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Coupons Boost Email Response Rates

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Joel Book
Retailers and consumer packaged goods marketers that include coupons in consumer email communications are experiencing higher open and click-through rates.

As reported in the November 19th eMarketer Daily Newsletter, “There is a pronounced difference between open rates for e-mails that include a coupon offer and those that do not. Open rates of around 24% to 25% for coupon e-mails dropped to just 16% to 18% for non-coupon campaigns.”

Open Rates for Coupon Offers vs. Other Mailings

The eMarketer article also confirms that “Higher open rates for coupon offers translated into higher click rates as well, though the difference was much smaller. emails with coupons that could be used online were most likely to be clicked, at 4%.”

Click Rates for Coupon Offers vs. Other Mailings in the US

As coupon use expands, I believe those brands that are able to personalize offers to the product needs and purchase behavior of individual consumers will have a distinct advantage over those brands that practice a “one-size-fits-all” coupon strategy. To learn more about technology that enables marketers to deliver relevant and timely offers – including coupons -- based on email subscriber data and behavior, check out ExactTarget Live Offers at ExactTarget.com

What About Mobile Coupons?

Are mobile coupons ready for prime time? Not quite, but we’re getting there fast – really fast. According to a recent Mobile Marketing Survey of 511 consumers by HipCricket, 83% of US consumers say their favorite brand has yet to market to them via their mobile phone, even though 37% say they would be interested in participating in a mobile customer loyalty program from a brand they trust.

This indicates growing consumer interest in mobile marketing and represents a significant -- but largely untapped -- opportunity for brands to connect with customers on mobile devices.  “With consumer interest in mobile marketing continuing to steadily increase, it’s clear that now is the time for brands to launch and execute their mobile strategy and programs,” said Scott Debson, HipCricket’s VP of brand solutions.

It seems that brands are starting to listen. Ten million digital coupons were redeemed in the first six months of 2009, up 25% from a year ago, according to Inmar, a coupon-processing company. But they still account for less than half a percent of all coupons distributed.

Top Tips for Using Mobile Coupons

If you’re looking for practical insight on how to use mobile coupons effectively, check back here to see my next post, “Five tips for using Mobile Coupons to Drive in-store Traffic.”

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Drip Model Marketing– Is that a leaky faucet or your email marketing software?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by Kristeen Hudson
Phrases like “drip campaign”, “automated email drip”, “drip email program”, and “drip email” are thrown around ExactTarget a lot. This is because ExactTarget is in the business of sending email, especially automated email drips.  However, everyone may not understand what a drip campaign is.  Let me tell you a little bit about the basics of drip marketing.

Drip marketing comes from the phrase drip irrigation, which is where crops are watered in small amounts over a long period of time. This same concept is applied to marketing and is called drip model marketing. Customers or potential customers are given small amounts of information over a long period of time.

The idea behind a drip campaign is that it takes between 3 and 30 impressions of a brand to make it sink in. When creating a drip campaign its important to have a consistent brand with varying messages to help develop the reputation of your company.

Drip emails are the most common type of drip communication, however there are other ways to communicate in a drip campaign. Some other options are - voice messages, SMS messaging, and direct mail.

Drip model marketing is a good way to help avoid always trying to sell a product and a good excuse to provide content that will engage subscribers. Think of this as a great way to nurture your potential clients. Drip marketing can be used for business to consumer or business to business email marketing solutions.

The good news is ExactTarget is one of the best email marketing software providers for creating automated email integration. To learn more about ExactTarget checkout their website.
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Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007

Thursday, October 22, 2009 by Andrea Smith
written by David Hoang

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

However, that is not the case anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For additional information about rendering in Outlook 2007, check out our white paper, Seven Email Marketing Design Tips for Outlook 2007.
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Is Mobile Email Driving Consumers to a Disappointing Experience?

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Morgan Stewart
As outlined in our recent whitepaper, Is Email Marketing Endangered?, Smartphones are a major force behind consumers increasing consumption of email. As such, the importance of mobile email for email marketers will continue to increase. While the solutions remain less than ideal, Mark Brownlow has done a wonderful job of summarizing the challenges of mobile email and linking to useful resources on the topic.

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

Among findings of the report:

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

The number one reason cited was slow load times (73%). There are a number of factors that may impact load times that are out of marketers’ control. However, the other top reasons are all things that marketers should be able to test and rectify:
 
    * 51% experienced errors or crashes on the mobile site
    * 48% said formatting of the mobile site made it difficult to use
    * 45% had issues with the site functioning as expected

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

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

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

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

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

Take a look at the full report Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-Users.
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Live Blog: Financial Services Solution Showcase

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
We've got quite a change of pace in the ol' developer track conference room. Chris Murray of ExactTarget is the emcee for the Financial Services Solution Showcase.

He starts by introducing the first segment:

Beyond Deliverability: Consumer Choice & Control
Authentication, Privacy, and Policy
by Craig Spiezle
https://otalliance.org

The Online Trust Alliance is concerned with security in online activity, especially financial services. Spoofed email, phishing, and online exploits are a major challenge for financial organizations that operate online.

Craig said that government regulations are likely to come about in the next few weeks as a result of the identity theft incidents that we've heard of recently. Craig said that the United States is actually behind other parts of the world in consumer production.

Craig discussed extended validation certificates. In order to get one of these certificates, the business must prove that it's registered with a local tax authority. While this can't verify that the business has good business practices, but it does require that the business be a real business. When a business has this certificate, it turns the address bar in your browser green when you visit their site. If the address bar isn't green, you know that it's a spoofed site.

He continued to talk about the business value of authentication. Not only does this help protect your business from being spoofed, but also improves your deliverability.

Of the top 100 financial institutions in North America, only 43% have protections in place for consumers.

Craig talked about the problem with unsubscribe: an unsubscribe link in the footer of the email is required by CAN-SPAM, but consumers are warned not to click links in emails they don't want for fear that they'll alert spammers that they're a real person. An unsubscribe header allow ISPs to render an unsubscribe link in their client so that people can unsubscribe without clicking the "report as spam" link and degrading your reputation. About this time, someone from ExactTarget piped up to mention that ExactTarget email already does this automatically.

Addressing Email Security Concerns
Matt Burton - GMAC/Ally Bank

Matt talked about Ally bank and the fact that its customers were receiving more spoof emails that were pretending to be from Ally as they were receiving from the real bank.

Ally Bank, like many places, would love for there to be a "silver bullet" that would solve the problem, but in fact the best way to protect consumers is with a combination of proactive monitoring, excellent deliverability of your legit content, and customer education.

Governance, while unpopular, is critical. If your company has multiple business units, ALL of them have to have successful security.

Some financial institutions do not include links in their emails, instead telling consumers to go to the website. This is problematic because it requires more copy and results in fewer site hits. Also, this doesn't prevent phishing emails from including links in their emails.

Security tools, such as ISP Phish Blocking and Certified Mail, are available to help prevent risk and increase confidence in your message respectively.

Education of consumers can be tricky. Sending emails that tells customers how to tell whether your email is real might make it look like you're a spoofer trying to set them up to trust fraudulent email in the future. Better to just remain consistent in your sending so that consumers become accustomed to your style and learn to identify spoofs on their own.

To wrap up, Matt recommended proactive risk diminuation rather than waiting for a problem happens and only responding then.

Technology Solution
e-statements at Nationwide
Brian Jaffe - Nationwide Insurance

Nationwide was facing a "statement challenge"--sending statements to customers on email. The address this issue, they created an elegant solution.
  • Governance - As part of this process, they codified their program for sending emails.
  • Preference management - allow customers to specify their preferences. Brian recommends double opt in.
  • Billing format - recreate view of paper statement
  • Send mode - bulk or single send. You probably batch up your bills, but some might do individual sends.
  • Data preparation - attributes or data extensions? what is the unique subscriber key? You need to understand your extremes (what happens if you have an extremely large amount of data?) and your data-display issues.
  • Deliverability - decisions about IP and Domain. Learn from your deliverability team!
  • Feedback - decisions about bounce management, reply management. If people unsubscribe and then try to sign up, you could have technical problems sending emails. Make sure you understand how your unsubscribes are managed. And be ready to monitor replies, even if you tell people not to reply to a message.
  • Inserting marketing messages into transactional emails - CAN-SPAM does allow you include marketing messages into your transactional emails under certain circumstances.
Paperless statements can create issues. For example, what if customers call in saying that they never received their statement. Customer service needs to be able to access tracking to see whether the subscriber ever opened the email and have other strategies to deal with these complaints. Customer service needs to be able to resend statements.

Nationwide includes quite a bit of personal information in their emails so that subscribers know that the email must be legit, since a phishing scam wouldn't have access to so much personal information. Watch out for links to log-in pages, since phishing emails like to send very similar emails that direct to their own "login page."

Having a protocol to deal with bounces is wise. In their case, if a subscriber soft-bounces, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream for one cycle and try paperless again for the next cycle. If they run into a hard-bounce, they put the subscriber back into the paper stream indefinitely until the subscriber re-enrolls themselves in the paperless process.

Nationwide's solution is based on the ExactTarget SOAP API. Their OMS (outbound messaging service) is a middleware layer of abstraction that actually sits behind their firewall. Between the OMS and ExactTarget much communication occurs to get the statements out to subscribers.

The content of the eStatement itself uses AMPscript to build the bill by parsing concatenated attributes and dynamically displaying content in appropriate data tables.

Michael Murdza (ExactTarget) took us through the technical aspect of the eStatement data flow. A sophisticated decision tree weave through the Nationwide database and ExactTarget application, using XML, AMPscript, and API calls.

And then the presentation wrapped up, and everyone started getting ready for the evening entertainment. I've really enjoyed live blogging the technology track for everyone today, and I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing it. See you between the lines :)
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Mobile Developers Solution Showcase

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
Ratul Shah is the presenter for the first part of the solution showcase. Unlike every other presenter that's talked in this room so far today, Ratul is maneuvering through the crowd with the hand-held mic. What a showman. :)

Industry Standard Terms
  • SMS = short message service, aka text messaging. It has a 160 character limit.
  • MO = mobile originated = a message sent FROM a phone
  • MT = mobile terminated = a message sent TO a phone
  • short code = a 5- or 6-digit number that you buy from a carrier to send messages to your customers. http://www.usshortcodes.com
  • vanity short code = a short code that spells something out, such as our, ETSMS
  • random short code = a short code that doesn't intentionally spell anything. These cost slightly less.
  • private short code = only your traffic goes through this code
  • shared short code = a code that you share with other SMS users. Keywords differentiate your traffic from the traffic of other people on the shared short codes.
  • MMA = Mobile Marketing Association http://mmaglobal.com/policies. A group that creates guidelines for United States mobile marketing.
  • Aggregator = a third party company that maintains connections between the carriers and the content providers. When we provisioning a short code for you, we work with an aggregator to get you approved for all carriers.
ExactTarget SMS Architecture
You create JOIN, VOTE, HELP, UNSUBSCRIBE and other kinds of actions that subscribers use to send you MO messages to get in on your mobile messages.

Unfortunately, you can't create keywords or actions in the API at this point. You can initiate SMS sends through the API, however.

System Terms
  • Subscriber key = unique identifier for subscribers. Allows you to identify subscribers by phone number instead of email address.
  • Publication list = contains subscribers who opt-in using their mobile device
  • Data extension = contains subscribers whom you import through the GUI or the API  
Implementing Text
  • Keyword response - text in and receive a response
  • Mobile capture - captures email address for list growth
  • Vote and check vote count - submit your vote. poll the response
  • Outbound (with opt-in) - a message from ExactTarget to the mobile device
  • Custom campaigns
Wow, Ratul goes through a lot of content fast, and a lot of these slides are very graphics heavy and difficult to translate to blog. Thankfully, everyone at the conference is supposed to be able to get the slides.

FanMail Solution

Dave DeVore - CEO FanMail marketing
Josiah Kaiser - Senior Operations and Solutions Consultant
Tim Kauble - ExactTarget product specialist and world-class AMPscript guru

FanMail Marketing is using SMS to capture email addresses. Initially they were asking subscriber to text their email addresses in this format:

krohn email@example.com to 88769

but they found that customers found this confusing and made errors that prevented the system from capturing their information. So for the next phase, they made it into a 2-stage process to make it more like a conversation. In the new setup, subscribers text in in this format:

stubbs to 88769

then the system sends back an text saying something to the effect of, "Thanks for your interest. Reply to this message with your email address to join our mailing list." When the subscriber responds with the email address, it is added to the email list. The customer gets an email immediately welcoming them to the list, and then any future mailings to that list.

The SMS message that was sent back after the first message included AMPscript to trigger the welcome email.

The first use case resulted in more errors than the second, and people weren't willing to try to sign up more than once. A limitation of both use cases is that it only captures people's email addresses, omitting other important subscriber information that would be useful for relevant messaging .

In the third phase of FanMail's SMS evolution, they integrated their SMS with landing pages to allow the capture of more subscriber information. People text in:

butter to 88769

The system responds with a message saying to respond with an email address. When the subscriber replies with the email address, the system sends them an email with a link to a landing page built with the Smart Capture feature.  People complete the Smart Capture form and now the system has information to send really personalized information. For example, this band (Hot Buttered Rum) uses the subscriber's ZIP code to let the subscriber know about upcoming concerts in their area.

What FanMail discovered was that going through this process aggregated higher quality subscribers who were more likely to be engaged with the marketing campaigns and therefore higher ROI on their marketing efforts.

The future phases of this SMS evolution may allow subscriber to provide attribute information via SMS, such as ZIP code to empower the functionality above.

Another thing that FanMail has discovered is that subscribers are willing to send you SMS messages if they're interested in what you have to offer, but they don't like for you to begin the SMS conversation.

Custom Use Case
Tim Kauble took the stage for the final portion of this presentation. Poor Tim--his phone junked out on him this morning and his data connection didn't work, so we're seeing a modified version of his presentation. Typical of technology!

Tim talked about designing a system to allow him to manage his own tasks using text messages. He wanted to accomplish the following:
  • Accept tasks
  • Assign those tasks
  • Assign priority, including deadlines
  • Expose the tasks to landing pages so that he could see them all
  • Support multiple methods of input, such a forwarding emails to an endpoint that generates a task with the content of the email.
Tim demonstrated texting in to the system to find out how many tasks he had. He had 30, by the way, plus the system also sent him a message to stop messing around with text messages and get back to work. :)

Tim also brought up the landing page where we could see his lengthy task list--such is the life of the ExactTarget employee!
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Live Blog: Advanced Dynamic Messaging and Smart Capture

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
The Developer Track is packed this morning to see Advanced Dynamic Messaging and Smart Capture. The room looks like it seats about 100, and all the seats are full with several standing or sitting (like me--tough to type while standing!) around the perimeter of the room.

Centric Consulting
The presentation begin with Centric Consulting talking  about its extensive experience using the advanced ExactTarget tools.  As I type this, Dave Lemons from Centric Consulting is introducing the basic terms: microsites, data extensions, AMPscript...stuff like that. Bryan Wade, ExactTarget embedded expert and emcee of the event, has been interjecting as well, probably trying to help bring the sophisticated technical content to the attendees, who are certainly of various levels of technical experience, especially with the ExactTarget tools.

Centric has built a landing page that displays the results of a query activity on a data extension. Centric is a third-party developer, and the functionality that they're displaying here is not just an example of what other people can also do, but could eventually become the kind of app that we've been talking about all conference long that could be made available to ExactTarget customers everywhere.


Best Buy
Eric Brousseasu, Best Buy
Jim Murphey, technology solutions manager

The second part of the session is a case study of some of the cool things that Best Buy has implemented.

Eric and Jim started the presentation basic with their dynamic content that they're using in their emails. The dynamic content is based on attributes in a data extension, so it sounds like they're basing dynamic content on more than just subscriber attributes. They're also including AMPscript in the emails for simple things like proper capitalization as well as for building rowsets to include the message. You can do things like include a purchase history using this functionality. I think that in this case they're sending emails to alert customers when a product comes back in stock.

As they moved in to the advanced dynamic content discussion, they talk about using Content Syndication ("screen scrape," as it's called in the vernacular) to grab content from their website to include in the email. It sounds like they're transforming the XML from the site using AMPscript before including it in the body of the message. By combining the subscriber's wish list content (from the website) with the emails, they're creating truly personalized, truly 1-to-1 communication. This is a really cool implementation.

They were running out of time for the last part of their talk, so we rushed through the delayed surveys (the "how was the shopping experience" email  that came out a few days after the purchase, the ability of customers to cancel their own orders through the website, and the ability to see which SKUs were selling best--all using the ExactTarget application.

A very cool presentation with some very cool functionality. Also very cool: now the people are filing out and I get can a seat. Maybe my foot won't be asleep for the whole day after all!

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

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Andrea Smith
written by David Hoang
 
Question: When do email marketing professionals usually take a break or step out?

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

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

Here are some quick tips on what you should run through your mind; so you don’t have to leave the building after delivering an email:
  • Is it legit? After every round of revisions, always validate the message; the simplest way to see if you have everything to get it out the door: physical address, unsubscribe link, etc.
  • Do an email test. It's practically unheard of wherein you send out a mass email campaign without testing; so don’t do it. Set up a few test email accounts (Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, AOL, etc.) and spend some time to see how it looks in each email client.
  • Spell check. Repeat. Your email delivery is intended for 1-to-1 marketing, so write like you’re taking quality time to communicate with your subscribers. Run spell check, manually look for spelling errors and yes, read the message out loud. If this seems like too much work, make someone else do it!
As much as email marketing is mass-produced, the one-to-one messaging is its key to effectiveness. Therefore taking time to communicate a message and doing it correctly, with no spelling and grammatical errors, should be top priority. Not only will avoiding these common pitfalls save you face, it will also make your recipients feel like you have taken that extra step to make sure it's perfect. 
  • Check the details. Take a look at every aspect of your message to make sure something is not missing. Do you have a subject line? Is it the correct one? Do all of the links in the email go to the proper pages?
  • Do a final once-over. Think of this as when you were taught crossing the street. Look left, look right, then look left again. Test your email to make sure that there are no mistakes, especially if revisions were made. Scan with the mindset that you are looking for mistakes. If you don’t find them, hit the send button.
Ultimately, you want to come up with a method that's most comfortable to you. Make an actual checklist and cross off the steps as you prepare the send. With a routine checklist in mind, you can hopefully sit back and relax (a little bit more) after delivery.  
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Email Design Tip of the Week: Designer’s Top Ten Countdown to Connections

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 by Kristina Schott
Connections is less than a week away, and the Design Solutions team is anxiously awaiting the fanfare, fun, and finale. Here's how to make the most of ten designerly highlights of Connections from the Design Solutions team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Malcolm Gladwell

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

Designer's Top Ten Countdown to Connections

 


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The Power of the ExactTarget Platform

Thursday, October 1, 2009 by Amanda Cross
ExactTarget Integrated PartnersIntegrations with partner products is one of the things that makes ExactTarget so dynamic and powerful. Centralizing your electronic marketing software to work with your CRM, CMS, analytics, or other packages lets you accomplish more with less time, energy, and money.

Here's just a few of the new integrations available:

SeeWhy
SeeWhy, creator of the Abandonment Tracker Pro web analytics service, is now offering an integration with ExactTarget. This integration intends to optimize real-time email follow-up campaigns that can convert up to 50% of website abandoners to customers.

XMPie
XMPie, who offers "One-to-One-in-One" is now incorporating ExactTarget email service into its PersonalEffect Cross-Media and e-Media products.

Printable Technologies
Printable Technologies Inc., provider of web-to-print and marketing personalization solutions, has integrated ExactTarget email capabilities into their product MarcomCentral.

You can see many more available integrations on the Integrated Partners page on our website. Categories of integration include, but are not limited to:
  • Content Management System Partners
  • CRM Partners
  • Deliverability Partners
  • Survey Partners
  • Web Analytics Partners
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Email Design Tip of the Week: Extreme Makeover, The Email Design Competition

Thursday, September 17, 2009 by Andrea Smith
We’ve blogged about it before, but we’re so excited we just have to share it again. The Design Solutions team is currently knee-deep working on one of ExactTarget’s premier main-stage events at Connections 2009. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? It’s simple – you can’t afford to miss:

Extreme Makeover: The Email Design Competition.
Connections 2009, Indianapolis, IN  •  Thursday, Oct. 15th, 10:00 – 11:00am

The specifics
Three design teams compete. Only one can win! Design teams from ExactTarget, Mighty Interactive, and Smith-Harmon have redesigned and will soon deploy their take on emails for three different ExactTarget clients. First join each team as they present their hard work, vote for your favorite via text, and then watch in anticipation as MarketingExperiments reveals both the fan favorites and the results of each battle as measured by clicks and conversions.

COMPETITORS: ExactTarget, Mighty Interactive, Smith-Harmon

CLIENT PARTICIPANTS: MarketingExperiments, AAA, Pier 1

JUDGE: MarketingExperiments

This is an amazing opportunity to see not only how important it is to have good design in email, but also how strategy, content hierarchy, and the unique email landscape come together for performance-driven success. Be sure to join us!

Design Solutions
In addition to the Extreme Makeover Competition, don't miss the ExactTarget Design Solutions team at our booth in the expo hall. Bring all your burning questions, sneak a quick critique and talk to the experts!
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Design Tip of the Week: Don’t miss out on Connections '09

Thursday, September 10, 2009 by Tana Babcock
Time is closing in for the Connections 2009 registration – it’s a little over a month away! If you haven’t registered yet, you should, as this is the largest one-to-one marketing conference in the world.  With this year’s theme being  “Success By Design” it’s no wonder the Design Solutions team will be fully involved. Several email design experts will be available for quick email critiques and questions regarding your email program. Stop by our booth in the Expo Hall, say hello, find out our exciting news and pick up some Design Solutions schwag too!

Email Marketing Design

Still want more from the design team? Take a closer look at this intense breakout session agenda bringing you insight from some of the sharpest marketers in the industry! Let me just point out a few places you’re likely to run into a designer…

On Wednesday October 14th, join two of our top designers for the Designed By Success panel (noted in the Content Track) as they discuss the current landscape of email creative. 
 
Better still, check out the Email + Video: Take 2 panel (noted in the Optimization Track) for a solid perspective on how video can work for your program, tips on usage, and other insights.

FINALLY, please make sure that you check out Extreme Makeover: The Email Design Competition! Thursday morning starts off with a bang with a design face-off between Mighty Interactive, Smith-Harmon, and yours truly, ExactTarget. Two months have been devoted to building the best email designs for MarketingExperiments, AAA, and Pier 1. The results of the competition, based on actual success metrics, will be revealed for the first time in this session. Be sure to join us for the unveiling and get your chance to vote for which email design you like best.

Check out our Flickr account for a great visual representation of the fun we had last year. And don’t forget to check out this star-studded list of events for further entertainment!

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The Latest One to One Marketing Solutions With iLab - Omniture Test and Target

Thursday, August 27, 2009 by Jeff Cunning
iLab at ExactTarget is always rolling out new products, solutions, features, and functionalities for your benefit.  Recent innovations include Impression Tracking for Dynamic Content or AMPscript, Outbound Text Messaging with a Shared Short Code, and International Text Messaging.  Some spaces still remain so don't wait any longer to become our newest partner in innovation.

This week, we are excited to release Omniture Test & Target.  And in iLab, it's not just another affordable email marketing solution--it's free! This new feature is a conversion product that allows marketers to test subscriber interaction with website design, content, navigation, and campaigns.  Test results can be accessed in real time and used to target marketing offers, products, and content to different segments or individuals in order to create the most effective campaigns. 

Omniture Test and Target

Whether it's B2B or B2C, access iLab today to sign up for Omniture Test & Target and take the next step in delivering the most relevant information to your subscribers!
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Email Design Tip of the Week: A Designer’s Take on “Presenting Data and Information”, a Seminar by Edward Tufte

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 by Andrea Smith
Email Marketing DesignSeveral of my colleagues and the Design Solutions team had the opportunity to attend a fantastic seminar in Indianapolis this week given by Edward Tufte. Without diving into the full breadth of his rich background and teachings, Edward Tufte is an influential writer, analytical designer, and landscape sculpture artist. Through his work, he has provided amazing thought leadership into how to effectively display information and content.

This fresh insight begs the question, how can we create better, more effective presentations based on Tufte’s strategy for success? Or in an email marketer’s case, how can we create better emails? Here is what we gleaned:

1. Better Content
  • If what you have needs improvement or is not working, simply get better content. Make useful comparisons and show them. It’s vastly important to have solid evidence and content before you can begin to develop a great email program.
  • All presentations (or email programs) stand or fall based on the quality and integrity of the content presented.

2. Effective Presentation
  • Be as effective as possible in a given space and respect the unique landscape of email. Don’t cloud what you have to say – keep it simple.
  • Look to your audience for cues. Feel free to teach them or present new information, but respect their time and interests.

3. Redesign
  • If your communications are cluttered or confusing, redesign them!

As always, check out "Email Marketing Design: The New Essentials" for more design tips and recommendations.

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E-Coupons are HOT! (Even if the economy is not.)

Monday, August 24, 2009 by Joel Book
As reported in last week’s online issue of MEDIAWEEK, “8.6 million (or 8 percent) of U.S. households currently acquire coupons via text messages and/or email.” This finding is from a recent report from Scarborough Research.

The article noted that “a number of factors have contributed to the increasing use of text or e-mail coupons, such as the increased usage of cell phones and other personal communications devices, which allow consumers to access offers at the point of purchase. And because consumers must opt in to receive the coupons, they tend to be more targeted.”

Gordmans’ Birthday E-Coupon is a Winner

Gordmans' Birthday E-Coupon

Email is the direct marketing workhorse for Gordmans, an Omaha-based retailer of ELP (Everyday Low Price) merchandise. The company, with 65 stores throughout the Midwest, uses e-coupons to “congratulate” its customers on their birthday by sending a bar-coded coupon worth $5 off their next purchase.

Results:
70.5% Open Rate
4.3% Conversion Rate (of delivered)
6.0% Conversion Rate (of opened)

Most importantly, the average sales receipt for customers redeeming the “Happy Birthday” coupon is 33% higher than average!

Looking for Retail Marketing Horsepower?

In today’s highly competitive retail environment, it’s more important than ever to employ a multichannel marketing program that includes digital one-to-one communications—and gives customers exactly what they want, when they want it. 

Whether it’s implementing Personalized E-coupon Solutions, POS Customer Data Capture for Triggered Email Promotions, or using SMS to capture new email subscribers, ExactTarget can help.
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2009 Marketer's Dilemma: Doing More with Less...Again

Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Amanda Berkey
39% of Marketers think their budget will be cut in 2009As a marketer, I've always focused on balancing driving the most results from a limited budget. Then the global recession took effect last year and to remain competitive, companies began their prudent cost-cutting measures across all areas of the business. All marketers know that their budgets are some of the first to be reduced during trying economic times. This challenge helps us flex our virtual marketing muscles to affect our target audience with strategic marketing campaigns, with less budget than before.

The good news is that you're not alone! MediaPost shared results from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recent survey of marketers, concluding that while marketing spend is slightly increasing in some companies, the amount of new projects is surging. What a balancing act!

MediaPost's Jack Loechner writes, "today, 87% of the respondents indicate they are identifying cost savings and reductions, the same as one year ago, and only slightly improved from 93% six months ago." The survey shows that marketing spending is still tight often leading to sending fewer people on the road, reducing the media advertising, and lowering overall production costs.

This recent survey validates that the pressure is on to continue to improve marketing strategies that drive business results, all while spending less budget. At ExactTarget we know more than ever that our customers come to us for One to One Marketing and Email Marketing Strategies that help set them apart from their competitors.

This Tuesday, Myron Corporation, announced that they renewed their contract with ExactTarget because they were able to reduce their marketing costs while more than doubling their email-related sales using our on-demand marketing solutions. So what's "in" for 2009, you ask? Saving on costs, while driving business is always in style.
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Partner Network Builds Strategic Email Marketing Relationships

Thursday, August 20, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

ExactTarget has a highly-talented team of people working with one objective in mind: developing strategic partnerships with referral, consulting, embedded, integrated, and reseller partners.

Why?

These partnership strengthen the abilities of the companies we work with and allow more people to utilize the power of ExactTarget’s one-to-one marketing software through email, SMS, and voice. ExactTarget is the perfect email marketing solution for many businesses looking to send direct email marketing campaigns.

Our partner page lists who we are currently aligned with and our program guide gives you detailed description of what it means to be a partner with ExactTarget, an industry leader in 1 to 1 Email Marketing Solutions that can develop effective email marketing campaigns across industries.

Interested in learning more? Download the ET Partner Program Guide PDF.

Kyle Schroeder
Slingshot Summer Intern

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Where To Find New One-to-One Marketing Software

Friday, August 14, 2009 by Jeff Cunning
Want to improve your marketing strategy? Need affordable email marketing software? The Innovations Lab, commonly referred to as iLab, is the perfect place to enhance your one-to-one marketing efforts.  We release our newest features to iLab first where clients can access them in exchange for providing us with valuable feedback.  iLab is located in ExactTarget's 3sixty user community--clients can login and view current, former, and future innovations and sign up to have the available features automatically enabled.  During the test process, clients will also be able to complete a short survey and phone interview to help influence future product enhancements.

iLab
 
A couple examples of recent innovations are Live Images and Simplified Landing Pages.  Live Images allows you to change image content in emails after they're already sent.  Simplified Landing Pages offers the ability to create a landing page in just minutes by boiling the process down to a few simple steps.  New innovations will continue to arrive and become available to any user--although spaces are limited--on a first come, first serve basis. 

Innovations that are set to become available soon include SMS solutions 1) Global Text and 2) Outbound Text Messaging with a Shared Short Code as well as new tracking capabilities with 1) Impression Tracking for Dynamic Content and 2) Impression Tracking for AMPscript.  Login to iLab today or join the iLab group in 3sixty to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest features!
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Driving Customer Engagement: Email + Web Analytics

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 by Colby Cavanaugh
After you’ve done the hard work of getting visitors to your site, your marketing job is still not done. You need to pay attention to your visitors’ behavior, intentions, and actions, and then you need to deliver them compelling communications at the right time through the right medium. It’s not an easy task. Lucky for us, the web is the most measureable and actionable medium marketers have ever had.

Web analytics solutions give you powerful insights into understanding the interests and behavior of your online visitors—both through implicit and explicit actions. For example, your visitors may tell you exactly what they want—such as adding a product to a shopping cart—or they may spend 30 minutes browsing a particular area of content on your site. Either way, they’re sending you a clear message of intent and interest.

Listen to your visitors and take the appropriate action to start a conversation that helps them get what they’re looking for. When you combine customer behavior and intent data from your web analytics solution with a powerful communications platform like ExactTarget, you can begin a meaningful conversation with your website visitors by providing them relevant content, special offers, and personalized information—instantly and automatically. Provide value to your online visitors prior to a transaction, during a transaction, and after a transaction, and you’ll build long-lasting, deep customer relationships.

To see a great example of this integration in action, check out our case study on Cable Shopping Network. CSN not only uses the integration between Omniture Site Catalyst to get a consolidated view of their email and analytics reporting (which ensures they get an accurate picture of the marketing campaigns that are driving the best results), they also integrate with Omniture Genesis to automatically remarket to and re-engage customers. With the consolidated data from Omniture and ExactTarget, CSN automatically creates shopping cart abandonment lists They then re-engage these prospects using ExactTarget, and they assist their web visitors back into (and through) the conversion process by providing compelling content and offers to those who have left the site without completing a transaction. CSN has seen fantastic results, and their story illustrates a great example of listening to your customers and offering value to create sustainable, long-term relationships.

If you’re using a web analytics solution today but haven’t integrated it with ExactTarget, it’s absolutely time to start. We have integrations with all leading vendors, so you can rest assured that there’s an integration path for you—and our services team can help you get started. If you need more information, reach out to your account manager or check out the resources we’ve compiled on ExactTarget 3sixty.
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ExactTarget 2009 SUBSCRIBERS RULE! Awards – Nominations Now Accepted!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 by Chip House

Each year at the ExactTarget Connections conference we give out awards to our clients that have demonstrated some of the best programs, designs, list growth and results of the year. This year is no different…but there is a new twist. This year we’re launching the SUBSCRIBERS RULE! Awards.
SR Award
There are 5 key awards and 3 grand prizes that go to those programs that best honor the three main tenets of our SR! philosophy:

1. Serve the individual.
2. Honor their unique preferences for communication, content, frequency and channel.
3. Deliver them timely, relevant content that improves their lives
 

If you are an ExactTarget client or partner you can now nominate yourself, or another program online. Nominations are only open until Friday, September 4th so please start those wheels turning now.

Submit nominations here!
Award Categories are:

Communication & Content Relevance Award
Do you design your content around subscriber preferences? This award focuses on customers that have shown big improvements in subscriber relevancy by designing emails to match subscriber preferences. Of course design and metrics matter here!

Behavior & Data Relevance Award
This award is for marketers that have really done a great job integrating and leveraging data from multiple sources (CRM, analytics, POS) in a way that results in more individualized communications through ExactTarget.

Channel Preference Award
Honoring your subscribers’ channel preferences to receive email via email, SMS, voice or other channels? If so, this award is for you!  Nominees must have used at least two messaging channels and will be judged on demonstrated customer retention or lift in response.

Permission-based List Growth Award
The best marketing lists are grown subscriber by subscriber while honoring permission. If you are an ExactTarget customer using unique, permission-based list capture strategies that have shown big improvements in list growth or response rates then we want to hear from you!

Improving Lives Award
Who says email can’t change lives? Many of our customers in non-profit and profit sectors help others every day. This award is for a customer with the most inspirational story of how their one-to-one marketing efforts are improving the lives of their customers.

Grand Prizes:

Reseller Partner of the Year Award
From beginning to end this ExactTarget Reseller demonstrates excellence in email marketing strategy, design, integration, execution and client success all while honoring the tenets Subscribers Rule!

Embedded Partner of the Year
A number of companies have embedded ExactTarget into their software application. This award is for the best embedded solution that honors Subscribers Rule!

Email Program of the Year Award
This award will simply go to the best of the best. The grand prize winner of the SR! Awards 2009 will be the best overall email marketing program that honors the tenets of Subscribers Rule from start to finish. That includes solid strategy, data management, creative, use of dynamic content and targeting, integration, and results!

One thing is for sure…we’ll have a great time giving out the awards this year. ExactTarget customers never disappoint. There are always some amazing programs shown off at these awards and I’m sure this year will be no different!
 

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