Email Direct Marketing

Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Gmail

Thursday, November 5, 2009 by Andrea Smith

This week we’re focusing on email rendering in Gmail. Gmail, like other web-based email clients, is constantly evolving. These updates continually change the way HTML emails are rendered. Not only do email designers need to pay special attention to Gmail, they need to be aware that their Gmail subscribers may be seeing one of two different versions of Gmail. Depending which browser and version you are using, scroll to the bottom of your account and select the “older version” link to test that version of Gmail. To revert back to the newest version, select the “newer version” link in the top right section of the account.

Below are some great tips to consider when building your email campaign in order to create the best experience possible for Gmail subscribers.  

Image Blocking - Alt Tags
 Images are blocked by default in Gmail. Gmail does display stylized “alt” tags, so add those to your design when it makes sense to help create brand synergy. 

CSS
In both versions of Gmail, CSS must be applied inline. External or embedded CSS in the head of the HTML will be stripped out.

 CSS Borders
The newer version of Gmail has difficulty rendering CSS borders in IE8. Occasionally, 1-2 pixels of white space will be added to the left or right side of the content enclosed within the border. This issue affects some designs more than others, so if you have a particular element that depends on symmetry, test both old and new Gmail versions to ensure your design renders properly. If CSS borders are giving you trouble, you may want to consider using a background color combined with a spacer .gif to create the same look.

Background Images
Background images are supported in both versions of Gmail. However, the “background-image” CSS property is not supported, so the HTML “background” attribute must be used to assign a background image. Previously, there were issues using the CSS property “background-repeat”, but that property is also now currently supported.

Gmail Themes
Gmail introduced the concept of “themes” this year, which allow the user to select different combinations of background colors, text and link colors to personalize their inbox. Some combinations may render light text on a light background, or dark text on a dark background. The bottom line: you must specify background, text, and link colors in your HTML, or they may be changed in accordance with your subscriber’s Gmail Theme.

Testing
Always be sure to test in major web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox, and remember that there are both newer and older versions of Gmail. Gmail is a great client to test first when finishing your campaign, as it exposes rendering problems and is unforgiving of any HTML syntax errors. 

Personally, I love using Gmail — it has great features including shared docs, calendars, folder organization tools and other interactive capabilities, so let's make sure our subscribers continue to have a great experience in Gmail. Portions of this blog, Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Gmail, and more information on email rendering can be found in our whitepaper "Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials”.

Real Email Threat #3: Lax Permission

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

The issue of permission presents one of the greatest threats to the future of email marketing. According to data shared by Julie Katz at Connections ’09, consumers want greater control over email. They want control over SPAM, they want to be able to unsubscribe from email more easily, and they want greater control over the frequency of commercial email coming to their inboxes.

In both 2008 and 2009 we asked consumers to indicate how acceptable it was for them to be contacted via email for “Promotional messages (i.e., sale, special offers) from companies whom you regularly conduct business, but have not specifically asked for ongoing information.” As we outlined in the 2009 Channel Preference Study, consumers’ attitude toward non-permission communications from known companies is souring quickly. In 2009, 50% of consumers considered these messages with unacceptable, nearly doubled from 26% in 2008. The belief that marketers can send email to their customers based on a ‘prior existing relationship’—the premise for email appends—is dead. Customers don’t want the practice to continue.

Nevertheless, the industry continues to allow embarrassing practices like email appending and list rental. Not surprisingly, the only people that fully endorse these practices are those that profit directly from them. The rest of us squirm and manage to squeak out the words, “It can work, if you do it right.” However, few believe that it ever will be done right on a consistent basis. After all, we've been writing about this for quite a while.

There are three interrelated reasons for this. First, as I mentioned in my first post in this series, email is too easy and too cheap. It’s simply easier to do email appends and list rental incorrectly, using an opt-out model that has no regard for permission. The numbers are more impressive--and let's face it, big lists still sound better than little ones. Second, pricing models are still based on match rates and list sizes. These models favor sending to the masses, which in turn favor the opt-out model. Third, since there are still enough suckers out there who will pay to do it incorrectly, email append and list rental vendors have no incentive to change their revenue model. Given that opt-in revenue models are likely to be less lucrative, it won't change until the issue is forced.

But it may already be too late for email append and list rental companies.

While the industry has failed to police itself, two entities with the ability to make real changes have lined up with consumers. First, ISPs continue to serve the best interests of their customers by increasingly relying on reputation systems that include engagement measures such as opens and clicks to determine if messages should be routed to the spam folder (see What’s in store at the ISPs 2009-2010 from Pivotal Veracity). Second, Canadian Parliament continues to push forward Canadian Electronic Commerce Protection Bill C-27 which mandates an opt-in standard.

Comparatively, US CAN-SPAM laws are notoriously weak, making the joke that US CAN-SPAM laws say, “yes, you can spam consumers so long as they can opt-out.” Unfortunately, Unfortunately, many companies use this law to condone their continued distribution of non-permission email. In short, the US Law falls short of meeting customer expectations—again more than half of consumers believe non-permission email is unacceptable, even when it's from a known company. This doesn’t support an opt-out standard. I interpret this as, “there is no excuse for sending email without the express consent of consumers. Period.”

Interestingly, in the same comparison of opt-in promotions from 2008 to 2009, there was no change. Consumers believe permission-based email is highly acceptable. In fact, given the choice, 75% of US consumers (see the 2009 Channel Preferences Study) and 74% of UK consumers (see Strategy Meets Customer Expectations) prefer to receive permission based promotional messages through email.

It’s simply that we need to draw a hard and fast line. Opt-in permission should be the only standard by which we live. Not supporting efforts to eliminate questionable practices in our industry reflects poorly on the industry as a whole. After all, as Matt Blumberg, CEO of ReturnPath, recently wrote, “What's good for consumers is great for direct marketers. Marketing is not what it used to be, the lines between good and bad actors have been blurred, and the consumer is now in charge.” Amen!

It's time we completely honor consumers' preference for an opt-in standard. We can no longer afford to lend any support, even passively through silence, those who don't.

Real Email Threat #2: The Specter of “Inbox Clutter”

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

There is a lot of talk about the sheer volume of email consumers receive. According to Forrester, 60% of consumers believe they receive too many email offers and promotions (Forrester, December 2008). Thus, it should also be no surprise Forrester also found 64% of consumers say they delete most email advertising without reading it and for them to conclude that consumers find marketing emails a burden.

According to MarketingSherpa, 32% of marketers see general inbox clutter as the biggest challenge to their success in email marketing (MarketingSherpa, Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, September 2008). In Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power, Forrester found that 90% of marketers who believe email will be less effective in 2 years believe the reason for this decline is “too much clutter in consumer inboxes,” while 59% believe “SPAM” will drive this decline.

Yes, inbox clutter is impacting the industry-wide success of email marketing. In fact, at the beginning of this year I the following prediction in our 2009 Marketing Almanac: “On average, we expect open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates will decline in 2009 as subscribers’ inboxes are flooded with bad email from marketers trying to stay afloat.”

The latest DMA figures suggesting that the ROI from email marketing slipped again this year, down 3% from last year to $43,62, support this prediction. However, recently release open rate benchmarks from Epsilon suggest my prediction was wrong. They say open rates have increased slightly in each of the past 4 quarters. From Q2 2008 to Q2 2009 they report an increase from 18.8% to 22.2%. That’s an increase of 18%!

Okay, so the DMA says ROI is down 3% and Epsilon says open rates are up 18% over the past year. At the end of the day, all this suggests is that even if inbox clutter is having a negative impact, it isn’t having much of one on individual marketers.

Consider the following information presented by MarketingSherpa. 31% of consumers indicate that one of the reasons they unsubscribe or disengage from emails is related to inbox clutter. However, this is the third most common reason identified in this survey. The relevance and frequency of YOUR emails are much more important.

Thus, I call this threat the specter of ‘inbox clutter’. It's simply another myth that your emails are being crowded out by junk. Unless you plan on running an average or below average email program, none of this matters for you! If your program delivers value, your program will continue to thrive. The problem is not “out there” as the specter of inbox clutter suggests. More and more, the challenge is to create an above average program.

Are Your Subscriber's Fan's For Life?

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Lindsay Niemiec

On my drive back from Chicago last week, I noticed a large billboard towering over the interstate. Of course, many billboards crowd every interstate, but this one was different. The advertisement for the Chicago Bears, read “if you’re not a fan, you’re a tourist”. What grabbed my attention was not only to how clever I though the ad was, but how applicable it is to the ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule! philosophy. Everyone wants to be a part of something special, and marketers want their customers to feel as if they are special too. It starts with delivering 1 to 1 direct marketing of which subscribers are a fan.

Does your marketing program address what your subscribers want? Or do you blast out the latest news and hope for click-throughs? Do you dynamically target the content of your emails to your subscriber's preferences? Or do you batch and blast the same email to everyone, hoping they find it relevant? As the NFL season continues and the holiday season kicks off, the relevance of your email campaign programs could be the key component in making your subscribers true fans.

If you make your subscriber a fan, then much like a Bears fan, they're in it for life. If not, then they're just a tourist on your list for now waiting for the next best thing.

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.

Email System Process Term of the Day: Asynchronous, Scheduled, and Real-Time

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 by Amanda Cross

Your email marketing messages don't have to be processed right away. Different timing is appropriate for different tasks, and in some cases the ExactTarget application gives you the control to choose how--and when--your system does its work.

Asynchronous
An asynchronous process is a process that runs “behind the scenes” while you continue to use the interface to perform other tasks. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.

For example, if you start an asynchronous report, the report runs while you continue working. When the report is done, you receive an email that contains the report results.

Scheduled
A scheduled process is a process that runs automatically at the time you designate. You receive an email or other alert that the process is complete so that you can view the results.

For example, if you schedule an email send to begin at 11p.m., the system begins the send at 11p.m. and can send you an email when the process completes to give details on the success of the send.

Real-Time
A real‐time process is a process that runs in the foreground of your application. You cannot
perform other tasks while the real‐time process is running. When the process is complete, the application presents the results on your screen.

Time for your Halloween email...I mean Holiday Email Program

Monday, October 26, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

I don't know about you, but I like to enjoy each holiday on its own and in order. Especially in the Fall when the three big holidays come hurtling at you back to back from the dark days of Fall: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't put out Halloween decorations until October, I don't buy a turkey until November and I don't really start planning for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I definitely do not shop for Christmas presents in July! Who really does that anyway?

Unfortunately in the world of email marketing, you need to start planning your holiday email program now - today - Yesterday! You need to ensure that your emails are planned, designed, tested, scheduled and ready for delivery. The holiday season is when the inbox gets the most congested and without advance planning, your emails may be lost in the crowd. In addition to driving for results, you want to ensure that you are not one of those marketers that over do it - sending a different offer everyday. After just a few of these emails, your subscribers will start ignoring (and deleting) your emails. Chip House spoke to this very subject in a blog post from last year "High Holiday Frequency Drives the Ignore Rate to New Heights".

You also don't want to be one of those marketers that make no significant change or improvement in your email campaign. Those emails seem uninspiring at a time of year when you should be grabbing the attention of your subscribers. Make sure to check out our design tips and tricks at Email Marketing Design blog. Then on top of everything else, there are deliverability challenges at the holidays.

Where will your email program land?

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Friday, October 23, 2009 by Karen Balle

When my nephew was much younger, we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas together on VHS until the tape broke. He even thought his name was Jack the Pumpkin King! The soundtrack will be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

Not only is this one of the best movies of all time, but it's a wonderful commentary on the state of email marketing during the holiday season. I don't just mean that trying to get email delivered is a nightmare starting around Halloween or that marketers find themselves in somewhat different situations than they're used to during the rest of the year. The flow of the movie and the soundtrack fit with how email marketing happens during the holiday season. It happens every year.

There's a dramatic uptick in all email marketing, be it legitimate email marketing or spam, that starts when the weather gets cold. Some years, it triples or quadruples normal email volume. And that means slower mail servers, more filters, more complaints, and slower response times. It also means overworked, cranky mail and abuse admins. I know. I've been one of those cranky abuse admins.

The rules surrounding email deliverability, which are confusing enough, get more complicated during this time of year. It feels like every company you have ever driven past and every partner of theirs is vying for your attention. There are a lot of little things that you can do, from holiday ramp-up strategies to promoting special holiday-only marketing campaigns that draw customers in.

I'll leave you for now with this very important thought.

Engagement is more important than ever. If you don't get the attention of your recipients, you'll find your email in the spam folder or blocked during your most crucial sales period.

As I've been writing this, the song "Making Christmas" has been running through my head. It makes me want to ask which mindset do you have for your email campaigns, going into this holiday season?

"Snakes and mice get wrapped up so nice with spider legs and pretty bows.
It's ours this time."
(Your focus is on your ideas of what your recipients should want. You reach years back into your subscriber database. You send out email to people who didn't give you permission.)

Or
"This thing will never make a present. It's been dead now for much too long.
Try something fresher, something pleasant."
(Your focus is on what your customers are really interested in. You're interested in actively engaged subscribers rather than the number of subscribers on your list. You use dynamic content to create a one-to-one experience for your customers.)

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.

Real vs. Perceived Threats to Email: Part 1 - Addressing Misperceptions

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

The now infamous Wall Street Journal article announcing the death of email sparked a fire in the bellies of email marketers and social media gurus alike. The overwhelming response is that social media is not posing a significant threat to email. To date, all the signs seem to indicate that these two channels will continue to evolve together.

True, there are dissenting voices. However, I have found none that are backed by credible statistical data. Since there is no statistical validity in personal anecdotes, I don’t care (except for the value they provide in forming hypotheses to be tested in future research). I care about what well-founded research tells us about the world at large.

Here is a list of the data sources I have located that reveal the truth about the current state of email use and email marketing:

Pew Internet & American Life: Online Activities Trends

79% of Americans use the Internet
90% of online Americans use email, making it the most popular online activity
57% of Americans check email daily

MarketingSherpa

78% of users email friends a link to information they wish to share with friends over the internet.
22% share through social media
MarketingSherpa’s research directly contradicts research released earlier this year from AddToAny, which suggested people share information twice as often through Facebook as they do through email. However, there were serious issues with the AddToAny research.

USC Annenberg Digital Future Report

How Many Americans Are Using E-mail? -- Almost everyone who goes online uses e-mail (97 percent of all Internet users).
Regular Contact by E-mail -- E-mail users maintain weekly personal e-mail contact with an average of seven people in the current study, down from the peak of nine in 2006. Forty-nine percent of e-mail users said they maintain personal contact by e-mail on a weekly basis with five or more people.

Participatory Marketing Network

Email (26 percent) and text messaging (26 percent) are the activities least likely to be "given up for a week," followed by TV (15 percent), talking on phone (11 percent), visiting social networks (nine percent), reading magazines (seven percent) and visiting non social network sites (six percent).

Pontifelx / Harris Interactive Survey

96% of online adults who have actually taken the step of providing brands personal information have shared their email addresses with marketers
12% of online adults have been willing to share information like their Facebook user name or their Twitter handle with a brand in exchange for information or promotional offers

SmartBreif on Social Media

While not nationally representative, this poll is interesting in that is suggests even social media professionals are not significantly curtailing their use of email.

59% of SmartBreif on Social Media readers (likely to have a heavy disposition toward social media use) report their use of email has stayed about the same despite the growth of social networks.
28% are using slightly less often
11% are using more often
2% of these readers rarely use email

ExactTarget – Is Email Marketing Endangered?

We asked a question similar to the SmartBreif poll, however, the question excludes marketers—so it is a better representation of the population at large.

Net 25% of online consumers report using social networks more often over the past 6 months (42% using more often, 17% using less often)
Net 23% of online consumers report using email more often over the past 6 months (29% using more often, 6% using less often)
Net 21% of online consumers report using text messaging more often over the past 6 months (38% using more often, 17% using less often)
71% of smartphone owners report sending more PERSONAL email on their smartphones than BUSINESS related email—it’s not all business.

ExactTarget – 2009 Channel Preferences Study

57% of online consumers use email most often to send written messages to their friends, over text messaging (24%) and social networks (10%)
75% of online consumers prefer to receive permission-based promotional messages through email—up 3.6% from 2008—followed by 17% who prefer direct mail promotions and 4% who prefer text promotions.
More than half of online consumers have made a purchase as the direct result of and email message they received, more than any other online communication channel.

Forrester Consulting – Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power

34% of marketers believe email will become more effective over the next two years, 19% believe it will be less effective
Asked why marketers believe email will be more effective:
- 74% believe their email communications are getting more relevant
- 58% see email as an integral part of their multichannel activities
- 44% believe customers prefer email as a marketing channel

That is not to say there are not threats to the future success of email. Stay tuned for part two where I share insights from a panel I moderated at Connections last week where Julie Katz from Forrester, Rebecca Lieb from eConsultancy, and Stefan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa were asked to share their takes on the real versus perceived threats to email marketing.

Is Mobile Email Driving Consumers to a Disappointing Experience?

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

As outlined in our recent whitepaper, Is Email Marketing Endangered?, Smartphones are a major force behind consumers increasing consumption of email. As such, the importance of mobile email for email marketers will continue to increase. While the solutions remain less than ideal, Mark Brownlow has done a wonderful job of summarizing the challenges of mobile email and linking to useful resources on the topic.

But getting mobile email to work is only the first step. Assuming your email is successful in getting consumers to your site, they need to be able to actually do something. This appears to be a challenge. According to new research from Equation Research commissioned by Gomez Inc., end users are disappointed with their mobile web experience.

Among findings of the report:

60% of consumers have encountered a problem when accessing a website from their mobile phone during the past 12 months

The number one reason cited was slow load times (73%). There are a number of factors that may impact load times that are out of marketers’ control. However, the other top reasons are all things that marketers should be able to test and rectify:

* 51% experienced errors or crashes on the mobile site

* 48% said formatting of the mobile site made it difficult to use
* 45% had issues with the site functioning as expected

Among common formatting errors, the study identified content that is too large or too small for the screen, links that do not work, and overlapping or illegible text and graphics.

Poor mobile experiences impact brand perception

Consumers have high expectations of mobile sites—they should load quickly, look good, and function properly. The consequences of not meeting these expectations are also high. While it makes sense that consumers would be less likely to visit the site again (61%) and that they would visit a competitors site (40%), the negative impact on the brand at large is more alarming:

* 23% would be less likely to purchase from that company
* 19% would have a negative overall impression of the company
* 18% would be less likely to go to the company’s website on their regular computer

If mobile experiences impact consumers’ willingness to interact with companies at large, we can’t think of mobile as simply another channel. It is part of the communication landscape at large. It is not about developing mobile campaigns, it is about facilitating users ability to get the information they need at their convenience.

Thus, not only do optimizing mobile email and optimizing the mobile web go hand in hand, but both of these go hand in hand with optimizing our traditional email and web experiences as well. It’s all connected.

Take a look at the full report Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-Users.

Do people really report legitimate email as spam?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by Karen Balle

Gmail and MSN Hotmail have recently started offering an unsubscribe link instead of a report spam button for some permission-based mailing lists, using the hidden X-List-Unsubscribe header that many email marketers and ESPs include in their emails. It makes sense, as many people use the This is Spam button instead of unsubscribing from opt-in email.

A customer asked us for some solid numbers on their unsubscribes, as they're trying to make some internal decisions on how to handle their unsubscribe process. I knew the number of subscribers who click on the spam button was significant, but the numbers were eye-opening. I looked at data for almost 80,000,000 emails sent (Yes, 80 MILLION emails), with complaint rates that never came near where an ISP would block and bounce rates that would make you drool.

17% of unsubscribes came from customers who hit reply and asked to be removed.
43% of unsubscribes came from customers who followed the unsubscribe link in the email.
40% of unsubscribes came from customers who clicked the This is Spam button.

That's right. 40% of legitimate unsubscribes came through the feedback loop as a complaint. ISPs take this figure into account, but it should give you something to think about next time you look to expand your email campaign.

Even though they recognized the brand.

Even though they signed up for the email.

Even though they recently purchased from the company.

Even though many of them will continue to purchase services from this company.

On a list with engaged and active subscribers, 40% of the subscribers who no longer wanted to receive promotional materials that they had signed up for used the spam button instead of the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

Delivering Relevant News

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by Lisa White

The majority of people in the US prefer television as their source of news, followed by daily newspaper, radio and online sources. Even though it is currently being beat by other news sources, a study found that US adults currently get close to 15% of the their news from online sources, which is an increase from 12.7% the previous year.

It would be interesting to see if more targeted email marketing would help give the internet the edge over tv and radio as a news provider. Online news providers can target their audience geographically to give subscribers local news that is relevant to them. Moreover, they can target the subscribers by preferences to give them easier access to stories that align with their interests. The power of one to one marketing would allow for subscribers to receive news that is personalized particularly for them.

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.

Email Design Tip of the Week: 3-2-1, Wait! A Checklist Before Hitting Send

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Andrea Smith

written by David Hoang

Question: When do email marketing professionals usually take a break or step out?

Answer: When he or she just hit the “send” button for a mass email.

There is nothing more nerve wracking than hitting the button with no return. Unlike web publishing, there is no turning back with email. So what’s the solution? You can say, “don’t make any mistakes” – but it’s inevitable. What you can do, however, is strategically make a checklist of what to do before hitting the send button to make sure mistakes are avoided.

Here are some quick tips on what you should run through your mind; so you don’t have to leave the building after delivering an email:

Is it legit? After every round of revisions, always validate the message; the simplest way to see if you have everything to get it out the door: physical address, unsubscribe link, etc.
Do an email test. It's practically unheard of wherein you send out a mass email campaign without testing; so don’t do it. Set up a few test email accounts (Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, AOL, etc.) and spend some time to see how it looks in each email client.
Spell check. Repeat. Your email delivery is intended for 1-to-1 marketing, so write like you’re taking quality time to communicate with your subscribers. Run spell check, manually look for spelling errors and yes, read the message out loud. If this seems like too much work, make someone else do it!

As much as email marketing is mass-produced, the one-to-one messaging is its key to effectiveness. Therefore taking time to communicate a message and doing it correctly, with no spelling and grammatical errors, should be top priority. Not only will avoiding these common pitfalls save you face, it will also make your recipients feel like you have taken that extra step to make sure it's perfect.

Check the details. Take a look at every aspect of your message to make sure something is not missing. Do you have a subject line? Is it the correct one? Do all of the links in the email go to the proper pages?
Do a final once-over. Think of this as when you were taught crossing the street. Look left, look right, then look left again. Test your email to make sure that there are no mistakes, especially if revisions were made. Scan with the mindset that you are looking for mistakes. If you don’t find them, hit the send button.

Ultimately, you want to come up with a method that's most comfortable to you. Make an actual checklist and cross off the steps as you prepare the send. With a routine checklist in mind, you can hopefully sit back and relax (a little bit more) after delivery.

Connections 09: More Subscribers Rule

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Shelly Griffin

This morning I am attending Connections 09 breakout session focused on growing your email marketing subscriber base with Morgan Stewart serving as commentator. This concept is a great follow-up to my recent posts on how to grow your email marketing list.

8:30am - 50% of consumers consider non-permission email from companies that they are familiar with as Spam...that number has doubled year over year.

8:45am - what are they keys to growing your subscriber base? Asking basic questions of your subscribers...do they want to receive email from you and what kind of email do they want to receive? Then what? Make sure you have a strong follow-up after registration. Don't leave your subscribers hanging.

9:00am - Email and social networking...building stronger relationships through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. You can offer exclusive discounts through these networks to drive subscribers to your email list. Ensure that the process is a closed loop...getting subscribers to a landing page with good creative and a good call to action and then getting the data you need to be able to market to that subscriber. Knowing the source from where your subscribers some...whether from co-registration pages, social networks, referrals (forward-to-a-friend). Between the source and the data, you can drive the right message to each subscriber and stop "marketing to the masses".

9:10am - List append is "bad"...it may make you money but you just left the taste of spam in your subscribers mouth.

9:15am - the number of tactics and touch-points that can be used to grow ur subscriber list can and should be many...your subscribers are not just sitting at their computers looking through the internet. They are on the go, so you need to be where they are - mobile, Facebook, Twitter, print - everywhere.

1-to-1 Marketing and Beyond: Success Stories

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross

When you hear The World Society for the Protection of Animals you probably don't think of a standard B2C with a targeted marketing message. Even so, this group has achieved a 50% increase in online donations with the power of 1-to-1 marketing tools, specifically dynamic content through ExactTarget.

Meanwhile, Motorcycle Superstore realized double-digit increases in open rates as a result of integrating online browsing and purchase data into their email marketing decisions. In this case, the ExactTarget tool driving the relevant message to the customer was the integration with Webtrends.

In another case, the online photo book publisher, Inkubook, announces that email marketing through ExactTarget drove more than 60% of its first year revenue. While PetPlace.com went from zero to $1 million in online sales in less than 12 months with the help of ExactTarget email campaigns.

It doesn't matter whether you're selling sidecars or gathering signatures on a petition, people are more likely to hear your message when you're saying something that's important to them. Using the tools that help you send a more customized messages not only create more fertile ground for conversions, but also create more fertile ground for building a lasting relationship.

Success in Honoring Subscriber Requests

Monday, October 12, 2009 by Amanda Cross

Industries have their seminal moments that affect the direction of their development from that point forward. I see one of those happening right now in email marketing: the dialog between marketer and customer about what the customer wants to receive.

Powell's Books is among the pack leaders and is reaping the benefits, as this story on InternetRetailer.com describes:

Powell’s Books has been sending shoppers e-mail newsletters recommending books on subjects the recipients told the retailer they enjoyed. The e-mails were opened 70% more than generic marketing e-mails sent by Powell’s.

The campaign, launched in February, allows consumers to choose from 10 e-newsletters on various topics, such as romance or literature, and then sends the applicable newsletter via e-mail. “The Subject newsletters are proof positive that the more focused the content, the more likely customers are to interact,” says San Whitmore, online marketing developer.

Marketing email content driven off subscriber information has been and continues to be a powerful mechanism to get personalized content into the subscriber inbox, but when it's feasible and appropriate, asking the consumer directly is even better.

The Success of Behavioral Targeting: Earning Consumer Trust

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

A recent study performed by the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law, and the Annenberg Public Policy Center reports that Americans believe marketers should not advertise to them based on preferences and behavioral data…But why? In a marketplace of abundant information and almost innumerable and varied products, why don’t consumers desire some assistance to narrow down their selection? Why don’t people appreciate that marketers want to provide them with relevant advertising? If I am going to see advertisements on a website…and there is no question that I will…I would much rather see advertisements that pertain to my interests. Wouldn’t you?

The Annenberg/Berkeley study reports that 66% of Americans do not want to see website ads that are tailored to their interests. This sounds discouraging, but I believe the information provided by this study offers valuable insight for marketers seeking to capitalize on relevant, 1 to 1 marketing efforts. This study’s stats highlight consumers’ desire for control and trust—observations that can inform behavioral web and email marketing strategy.

Advertising preference is not the only metric this study provides, as eMarketer’s article “Behavioral Targeting Misses Mark” points-out. There are several other, seemingly contradictory metrics this study reports that can help us solve this puzzle. For example, close to 50% of Americans would like websites to give them discounts specific to their interests. Hmmm…So you don’t want to see the ads, but you do want the coupons presented in those ads? Puzzling…let’s dig deeper.

eMarketer highlights another Annenberg/Berkeley metric: 67% of all Americans feel that they have “lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by companies,” and at the same time 54% of Americans believe that “existing laws and organizational practices provide a reasonable level of protection for consumer privacy.”

This issue is one of trust, not necessarily the failure of behavioral marketing. Consumers like discounts, but people feel as if they have lost control over their personal information, and no one likes to feel like they have lost control. As a Catapult at ExactTarget, I spent two days in Chicago with fellow Catapults, interviewing people on their marketing preferences. Overwhelmingly, people expressed that they felt their personal information was abused by spammers and companies they had no relationship with. Yes, there are “reasonable” laws regarding consumer privacy, but consumers ask, “Why do I get so much spam?!” “How did they get my email address? My phone number?”

When asked how they felt about tracking on “websites in general,” people stated that they felt behavioral tracking was creepy and “Big Brother-like.” On the flipside, when given a concrete example, like Amazon.com’s personalized product recommendations that appear when browsing the website, interviewees’ tone changed: “Yes, I find that helpful, but they don’t send me a million emails after I buy something and pester me all the time. And, I have a relationship with them.”

Lesson learned: people want to feel safe, respected, and protected. Amazon.com is not scary, because they have a trustworthy reputation. As marketers, we cannot neglect that relationships are the foundation for business. Leverage your landing pages, emails, voicemails, and SMS organically to build trust with clients, at point of sale, for example. In your emails, provide a reminder of how clients signed-up. Provide a link in your emails to a page on your website that explains how you use subscriber information. Perhaps you should only advertise on trusted websites. Finally, don’t be abusive: be cognizant of email frequency and content.

I encourage you to check out our whitepapers on building quality lists direct marketing channel preferences. Use our List Growth Advisor for custom recommendations on how to responsibly grow your subscriber lists so that you can leverage subscriber data respectfully and effectively. Behavioral tracking does not have to "miss the mark."

User engagement. What does it mean?

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Karen Balle

Al Iverson and I spend a lot of time talking about user engagement. It's been around for a very long time, but it's now a standard for inbox delivery. How do you define engagement? Quality over quantity. Targeted email marketing. True one to one communication. But what does it really mean to you? How does it make for a more effective email marketing campaign? If permission is king, engagement is emperor.

How do you create an effective marketing campaign that keeps your customers coming back in the age of DVRs, satellite radio, and short attention spans? How do you get your customers to pay attention? This is vital now for inbox delivery. Yahoo has started measuring whether or not your recipients are spending time reading your email, whether they're looking for you in the spam folder, how vital you are to their daily lives.

I found a gentleman today who gets what it means to really engage with your customers. You can visit Bob Gilbreath over at Marketing with Meaning and download a chapter of his book, The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning.

He gets it. This concept of engagement, and he calls it meaning. Marketing now, whether it is effective offline or effective email marketing, can no longer be interruptive to your customers' lives. Your communications with them need to be not only permission-based but need to add some value to their daily lives.

When you create email campaigns, what do you do to add value? How do your targeted email marketing campaigns add to your recipients daily lives? What do you put in your marketing campaign or to your email newsletter that drives your recipients to want to spend time with your company?

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