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Designing For Your Subscribers: Webinar Q&A

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Justine Jordan
Thanks to everyone who was able to attend “Designing For Your Subscribers: Tips and Tricks to Increase Email Marketing ROI” last week. We had an excellent turnout and plenty of great questions. If you weren’t able to attend the session, don’t worry! You can watch a recording of the one-hour webinar on 3sixty.

Do you have data on email clients that consumer subscribers tend to use?
While data is available, your mileage may vary. Each audience will be different, and you may see dramatically different segments in your list or even between lists, as we saw in the webinar. Fingerprint publishes an aggregate of the data collected from marketers utilizing their service. MailboxIQ provides an in-depth view of email client usage, where emails are being read, and more. Even a simple List Demographics report in ExactTarget can help you understand which email clients your subscribers might be using.

What are the default pixel dimensions for common preview panes?
Over half of subscribers use a preview pane in their email client. We measured each of the default preview pane setups on Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Mail using a 1024x768 monitor resolution. Read the blog post here.

Do you also have data on monitor resolutions in order to determine which portion of an email might be “above the fold”?
Similar to preview pane dimensions, the dimensions for the area above the fold may vary widely since individual users can adjust the size of their preview pane and their inbox in general. Keep in mind that your users may not be viewing your email in an inbox maximized to full screen resolution. w3schools.com publishes display resolution trend information (as do many other sites), but it’s important to remember this data comes from their own website traffic. Just as with email clients, your own website’s analytics data may reveal more pertinent information about your subscribers’ screen settings.

Browser Size by Google Labs is a great tool for indentifying what portion of your email might be “below the fold” in different monitor resolutions. Keep in mind the following caveats: you must have a web-hosted version of your email (you need a URL to paste in) and the email should be left-aligned for best results.

What should be the ideal width of an email in pixels?
We continue to recommend 600px wide as a guideline. We’ve seen success with narrower and wider variations. Again, your results may vary. Generally speaking, we wouldn’t recommend going much wider than 750px.

Where did the "50% of users have images turned off" metric come from?
Many popular email clients—including Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail—disable images by default, forcing the subscriber to choose to turn images on. As we saw in our discussion of email client usage, these email clients can account for 70+% on many lists. It’s important to note that images off is the default for these email clients.

When designing using ExactTarget templates, how can you edit the preheader teaser text?
Our Client Success Center would be happy to assist you. You may reach the CSC by creating a case in BackOffice, sending an email to help@exacttarget.com or calling 866-558-9823.

How do I find out what the "web safe" fonts are?
This site has a great list of web-safe fonts and matches font equivalents between a Windows and Mac environment.

Is there any way to control what content is seen on a mobile phone using CSS? How should I create a mobile friendly version?
There are ways for a website to detect a mobile device and automatically serve up appropriate content, but email currently requires a manual approach. If you’re seeing a significant number of subscribers viewing your emails on a mobile device, we’d recommend creating a simple mobile HTML version and linking to it in the upper left of your standard HTML email. This version would include web safe fonts with minor formatting (color, bold, italics), short teaser text linking to full content, and little more than a simple image (such as a logo) at the top. This creates a great foundation for a mobile-friendly program, which can certainly grow – for example, eventually you might allow subscribers to choose “mobile preferred” and send them a mobile specific email directly.

Thanks again for attending and for all the great questions!

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Goodmail Confirms Yahoo Split

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Al Iverson
As I mentioned before, Yahoo is ending support for Goodmail CertifiedEmail.

Today, Goodmail confirmed this via an email notice to Goodmail clients and Goodmail partner ESPs. In the email, Goodmail says that "Goodmail and Yahoo failed to renew their service agreement. As a result, effective 3/24/10, Yahoo will no longer accept CertifiedEmail messages. We hope to restore the CertifiedEmail service at Yahoo in the not too distant future, but for now our customers are advised to plan on sending plain (non-CertifiedEmail) messages to Yahoo as of March 24."

We're already working with Yahoo to ensure a smooth transition off of Goodmail CertifiedEmail at Yahoo for any affected Goodmail-utilizing clients.  I don't anticipate this being a painful process. Stay tuned; we'll be sure to post any updates as they become available.

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ESPC Call: Cloudmark and Best/Worst Practices

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

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

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

Here are just a few of the Cloudmark-preferred best practices that Jamie mentioned on the call.
  • At a minimum, compliance with CAN-SPAM. (Keeping in mind that CAN-SPAM is a starting point, not the finish line.)
  • Following MAAWG Senders Best Communication Practices document.
  • Implementing confirmed opt-in, also known as double opt-in, obtaining explicit permission confirming that every recipient really wants to be on your email list.
  • Segmenting or segregating marketing mail from transactional mail. Making sure you're not trying to dilute stats or get away with something by mixing mail streams. (Spam filterers are smart and will figure you out.)
  • Using consistent branding in content, sending domains, call to action domains, and reverse DNS.
  • Sending from dedicated IP addresses.
  • Utilizing feedback loop data to identify and solve problems. (What intelligence can you gather from the recipient response to the campaign? Don't just listwash.)
On the bad side of the practices spectrum, a few of the things that she mentioned that can damage your reputation include things like third party co-registration, email append (which consumers hate), list purchasing and mailing to inactive subscribers. She also pointed out that you're very likely to look like one of the bad guys if you're doing things like gaming reputation systems, distributing mail volume over a large number of IP addresses (also called snowshoeing), sending your mail via multiple ESPs or affiliates, or mixing non-relevant third-party mail in with relevant, permissioned messages-- a practice termed "spamouflage."

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

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Al Iverson
Residents of Alameda, California-based AlamedaNet, Alameda Power & Telecom's internet service have been transitioned from alamedanet.net email addresses over to comcast.net addresses, as the alamedanet.net email domain has been retired as of December 15, 2009.

It isn't possible to convert email addresses in a blanket manner from one domain to the other, as there are certain to be username collisions between the new domains. Meaning, somebody could be bob@domain1 and he can't become bob@domain2, because somebody else already has the username "bob." Also, anti-spam groups regularly point out that consent to send email is tied to specific email addresses -- meaning, it is not kosher to change someone's email address in your database without their explicit consent.

As this domain has been retired, we'll be adding it to our "List Detective" filter shortly, preventing any further email messages to any address at that domain.

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B2B Contact Databases Are Poor List Growth Sources

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Al Iverson
This morning, I took one of the numerous bits of B2B spam that I received, and I replied to the sender. This time around, it was a staffing services company, looking to help me with all of my staffing needs. He's ready and willing to help me with all of my staffing needs in the aerospace, transportation, and defense verticals, just to name a few.

In my reply, I asked him where he got my email address. "Through the company website," he replied. That's odd, I thought. My email address isn't published on our website. So I replied, saying exactly that. He replied with, "Have you ever heard of Zoominfo?" Sure, I've heard of Zoominfo. I've previously blogged here that it's a bad idea to grow your list by working with companies like Zoominfo, Jigsaw and Netprospex.

Why? Let's use me as an example. If this guy really did get my email address from Zoominfo, he bought a useless record. I'm not a hiring manager, I don't buy from spam, and I spend a lot of time tracking spam and spammers. I can't be the only one in that Zoominfo contact database who has no interest in receiving exciting, valuable unsolicited offers for help with my staffing needs.

After I informed the guy that if he bought my address from Zoominfo, he ought to try to get his money back, he changed his story. Now he's quoting my online bio at me as if this is somehow proof of an opt-in (buh?), and saying he's going to report me for harassment.

So, it's hard to say if this data really came from Zoominfo or not, as this guy keeps changing his story. But I get an awful lot of B2B spam, and people have to be getting my email address from somewhere. What do you think, dear reader?
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Distributed Email Marketing (Build vs. Partner series)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Dennis Hall
The process of implementing or replacing an email marketing module that will be distrbuted to your customers (and even your customer's customers) can be a daunting exercise, not only due to the complexity of developing functions like list management, content editing and tracking, but also because of the importance of factors outside the bits and bytes.

For example, deliverability (the rate at which emails make it to the subscriber’s inbox) is affected by the reputation of the sender not the quality of the code. Without the right policies and people to work with the major ISPs, the value of email (no matter how beautiful) is diminished.

To help you assess the magnitude of becoming your own Email Service Provider on behalf of your customers, we’ve put together a "top-ten" list of high-level requirements that our Partners have shared with us along with a bit of color.

1.    Reliability System availability and uptime are critical issues for email. As email volume grows, so must the system behind it. System failures will occur whether the system is in-house or 3rd party so management and recovery processes are constants.
2.    Deliverability Reputation and remediation capabilities are critical to ensure consistent, timely email delivery. Managing this process is one of the most expensive elements of email. To maximize delivery, the system must support a permission based, strong opt-in model as well as private (dedicated) IPs or domains.
3.    Security In addition to data protection standards (e.g. encryption/SMTP) to keep customer data safely behind the firewall, the system must maintain data integrity across multiple hierarchies and parent-child relationships.
4.    Transactional, operational sending Many ESPs do not support this capability within the framework or API. These types of emails, from loyalty programs to notifications, have become as effective as mass marketing emails in terms of driving consumer behavior.
5.    Relevance The ability to use subscriber attributes and external data tables to deliver tailored messages, including HTML, text, hyperlinks and images, has grown as a key differentiator for email marketing systems. Dynamic content is an example of innovation in this area.
6.    Performance List processing, send execution and tracking response are key metrics to be optimized. In today’s world of social media and instant buzz, customers want to know that there emails will be delivered in near real-time.
7.    User experience This category includes usability, look and feel as well as integration with external systems. The extent of control desired often dictates the go to market approach. An open, flexible framework will allow for a phased deployment.
8.    Tracking  Access to opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and conversion statistics are vital to measuring the impact of email programs. If this data is not available, it will become more difficult to justify cost from the user’s perspective.
9.    Unsubscribe options Support for campaign based or publication based management of unsubscribes is essential to building and sustaining subscriber lists. 
10.    Multi-channel Though Email remains a red-hot market and will continue to be a major channel of communication (despite the NY Times opinion, marketers expect to utilize other established and emerging channels, such as SMS (Text), Voice, Landing Pages and Social networks. Supporting such channels within a single platform will enable you to satisfy demand as it grows.

Your list will no doubt be unique - containing more granular requirements on what is needed to satisfy customer demand in your market. We'd love your feedback on what features, functions and/or factors are most important to you and why...

Stay tuned for the next part of the series...The Partner Paradox.

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The 7 Secrets to Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts

Monday, February 8, 2010 by Joel Book
On Tuesday. February 16th, I have the pleasure of co-hosting a webinar that will tackle the problem of shopping cart abandonment. The webinar is titled, “The 7 Secrets to Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts,” and will cover the strategy and technology required to implement an effective shopping cart abandonment solution.

If you’re an online marketer, and shopping cart abandonment is a recurring problem, I highly recommend you register to attend this webinar! Joining me to co-host this webinar will be Charles Nicholls, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SeeWhy. What’s great about this webinar is that we will take you “behind the scene” of the highly successful shopping cart remarketing strategy of Smiley Cookie. Smiley Cookie is using SeeWhy’s Abandonment Tracker Pro to trigger remarketing campaigns using ExactTarget’s transactional API. This provides a real-time follow up to shopping cart abandoners.

Smileycookie.com is a division of Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, which includes Eat’n Park Restaurants and Six Penn Kitchen. Eat’n Park’s mascot is “Smiley,” a walking sugar cookie with a smiley face. Eat'n Park is well-known for its Smiley Cookies, which are frosted sugar cookies with smiley faces drawn on them in icing. Last year, Eat’n Park made over 11 million Smiley Cookies.

Our Interview with Adam Golumb of Smiley Cookie

Recently, Charles Nicholls and I caught up with Adam Golomb, director of e-commerce at Smileycookie.com, to discuss their new shopping cart recovery program. Adam is responsible for the online channel — www.smileycookie.com/ — which sells Smiley Cookies and related merchandise on line.

Website Conversion: Why did you decide to start a shopping cart abandonment remarketing program?  

AG: We spend a tremendous amount of money to get customers to the site, but with 60 percent abandoning the shopping cart process, remarketing represented low-hanging fruit. These customers were already interested in the brand and had placed items in their shopping cart, only to abandon, so sending follow-up emails seemed like an obvious tactic to get them back and convert them into sales.

Website Conversion: What have you learned about shopping cart recovery?  

AG: It’s still the early days for Smileycookie.com, but it’s clear that it’s a good tool to recover some sales, in particular where customers thought that they’d completed their purchase, but hadn’t. Some customers have replied to the email explaining why they had abandoned their shopping cart. The cost of shipping is the number one reason given, very much in line with industry numbers. As a result, we’ve been testing a free shipping offer when they spend $40 or more. This looks promising and has helped to raise our average order value. We don’t offer any incentives yet in our current campaign, and we think this will be important in driving additional sales.

Website Conversion: What’s next in your remarketing campaign?  

AG: We’re just about to roll out a multi-step version of the campaign. We started with a simple service-based follow-up email which is sent out immediately following an abandonment. This is a simple reminder email that the customer did not complete the process. Our multi-step campaign will contact them again after 24 hours, and then after 7 days, and include some incentives. We’re pretty excited about it and think it will drive additional sales.

Website Conversion: How have customers reacted?  

AG: We haven’t had anyone feeling that it was ‘Big Brotherish,’ and some people have found it very helpful. In particular where the customer thought that they’d made it all the way through the shopping cart process, but hadn’t, the email is a prompt for them to contact us, often by phone. Customers are very grateful when this happens. It has also highlighted some problems with our shopping cart process on the website which we’ve now addressed.

Website Conversion: Does it matter that you don’t have a persistent cart?  

AG: Definitely. We’re working on putting a persistent cart in place, although we don’t offer many SKUs. Today we provide a link in the follow-up email which takes them back to the item they placed in their cart. We’ve had customers following the link back, going directly to the website and contacting us by phone. A persistent cart should make it easier for them to complete their order online.

Website Conversion: How do you measure success?  

AG: We measure success based on the number of completed orders. So we compare the sales generated by the program with spend on other marketing programs. It’s a bit manual because we get some orders coming in by phone.

Website Conversion: Can you talk about setting up the program and how complex it was to do?  

AG: It took a bit longer than I thought it would. We already had an existing relationship with ExactTarget, so getting the email campaign set up and using SeeWhy to trigger emails using our existing ExactTarget account was straightforward. What took longer was tagging the site and working through our check-out process. Every time I thought we were nearly there, the IT guys seemed to have to make additional changes in order to get the detail right.

Website Conversion: How was it working with the SeeWhy team?  

AG: It’s been great; they’ve been extremely responsive. When we had any issues they’ve been really proactive and very accessible. Smileycookie.com is using SeeWhy’s Abandonment Tracker Pro to trigger remarketing campaigns using ExactTarget’s transactional API. This provides a real-time follow up to shopping cart abandoners.
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Maine AG: State email lists are public data

Thursday, February 4, 2010 by Al Iverson
As mentioned on MediaPost's Email Insider and elsewhere, the Maine Attorney General's office recently ruled that email addresses of people who contacted various state departments are fair game, that they must be supplied to anybody who submits an inquiry via Maine's Freedom of Access Act.

This means that any sort of advocacy group can petition the state government to provide a list of all the email addresses of people who contacted them on a given topic; and then they would be able to spam those people, to further the advocacy group's goals. BAD NEWS.

Spamhaus blogged about this; click here to read their take on why this is a bad idea. We couldn't agree more with Spamhaus's take on this issue. For our part, we sent a letter to the Maine legislature, looking to explain why we prohibit third-party lists-- any list compiled via this method would clearly NOT be a permission-based email list and we'd clamp down hard on anybody who tried to use a list like that via ExactTarget.

As Morgan Stewart and I explained in our letter, "Allowing advocacy or other groups to obtain email addresses from the Maine state government via a Freedom of Access request allows these groups to build spam lists that will cause harm to internet service providers and end consumers. The owners of those email addresses did not consent to have their email addresses shared with third parties or added to other email lists. Further, recipients of such emails will have to take an affirmative step to unsubscribe from those lists, which adds to the burden of those recipients.

"There is no known legitimate use for email address data in this context other than to compile a non-permission email list and send spam to it. Whether or not the topic of the spam is related to advocacy of something under Maine law is irrelevant; spam is still spam. It is our opinion that there are ample alternate methodologies under which advocacy or other groups may identify and contact Maine residents, without resorting to the most unwanted of email scourges; spam. Please don't enable the sending of spam to Maine residents by allowing their email addresses to be obtained from government agencies."

How about it, dear readers? When you contact somebody in government to provide feedback on an issue or apply for some sort of permit, do you think it's fair that groups can query the government for your email address and be able to add you to a list? And if you're an email marketer, do you really think this is a winning email strategy? Blasting people who didn't sign up for your emails? I sure don't.
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ExactTarget at WebTrends Engage

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by Colby Cavanaugh
Hello!

We’re here at the WebTrends Engage 2010 conference this week, located down South in the Big Easy. As a Gold sponsor of the conference, ExactTarget is excited to be present at this SOLD OUT event!

Later today, I’ll be speaking briefly at the general session on multichannel marketing and the importance of creating engagement across all channels – not just email. You’ll even see a quick demonstration on shortcode and text-in campaigns. Make sure to tune in, as you’ll have a chance to win a Starbucks gift card!

Plus, stop by Booth #7 at the conference to receive a complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave™: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q4 2009, where ExactTarget was named a LEADER in email marketing.

With all this great stuff in store, we can’t wait to see you there!

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Distributed Email Marketing (Build vs. Partner series)

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by Dennis Hall
“It’s not a problem until it’s a problem.” A great quote from a Product Manager at a leading SaaS provider who I met on the road last week. His company had invested significant man years of development to build their own email infrastructure back in 2006.

He pointed out, “At the time there weren’t any other viable options for us so we didn’t have a choice.” As their customer base expanded, the volume of email followed in an exponential way. Their email system had shifted from a competitive advantage to a liability with issues from system failures, constant maintenance, delivery problems and limited visibility to tracking data.

More and more technology driven companies are experiencing these kinds of pains with their in-house email systems. And the question rises once again, “should we build version 2.0 or leverage a 3rd party?” Working with hundreds of technology companies over the years, I’ve heard all sides of the debate. Underneath the market research, the gap analysis and financial models, the decision ultimately rests on time, money, resources and strategy.

Next week, I'll share a list of top level requirements we've gleaned over the years from our Partners. If you are thinking of becoming an email service provider on behalf of your customers, you'll want to stay tuned!

Maybe you’ve “been there done that” or perhaps you are just beginning your journey. Either way, we are interested in your perspective so please feel free to share your comments or contact me directly anytime.

Dennis - dhall@exacttarget.com (512) 423-0876 (24 x 7!)

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Email Evolution 2010 Will Rock!

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Joel Book
We at ExactTarget are proud to once again be the Exclusive Title Sponsor of the DMA’s Email Evolution Conference which kicks off on Monday, February 1st in Miami at the fabulous Eden Roc Hotel. Conference organizers tell me they are expecting a record turnout, and it’s easy to see why. This program is locked and loaded! And the lineup of speakers is off the hook.

Keynoting Email Evolution 2010 is Brian Harniman, EVP of Marketing and Distribution at Kayak. Harniman will offer a visionary look at the Kayak.com customer experience today and tomorrow with a focus on the role of email in relation to other channels.

Harniman will be one of many outstanding experts on email marketing including several ExactTarget clients and partners including Renee Middleton of Taco John’s, Kip Edwardson of Scotts Miracle-Gro, Andrew Kordek of Groupon, and Mike Corak of Mighty Interactive

The New Triangle Offense of 1to1 Marketing

If you want to see two outstanding examples of how brands are successfully using Email + Social Media + Mobile to attract and retain customers, plan to attend my session on Tuesday afternoon. I’ll be joined by Renee Middleton of Taco John’s and Kip Edwardson of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company.

In our session, you’ll learn how marketers are:
  • Using Dynamic Content to personalize product information and offers to subscriber interests
  • Using Social Forward to empower “brand fans” to expand message distribution to friends
  • Using Mobile Messaging to accelerate response to offers and attract new subscribers

Register Today and Save $200!

I think the Email Evolution Conference will be one of the BEST conferences on email marketing you will attend this year. So if you haven’t registered yet, do it now!

Call Barbara Cruz in DMA Customer Service at 212.790.1500. Or go to the EEC2010 Registration page, enter the special code BEST, and you will save $200.

See you in sunny Miami!   
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Did You Know? Three Ways to get ExactTarget Customer Service

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Dawn DeVirgilio
In email marketing it's all about Channel Preferences! So did you know there are three different ways to get ExactTarget Customer Service from our Client Success Center: 

3Sixty Back Office
My favorite! If you are a member of 3sixty, you can click the Back Office Button and Sumbit a Case, Request an Update on a Case and also monitor case comments. 

Email to Case
Send an email to help@exacttarget.com and a case will be automatically created in our case management system.  You will get an email reply identifying your case number.

Good Old Fashioned Phone Call
  • US Customers can call 866-558-9823
  • UK Customers can call +44 (0) 808 101 7081
  • All other International Customers can call +44 (0) 207 291 8550

Lastly, I've found alot of the answers I need in 3sixty have already been asked (and answered!) but customers and ExactTarget employees. Make sure to check out 3sixty Community! 

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Email Design Tip of the Week: Email + Video: Take 2: Connections ’09 Panel Recap, Part 1 (of 3)

Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Chris Studabaker
Video in email is one of the most intriguing hot topics regarding email's technological growth and audience engagement capacity. Current support for the combined use of these mediums is low, but audience interest and advertiser investment in online video—and this type of media convergence—continues to grow. This blog recaps the major points I discussed in the "Email + Video: Take 2" panel at Connections '09. Please note that this blog centers on the technological considerations around email + video—the strategy around sending video in email (or not) is another discussion!

Online video
Online video, itself, is young—it only began to take root in 2005—but it's quickly become an integral part of our online lives. Discussed in conjunction with email, it's imperative to note that online video has already seen rough standards emerge (formats such as .mpg, .mov, .wmv, and .avi). Email, unfortunately, continues its history of little to no standards, and the emergence of video in email has created a new set of compatibility issues.

Current support for video in email
Today, there's a near complete lack of support for video across the major email clients. Sporadic support exists for some formats but the animated .gif is the only format reliably supported. Gif is a standard web image format and supports animation, though it's limited to 256 colors, does not support sound, and inconsistent frame rates are possible. It's hardly a true video format—which has given rise to some innovative, albeit workaround, solutions—but animated .gif images remain the best all-around option for including motion graphics in email.

There are also a few companies in the marketplace offering paid solutions to include video in email. These companies offer two main services: first, the technology to send video; and second, relationships with consumer email services (such as AOL and others) to allow the successful receipt of that video. However, the list of ISPs supporting these services is limited and should be researched. Lastly, HTML5 is around the corner and there are indications that it might open more options for including video in email.

Delivery methods
  • Streaming – video downloaded as it plays
  • Linking – click through to externally hosted video
  • Embedding – video data included in sent message
To avoid confusion, it's important to set a few definitions regarding the three methods of video delivery. Streaming video refers to a hosted video beginning to play as soon as enough data has loaded, and then continuing to load as it plays (as on YouTube, for example). Ultimately, this is the experience that marketers hope to deliver with video in email. However, the current standard practice is to use a static image with a "play" button, linking to a page on which subscribers can watch the externally hosted video—your website, a landing page, even your company's YouTube channel. Linking to video poses no technical challenges and will work in all browsers and email clients.

Embedding is occasionally mentioned and refers to actually inserting the video file or video code into the email itself, almost like attaching the video to the email. This is a workaround, represents a negative user experience in many ways, and is not recommended.

Part 2 of this topic will contain a look at benefits & concerns of email + video and give a few concluding thoughts. Part 3 will share some interesting customer experiences and discuss ExactTarget's animated and static .gif testing using Connections '09 emails.
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DNS? Do Not Send? Donuts Never Salty?

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 by Karen Balle

Domain Name Service

Just a quick post today for more advanced senders.  When you're sending email, sometimes you need to understand things other than SMTP - Simple Mail Transport Protocol (what we use to send email).  There are a lot of other internet protocols involved in getting your email from one place to another.  DNS is one of them.  DNS is involved in EVERY online interaction.  It's very technical, can be difficult to understand and even harder to explain. 

When you're trying to understand or explain to someone about sender authentication (Sender ID, SPF, DomainKeys, DKIM), it can seem an impossible task.  I found DNS Oversimplified the other day.  It explains the basics without making it sound like rocket surgery.  If you're looking to understand a little more about how the internet works, I recommend taking a look.

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Is 2010 the Year to Partner for Messaging?

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by Dennis Hall
"Should we build or partner?” Executives around the world and across industries have to make this call on a daily basis. A little more than a decade ago companies routinely built their internal business applications, like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Inventory Management systems. I still have nightmares about a custom CRM application we deployed in the early 90s...

However, with the proliferation of technology, most notably open source code and software as a service (SaaS) applications, an executive would be thrown out of the boardroom today for suggesting a 6 or 7 figure project to build CRM over adopting salesforce.com, Siebel OnDemand or Microsoft CRM Online (and tens of other applications per vertical per industry!).

For commercial technology companies, this is a more acute (and contentious) issue. How can you justify acquiring technology from another company when building it is part of your core business? There are Engineers just sitting there waiting to build the next cool thing! Well, there is no question that developers can build most anything if given the time and resources, but these are finite commodities often overwhelmed by demands surrounding core product development and innovation.

At ExactTarget, we’ve built a business dedicated to partnering with technology companies in order to solve this challenge – ExactTarget Embedded. As Bryan mentioned in “2009 in Review”, we are seeing strong demand from technology providers, especially in the Computer Software, Direct Marketing Services and Commercial Printing verticals. The primary motivators for these companies include satisfying customer demand, achieving competitive advantage, increasing market share + revenue, and reducing COGS.

To support your decision process in 2010, we’ll share a series of articles around the topic of “build vs. partner”, including a deep dive into leading technical requirements, go to market business models and partner case studies across industries.

We welcome your input and look forward to an interactive discussion!

Dennis
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Domains by Proxy: A good idea?

Monday, December 28, 2009 by Al Iverson

Is it a good idea to mask ownership of your domain?

Services like Domains by Proxy allow you to mask (hide) the true owner of a domain name. In my opinion, the legitimate business case for doing so is questionable. Wikipedia suggests that it's a good way to block “unsolicited contacts from third parties.” I don't think that's true-- I think a legitimate business is going to have contact info on their website, making it possible to contact them with postal advertising or regarding legal issues, regardless of uses of a domain masking service. And if you're worried about spam, use a unique email address that is well spam filtered, and isn't your primary email address.

I guess if you're a one man shop, working from home, and you register a domain for your business, maybe you're concerned about people knowing your home address. But domain masking isn't the only method of addressing this. The UPS Store (and the USPS) runs a brisk business in PO boxes and/or PMB postal addresses for exactly this kind of use.

And what's the down side to using a domain masking service?

You look like a spammer. Wow, really? Yes, really. It's that simple. A lot of the people that use these services seem to be spammers. I don't have data on this; only anecdotes. But I can tell you that, unfortunately, that based on my personal experience, there is a strong correlation between “likely to send unwanted or unsolicited mail” and “who owns their domain is hidden behind Domains by Proxy.” Sad, but true. Thank spammers for ruining another part of the internet for the rest of us.

Why do spammers do this? Lots of spammers register large numbers of domains. From dozens to hundreds (or even more). If they made their ownership of these domains publicly, easily found via the internet's WHOIS databases, anti-spam groups like Spamhaus would be able to track them much easier. It's not much of a deterrent, but it's enough of one to be very common in spammer circles.

And there might be legal risk as well. Read about this 9th Circuit opinion in USA v. Kilbride, (9th Cir., 2009) as reported by Mickey Chandler over on Spamtacular. The court found that use of a service that masks who owns a domain (like, in my opinion, Domains by Proxy) counts as material falsification under the US Federal anti-spam law, CAN-SPAM.

The jury is out on whether or not this is likely to be used against other bad actors in the email space, but why risk it? If you're a legitimate business, show the world that you are one by having your domain registration accurately reflect that you own every domain you use.

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ExactTarget Named A Leader in Email Marketing by Forrester Research

Monday, December 28, 2009 by Scott Dorsey
Industry analyst Forrester Research released the “Forrester Wave: Email Marketing Service Providers Q4 2009” report Dec. 23 and named ExactTarget at the front of the email marketing leader pack.  While it’s a monumental achievement in our business and highlights our relentless pursuit of innovation and service, the real credit goes to you - our customers. ExactTarget was the only vendor evaluated to score a perfect 5 out of 5 in the customer category – an aggregate rating of customer satisfaction, customer diversity and number of customers.  I’m humbled by the resounding vote of confidence our customers shared, and I am energized to drive even greater levels of customer satisfaction and customer ROI in 2010.
 
When we founded ExactTarget, we set out on a clear mission – help companies build relationships with their clients.  Forrester’s report shows we’re well on our way to achieving that goal.  In fact, Forrester awarded ExactTarget perfect scores in 6 of the 14 categories evaluated.  What’s even more exciting is we out-performed or tied our closest competitor in 11 of the 14 categories, including current offering, technology platform, services and customer satisfaction.
 
Thank you again for your resounding confidence in ExactTarget.  I look forward to delivering new and exciting innovations in 2010 to help you further drive ROI from your ExactTarget partnership.
 
Best,
Scott
 
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Big Players in B2B Deliverability

Monday, December 28, 2009 by Al Iverson
A client was asking the other day about B2B deliverability, how it differs from B2C, who the big players are, etc.

This isn't the first time the topic of deliverability in the B2B (business-to-business) email realm. Back in June, I answer the question, "Is B2B Deliverability Different?" In a more recent blog post, I link to information from Google about how they've become a very large host of B2B mailboxes.

Clearly, Google is a big player in this space. Meaning, a lot of the B2B mailboxes you send to are going through spam filters run by Google; just as if your recipients were at Gmail.com. What that means to you is that the same rules apply to sends to both those Gmail.com users and any B2B domains hosted at Google.

As I mentioned before, Yahoo, Hotmail and Google host mail for more than 264,000 domains, Google making up approximately 106,000 of those domains. (All three of these guys probably host mail for very many more domains than this; this is just a snapshot based off of last year's client list data. Meaning, if a domain doesn't show up on an email list, I don't know about it.)

That means you've got a huge chunk of the B2B email space hosted by top consumer webmail providers. Meaning that the B2C rules significantly apply to B2B senders, by the fact that the same spam filters are involved.

In the more specific B2B realm, there are too many players to list. Postini, Cloudmark, Barracuda, Ironport, Symantec Brightmail and MessageLabs are just a few of them. There are hundreds, maybe thousands more.

The way these filterers work is very similar to how B2C ISP spam filters work. They build a reputational view of you based on spam complaints, engagement, bounce rates, etc. They're a bit more invisible to some senders, as it's not always easy for you to know exactly what % of your mailing list might be behind a Brightmail filter, for example. But they still matter, very much so. In this combination of hosted service providers and appliance developers, getting tagged as a bad guy means you end up with delivery problems far and wide.

If you end up with a bad reputation as measured by Barracuda, and your mail is going to be blocked or filtered at the more than 85,000 customers that use Barracuda spam-filtering devices.

If Cloudmark determines the mail you send merits a bad reputation, you'll probably find it hard to successfully get to the inbox at any mailbox protected by any of Cloudmark's anti-spam solutions -- that's over 850 million mailboxes in 190 countries!

That's why B2C and B2C are more similar than you might have thought. Filterers handling either type of mail both look at your sending reputation, and treat your mail acordingly. Blocked at any of these providers on either side of things means that you're going to have issues delivering mail to a whole bunch of different mailboxes.
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Yahoo Closed the Last Week of the Year

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 by Al Iverson
As reported on the local news in the bay area on Monday night, Yahoo will be closed from December 25th through January 1st.

"Yahoo is shutting down from December 25th to January 1st and if employees are out of vacation time, it will be an unpaid week off.

"Yahoo told their employees this summer, most of the 13,200 employees around the world will be forced to take the time off.

"They are ending the year the way they started it -- trying to cut costs. Yahoo executives laid off about 700 people earlier this year and got rid of some products. Now, the Sunnyvale company is shutting down operations for a week, but this move doesn't shock technology analyst Rob Enderle." -- KGO TV, San Francisco

I'm passing this along as a heads up to ExactTarget clients. Our deliverability services will be around in the week between the two holidays, but keep in mind, we likely will not receive any response from Yahoo on any outstanding issues during this time. Also keep in mind that other ISPs are probably also understaffed due to holiday vacations.

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Ending the Spam

Thursday, December 17, 2009 by Al Iverson
A reader named Don posted a comment containing the following question: “I'd really like to end your spam. I do not trust the link on your spam because, just like all the other spam merchants out there, your e-mail appears to be poised to cause more problems than clicking is worth. How do I make you go away and stay out of my in box?”

Don, I'm sorry you're receiving spam from a client of ours. Our clients are only allowed to send mail to people that signed up for their lists. We don't buy or sell email lists, nor do we allow clients to do so. If you want us to investigate, and make the mail stop, feel free to send us a spam report at abuse AT exacttarget.com. Note in your email that the message is unwanted spam and be sure to include a copy of the message, including full headers, if possible. We will immediately investigate, and take action against our client if they are indeed out of compliance with our opt-in permission requirements and anti-spam policy.

Policy compliance (making sure our clients don't send spam) is occasionally a challenge for anybody providing email-related services to a large number of clients. We've got the tools and expertise to be able to nip a lot of these issues in the bud, before you ever see them. But, one of the many components to taking action against spammers is based on reports we receive from the outside world: ISPs, anti-spam groups, and end recipients like yourself.

As far as trusting the link in the email message -- all the unsubscribe link does is mark you as unsubscribed in that client's account. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't secretly sign you up for somebody else's email lists. It doesn't give the client permission to email you later (and if they do, they're breaking our rules). However, it doesn't tell us that you thought the message was spam. So if it was spam, feel free to report it to our abuse address, as well, as noted above.

As far as trusting us, the company, ExactTarget, I'm not sure what I can tell you to convince you that we're a legitimate email service provider and not spammers. But here's what I know. ET is a real company, based in Indianapolis (though I work from Chicago), and I've worked for them, helping to oversee and continually improve our anti-spam efforts, for more than three years now. (I have a long history of spam fighting, going back more than ten years.) As you can see here, we have a lot of legitimate, well-known companies as clients. Also, if we knowingly let our clients send spam, ISPs would get fed up with us and block all mail from all of our clients. So that's why it's in our best interest to prevent our clients from sending spam -- it's necessary for us to be able to succeed in the email industry. So it would be extremely unwise of us to do anything other than immediately respect your click on the unsubscribe link, and ensure that our client stops sending you mail.
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