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Time for some Email Marketing Spring Cleaning

Friday, March 12, 2010 by Shelly Griffin

Maybe I am just a little too happy about the warmer weather... but I can smell Spring in the air. The snow has finally all melted, the birds are chirping, the days are getting warmer. Yes, Spring is in the air. Granted my happiness may be a tad premature. As the saying goes: if you don't like the weather in Indiana just wait 10 minutes. We could easily have more snow during the month of March. Whatever the case, I am going with it.

Spring is also the time to think about Spring cleaning. I am one of those weird people that actually looks forward to spring cleaning. I like the idea of starting fresh. Doing the deep cleaning and organizing. Open up the windows and let the fresh air into the house.

It's also a perfect time to do some email marketing spring cleaning... use a little elbow grease to scrub your subscriber database. Take the tooth brush and get down in the cracks. Are there subscribers that have stopped opening your emails? Maybe it's time to segment those to a different list and change the way in which you communicate with that group. It may be time to verify the frequency that your subscribers want to be communicated with, along with the content that they wish to receive.

I'm also of the belief that if something hasn't been used in a year, it needs to go. Donate it, throw it away, sell it - whatever the case it has to leave the house. Take the same approach to your emails. Design not working for you? Not seeing the open rate you expect or the open rate has declined over time? Then it is probably time to toss your email design and start fresh. Clean out the cobwebs. Review our Email Design Tips of the Week for some email design spring cleaning inspiration!

The other thing I LOVE about spring is the garden catalogs! You get to dream and plan all the beautiful plants that you can add to your garden this year. Check out what's new. With your email marketing program, there are all types of resources and ideas out there that you can peruse with wonderment and anticipation... maybe it is time to incorporate Twitter into your email marketing program.

All this talk of spring and sunshine... I think I'll go for a walk outside!

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!

Your emails CAN do it all!

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Shelly Griffin

Everyone knows that I love to hear how our customers are using ExactTarget's application for their email marketing campaigns - especially when it is a great example of incorporating good design, call-to-actions, and cross sells - while still maintaining anticipated, relevant and personal content for subscribers. DineWise is a company that specializes in prepared gourmet meals delivered right to your door. They send both informational and promotional emails through ExactTarget. Check out this recent article on exactly what sets their emails apart.

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.

New Zealand gets tough.

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Karen Balle

New Zealand has had enough of businesses and individuals not paying attention to their anti-spam laws. They had been going with educational efforts, but they're fed up now. Fines for spamming, either via email or SMS, are $200,000 for an individual or $500,000 for a business.

If you're a New Zealand resident and you're getting spam, you can file a complaint with the Department of Internal Affairs.

If you're sending to New Zealand residents, make sure you're honoring unsubscribes or it can cost you up to a cool half-million.

Countries all over the world are fed up. ET handles your unsubs for you, so if you're sending through us, no worries. Just make sure that if you're a new customer you've imported your previously unsubscribed customers as unsubscribed or that you don't upload them as Active subscribers.

Email Design Tip of the Week: Social Media in Email

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Andrea Smith

Should social media be used in email? Sure! But only if it makes sense for your audience. Decide if you will link to your existing social presence, enable content sharing, or both. Let’s take a quick closer look:

Link to your existing social presence. This can include a simple text or graphic link to your Facebook page, Twitter feed or LinkedIn site, driving traffic to your social presence. As with your email program and website, you’re simply encouraging interaction with your brand.
Enable content sharing through ExactTarget’s “Social Forward” integration. In other words, share an “item” with your network. This can include sharing the entire email or just a section of content. In doing this, you are allowing your subscriber base to evangelize your brand on your behalf. In the Florida Power and Light newsletter below, you have the option to share “Cold Weather Tips”.
Plan, test, repeat! While social media can bring value to your email program, make sure you’re thinking through the bigger picture. Social media is definitely an emerging technology that will someday be a part of standard brand practices, so it makes sense to give it a chance. Be sure to plan and design with the needs of your customers and subscribers in mind, then test, evaluate and repeat!

For more design advice and thoughts on social media, add @ETDesign to your Twitter feed and check out “Design Tip of the Week: Integrating Twitter to Your Email Strategy“.

Changes to Lycos spam filtering.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Karen Balle

Lycos is migrating their customers onto a new mail system. This new system uses a different type of spam filtering than their old system. It's an adaptive spam filter that will let their users be able to decide what is and is not spam, adjusting its settings for each individual user.

What's an adaptive spam filter? It's a bit like the spam filter used in Thunderbird or Mac OS X Mail. Similar to Bayesian spam filters, they learn based on what each individual person's preferences are rather than on a group's determination (complaints and user engagement models). Each time a person clicks on spam or not spam, the system learns a little more about what types of emails that subscriber thinks is spam and what is not. It gets smarter about the next piece of email that comes in.

So what's that mean in practical terms?

Subscribers Rule!

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.

Twitterview: Engagement. Delivered.

Monday, February 22, 2010 by Dawn DeVirgilio

Our own Chip House, VP of Industry & Relationship Marketing virtually sat down with me for our latest Twitterview on 2010 Resolutions. We talked deliverability and how marketers should be more engaging in 2010:

ExactTarget: @cehouse Your resolution is Engage Your Subscribers. What’s the easiest thing a marketer can do to engage? #ET2010

Chip House: The answer seems almost too easy. Treat them like you know them and you care about "what they think" as individuals. #ET2010

Chip House: the same things marketers do to drive high ROI (opt-in, branding, relevance, frequency) also drive engagement

ExactTarget: How does engagement affect email deliverability?

Chip House: Positive and negative engagement are monitored by ISPs. Complaints are "negative" engagement, and clicks are positive

Chip House: Engagement also comes in "implicit" ways -- meaning, if your emails aren't ever opened, that will lower inbox rate

ExactTarget: Explain why quality always trumps quantity in deliverability.

Chip House: Marketers know of the 80/20 rule. The 20% drives your sales, but the bad apples in the 80% kill your deliverability

Chip House: So most from the print space think "email is cheap, I'll send a lot" - but, the cost of mailing deep is poor engagment

ExactTarget: The whitepaper mentions reducing sending frequency can actually help re-engage. What other factors play a part?

Chip House: Regular list hygiene to re-engage or dump unengaged subs is needed. But, just reducing frequncy has shown to work too

Chip House: The balance of engaged and active customers has to heavily outweigh the unengaged & complaints to avoid the spam folder

ExactTarget: Where should folks go if they want more information on email deliverability?

Chip House: visit the deliverability blog at ExactTarget.com for starters... other good resources are the EEC, Sherpa and more

How are you engaging your subscribers in 2010? Want more expert advice on email design, deliverability, subscriber engagement? Download 5 Resolutions Every Marketer Must Make in 2010.

Twitterview: Success By Email Design

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Dawn DeVirgilio

Feburary is unoffically Email Design Month here at ExactTarget. (Hint: If you aren't subscribed to Insight you can opt-in to our own email marketing newsletter - There will be some Email Design info coming your way this month!)

Today I was excited to have a Twitterview with ExactTarget's Justine Jordan, Manger of Design Solutions on our Email Design Twitter Account @ETDesign.

ExactTarget: @ETDesign In your resolution you challenge marketers to Design for Subscribers. Why is it not just about graphics and templates? #ET2010

Justine: Your subscribers determine your success or failure. Design with their needs in mind and they will reward you.

Justine: To design is to create a purpose/plan. Graphics are important (brand awareness, trust) but just part of the equation

ExactTarget: What is the first step for marketers to incorporate social media into their design?

Justine: Start small, have a plan. Decide if you will link to existing presence or enable content share. Design, test, repeat.

ExactTarget: Design.Test.Repeat is great advice! What do you recommend to marketers who are just starting to do email design testing?

Justine: Find out what elements drive success and focus your efforts there. Explore different ways to highlight key messages.

Justine: Make decisions based on data. Test the usual and then get creative. Left or right sidebar? Product or lifestyle image?

ExactTarget: What brands are doing a good job of creating great social experiences in their email design?

Justine: Brands that are finding ways to start conversations. Need unique ways to encourage interaction, not just clicks.

ExactTarget: Lastly, What was the most interesting takeaway from the Connections 09 Extreme Makeover Design Edition Session?

Justine: Can I quote @andy_mott? :: “Our intuition will never be as good as our ability to test.”

Justine: @ExactTarget Also, take risks, but make informed decisions. Be open to success where you didn't expect it and failure where you did #ET2010

How are you starting the conversation with your email marketing and social media strategy? Make sure to check out our 2010 Resolutions for more from our thought leaders on email design, deliverability, and subscriber engagement. And as always you can get more email design tips from ExactTarget on our blog.

Time to Take a break and Review Your Email Acquistion program.

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Shelly Griffin

Ok..I admit it, I am not making a great start to the year when it comes to keeping up with my blog. It is soo easy to get bogged down in the day to day, that I find myself at the end of each week wondering where it went. Poof! Another week gone by in the blink of an eye. And we're only in the second month of the year..not a good sign of things to come.

Talking to clients, this same phenomenon easily takes hold of their email programs. All the best intentions to prep, plan, test, target, review, revamp are diminished by the need to get the email out the door. Poof! Another send gone...maybe next time. We all need to set time in our weeks for reflection and planning. We need more buffers in our schedules.

The first priority in any email marketing program should be a review of your email sign-up and email acquisition. This time of year is the perfect time to take some time to review the sign-up forms, how you request permission, the expectations and anticipated content for each email. Last week Stefan Pollard from ClickZ featured an article on "How to Improve your Process for Acquiring Subscribers". Set some time aside to read, reflect and then revamp your own email acquisition programs.

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.

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!

10 Tips for Successful Email Preheader Text

Monday, January 25, 2010 by Kristeen Hudson

In my previous blog post I explained what email preheader text is and why it is important. Below you will find some tips for creating your preheader text.

Tips for successful preheader text:

Call to Action – Unlike in your subject line, it’s ok (and encouraged) to use your call to action as your preheader text.

Be Positive - Use positive wording for preheader text. For example instead of saying, “Having trouble viewing this email? Click here” try “view this email with images.” The design team has a great blog post about this.

Support – Make your preheader text support you subject line. If you remember from my post Improve Your Email Subject Line, the subject line should support what is in the email. It is all one big circle.

Character Count – Keep in mind the length of the preheader text that will be displayed in the inbox (before opening). This length varies depending on the email client. To give you a character count reference, Gmail shows about 100 characters for subject line (this number varies based on screen size) and preheader text collectively (so if you have a long subject line none of your preheader text will display) and the iPhone displays about 140 characters (in the traditional vertical view) regardless of subject length. There are also some email clients that don’t display any.

Proper Placement – The marketing preheader text (aka the call to action) should be in the top left of the email. This way it will show up in the inbox. Then your more functional preheader text (such as add to address book, unsubscribe, forward to a friend) should be in the top right corner.

Short and Sweet – The pre-header text is meant to be a short summary that the subscriber can quickly glace at. If you make the pre-header text to long it defeats the purpose.

Echo – A common mistake by marketers is repeating the subject line as the preheader text. This repetitive and doesn’t add any value.

Look and Feel – Preheader text is generally smaller then body copy, but it should still be readable. Keep in mind color choices (dark text with light background or reverse is ideal) and font size (minimum of 8pt font).

Be Creative – You are competing for attention in the inbox. Write preheader text that is going to grab the attention of your subscriber and is going to make them want to read your entire email.

Test, test, test – Like everything else in email marketing, your preheader line needs to be tested. Try an A/B split with different pre-headers and test to see which emails get the most opens and conversions.

My Resolutions Have Resolutions

Friday, January 22, 2010 by Megan Sabine

As a fellow email marketer, I spent quite a bit of time in December determining what my 2010 resolutions were going to be. After finalizing my goals, I stared at my list…and then had a moment of panic. How exactly am I going to get everything done in 2010?!?!?

It was at that moment that I decided to make resolutions on how I plan to achieve my resolutions. (And yes, I’m aware that it’s a lot like having a meeting to discuss another meeting or having a plan to have a plan.)

I’ve got high expectations for the New Year and I won’t settle for anything less. Hopefully by using the sub-goals below (yup, I said sub-goals), I’ll have a completed to-do list on December 31, 2010. And in my eyes that’s reason enough to have goals for goals and meetings on meetings!

One slip up doesn’t mean I get to forget about that resolution for the rest of the year.
Like many of you, a big resolutions of mine is to test, test, and test some more with ExactTarget’s communications. Also like many of you, sometime the timeline doesn’t allow for the in-depth testing schedule I’d like. While those scenarios aren’t going to go away in 2010, the notion of “well I didn’t test anything on the last communication, so I’m not going to on this one either” will. Every time I have the opportunity to test, you can bet I will.

Set goals that are both challenging and attainable.
While I’m a big fan of setting high goals, I’m an even bigger fan of achieving my goals. Goals should be pushing you past the limits of your comfort zone and challenging you to reach the next level, but you shouldn’t be setting goals that have a zero chance of being met. If currently all of your email campaigns are a manual process, make one of your 2010 goals to automate 4 campaigns versus automating all of your campaigns. If none of your communications contain a social media aspect, resolve to have social media in your “bread and butter” communications.

Uncomplicating my complicated goals.
In the world of email marketing, it’s easy to make a scenario complicated very quickly. For example, you want your email communications to feed off of search history living in your website analytics while pulling in information from your CRM – all while conducting a multi-variant test. And the head scratching begins. Having a 360 view of how your subscriber is interacting with your company is a great 2010 resolution, but at the same time very daunting to tackle at once. It’s a lot easier to tackle one complex goal (think integrating your email with your web analytics) than attempting to tackle all of them at once. That’s why I’ll be setting quarterly goals that will keep me on track for achieving the bigger (and scarier) resolutions of 2010.

P.S. Stuck on what your 2010 resolutions should be? Our latest whitepaper, 5 Resolutions Every Marketer Must Make in 2010, takes the guess work out of the equation.

What is email preheader text and why is it important?

Thursday, January 21, 2010 by Kristeen Hudson

What is email preheader text?

Preheader text is the content of an email that displays before the header of an email. Normally preheader text includes a call to action phrase/link and a view as a webpage link.

Why preheader text is important:

If image blocking is enabled the preheader text may be one of the only (if not the only) things the subscriber can see.
Some mobile devices block images entirely making the preheader text even more important.
Some email clients such as Outlook 07, Gmail, and the iPhone display preheader text after the subject line in the inbox.
Generally speaking this is one of the first things that the subscriber sees before opening your email.
Preheader text provides a quick overview of your email. This helps the subscriber decide if they want to read it or not.

Stay tuned for my next blog post that will include tips for successful preheader text.

Want to know more about what is new with 1-to-1 email marketing? Check out the new whitepaper Five Resolutions Every Marketer Must Make in 2010.

Resolve to Keep Your Resolutions

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 by Megan Sabine

Statistics show that of the 40% of people who make New Years resolutions, nearly 80% of those resolutions are discarded by Valentine’s Day.

80%. That’s a sobering statistic.

But it doesn’t have to be.

As marketers, we’re conditioned to setting goals, executing a plan, and measuring our results. Our New Years resolutions should follow the same pattern. And taking action is the key.

ExactTarget’s new whitepaper, 5 Resolutions Every Marketer Must Make in 2010, outlines the plan simply and succinctly:

Be helpful, not just social.
Engage your subscribers.
Treat subscribers like friends.
Design for your subscribers.
Get back to basics.

Although the pages on the calendar continue to turn, one true thing remains—good marketing is all about positive subscriber relationships. So, read through our recommended resolutions, post them by your PC, and resolve to make 2010 the Year of the Subscriber.
You have the power to make 2010 your best year yet.

Email Design Tip of the Week: Integrating Twitter to Your Email Strategy

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 by David Hoang

Twitter has revolutionized micro-blogging and ways users share content in real-time. Some believe that social media is more valuable than email, but I beg to differ, as both are powerful platforms and are different mediums of communicating. A great solution is integrating Twitter into your email campaigns to reach out to both audiences.

Why Twitter? According to Mashable, there was an estimated 18 million users on the popular micro-blogging site in 2009. Even with 60% of users quitting within the first month, there are roughly 7.2 million active users; untapped and perhaps not an email subscriber of yours. That’s a lot of people to reach out to. Twitter is a way to reach out to new users to: a) communicate with them outside the reach of email b) compel them to become an email subscriber.

Integrating Twitter to your email marketing campaigns will expand your presence and is very simple to set up. Here are a few ways to integrate Twitter in your email strategy:

Twitter integration
Twitter integration is currently an iLab feature and will be available to all ExactTarget users in the future, which will automatically post your email as a tweet to your company’s Twitter account. This is a simple and effective way to broadcast your message further; with the opportunity for your followers to re-tweet and share your email message.

Add social forwarding on your emails
The ExactTarget application provides a simple way to spread your email message beyond your lists with our social forward feature. Social forward will include buttons in your email message (Twitter is included as a ShareThis feature) which easily allows your subscribers to share your message. You will reach out to users who are not your subscribers; opportunity for new relationships.

Start a #hashtag
It’s amazing what people will do if you simply ask them. If you’re trying to reach out to your audience on Twitter, consider asking them to be an extension of your broadcast by starting a hashtag. For example, if Northern Trail Outfitters wanted to start a hashtag on Twitter, they could send an email asking subscribers to tweet with the hashtag “#NTO.” This begins a searchable discussion of content tagged “NTO.”

For a great example, check out Style Campaign’s blog post on how HBO’s True Blood used Twitter in their emails. This is a great way to utilize email to leverage your Twitter campaign.

Post content on your company Twitter account
Your presence matters. Regardless of the size of your company, start a Twitter account and open dialogue with the Twitterverse. Consider posting links, re-tweeting useful content and speaking with your followers. Set up a search and see what people are saying about your company.

Link to your Twitter account on every email
Again, your presence matters. Put a link to your Twitter account on the footer of your email messages; could be a button or simple link. Let people know you are there.

I want to conclude with a few reasons to use email in your marketing campaign, that doesn’t quite work on Twitter:

Sometimes you just need more than 140 characters.
HTML email will allow you to send your message to your subscriber’s inbox.
Your Twitter posts can get lost in the timeline and be bumped out of the real-time stream.

When integrating Twitter into your email strategy, think about the differences between the two platforms, the people on them, then ways you can converge the two together.

For great insights on the rise of social media and its relation to email, check out our whitepaper, Expanding the reach of email with social networks.

Follow us on Twitter at @ExactTarget and @ETDesign.

Happy Tweeting!

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

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Chris Studabaker

Last post, I discussed current support and delivery methods for email + video. This time we're going to focus on some of the benefits and concerns and finish with a few closing thoughts. As I mentioned last time, 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!

Benefits of email + video

Strong emotional appeal
Highly engaging
Personal, even user-generated content

Video offers incredible emotional appeal and a personal, highly engaging form of communication. Online video and social media offer the additional bonus of user-generated content, an incredibly effective tool for brand recognition and even advertising when used properly. Volumes have been written on this subject, and I recommend further reading on video as an advertising medium.

Concerns regarding email + video

Development cost and time
File size and bandwidth
Frame rate inconsistencies
Deliverability

Video use does come with some concerns, the foremost being that video represents a considerable development cost and time investment. Integrating video with email requires first having the video! Creating video content then requires the same commitment to brand standards and quality that comprises the rest of your brand experience.

Moving to technical issues, browsers interpret animated .gif frame rates differently, so it's important to test and ensure your .gif appears as desired in all browsers. File sizes and bandwidth are also a concern. A typical HTML email message may be no more than 150KB, including images, but even a simple animated .gif can double the total file size. To carry this further, sending a 1 MB video to one million subscribers can demand significant resources, and adding send frequency to the equation means we must be cognizant of the effect video can have on web hosting and bandwidth. The lack of video standards also raises concerns with deliverability. ISPs and email clients have different standards when determining spam/junk/trash messages, and the lack of generally accepted practices makes testing even more important.

These concerns can certainly be addressed successfully, but these points show it's important to remember that adding video to an email program represents far more than simply a new content block to plan.

Conclusion

Remember the message's primary goal
Consider video in content hierarchy
Know your audience
Subscriber expectations

In the end, we land on a mindset you're very familiar with: Subscribers Rule! Whether it's text headlines or Hollywood-style full motion video, know your subscribers and provide relevant content. Crafting engaging calls to action, nurturing a subscriber-centric content strategy, and establishing strong subscriber relationships are still primary concerns to email marketers, and video is a powerful new tool we can begin to use in accomplishing those goals.

You can check out Part 1 of this series for info on current support and delivery methods for email + video. Part 3 will share some interesting customer experiences and discuss ExactTarget's animated and static .gif testing using Connections '09 emails.

Haiti Relief Text Campaign from Red Cross Emphasizes Convenience and Immediacy of SMS

Friday, January 15, 2010 by Amanda Berkey

According to the Mashable blog, by 5:30pm EST Jan 14, only two days after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the Red Cross has raised an impressive $5 million dollars from their Text campaign. If you were on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites this week, you may have seen the outcries to donate $10 by texting "Haiti" to the shortcode 90999. If you do the quick math, that's 500,000 mobile subscribers that have used text messaging to donate to the Haitian relief efforts led by the Red Cross. The blog post also shows an SMS message flow explaining how easy it is for a mobile subscriber to text in "Haiti" and then "Yes" to confirm their donation. In two short SMS messages, a single person is able to contribute to the larger cause from anywhere!

As the product marketing manager for the SMS portfolio at ExactTarget, I'm very impressed, but not surprised by the results of this SMS campaign. When I meet with customers who are strategizing about their 1 to 1 Marketing campaigns that include email, SMS, web, and social media, we discuss the reasons that SMS messaging to communicate with your subscribers are effective.

We are in an era when people are more likely to have a mobile phone rather than a traditional land line. And mobile phones are something that people do not leave home without. Whether you have a smart phone or standard mobile phone, SMS text plans is now considered basic communication. How many times have you ditched leaving a person you were calling a voicemail to send them a simple text message? Many people outside of the business world forgo the expensive data plans to receive email and web from their phone, but gladly pay for their SMS messaging plans.

Including text messaging in your 1 to 1 marketing strategy is a powerful way to reach your audience can have huge rewards:

SMS messaging is immediate and direct: by nature of the US standard of 160 characters, text messages are short and concise. They reach the person that needs the quick information. And responding to or reading a text message takes only seconds and it doesn't require you to shift your focus too much. You can even do it in a meeting! *Wink*
Text messaging campaigns are always available when a person is interested: savvy marketers know that it takes massive effort to get a prospect engaged in their brand. Having a text campaign that a mobile subscriber can respond to a call-to-action at the emotional high of the interest, can be the difference if they ever participate or not. Let's face it, when they get back to their computer, even a geniunely interested person is likely to forget that they wanted to sign up for your program.
SMS can augment email marketing efforts: the best example of this approach is from our customer, Pier 1 Imports, who follows up with email drip marketing from new subscribers they captured from their text sweepstakes at college bookstores. Leveraging both email and text messaging for marketing campaigns can empower you to send relevant information using both messaging channels

The recent example of a non-profit organization raising donations and enabling the general public to act is proof that SMS messaging when combined with social media and email can have incredible impact and rewards. For more thoughts about getting started with Text Messaging check out our recent webinar.

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