Every afternoon, I receive a message with links to press releases and industry articles from our PR firm.  It's a great way to stay on top of what's happening with ExactTarget and in the email marketing industry.  All from the comfort of my uncomfortable office chair.

As I perused through today's issue, I noticed yet another article about mobile email marketing.  While reading the article, I realized that something was amiss: it's just not that simple.  There are too many factors (i.e. phone type, operating system, email client) and too many scenarios (i.e. checking on the run, reading in full, saving for later) to provide any type of blanket statements (i.e. design like this, segment like that) about mobile email marketing.

We know people use it.  And we know that as marketers we should pay attention to that.  But beyond that, we should proceed with caution. 

Last month, Morgan Stewart, our Director of Research & Strategy, wrote a great article about the complications of mobile email marketing -- and how there is no easy fix.  And last summer, our strategic services team conducted the most extensive consumer study to date on mobile email marketing.  The results may surprise you.

For example, our research shows that some recipients are actually thrown off by mobile-specific text on the messages.  And designing for "mobile-only reading" assumes that your recipient isn't going to open the message again on their computer (which many recipients report they do!)

That research is still available in ExactTarget's Email Marketing for the Third Screen Whitepaper.  Yes, I know it's a whitepaper (ugh!) and that it's lengthy (yuk!).  But if you're serious about mobile email marketing, it's well worth the time to read. 

To date, I have yet to find another resource that provides so much data to back up so many recommendations about mobile email marketing.  And no, Morgan didn't bribe me to say that.*  This article from February, also on the DMNews blog, provides some good general (and cautionary!) recommendations. 

Cheers,
Ashley
Manager, Marketing Communications

P.S. We're working hard with our strategists to finalize a brand new whitepaper this month on consumer messaging preferences.  If you liked Email Marketing for the Third Screen, you'll definitely want to keep an eye out for it!

* I accept bribe payment in the forms of celebrity gossip magazine subscriptions and gift certificates for my local spa.

So I just had a rather troubling realization: I'm officially a blog hog. When I hopped onto our blog today to read Ashley's new post about triggered email, I scrolled down and saw about the last 17 posts in a row...were mine.

Well, friends, here's #18. Take that.

As our InSight readers know, this month we're focusing on triggered email. Though many people assume triggered email only applies to marketing (like eNewsletters or sales reminders), that's just the tip of the iceberg. Triggered email can encompass everything from eBills and account notifications to shipping confirmations and abandoned cart remarketing messages.

But how many of you marketers out there are using the same email system as your operations or account services teams?...*crickets*...

Well you're in luck -- we're hosting a webinar May 1st that'll help you (and anyone else using email at your organization) understand how triggered email fits into your overall business strategy. A combined effort from our own thought leaders and client Danskin, this webinar will give you a new outlook on triggered email.

So register for The New Breed of Triggered Email Marketing Webinar and see what all the fuss is about. And bring that developer from upstairs -- and your favorite customer support rep -- and maybe even your account services director too, just for good measure. Plus, I'm working on a cool new deliverable for attendees -- so you'll hurt my feelings if you don't come!

...*crickets*...

Yeah, I'm needy like that.

Nicole
Marketing Communications Associate

With tax season at its annual April 15th climax, my attention has naturally been focused on one thought, and one thought only: I hope TurboTax got the math right, because frankly it would stink to be audited.  Never having been audited, I picture the process being about as enjoyable as an evening singing Alvin & The Chipmunks karaoke…with Celine Dion.

There is one type of audit, however, that I can whole-heartedly support—the email marketing audit.  I conducted my first email marketing audit on behalf of a client back in 2003, and honestly, neither the process nor the tremendous ROI upside has changed that much since then.  In a nutshell, to conduct an email marketing audit, you:

• Identify & map the different types emails that are being sent to customers, prospects, partners, and other constituents
• Interview internal staff and external partners who play any part in creating or delivering emails to your various audiences
• Document the systems—ecommerce, CRM, ESP, etc.—through which these messages are being sent
• Document the points of current integration between these systems, if any
• Document the email creation, broadcast, and reporting process
• Analyze the creative being used across all of the different message types
• Analyze any available performance data for the different message types
• Make prioritized recommendations on how to improve performance and streamline processes based on your findings

Does this email marketing audit process require a significant investment of time and effort?  Absolutely.  Is the ROI worth the investment?  Yes—but only if your organization is committed to turn the audit recommendations into reality. 

A thorough email marketing audit uncovers all sorts of “low-hanging fruit” opportunities for marketers.  The quick wins often range from improved design to verifiable delivery to the holy grail of one-to-one marketing—a consolidated view of all enterprise messaging at the individual subscriber level. 

Even more importantly, triggered emails that were once the shadowy purview of IT or e-commerce developers now appear clearly on the marketing team’s radar for review and optimization.  Examples of such triggered emails include:

• Welcome emails
• Automated replies (from customer service, HR, product, and other inquiries)
• Order confirmations
• Shipping alerts and confirmations
• Abandoned shopping cart notices
• Account alerts
• Registration confirmations
• Event reminders
• Membership confirmations
• Service notices (including those relating to service disruptions)
• Account expiration notices

If you know your organization is sending out any of these types of triggered emails—but your marketing department lack visibility into the creation, design & deployment—then it may be time to don your best blue suit and start auditing.  You’ll be surprised by how quickly you’re able to identify opportunities for improvement.

For more information on ExactTarget’s extensive email marketing audit services, please contact us.  For a more ideas on how to set up and conduct an email marketing audit on your own, check out Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Audit Kit.   

It's not often I bask in the glories of admiration for the US Postal Service, but yesterday was an exception.

As previously mentioned, I'm in the process of moving. And it's kind of a pain, considering the 192 change-of-address notification I need to make in the next two weeks. Last night, I decided to start with the US Postal Service because they offer a simple online form (with a $1 credit card charge).

After inputting the standard info, I had the chance to get special "new mover" discounts from national retails like Lowe's and JC Penney. Surprised, I happily ticked a couple boxes and submitted my form. Their system automatically triggered an email confirmation, so I popped into my Gmail expecting a half-baked, text-heavy, government-esque email.

Oh contraire.

A professional-looking HTML email awaited me instead with the necessary confirmation details. As I browsed the rest of the message, however, I realized they'd prepopulated the special offers I selected for Lowe's and JC Penney. I clicked through on the Lowe's offer and arrived at a nice landing page offering me a "new mover discount of 10% on my next purchase."

And here -- I'm proud to say -- I converted.

Yup, I filled in my info and landed on a Lowe's confirmation page which included an optional survey asking which areas of my home (*cough) I was interested in improving. My guess is, if I'd actually ticked any boxes -- my offer email would have included some specialized info for those rooms. Regardless, they had decided to use confirmation page real estate to learn more about their new subscribers.

By this point, I was pretty impressed with the entire experience.

So I went back to explore the rest of my US Postal Service email. At the bottom, they thought to include links to other places I needed to change my address -- like the IRS, car registration (which was automatically redirected to the appropriate state based on my new address), and voter registration. It was a welcome helping hand for someone trying to make sure she's thought of everything!

Well, enough swooning over the US Postal Service. Let me just finish with two observations: 1) I think about email WAY too much, and 2) It's possible to really impress your subscribers by offering a clean, cohesive, simple email experience.

Kudos, USPS, kudos.

Nicole
Marketing Communications Associate

I don't know anyone who likes moving. So either I have "half glass empty" friends, or the world has figured out that moving is a royal pain in the...anyway.

Here are some of my favorite things about moving:

1. Running out of packing bubbles and wadding 923 Kleenex together to cushion your box of dishes.
2. Calling utility companies, the BMV, and the U.S. Postal Service with your change of address.
3. Painting your old place back to "eggshell" (best practice: 5 coats).
4. Paying nearly a month's rent to hire movers to cart your Kleenex-Corelle, furniture, and clothes to avoid shamelessly abusing your friends who are unlucky enough to drive pick-up trucks.
5. Scouring apartment guides online, scheduling walk-throughs, and juggling 15 "in the works" living options.

You guessed it -- I'm moving. And I'm super excited!!! Not.

At least I wasn't until I found some apartments doing their part to make my life easier. How? They let me set preferences through their websites (# bedrooms, move-in date, price...) and sign up for SMS or email alerts.

Here's one pitch:

"No need to constantly check back to see if an apartment you want has become available. Be notified automatically by email and/or cell phone text alerts when there are new matches based on your apartment criteria."

Now instead of trying to juggle everything on my own, the most relevant information can be delivered to my figurative doorstep through the channel I prefer. Love it.

And the result? I'm signed, sealed, and delivered in under two months.

Welcome Home.

Nicole
Marketing Communications Associate

Melinda Baxter, Director of Marketing Services

We talk about email design as the seamless merging of design and technology to deliver powerful business results.  A few of the Designers at ExactTarget sat down to answer some questions about the “day in the life” of an email marketing designer that loves the challenge to deliver business success through design.

What is the background of an Email Marketing Designer?

I have always been a “visual” person, graduating from I.U.’s Herron School of Art and Design with a degree in Visual Communications. I am a designer of brands, print ads, logos, and all types of marketing communications.  My inner geek loves to bring my design skills to pixel perfection.
- Justine
__________________________________________________________________________

I have been designing since I was a kid – illustrations, characters, computer graphics, and animation.  I studied Animation at Purdue’s school of Technology bringing my love of design to computerized mediums. Since then I have been addicted to moving innovative design into powerful interactive media.
- Tim
__________________________________________________________________________

I have designed since birth – never without a sketch pad, moving from crayons to oils to Adobe Creative Suite. I have a fine arts background that enables me to design convincingly and artfully to deliver business results.
- Lacey
____________________________________________________________________________

My background is in graphic design - print, web, motion graphics, video editing.  I have a good aptitude to learn new media and skills and love the challenge each new media offers. I have always been customer-facing in my career, so understand how to focus on the business opportunity the design needs to solve.
- Chris
____________________________________________________________________________

So, why did you choose to become a designer for email marketing?

I love to solve customer business challenges through visual communications.  Taking my love and appreciation of design to build an intelligent, highly motivating communication is a blend of my passions.
- Justine
____________________________________________________________________________

I am a problem-solver.  The opportunity to master the ever-changing email marketing landscape through a combination of design and html coding nuances is a great daily job for me.  I have the tenacity to keep trying until the email is the best it can be.
- Tim
_____________________________________________________________________________

Email is the most pervasive and impactful communication medium today.  For a designer the palette is rich with creative opportunity to explore and test its potential.  It is an entrepreneurial dream that continues to expand as the environment changes constantly.
- Chris
____________________________________________________________________________

As an artist, I thrive on exploring new ways to express ideas in design that create a response.  I have the opportunity to design for numerous small and large companies, across a wide range of industries to keep my talent fresh and evolving.
- Lacey
_____________________________________________________________________________

What skills do you think serve you best as an Email Marketing Designer?

Definitely design skills.  Working for top companies across the world, they expect great design interpretation of their brand.  It is really important that my designs are synergistic with their web site and offline communications to build trust in email.  Yet, email is its own unique medium with a very different design strategy to be successful.
- Lacey
___________________________________________________________________________

Agreed. Design skill is really the starting point.  Every medium has a unique environment to take into consideration, and email is certainly challenging due to the lack of standards around how the email will display from one email client to another (AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, etc...).  Understanding how HTML renders – and taking this into consideration as you design - is a necessity.
- Justine
_____________________________________________________________________________

Hunger and persistence to find solutions to design and build emails in this standards-free environment is really important.  It isn’t an afterthought, but an integrated part of the design process.  Testing is an on-going process, for each and every email design.
- Tim
_____________________________________________________________________________

There is on-going need for retention of cumulative knowledge to stay best-in-class in this constantly changing environment.  Knowledge from testing results, changes in the industry, consumer trends and design trends need to be incorporated into all designs.  It’s about results, not just attractive designs.
- Chris

Let’s be frank…designers are great.  They wear the coolest clothes, carry the coolest gadgets, and fill their next generation iPods with only the coolest of tunes.  Granted, their spelling could use some work – but I’m willing to forgive that as long as they keep me on the invitation list to their exclusive parties.

That said, when dealing with designers on certain email projects, I have been reminded of the old saying:
 
To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Or, to put it in design terms:

To a designer with Photoshop, everything looks like a canvas to be filled.

The truth with email design, however, is that less is often more.  Consider  an email alert.  Email alerts are sent for a variety of reasons, including:

• An emergency requiring immediate action or response
• A timely correction to information contained in a previous email or other communication
• A notice to subscribers of a service issue or disruption
• A breaking news story

In each of these situations, there is a single, primary purpose for the message — to communicate a time-sensitive piece of information quickly and clearly to subscribers.  In situations like this, the best designs are those that are nearly invisible to the recipient.  There’s a logo to confirm the message source, and a font selection that ensures maximum legibility — there might even be an executive signature to punctuate the message with a sense of its importance.

If you’re blessed with an intuitive designer, they may instinctively understand the difference in design needs between an email alert and a promotional email.  If not, it would be wise to work with your design team to develop a simple email template to have on hand in case you’re faced with a situation warranting an email alert.  Less can be more—but only if you’re as conscious in the design or your email alerts as you are with your email promotions.
 
As the late, great designer Charles Earns said, “Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.”  Whether you’re an email designer, developer or consultant, the more you can help define the need to be served, the better your design (or lack thereof) will ultimately be.

Network World just published a great interview with Yahoo's Mark Rischer, anti-abuse product manager for Yahoo Mail.

Highlights:

• More than 40% of inbound mail to Yahoo is authenticated with DomainKeys.

• Yahoo blocks un-authenticated messages that claim to be from eBay or Paypal. They have no plans (as of yet?) to do this in a broader fashion for other domains.

• Will Yahoo be sending un-authenticated messages through more filtering than if they were authenticated? Yes.

You can read the full interview here. It's quite insightful. What I get out of it is that email authentication is the future, and the future is now.

Need help with email authentication? ExactTarget can help! Our Sender Authentication Package covers all the common authentication methods, including DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Contact your account services representative for more information.

If you're like me, you have as many email addresses as pairs of shoes.  Just keeping the inbox clean can be a daily challenge.  To help manage them I find myself constantly unsubscribing from email lists that at one time filled a need but now just serve as clutter. After all, I can always subscribe again . No worries, right?

So, what does letting your audience unsubscribe have to do with staying off an Internet Service Provider's (ISP) blacklist? Glad you asked! Just the other day I tried to unsubscribe from a large corporation's email list but, to my surprise and chagrin, there was no way to do so. But of course there was a nice "Subscribe" link prominently displayed in the header. So, now my choices are either A), continue receiving email I don't want or B), mark it as SPAM. Hmmm? What to do? What to do?

Just imagine if this were your email campaign and others wanted off your mailing list. Every recipient that marks your message as SPAM pushes you ever closer to dreaded blacklist. Ouch! Avoid this potential painful lesson and stay compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act by having a "visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism" present in every email. It doesn't have to be the most prominent part of your message but it does need to be accessible.

Besides, do you really want to keep members on your email lists against their will? You're now paying good money to send an email to someone who is most likely going to delete it unread. Do the right thing. Let them unsubscribe. For more info on how to stay CAN-SPAM compliant read our  free email marketing whitepaper Enterprise Email: Managing Risks and Liabilities.

Ryan Oldfather
Internet Marketing Manager

According to two sources I trust implicitly—J.R.R. Tolkien and Drew Barrymore (okay, technically I trust her character in Donnie Darko)—the most beautiful combination of words in the English language is “cellar door.”  Now, you can debate this assertion all you want.  But to do so would be fruitless unless you’ve penned a tome as lengthy and beloved as “Lord of the Rings” or you won the hearts of millions in E.T. the Extraterrestrial.

So, rather than debate the most beautiful combination of words in the English language, I would like to propose the ugliest.  Here goes:

Email List

Hold on…let it sink in for a bit.  Do you feel the fingernails scraping down your mental chalkboard? If not, take a moment and consider what one of your subscribers hears when these words are spoken.  Do you think they feel special, unique or valuable?  Or is it more likely that they feel like a nameless, faceless number?

Language matters.  And when we focus on issues concerning the “email list” instead of the needs of our “email subscribers,” we do ourselves a great disservice.  We focus on us and our needs as opposed to our subscribers—our customers—and their needs. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a marketer proclaim “we have to grow our list!”  When pressed, however, these marketers readily admit that list growth isn’t the real goal.  Their real goal is increasing the number of subscribers who respond to their email program by purchasing or responding or interacting in some measurable way.

If you share a similar objective, I’d like to suggest a simple, semantic exercise to help focus your efforts. For the next month, try substituting “subscribers” for “list” in your email marketing vocabulary.  Give up trying to “grow your list” in favor of trying to add subscribers and increase your knowledge of their unique needs. 

The exercise may be simple, but the perspective gained will help you avoid burn and churn tactics in favor of programs built to maximize subscriber value.

Subscriber-centric.  Now those are beautiful words.

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.  ~John Wooden

I love that quote.  Philanthropy is so important−and I am continually impressed and inspired by leaders who have built the mindset of corporate philanthropy directly into their culture.  Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, has authored a couple books on the subject.  His book titled “The Business of Changing the World” is a great read and describes how Salesforce.com donates 1% of employee’s time, 1% of company equity, and 1% of sales via no-cost product for non-profits. 

At ExactTarget, we also strive to make a difference in our local community and communities around the world.  One of the ways we give back is through providing substantial discounts on our software and services to qualifying non-profit organizations.  In addition, we have a steering committee of dedicated and compassionate individuals who lead our local community and philanthropic efforts.  Around here, they’re commonly known as ExactImpact (Involving Members Passionate About Community Ties).

I had the pleasure of announcing the efforts of our ExactImpact group in 2006. This year, the summary list of accomplishments has grown substantially. Here are some of our 2007 highlights:

• January
-- Employees challenged each other to raise money for the Riley Change Angels event.

• February
-- 430 pounds of food were collected and donated to Gleaners Food Bank.

• March
-- 30 pints of blood were donated during an ExactTarget blood drive. (That’s enough blood to save 90 lives!)

• April
-- The “ExactBark-It” team raised money for Indianapolis animals in need during the Humane Society Mutt-Strut.

• July
-- An additional 30 pints of blood were donated by ExactTarget employees.
-- Approximately two boxes of school supplies per floor were collected for the Backpack Attack.

• August
-- Employees raised money to benefit the Gleaners Food Bank.

• October
-- Employees participated in the Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

• December
-- Five families (19 people, including 13 children) were sponsored by ExactTarget employees through the Christamore House. Gifts were purchased by ExactTarget employees, and a company raffle was held to raise additional money for the families.
-- A Wal-Mart gift card was also given to a local family devastated by a house fire.

Thank you to the many ExactTarget employees who have made a difference─both through personal contributions and countless hours of time.  We look forward to making an even bigger impact in 2008.

If you have suggestions on how ExactTarget can make a difference, please send an email to exactimpact@exacttarget.com.

There is a trend in the software industry to expose one’s core infrastructure via APIs to allow other businesses to leverage that infrastructure to build new applications.  Who is moving in this direction?  Amazon, Google and Salesforce.com all offer APIs that allow ISVs to leverage their infrastructure to develop applications on their platforms. 

ExactTarget Embedded is ExactTarget’s new product offering for developers and ISVs.  The ExactTarget Embedded web service APIs to allow ISVs to leverage our messaging and deliverability infrastructure to develop applications within or on top of their applications.  One can quickly get to market with less up front capital investment by building applications on ExactTarget’s suite of web services.  More importantly, letting ExactTarget manage the deliverability and back end process of sending email takes the burden off of development resources, freeing them up to work on other tasks.

Here is a summary of ExactTarget Embedded:
http://email.exacttarget.com/ETWeb/partners_embedded_detail.aspx

ISVs both big and small are finding value in leveraging large capital investments made by ExactTarget and other software companies.  Here are some similar examples from Amazon, Salesforce.com, and Google:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=3435361

Salesforce.com
http://www.salesforce.com/platform/

Google
http://code.google.com/more/#label=APIs&product=gdata

If my inbox is any indication, list growth was a common goal set for this year.  In the past week, I have been asked for information on email appends and other list growth tactics by several clients a day.

Most email append providers offer what we call an "opt-out" email append service.  The process looks something like this:

1) Client provides a file containing street addresses of customers or prospects that is matched against a database. Where a match to the client's list is found, the email address is appended to the record.

2) An email is then sent to the individuals on the newly created list with the option to opt out. (Interestingly, many email append companies advertise the low number of opt-outs that are received... but more on that in a minute)

3) After allowing some time for people to opt-out (typically a week), two files are returned to the customer. The first file is a list of successfully appended and delivered emails. The second is a list of opt-out emails to be used for suppression.

Cost

We have worked with several third parties on email append projects with clients. Pricing is competitive in this industry with rates from reputable email append providers starting around $0.50 per appended email address with significant discounts based on volume. Pay attention, since there are hundreds of companies that advertise significantly lower rates. If someone quotes you rates starting at $0.05, or even $0.10, per email append... RUN!

Issues with Opt-out Append

1) Those low opt-out rates are not a good thing.

One prominent player in the email append space advertises, "Less than one-fourth of one percent choose to opt out." No one should be impressed by this since opt-out rates are always low.  The industry wide average opt-out rate is about one-tenth of one percent. So, quoting one-fourth of one percent suggests that their average opt-out rate is 2.5 times higher than the industry averages.  Not good!

2) Quantity, not quality.

The opt-out approach to email appends provides no incentives for the email append provider to ensure that the names will be responsive. They get paid by the address they provide back to you, regardless of whether or not the address is responsive. While reputable providers do have an interest in repeat business and referrals, which is some incentive, the fact still remains that you pay for the email addresses you receive back at the end of this process. The only requirements are that the email address is deliverable and they did not opt-out to a single email sent to them as part of the process.  These are embarassingly low thresholds. In my experience, addresses acquired through opt-out append are less responsive than new registrants from other sources. At least part of this can be attributed to “recipient dilution”, which you can read more about in Al’s recent post. At the end of the day, you just end up paying for a lot of deadweight.

3) "Opt-out" is not permission.

Why is this important? Because lists that are not permission-based result in higher unsubscribe rates, higher percentage of people clicking this "This is SPAM" button, and lower open, click-through, and conversion rates. These factors lead to problems with your online reputation, and thus, your ability to get your email delivered. Just because someone does not unsubscribe or report you as SPAM the first time you send an email to them (as part of the opt-out append process) is no indication that they will not do so later. The best predictor of someone reporting you as SPAM is the level of permission you obtained when they were added to your list. "Opt-out" lists, while legal under CAN-SPAM, do not meet the demands of most ISPs receiving your email, significantly increase the likelihood that your email will be blocked, and make it much more difficult to get your email unblocked.

"But all the email addresses are 'double opt-in'!" is a common protest when we bring up this point. Well, yes... maybe at some time they double opted-in for something. But, they never opted-in to anything for you! Permission in marketing is non-transferable.

For that reason, ExactTarget is a permission-based ESP. All ExactTarget clients sign an agreement agreeing that the lists they provide are permission-based and are not permitted to send to opt-out lists using our system.

4) Opt-out append leaves a negative impression with some recipients. 

I have yet to find a way to measure the financial impact of the negative impression that is left in the minds of unwilling recipients of appended emails, but there is no question that there is a dark side. Forrester provides excellent insights based on a survey they conducted in August 2004. "Nearly 50% of likely email subscribers wouldn't mind and would read appended emails from a cataloger. However, appended email blatantly offends between 25% to 39% of consumers, depending on the type of business sending it. And it has hidden risks. About 20% of consumers say that even though they read appended emails, they find them annoying. Another 12% say that although they don't unsubscribe, appended emails annoy them."

5) Results are spotty at best.

MarketingShepra's 2007 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide indicates that of marketers who have tried email appends, more than half said it either didn't work or it wasn't worth the effort.

Part II coming soon... email appends done right!

The number one thing a marketer can do to ensure maximum email deliverability is maintain a good reputation. The vast majority of ISPs decide which mail to accept based on the reputation of your sending IP address. If you are sending mail to names outside of permission; if those recipients don’t expect to hear from you; if you’re continually mailing the same, tired old list for years; these and many other factors can drag down the email reputation of your IP address, increasing the chances of your mail going to the bulk folder (or being blocked outright).

What you’ll find new on this front in 2008 is that ISPs are clamping down more than they’ve ever done before. They’re automating their spam filtering and becoming faster on the trigger. They’re now blocking more quickly, and declining to unblock more often. They’re outsourcing more of their mail delivery choices to third parties. For example, comcast is working with Return Path.  And Yahoo now uses the Spamhaus blacklists.

That’s why it’s becoming more important than ever to proactively ensure maximum deliverability through adherence to permission. If you don’t, you could easily find yourself trapped in a deliverability quagmire that you can’t easily resolve – even though it’s a practice that you received no negative feedback about previously!

ExactTarget has excellent technical tools to help you maximize your deliverability. Our automated feedback loop processing, bounce mail management, and mail server fine-tuning all work together to get as much as your mail to the inbox as possible. Our dedicated deliverability services staff stands ready and waiting to reach out to ISPs as needed to help resolve issues. But, even with all of those steps, reputation and permission remain the true, primary governors of email deliverability success.

The best advice I can give email marketers to start their year is to craft emails that are optimized for the inbox.  Email needs to be given the same attention that is placed on your web and print marketing efforts  It simply cannot be an afterthought or a “digital version” of your print campaign – email is too powerful and has too many variables to be treated as such.  To attain maximum design success this year, marketers must recognize that email has a unique set of challenges and principles that need to be taken into account.

1.  Your email design needs to take into account image blocking, preview pane viewing and the unique nature of the various email clients. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your design is if your subscribers can’t see it!

2.  Make sure your primary call-to-action can be seen in the preview pane by including it in the upper left quadrant of your email. 

3.  By using HTML text for your call-to-action message, you will avoid the image blocking issue as well.  And by seeing a relevant call-to-action, your subscribers will be more likely to download the images, add your email address to their safe sender list, or interact with your email.

4.  Test your email in as many different email clients as you can. This can be accomplished using a service such as Pivotal Veracity or by signing up for free email accounts (Yahoo, Gmail, Windows Live Mail, etc.) and including them on a test list.Despite their differences, you can develop a version of your email that functions well across all the major email clients.

By taking these factors into consideration and giving your email design the attention it deserves, you will increase your chances of email design success.  So take a deep breath and repeat after me: Design with the inbox in mind!

Tim Siukola, Senior Email Campaign Manager

The hoopla has started to calm down, but the impact of the iPhone is becoming crystal clear now. The battle between Apple and RIM is shaping up. B2B marketers hoping that business users are only using Blackberries need to take note. Optimizing your email for mobile rendering on the Blackberry is not going to be the long term answer.

Furthermore, other smartphone manufacturers continue to release phones that seem to be a direct response to the iPhone. Samsung's F700 and the LG Voyager are just a couple of the more notable recent releases.

It seems that iPhone’s full support of HTML on the web and email has fundamentally changed the definition of “mobile internet.”  Where users had grown accustomed to having limited functionality on their mobile devices, the iPhone responds with a clear message, “you don’t need to settle.” iPhone delivered a user-friendly experience that makes huge strides (however imperfect) toward providing a web and email experience that mimics a traditional computer.

Whether or not Apple caught the other manufacturers off-guard or not is a moot point now.  Fact is, that many of the leading mobile manufactures, such as Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson had joined the dotMobi bandwagon prior to the iPhone release. The folks at Apple recognized error of the dotMobi approach, which essentially creates two distinct online worlds--simultaneously creating both a fractured marketing experience and administrative nightmares associated with running parallel sites. Instead, Apple developers facilitated access of the traditional web and email on a mobile device... and by doing so, set a new standard.

In bypassing the dotMobi movement, Apple has done a service to all online and email marketers by creating demand for mobile devices that have full internet functionality, and by showing that it is possible. Email marketing professionals should praise this accomplishment. I believe it is a critical first step toward a solution to the current challenges associated with mobile email rendering.

I am seeing more and more examples of how smart marketers are using email for customer service. And with today’s generation of APIs (Application Program Interfaces), it’s easier than ever to integrate email technology with database technology to deliver fully automated customer service messages – that are personal and timely – and require no human intervention.

Why more companies do not use email to deliver subscription renewal, billing reminders and other “alerts” is beyond me. It’s just good customer service. And for those companies that do, it is becoming a huge competitive advantage. I don’t have the metrics to support my opinion, but I believe we are getting closer to seeing just how important email is in building relationship equity which in turn builds brand equity.

Here’s a good example.

Last week, I received an email from my 23 year old son, Chris, who is typical of today’s “digital media” consumer who prefers the speed and ease of email. His recent experience with an insurance company serves as a good example of what can go wrong when email is not used to alert customers when their policy is about to expire. Here’s his story:

“I came into the office this morning and realized that my car insurance expired on December 23rd. No email was sent to me from (my auto insurance company) alerting me to the fact that my policy was due to expire and inviting me to renew. This caused me to think about how great it would have been to receive an email with anything in the subject line alerting me to my policy's impending expiration.

This leads to two conclusions about email, one fairly obvious.

1. Subject lines are more important in 2008 than ever. We are inundated with email, and subject lines are being skimmed more and more. There's no longer the necessity to entice the recipient with subject lines, you now must communicate the gist of the message in the subject line.

2. This leads me to my second and slightly less obvious point. No longer is it a perk for us to receive emails alerting us to special offers or information that is timely (like policy expiration alerts)…we now expect it. I have paperless billing for everything. I now expect that when I need to be alerted about something -- of interest or importance -- that I will be informed of via email. In fact, I have come to expect this.

Those of us who work in the field of online marketing understand that today, it’s all about ROI. Is there a better way to generate positive ROI than by retaining an existing customer? For two cents - or whatever the going rate is for email - (my auto insurance company) could have made $960 (I can't wait until I'm 25 for cheap insurance!). I'm not a math wiz, but spending two cents to generate a $960 insurance renewal seems like a pretty good ROI!”

EmailStatCenter.com recently released findings from a survey they conducted in September and October of this year on the State of Email Metrics. The survey consisted of 345 respondents, with 55% coming from client side marketers and the remaining 45% coming from agencies and ESPs.

The study provides some decent insight into the challenges that marketers are facing today.  List development, time constraints (which can also be interpreted as resource constraints), and strategy/planning are all areas highlighted both as challenges and as areas for near term focus. 

All of these are critical areas.  We continue to test new list development strategies and will be providing some updates on this topic soon.  Time and resource constraints... building out metrics and making the business case for getting email the attention it requires is a critical first step. Beyond that, recruiting experienced talent in this area is tough.  Strategy and planning is near to my own heart, so I'm glad to see this on the list.  It also makes sense given the considerable growth of our Strategic Services practice in the past two years which focuses the vast majority of its attention on strategy and planning.

Interestingly, another area many indicated as an important near term focus was “metrics and measurement”.  Not that this is interesting in itself, but it puzzles me a bit to see this as the second highest near term focus area (behind list development) and then to see testing ranked lowest in near-term focus.  There are three explanations I have thought of for this:

1) Marketers do not want to start testing until they have better metrics and measurement in place.  If that is the case, I applaud that effort.  The stronger the metrics and the more closely aligned to bottom line business goals those metrics are, the better a program can be optimized through testing.

2) Testing simply is not that appealing.  Given the focus on strategy, planning, and metrics, this does not make sense.  Even with the best plans in place, those plans need to be verified (see my recent post of Marketers Intuition). Moreover, metrics are only good for two things: a) convincing management that we are doing a good job and, b) improving the program—which requires testing new concepts.

3) Past testing has not resulted in the promised results.  Let me be the first to admit that this does happen.  Marketers run tests all the time that do not result in huge gains.  I have run many AB subject line tests during my email marketing career that left little to be desired.  I have also run tests that have blown the doors off a business.  Sometimes it takes 4 or 5 tests to get the knockout, case-study worthy test results.  Not every idea is a good one, but we can't get the huge improvements unless we are willing to fail now and then.  That is precisely why we test!

Welcome to 2008, where the “build” and “features” collide to create solutions.  Here at ExactTarget, 2008 should be an explosive collection of solutions for retail – led by our client’s business objectives and leading industry trends.  Over the next several weeks, I will be posting a flurry of solutions as part of a series on our Retail Email blog.

These will include solutions for:
Hidden treasures of web analytics
Automating abandoned basket emails
Automating check-out abandonment emails
New product alerts by product category (email and mobile)
Price drop alerts (email and mobile)
“In-Stock” notification alerts (email and mobile)
Advanced merchandising powered by SLI Systems, Endeca, Mercado, Celebros
Advanced cross selling powered by Certona, Aggregate Knoweldge
Pragmatic transactional email
Frequency capping by email intent

These programs used to be nearly impossible to execute for ANY Email Service Provider.  So what’s changed?  After a decade working with software companies (many of which were SaaS predecessors) I’ve noticed that there are two types of years: ”build” years and “feature” years.  At ExactTarget, 2007 was one of those rare years in history where “features” and “build” happen simultaneously.

As a “feature" year, it was noteworthy with lots of new “stuff” hitting the ExactTarget application, including enhancements to our:

• Dynamic merchandising solution – Point our application to your website and we’ll syndicate products, cross sells, more.
• Outstanding usability enhancements – Our award winning usability was taken to an even further extreme by streamline your ability to edit content in the context of the email itself
• New transactional email capabilities – All of the power of the ExactTarget email creation process, but with a convenient “single console” for marketers
• And a collection of features far too numerous to mention here!

But a “build year” is just as important.  It’s a year where we take a look at our architecture, our business model, our services organization and say “Will it support our vision for the future?”  Those of you who attended our user conference this fall got a glimpse of just how important that question is to ExactTarget, resulting in:

• A new data center in Las Vegas – This monster data center is up and running in a hot capacity.  This makes ExactTarget the premier ESP when your email is mission critical.
• Significant database re-architecture – It’s not just about performance, it’s about freedom.  From the ability to refresh segments that impact over 8 billion subscriber (last weeks stats), but enhanced security and flexibility
• Unparallel support for custom data — Your world is more than lists of subscriber.  My merchants have complex products relationships, web analytics data, transactional data (from brick and mortar, call center, online, etc).  In what is a remarkable effort, our product team put COMPLETE CONTROL of data into the hands of our customers.
• Support for mobile messaging, voice and RSS were released this year — Moving ExactTarget from the one-to-one emails of today and towards the one-to-one messaging of tomorrow.

The foundation laid in 2007 is sure to result in 2008 being a stellar year!  This is why you will see more innovative solutions from ExactTarget than ever before (and more than any other ESP). The end result will be more sales, to more customers, more frequently…

2007 was a big year for the ExactTarget integration team.  I’m thrilled with the progress and advancements we made with our APIs, so I thought it was only fitting as the year winds down to reflect on some of my favorite integration moments from the past year…

• ExactTarget released our Web Services API on a limited basis this year, which is in addition to our industry-leading REST API.  The Web Services API allows our clients to use SOAP-based API to code their integration calls – exciting stuff!
• We’re currently building an extensive library of calls and increasing the functionality of the Web Services API, which should be generally available in 2008.
• Additionally, we revamped the architecture the REST API runs on to improve performance and stability.
• This fall, ExactTarget released a GUI for content syndication (a.k.a. HTTPGet), which makes the functionality easier to use.  Our Fall 2007 Release also included data extensions for a multi-table structure for subscriber data and the new AMPScript functionality to create dynamic emails based on data extensions.
• The exciting thing about all these new features is that ExactTarget is exposing more of our integration functionality through the UI, rather than just the API.  As we continue to expose this type of functionality in the UI, it means our less-technical user base will be able to use our integration functionality…without having a programmer!
• The new ExactTarget Programs functionality is the beginning of an ongoing effort to automate common activities within ExactTarget (such as important, group refreshes, email sends, etc.)  While this game-changing functionality is currently in limited release, 2008 should offer these exciting capabilities to our entire client base.

Oh, and who can forget raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens?  Just kidding, of course – but in all seriousness, I couldn’t be more proud about the integration strides we made in 2007.  I hope you’re just as excited as I am to see what advancements will happen in 2008!

Jessica Koch
Integration Consultant