in 3sixty yet, get in there. Encourage your fellow co-workers and team members to create their profiles. New to ExactTarget? Login into 3sixty right now!

Why the urgency you ask? Because I will personally be sending an orange 16GB iPod nano to the 20,000 person to join ExactTarget 3sixty! That’s right – a call to all of our current clients! Sign up now, create your profile, and start using the site. Of course, the chance of winning the iPod is phenomenal, but I think that the resources for 1 to 1 marketing, email best practices, and ExactTarget tutorials (and more!) will pay off long after the iPod is loaded with all your favorite tunes.

It’s the beginning of the month – a new, fresh start. Why not kick it off like a lion?

*This contest is only open to ExactTarget customers due to the nature of ExactTarget 3sixty permissions and access.

Aptera’s 2010 Email Marketing Resolutions

Friday, January 8, 2010 by Dawn DeVirgilio

The following post is from Brooke Francesi who runs email marketing at Aptera, an ExactTarget customer. Aptera is a custom software development and web design firm.

With a new year, a new decade, and a lucky seven anniversary on the horizon, Aptera is looking forward to 2010, especially what is holds in store for our e-mail marketing program. Unlike other marketing avenues, it’s a relatively painless process to analyze the overall success of your e-mail campaigns and adjust where needed. That’s exactly what we’ve done to create our resolutions for 2010.

More effective segmentation:
While our subscriber lists are already segmented into basic categories, we realize that segmentation doesn’t have to end there. For 2010 we are resolved to revamp our system and divide subscribers into vertical markets in order to better serve their interests. We do our best to adhere to ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule! mantra and that’s something better segmentation can only help.

1, 2, 3 Testing:
This year we’ve vowed to stop listening to what people tell us will work, and find out what really works. We know what worked last year, but will it work this year? Numerous sources report that testers achieve significantly higher open and click-through rates, as well as conversion rates. We’re not going to just believe it; we’re going to test different variations of the message, the creative, the timing, and the frequency.

Get social:
For Aptera, 2010 is the year we eradicate the “one-way-road” approach to information. We’re building a four-lane highway to connect data-rich sources of information. Keeping e-mail and social media apart just doesn’t make sense. We plan to share the stand-out information in our e-mails, and recruit opt-ins from friends and followers in our social environments. Why would we use social networking and e-mail as mutually exclusive channels when we can utilize them together?

There are easily over a dozen other 2010 resolutions we could be making to improve the success of Aptera’s e-mail marketing campaigns, but there sense in getting ahead of ourselves. I firmly believe that positive change occurs in baby steps, and by setting oneself up for success rather than failure. So, here’s to 2010 and e-mail success for everyone!

Relevance shmelevance. I'm blasting off!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 by Karen Balle

Mark Brownlow blogged about, among other fascinating things in a series on what email users say, why people unsubscribe. What was top reason?

Drum roll please.....

Merkle's View from the Inbox reports that recipients unsubscribe are
75% - Sending me stuff I don't care about
73% - Way too many "valuable offers"

Epsilon's Global Consumer Email Survey says North American consumers unsub because:
Sending me junk I don't care about

There's links to more studies there and guess what they say. These studies are nicer about phrasing it, as is Mark. I call it nicer things all the time, but what it comes down to is this....

There is a portion of your list that thinks your offers are valuable and really truly wants to get them in their inbox. They're your fan club.

There is a portion of your list that is ambivalent. To them, your offers are clutter. You might be able to turn them into truly engaged, loving subscribers.

There is a portion of your list that thinks your offers are absolute junk and never wants to hear from you again. They hate you.

Best practices are there, in part, to help you lose the third portion more quickly (or never add them in the first place) and help turn more of the second portion into the first. If you increase your volume or frequency, the ambivalent group does not join your fan club. They become haters and nobody wants that.

Sometimes We Are Our Own Worst (Email Marketing) Enemy

Thursday, December 10, 2009 by Phil Schott

I read a great post today by Ken Magill entitled, Let's Play the Email Blame Game!

As usual, Mr. Magill's material is frank and sensibly presents the notion, dare I say fact, that bad things happen when you stray from email marketing and deliverability best practices. And, wait for it... Often, there's no one to blame but yourself.

Amongst the cardinal sins mentioned in the post is that dusting off the house file and sending to really old addresses will get you into trouble.

Although not mentioned in the post, another holiday treat for receivers (and subscribers) is the thought that if sending to a list once a week gets X number of opens, clicks, and conversions, then sending to it twice a week or four times a week is going double or quadruple those metrics and ultimately, sales.

That's an excellent philosophy if you want to see your mail end up in the bulk folder or worse. Doubling, tripling, or quadrupling your send volume is a big red flag to receivers and with their resources strained as it is you're just asking for trouble.

Once you've gone there, it's not typically easy to put the horse back in the barn. Reputation and deliverability issues don't often get resolved overnight, but rather take weeks or months to recover from.

So, let's be safe and smart this holiday season and try to keep our subscribers and mail receivers happy by thinking through the implications of our actions rather than having to come up with excuses and lay blame as to why mail isn't being delivered.

NCDM 2009 Looks Like A Winner

Friday, December 4, 2009 by Joel Book

I’m really excited about the upcoming 2009 NCDM conference which kicks off Monday, December 7th in Las Vegas.

Attendance is up 20% over last year and the lineup of sessions and speakers is outstanding!

This year, the conference programming committee placed special emphasis on inviting speakers who are true practitioners of database marketing, and will share case studies of how they are using data and technology to sell and serve customers more effectively and efficiently.

For complete session details, download the NCDM 2009 conference brochure.

This year’s NCDM conference will feature several ExactTarget clients and partners.

Sean Mattson of Hitachi Data Systems will team with me to present a fantastic B-to-B marketing case study that describes how Hitachi uses email as the backbone of a global one-to-one marketing strategy that has made Hitachi Data Systems a world leader in data storage technology.

Dan Heimbrock of HyperDrive Interactive will discuss how Dreamfields Pasta has built a powerful and influential brand fan community of more than 400,000 consumers by using email marketing, social media, and word-of-mouth marketing to drive brand recognition and dramatically accelerate sales.

Augie MacCurrach of Customer Portfolios and Michael Enright of online gaming company, WorldWinner, will describe how WorldWinner uses customer playing behavior data to execute automated email programs that deliver personalized offers that keep players highly engaged.

For attendees looking for a practical and useful short course on techniques and best practices for effective email marketing, Jeanne Jennings of JeanneJennngs.com and I will be conducting a special pre-conference seminar on Monday titled Accelerating Email Marketing Performance and Profitability. It’s chock full of great examples of what to do, and how to do it right.

 If you are still on the fence about attending, I urge you to take advantage of a special offer which will save you $100 over the onsite price when you register in Las Vegas. You can also take advantage of this offer by registering online at http://bit.ly/3bq2aP. To redeem this offer, use code: ONSM when you register online.

  I hope to see you in Las Vegas for NCDM 2009, which promises to be one of the top conferences on tactics and techniques for data-drives sales and marketing.

Study Implies Best Practices for Social Marketing

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 by Amanda Cross

The Nielsen Norman Group has done a study on people's behavior when they consume marketing messages over social media. They specifically looked at how people interact with RSS feeds, as well as social networking sites like Facebook.

Challenges implied by this study:

Finding the balance of posting often enough to be noticed--you're message has to be recent or no one will see it--and posting too much--people don't want marketing messages to crowd out their personal messages.
Using the correct tone--people expect a different tone in social settings...except for some companies.
Knowing what to say--what will make people find your social marketing to be worthwhile?

You can read about the study on UseIt.com, which also includes a link to guidelines for your marketing in social media.

And once you've decided how to deploy your social marketing effort, check out the ExactTarget Social Forward feature to see how to make it happen.

Real Email Threats #1 – It's Too Easy and Too Cheap

Thursday, October 29, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Last week I addressed several misperceptions about the future of email and provided a list of recent statistics showing that the future of email looks bright. I also mentioned that there are real threats to the future of email.

I had the honor of moderating a panel at Connections titled “Research Survey Says!” On the panel were three of the smartest folks one could have the pleasure of working with: Julie Katz from Forrester, Rebecca Lieb from eConsultancy, and Stefan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa. With the assignment of presenting “relevant research” and a stacked deck of panelists, my job was simply not to mess it up. My strategy? Leave the topic really loose. I asked two simply questions, “What are the perceived threats to email?” and “What are the real threats to email?”

To my surprise, there was nearly unanimous consensus about the real challenges facing email. In summary, email is so easy and so cheap that even when used ineffectively, it still gets results. And that is a big, big problem since it makes it easy to send bad email.

According to research shared by Stefan Tornquist, email programs that do not follow best practices (e.g., batch-and-blast) are becoming less and less effective. In fact, these programs were half as effective in 2008 as they were in 2002. In contrast, programs that do follow best practices (e.g., segmentation, personalization) are slightly more effective today than they were five years ago.

While email experts have been talking about relevance for a long time, I have not seen it presented in a way that makes it this clear. It is not enough to send email. It is imperative for marketers to deliver authentic value to subscribers--and that is not easy!

This point is further supported by consumer-oriented research:

58% of consumers say the primary reason they unsubscribed or simply stopped reading emails from businesses is because “emails were not relevant to me,” followed by 44% who said they “Received too many emails from the sender” (MarketingSherpa, Consumer Media Survey, Sept 2008)
54% say most of the email ads they receive don’t offer them anything of interest (Forrester, “Winning Email Subscribers in a Down Economy” Dec 2008)

Earlier this year, I asked a professional triathelete to coach me in preparation for a half-marathon (we'll see how that goes before I sign up for a full marathon). In that time I have learned that while nearly everyone can run, the majority of people do not run well. I find myself cringing at the sight of people clodding around my neighborhood and placing unnecessary stress on their feet and knees. Only six months ago, that was me.

Email marketing is similar. Since nearly everyone who tries it sees some degree of success, many mistakenly believe they have it figured out. "Why bother with all that stuff the 'experts' preach?" Because if you don't listen and apply what they say, your glory days are behind you. Your email program will grow less and less effective. It's all downhill from here.

This does not need to be the case. The success of your program is in your control. Commit your program to constant and never-ending improvement. Keep learning. Keep modifying. Keep delivering content your subscribers find valuable (not what you think is valuable). Do this and the value derived from your email program will continue to grow.

Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by Andrea Smith

written by David Hoang

With the move from Outlook 2003 to 2007, Microsoft made a lot of security improvements. Along with that, however, were a number of design changes. Outlook changed its engine for rendering HTML content from Internet Explorer to Microsoft Word. Before, it essentially meant that if your code looked good in Internet Explorer, it looked good in Outlook.

However, that is not the case anymore.

This is a huge impact in the way we design emails; because of the high volume of Outlook users, particularly in the Business-to-Business realm.

Here are a few key elements to consider while designing email messages in Outlook 2007 to ensure it looks sharp.

Keep your styles in-line
Though Outlook 2007 does support embedded CSS, there are certain properties that present challenges, such as margin, line-height and float/clear. Keep your styles in-line while you are designing. In addition to being an email design best practice, using style attributes in-line will help ensure that your message renders properly.

No Animated .gif files
Animated .gif files will not function in Outlook 2007. However, there is a solution for using .gif files with Outlook 2007. Since the file will not animate, you only need to make sure the first frame makes sense; as that is what will appear in Outlook 2007.

Contain Yourself, No Floating!
Outlook 2007 does not support floating or CSS positioning in any capacity. Use standard HTML tables to contain and control the layout. This will ensure that your design elements won’t go flying all over the place!

Specify Accurate Table Widths
When using HTML tables it is important to specify accurate table widths to ensure proper display in Outlook 2007. This is especially important in table structures that contain multiple columns. For example, when you have a table cell that spans two columns, the width for that cell should equal the sum of the widths of the other two cells.

Continue Using Alt Tags
As it was in Outlook 2003, it is in 2007; images will automatically be blocked. While you’re designing your email message, keep in mind of what it will look like with images disabled. Remember that Outlook will display alt tags, but they will only appear after a default security message. For a list of acceptable tags in Outlook 2007, check out this guide on Microsoft’s website.

No Forms
Outlook 2007 disables embedded forms. If you design an email with a survey or form in the content, include a direct link (hosted from a website) to the survey for your Outlook users. Indicate clearly in your design that the form is not broken, so subscribers don’t get frustrated by trying to fill out the form.

With 2010 quickly approaching, you may be wonder if there will be any major CSS/HTML changes in Outlook 2010. Right now, don’t expect major changes.

To conclude, sticking to standard HTML table design for emails should help you effectively render emails in Outlook 2007. Be sure to read our design tips in the coming weeks for rendering tips in other email clients, including our past issue: Email Rendering in Hotmail by Anna Meier. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007 and more information on email rendering can be found in our white paper “Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials.”

For additional information about rendering in Outlook 2007, check out our white paper, Seven Email Marketing Design Tips for Outlook 2007.

Live Blog: SMS Text Messaging for Marketers Helps Increase Subscriber Engagement

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Berkey

Today at Connections 2009, I spoke on an industry panel about how SMS Text Messaging fits into the one-to-one marketing campaigns. We had four customers on the panel share their mature SMS marketing strategies. Hearing from the US Navy, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Pier 1 Imports, and Hyperdrive Interactive, the attendees heard one common element throughout each story. In every case, text messages were used to improve subscriber engagement, marked with explicit permission.

The reason why SMS mobile marketing is so successful is because people always have their mobile phones with them, but they may not have their computers handy. People don't leave home without their mobile phones. And as marketers are looking for ways to set themselves apart in the marketplace, SMS mobile marketing can help give them an edge.

Based on the 2009 Channel Preference Study whitepaper, consumers surveyed say they want to receive SMS mobile messages with expressed permission for companies to send transactional messages, time-sensitive alerts such as flight notifications, and operational alerts such as banking messages for suspicious account activities. The key learning for marketers to is understand which messaging channel their subscribers prefer for different types of messages.

A best practice to solve this challenge is to collect your subscriber's preference for marketing channels they prefer for various message types in the future. For marketers considering SMS text messaging, the first step is supporting inbound Text to capture new subscribers to your future drip marketing campaigns.

Capitalizing on real-time interest when you have prospects' attention at a live event or retail location, gives the marketer new possibilities. Seasoned marketers know that offering incentives to potential texters helps drive people to participate in these new campaigns.

When Pier 1 launched their first SMS campaign they captured new subscribers in a younger demographic for future email marketing campaigns. Subsequent drip marketing emails featured a message with a youthful tone and unique offers to help drive conversion. Read more from their story in Mobile Marketer. Texters were incented to engage in order to enter the sweepstakes to win a free Pier 1 Papasan Chair.

Text messaging is all over Connections this year, powered by ExactTarget Text. Check out SMS marketing program examples.

Live Blog: Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross

We've got a rather thin crowd for the Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs session. Apparently everyone is already implementing the API in the best possible way...or think they are :)

Manager of the Product Specialist department Dale McCrory returns to the stage for this presentation and starts the session by asking people what topics they would like to see covered today. The first question was on documentation.

YAY! I love when people care about the documentation!

Web Service API Documentation
Dale brings up http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com to demonstrate all of the wonderful web service API documentation that's available there. He takes the group through a technical article on asynchronous processing, the CREATE method, an object, and a property. Bryan Wade, the embedded expert at ExactTarget and emcee of the session, asks how many people in the room have been to the wiki before, and about half of the room had already visited. I think the rest will visit before too long.

Content Management
The second question is about content management and best practices for it. Dale pulls up the AMPscript page in the documentation wiki to find the HTTPGet() function. This function performs a get call against a URL and brings back the content. This tool can be used to interact with an outside system in include the content in the emails.

AMPscript also support XSLT now, so you can interact with ExactTarget with you XML content. The BuildRowSetFromXML() function extends this capability.

Slide Presentation
With the two questions addressed, Bryan prods Dale to get back to the slideshow. The slides cover:

Security
Reliability
Robustness
Flexibility
Messaging content
Stats retrieval - tracking events

Security
Standards-based SOAP security to support authentication

All calls transmit over an SSL connection. The API supports two forms of security:

Plain text username token. This is what everyone's using right now.
X509 certificate encryption for the username token will be available in the 135 release.

.NET, Java, and PHP work the best with our security. Perl is OK. Ruby, ColdFusion, and ASP have troubles dealing with it because they don't deal well with the standards-based security.

Reliability
In this section, we're talking about synchronous versus asynchronous API processing again. Asynchronous processing adds all calls to a queue to be processed when the system is ready, which prevents API calls from being lost if the server is unavailable for any reason.

Other benefits include:

The fact that you get a sub-second response to the fact that the call has been received.
You have multiple options to receive results: HTTP post, Email, and the RETRIEVE API call.
The ConversationID concept that's used with asynch API processing allows you to resend the same call without worrying that it will actually be processed twice if the system had already queued the request.

Question from the floor: sounds like we need to improve our XML API documentation. That product hasn't been enhanced for quite a while, so the doc has gotten a little stale. There's an item for my to-do list.

Robustness
Dale quotes Wikipedia: "Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance."

Triggered sends represent the quickest way to get an email sent from the ExactTarget system. Key points help decide whether to use user-initiated (list-based) sends or triggered sends:

How do you want to aggregate tracking?
List based sends aggregate tracking by job. Triggered sends aggregate tracking over a time period when the triggered send was running.
How will email content be made available to the ExactTarget system?
How are unsubscribes managed?
List based sends record unsubs at the list level, or at the All Subscribers level. If a person unsubscribes from a triggered send, they can be unsubscribed from all triggered sends.
How large are your lists?
If you have 1.5 million subscribers, you should start with list based. If you are sending individual messages in response to customer activity, triggered sends are the way to go.

You can keep your subscriber information in lists or data extensions. To help you decide:

Are attribute sets going to be the same for all sends?
If so, you can use lists because you set up attributes for all lists together. If you need different attribute sets for different subsets of clients, then you want data extensions.
Is import performance critical?
If you have 1.5 million subscribers to import, you can import them into a data extension in 10 minutes versus 1-2 hours for a list (this is an approximation...the number of attributes has a big effect on performance as well).
How will unsubscribes be managed?
Each list maintains its own unsubscribes. Data extensions maintain unsubscribes in publication lists.
Bonus point not in the slide: if you are a partner building an application, you probably want to build on lists if possible, because they cost less.

Flexibility
This topic starts with a discussion of data extensions. Data extension are

The only way to use the API to do "rich" queries of data
The way you can add relational models of data en masse or row-by-row
Very fast
Tables in our database schema that are specific to your account

The DataExtension WS API object

Allows the use of upsert
Ties to the DataExtension by CustomerKey (called "external key" in the GUI)
Allows specification of Keys and Nulls
There's also a DataExtensionObject that you can retrieve to bring back a row in the data extension.

Messaging Content
Email, images, and files, oh my!

Text-only email will be supported with 135, in addition to the HTML and HTML/Text multi-part formats.

The Portfolio object allows you to host files in ExactTarget. Images and files that you import into our system are hosted by Akamai, so when people hit these files, they are highly available and don't use your company's bandwidth.

Using AMPscript, you can attach files to your email, but you should use this feature with caution. There's a page for the documentation that's going to be published very soon that talks about best practices for attachments so that you can protect your deliverability while using this feature.

Stats Retrieval and Tracking Events
We ran out of time for the stats retrieval, so we went straight to question and answer, which went by too fast for me to keep up, especially while I"m still on this documentation cloud. :)

World's Largest... AGAIN!

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Scott Dorsey

Connections has sold out AGAIN this year with a record 1,300 marketers from around the globe scheduled to attend the three-day conference. We’ve built a blockbuster lineup of talent to provide insight and information including three-time New York Times bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, academy-award winning actress Marlee Matlin and industry thought leaders hosting nearly 30 interactive breakout sessions ranging from e-marketing best practices to building multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Connections always creates great opportunities to connect with the world’s best marketers, and I expect this year to be better than ever. I look forward to seeing you in Indianapolis next week.

Email Design Tip of the Week: Designer’s Top Ten Countdown to Connections

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by Kristina Schott

Connections is less than a week away, and the Design Solutions team is anxiously awaiting the fanfare, fun, and finale. Here's how to make the most of ten designerly highlights of Connections from the Design Solutions team.

10. Grab some Design Solutions Schwag at the Design Solutions booth in the Expo Hall. No boring pens or notepads here; we're outfitted with fun, unique, pilfer-worthy schwag and design resources.

9. Mingle in the Expo Hall: Dig up plenty of those business cards, pop a tic tac, and practice being a social butterfly in the Expo Hall. You have something in common with everyone here, so introduce yourself to a lonely stranger and start dropping some one-to-one marketing buzzwords.
8. Check out the evening Reception at The IMA: the galleries, sprawling gardens and grounds, set the stage for artful fun. Bring your camera for a photo op at the iconic LOVE sculpture.

7. See Kelly Mooney, keynote speaker; your brand will benefit from the insights of her book, "The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World."

6. Rock out with They Might be Giants at the historic Murat Centre. Don't forget to pack your dancing shoes for this one; do a little studying beforehand by listening to the 30-second previews on iTunes. You'll end up buying it.

5. Attend the Designed by Success panel; we can't wait to see all the examples that Email Data Source has pulled together. Get a seat in the front row to absorb as much design karma from Lisa Harmon as possible.

4. Video in email is a favorite topic of conversation lately; whether you love it, hate it, or just want to know the emerging best practices for video in email, come sit in on the Video in Email Panel, featuring a talented member of the Design Solutions team.

3. Get some expert advice from a Design Consultant at the Design Solutions Booth in the Expo Hall. The team is offering free Email Critiques. We can't wait to see what you're creating!

2. Malcolm Gladwell

1. Extreme Makeover, the Email Design Competition; see three incredible teams' redesigns for three clients, vote for your favorite, and watch the dramatic reveal!

Designer's Top Ten Countdown to Connections

Get Personal: One-to-One Marketing with Personalized Product Recommendations

Friday, October 2, 2009 by Joel Book

An article in the October issue of Internet Retailer, observes that “although the Internet makes it possible to personalize offers to shoppers, most e-retailers and other online businesses are failing to optimize web site content to improve the chances that shoppers will become buyers.”

Mike Chertudi, vice president of demand and online marketing for Omniture notes, “The majority of businesses aren’t optimizing their on-site conversion,” Omniture has teamed with Marketing Experiments to conduct the 2009 Online Conversion Benchmark Survey. The purpose of the survey, which began in June, is to help online marketers better understand best practices in onsite conversion, and know how they compare to their peers. Data is being compiled from more than 1,000 companies, of which more than half are retailers. Among the findings as of late August: About 80% of retailers don’t present personalized content based on shoppers’ interests suggested by analytics and clickstream data.

One-to-One Merchandising Works for Motorcycle Superstore

Proving that personalized product recommendations work, Motorcycle Superstore saw a 21.7% revenue increase in the first week after launching an email campaign on September 21st that incorporated personalized product recommendations.

Motorcycle Superstore uses behavioral data -- gathered with WebTrends technology combined with its e-mail marketing application from ExactTarget -- to send email messages with personalized product recommendations. These items appear as “Your Picks” in the lower part of the email and are based on the customer’s website visiting habits over the previous two weeks.

Commenting on the power of data-driven offer personalization, Erick Barney, vice president of marketing at Motorcycle Superstore, says “I believe this feature is so effective because rather than guessing at a handful of products to appeal to our entire customer base, we can merchandise products directly related to each customer’s historical interaction with our store.” Motorcycle Superstore is No. 223 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

Learn more about combining precision one-to-one communications and comprehensive web analytics by integrating ExactTarget and Webtrends.

Email Marketing: Can you afford to let price be your bottom line?

Monday, September 28, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

In these rough economic times, it’s crucial for companies to deliver a high ROI on marketing, points out eMarketer's "Online Helps Marketer's do More with Less." eMarketer notes that senior management is paying closer attention to “each dollar spent” on marketing and heightening accountability standards. Moreover, 43% of surveyed senior management stated that they view marketing as an investment.

We all know that email can deliver a high ROI compared with traditional media marketing. However, some ESPs are just plain cheap. When selecting your ESP, you should expect more than a bundle of emails at the lowest CPM to blast. Partnering with an ESP is an investment, and conversations with your provider should be about the value and customer experience you expect, in addition to the technology. You want the most bang for every buck you spend, not simply the most emails. You want your ESP to provide you with the best email marketing resources, to be your partner in business. Why? Because there is a lot more to digital marketing than getting your message out the door. Your message needs to be relevant. Emails need to make it to the inbox, to engage subscribers, to be shared virally, to drive ROI.

As an ExactTarget customer, you have more at your fingertips than the emails you send from your account. ExactTarget considers itself your partner and ally. We care about your business and want your 1 to 1 marketing strategy to succeed. We will work with you to make you look like a hero to your clients. Knowledgeable and responsive Customer Support Services are available 24-7 for questions and concerns. ExactTarget Services professionals are available to guide you through complex integrations and consult with you on deliverability and best practices. On 3sixty, our online community, you will find resources and tutorials that provide you with a means to communicate your ideas to other marketers and to our developers so that they can create the tools you need to succeed.

Even more importantly, ExactTarget values your partnership so much so that we assign you a personal point of contact. How many ESPs provide a personal contact ...regardless of the size of your account…for free?! Your voice matters, and your relationship manager is your representative to the company. The RM team is just as excited about your marketing plans as you, and they are eager to help you reach your business goals. Call them to introduce yourself! Speak strategy with them as you are considering what ExactTarget technology you will use. Share your successes with them; they would love to show-off your marketing savvy in a press release or place you in the spotlight at our annual Connections conference. I encourage you to take full advantage of ExactTarget’s value. Cash-in on your investment and experience the power of an email marketing business partnership that delivers.

Recurring Comcast Delivery Problems Don't Have to be a Problem

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Phil Schott

One of the most frequent questions that we in Deliverability Services get asked is how to keep Comcast blocking from recurring.

Comcast aggressively blocks mail they deem their users don't want--even more so than other receivers. Right or wrong, they have filtering in place that they believe is effective and offers their users maximum protection from spam and unwanted mail. Ultimately, their obligation is to meet the needs of their users and not necessarily to meet the needs of senders.

The two biggest reasons Comcast blocks mail is because a sender's mail earns too many complaints or because a sender is sending to too many invalid Comcast addresses.

Senders are understandably upset when their mail gets blocked at Comcast, but by and large blocks are avoidable and are the result of less-than-great sending practices.

To avoid blocking by Comcast, or any receiver, ensure that you're sending mail to subscribers who have explicitly opted-in, are expecting to receive your mail, and will find the mail relevant.

If your sends keep getting blocked, it's time to review your sending practices. Is your opt-in clear and explicit? Do subscribers understand what you'll be sending to them and how often you're going to send? Are you meeting those content and frequency expectations or are you sending more frequently than you said you would or different content than you said you would? If a subscriber opted-in for your mail six months ago, are they still going to find the mail relevant and look forward to receiving it or has your mail now become just another of dozens they receive daily?

If you answered "no" to any of the questions above, it's time to change your practices to meet your subscribers needs and expectations. That may include less frequent sending, changing your opt-in, making your content more relevant and more of a one-to-one communication, or simply asking your subscribers if they still want to hear from you, which is known as re-engagement.

ExactTarget is excellent at helping clients get wanted and expected mail delivered and helping to maximize delivery and return on investment. However, if you're not meeting your subscribers' needs and expectations or continuing to send to addresses that are no longer valid you're going to continue to experience delivery issues at Comcast and possibly other receivers.

For more email deliverability tips and Best Practices, check out our free whitepaper, "Email Marketing CAN-SPAM Compliance."

What do you mean my tracking is phishing?

Monday, September 14, 2009 by Karen Balle

Click tracking. We all do it. It's a best email practice. We all want to see who is following our links, what draws our subscribers in. Was this targeted email marketing campaign effective? What was the most interesting part of the email? Where are my readers engaged? Was this email campaign better targeted than last week's?

But how you do it makes a huge difference with spam and virus filters. What do I mean? I'll tell you a secret. Phishers and spammers like to use IP addresses and URIs of popular websites in the text of their emails and then put in HTML that makes it look like the recipient is clicking on http://www.bank.com. But you don't do that, right? What you might do is use http://www.partnercompany.com or even http://www.yourbusinesssite.com in the email that you're sending out through your favorite ESP, ExactTarget.

That's a no-no. Definitely not an email deliverability best practice. Why not? Because you want us to track email clicks in those targeted emails. You have a domain set aside just for us and that's the domain that we use for your email campaigns. Your subscribers see http://www.yourbusinesssite.com, but they click on a link to http://email-yourbusinesssite.com.

And that, my friends, looks like you're trying to be tricksy.
"So what do we do, email guru?" you cry in despair. Let me give you a little email design tip that will make a huge difference with filters like Postini and MessageLabs (both of which are used frequently in B2B email), or email providers like Gmail and Hotmail.

Use your words. Wow your targeted opt-in audience with your awesome descriptive powers.

What's more appealing to you anyway? I know which one I'd click on.

Look how we've grown! or http://www.exacttarget.co.uk/
Come party with us! or http://www.connections09.com

Email Design Tip of the Week: JavaScript in Email?

Thursday, September 3, 2009 by Andrea Smith

written by Michael Moriarty

Currently, Javascript paired with HTML is more or less the norm on the web as a large percentage of websites use it for high-level functionality. Why then aren’t we seeing more Javascript-infused email campaigns? Is it even possible? Including Javascript in email is possible, but that doesn’t mean it should be included. Let’s examine why.

JavaScript is stripped out of HTML email by default in all major email clients. JavaScript is a powerful vector for executing malicious code on a user’s computer — let’s compare a user’s experience browsing the web against a user browsing their email inbox. A user browsing the web has more control to avoid dangerous websites. If a website looks sketchy, it’s common sense to not click anything except the ‘back’ button. With web, there’s an opportunity to visually inspect a link’s destination or surroundings before clicking anything. Modern browsers also help protect users against phishing and virus-laden websites by letting the user know that they are about to stumble into a dangerous area.

Email, however, puts the control in the hands of the sender. This is one reason why so many malicious emails exist, as opposed to websites. The recipient only has the from name and the subject line to judge whether or not to open an email, both of which can be manipulated by spammers. Spam filters are in place to help mitigate this problem, and while they do a pretty good job, some spam may eventually make it through. JavaScript can be used to perform malicious activities upon email open, so if the from name and subject line are crafted properly, it can be very difficult to avoid being compromised by an email containing malicious JavaScript. As a result, all major email clients strip JavaScript out of emails by default. You can include JavaScript in your email to your hearts content, but doing so could harm your deliverability and cause your email to end up in the junk or spam folder.

Thankfully, JavaScript isn’t necessary to craft a successful email campaign. Consult our design best practices whitepaper if you are having trouble getting the results you expect, or if you DO want to use JavaScript, include it in a landing page — check out our landing page field guide.

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Mike

Connections '09 - 1 to 1 Marketing Extravaganza

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 by Nicole Ross

I took this picture last year during ExactTarget's Connections User Conference keynote presentation. 1 to 1 email marketing gurus can get pretty darn excited, as you can tell. And no wonder! Last year we launched our online user community, ExactTarget 3sixty, and our new partner community, Extensions Network. Dozens of breakout sessions gave attendees advanced email tips, email marketing best practices, SMS marketing advice, and more. It was crazy wicked...

OK fine, I lied. There was no mosh pit at Connections...but there may as well have been. The buzz coming out of the keynote was infectious. And this year, it's going to be even better.

As a member of our marketing communications team, I get to help build out the keynote presentation given by CEO Scott Dorsey and COO Scott McCorkle each year. Basically, that means I'm getting a sneak preview of all the cool stuff attendees will hear about in October. Jealous? I don't want to give anything away, but for those of you that heard last year's keynote, get ready. This year's going to blow it out of the water.

If you haven't already registered for Connections '09, get on it. The conference sells out every year - especially the pre-conference training - so don't miss out!

Nicole
Marketing Communications Associate

The ExactTarget Blog

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