• "Your website can no longer be a digital brochure, it has to be an engaging place where you can drive conversion," said Joel Book, ExactTarget's Director of eMarketing Education.
  
• "It's time to stop reacting and start taking a pro-active approach to your marketing campaigns," said Jeff Rohrs, ExactTarget's Vice President of Agency and Search Marketing.
  
• "If I receive an email and I don't know who it is, I immediately delete it, so why would we expect our customers to be any different?  I received an email from Continental on my phone that was mobile friendly and I was able to check-in just by replying to a text message - now that's engagement," said Jeanniey Mullen Founder of the Email Experience Council (eec) and Global Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Zinio Systems and VIV Magazine.

The highlight of the day for me was listening to Nick Godfrey, from Customer Portfolios (an email marketing agency partner with ExactTarget) discuss how his company utilized ExactTarget's email marketing software to build Dunkin' Donuts' loyalty program from the ground up.  He talked about the unique challenges of creating a 1 to 1 marketing customer loyalty program. 

A Dunkin' Donuts customer can receive rewards depending on how many times they visit a specific Dunkin' Donuts store each week.  As an example, if I go in Mondays and Wednesdays, the system is smart enough to trigger an email to that patron offering them a $1.00 credit towards the loyalty account, encouraging a third visit  This type of email marketing tool removes the time and budget burden most marketers are facing.

Shrinking budgets have led many marketers to search around for the best way to drive customers to their web site, but after attending this seminar, I realized that your marketing campaign must be engaging, and compelling, giving users a reason to come and stay on your site.  There is too much information out there for your message to get lost. 

My top four takeaways from Route 1 to 1:

• No more digital brochures - they don't work
• Give them a good reason to engage with your brand
• Truly powerful marketing will treat each customer as a unique individual, who has unique need
• Discussing Dunkin' Donuts leads to binge eating on my part

If you are a marketer like me, who knew what they wanted to do, but weren't sure how to do it, you really should think about coming to the ExactTarget Route 1 to 1: The new eMarketing essentials event.  Coming up next are Chicago and Cincinnati...its time to stop being a slave to our to-do lists. 

Gotta run, Dunkin' Donuts just opened here in Indianapolis and I want my free dollar. 

Todd McCall, PR Manager

...um, hi.

I've officially returned from my blogging hiatus. I say that as if 5,000 of you previously hung on my every word, anxiously booting up your laptops over that morning cup of Brazil Ipanema Bourbon™ to read my blog.

Realistic assumption? Maybe not (though that'd be cool). Regardless, you have my apologies for the delay.

Luckily, I have some good excuses:

a) Wrote case studies and use cases galore
b) Went on a month-long safari in Denmark
c) Dove into college recruiting efforts
d) Helped launch our new email marketing design whitepaper

To win back your favor, I shall complete a 4-part series on the above. Starting now.

If you haven't checked out the ExactTarget Resources tab lately (or pinged your Account Representative for more info), you're missing out. The Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Case Study (Mr. Goodbar, anyone?) was released in the February edition of ExactTarget InSight Newsletter and is now available on the site. If you've struggling with multiple brands, profile centers, or cross-promotions, this story's for you.

Our new Use Case library is also expanding - but you need to request them from your Account Rep for now. These 2-page quick-reads illustrate specific business challenges and match them with the ExactTarget features and tools you can use to solve them.

- Kestler Financial Group
- Embry Riddle University
- Wild Birds Unlimited
- Indiana Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman
- Email Design for Lotus Notes

As you can tell, it's been pretty busy around here!

Tomorrow: Denmark.

Nicole
Marketing Communications Associate

See this example for a good example of how to keep the quality of your email list high.  The grim reality is that subscribers tend to interact with your newsletters less as time goes by. This begs the question, why would you want subscribers who signed up three, four, or five years ago on your list?  There is a good chance these subscribers are just fluff and not driving much traffic to your site.

I received this excellent example from MediaPost. Instead of waiting until their list grows old and tired to clean it up, they keep their list evergreen by maintaining an annual subscription model. As you can see, my subscription is up this month and they recently started running these renewal reminders at the top of my daily email.

By doing this, MediaPost keeps their list fresh, response rates up, and keep themselves out of trouble often associated with mailing to old names (such as hitting dead inboxes that most ISPs monitor). Many fear that by adopting this approach, they will drastically cut into the size of their list. This is not completely unwarranted, but it is short-sighted. Despite the annual subscription approach (which by the way has worked for print subscriptions for years) MediaPost is able to keep the size of their list up. According to Mediapost's media kit, circulation for the EmailInsider newsletter is 58,000... pretty impressive for a high quality B2B email list.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you’re like me, maybe your resolution this year was to not have a resolution.  I swore off resolutions a few years ago – the year after I resolved to run a marathon (accomplished!) but realized in doing so that my resolutions were in fact things that should be an integral part of my life:  Keep active.  Keep learning.  Maintain a work / life balance.  Together, those things comprise the big picture “life foundation.” And I’ve found that if I focus on living it, all the little things fall into place – sometimes effortlessly, and sometimes with a lot of work.

Email marketing is no different.  Last year, when I started working with our email program, I set out resolutions like “get a 15% click-through rate” and “implement a testing schedule” and “lower our unsubscribe rate.”  Sound familiar?  While we were able to achieve them, we were missing the big picture.  The why we needed to accomplish those goals is just as important as the goals themselves.  Our own email program “big picture” is:

• Customer Retention
• Lead Conversion
• Brand Awareness

From here, it’s easy to identify the areas we can improve on (and relate them back to our broader vision).  For 2008, our goals are:

• Analytics and Metrics
• Building Better Lists
• Automation

These may seem basic – but that’s exactly the point.  By boiling it down into the key areas to improve, we can prioritize where to put our efforts.  The critical part is knowing what we’re working for, and then establishing actionable milestones that will be steps in the right direction.

You might notice something missing from the goals above.  Specifics.  Yep, I know they’re gone, too.  But things like “run reports on email performance” and “implement web analytics tracking” and “add 20% more subscribers to our list” aren’t goals – they’re actions.  They should be recorded and executed on appropriately…but to me, they set the bar too low.  If we know one of our goals is building a better list, for example, then adding more subscribers becomes just one piece of a bigger puzzle. 

So this year, you’ll notice a renewed focus on the foundations of email marketing – planning, design, deliverability, list quality, etc.  To help you strengthen each area of your own program, we’re adding a new section to your InSight Newsletter called “Back to Basics.”  Each month, we’ll focus on one area for you to improve – and deliver a brand new type of resource to help you take action. 

It’s no coincidence that next month’s focus is “Building a Better List,” so stay tuned!  In the meantime, I’d encourage you to register for a new webinar offered by our extremely talented Account Management team, and to sound off on what your 2008 email marketing “big picture” is.

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

• Sam's Club started emailing me without my permission
• WalMart shared my data in (seeming) violation of their own privacy practices
• I am not a Sam's Club member, it seems like they should have checked into that first
• Sam's Club won't let me buy online without becoming a member of their club
• Why put both brands at such risk??

There is a lesson here for the rest of us. The allure of a "bigger list" is always looming. Companies often see taking on their sister companies' lists as one way of growing their list. This is what Sam's Club apparently did, they simply took the WalMart list and called it their own without ever asking me if this was what I wanted. If this is something you are considering, know that lack of planning around three areas is likely to get you in trouble:

1. Do the people you are bringing into your program from a sister company WANT to be in the program? Simple solution... run an opt-in campaign. Tell the people you are inviting how you got their name, what you plan to offer them, and ask for positive opt-in.
2. Does the audience you are inviting even make sense? Sam's is sending me emails and I can't even buy from them until I become a member. In other sceanrios I have seen, the target demographics of the two sister companies are completely different... why send email to people who aren't likely to (or worse... can't) buy your products. It is a ROI loser!
3. Don't violate your own privacy policies. CAN-SPAM is one thing, violating your own stated policies is, at minumum, a PR nightmare waiting to happen. At worst, it is a legal nightmare. 

As for Sam's Club and WalMart. You need to update your privacy policy... especially if you want my trust as you so emphatically claim in your privacy policy:

We realize that making purchases at Walmart.com, or any other web site, requires trust on your part. We value your trust very highly, and pledge to you, our customer, that we will work to protect the security and privacy of any personal information you provide to us and that your personal information will only be used as set forth in this Policy. This includes your name, address, phone number, email address, and credit card or checking account information, in addition to any other personal information that can be linked to you, personally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008 is right around the corner. Hard to believe, isn’t it?

If you’re an email marketer like me, chances are you’ve started attending ‘08 planning meetings to nail down your email marketing program goals and objectives for next year. Aside from the usual suspects (i.e. increasing metrics, growing lists, and improving deliverability), we’re also planning new ways to incorporate all of the exciting one-to-one technology trends on the horizon. Are you?

Here are just a few of the hot topics from our latest ‘08 strategy sessions:

1. SMS.
   
   Recently I began working with a member of our Strategic Services team to fine-tune our ’08 email marketing strategy. If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from our meetings it’s this: SMS is the next “big thing.” A fellow Marketing team member actually just blogged about one use-case for SMS – campus alert systems. Check out her post to learn more about how universities are using SMS messaging to communicate with faculty and students in case of emergency.
   
   SMS is going to become more prevalent in 2008, so don’t get left behind. Why not use SMS to deliver your promotional codes, event invitations, or confirmation messages? Keep an eye out for our own SMS efforts next year!
   
   
2. Videos.
   
   If you subscribe to our newsletter, ExactTarget InSight, you’ve probably noticed an increased video presence. Hopefully you’re enjoying the segments (as our tracking data suggests you do!). We’ve got a hunch that most of our B2B readers are tired of the “same old same old” in their inbox and really enjoy these fun video clips. Whatever the reason, video in email (links, not embedding) is turning out to be a great way to keep our subscribers engaged.
   
   You can expect to see even more videos on our website and in your ExactTarget InSight throughout 2008!
   
   
3. Rendering.
   
   Sometimes it can be frustrating to tackle email rendering. After all, countless variables can affect how your messages render in a myriad of email clients and handheld devices. As we look to 2008, rendering is certain to be one of our top priorities. Will your email message still be effective if viewed on a BlackBerry, in Lotus Notes, or on Apple’s new iPhone? You won’t know unless you pay special attention to rending before you hit that send button.
   
   Naturally, it’d be wonderful if all email clients would render the same way and save us the headaches. But what are the chances? Well, I’ll ask Santa for Christmas if you will…

Of course, those are just a few of the topics on our radar for ’08. If you’re looking for more information on what’s going to be hot for email marketers next year, be sure to download 2008 Email Marketing Trends and watch December’s edition of ExactTarget Perspective.

Happy holidays, and here’s to a great 2008!

Till Next Time,
Megan Sabine
Marketing Communication Specialist

Since 1999, I’ve spent roughly $21,042, consuming on average 1.2 iced venti, 5-espresso shot, skinny, café mochas per day at an average price of 6 dollars, including tip (wow, I hope my wife isn’t reading this).

This would make me a “high value customer” to Starbucks. Should I shudder off the shackles of my Starbucks overlords and start going to other coffee shops, or stop drinking coffee entirely, it would negatively impact Starbucks’ business and could contribute to the collapse of Columbia’s economy at large. So what would Starbucks do if I suddenly stopped buying coffee from them? Would they know?  Would they care? What should they do about it?

This is a prime opportunity for behavioral engineering based on predictive purchasing patterns.  Huh?  Meaning that Starbucks knows my purchase patterns and my value to their bottom line, so how do they get me back on track if I stray? How does Starbucks identify at-risk customers and get them back into their predictable purchase models?

First, Starbucks needs a loyalty program…something that tracks purchases, ideally through all channels. This provides data on time between purchases, be it 90 days, 9 days, or in my case, 90 minutes. Thus, we have “average latency.”

Next, Starbucks would want to QUALIFY that average latency, articulating that enough transactions have occurred to say that our average latency is valid (known as “frequency”). 

Finally, Starbucks would look at recency.  When was the last time I purchased?  If it was yesterday, that’s great.  Starbucks knows I should have purchased yesterday and I’m following my anticipated pattern.  I am consistent, predictable and profitable. 

What happens when I deviate from my pattern? At what point do I become an at-risk customer? If you had a customer who purchased from you consistently once a quarter for two years and has been silent for the last six months, would you want to reach out to them?  What if instead of one customer you were able to identify as at-risk, it was hundreds, thousands? Identification is half the battle. 

Once you’ve identified the at-risk customers, send them a message or offer that will re-engage them.  Sometimes this is an easy process, corresponding with shifts in your merchandizing mix. Sometimes it can be a bit more challenging (like leveraging a data append to identify your customers who may have moved). 

The message is simple once the reason for flight has been established. Starbucks might send a message featuring my favorite drink…something that reminds me “mochas are tasty…caffeine is good.”  If a customer moved to a different city, a list of Starbucks locations in their new neighborhood would be more effective. If the customer doesn’t return in a month…that’s when the big guns come out and an email with an imbedded coupon good for a free drink or a direct mail piece with a dollar-off gift card is sent.

Remember, your customers are exactly that…yours.  Your job is to KEEP THEM ENGAGED. Stretching the life of your customers, even just a few transactions, will have SUBSTANTIAL impact to your bottom line.  Think about you attrition rate, think about your AOV, and do the math…numbers don’t lie.

By strategically leveraging email, you can begin to shape, refine, and redefine what your traditional customer lifecycle looks like.  For ExactTarget customers, this capability is point and click…very little effort to execute very intelligent marketing.

And if anyone from Starbucks happens to be reading this…I’m pretty sure we can work a barter…world class email marketing software/strategy for one Starbucks franchise…in my living room.

Cheers,

AIM

As subscribers to ExactTarget InSight can attest, we recently started including a video in each month's email message. Check out this archive newsletter (and don't worry, you can watch the video here).

We've been thrilled with the preliminary results of video in email, so I was please to find this article from MarketingSherpa regarding the impact video can have when included (not embedded!) in emails. It's refreshing to see that even short, "on a budget" videos can positively impact email results!

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

Stop me if this sounds familiar. You’re an email marketer with a big campaign coming up. You create your email, import your subscribers, segment your list, etc. To make sure everything goes smoothly for the big send, you send test emails out beforehand to other members on your team for review, various domains, and hopefully even a testing tool like Pivotal Veracity. Everything works beautifully.

And then…something doesn’t work. Maybe you catch a typo the day after you hit the send button. Maybe your CRM integration doesn’t work quite as planned. Maybe someone else on your team mistakenly deletes a profile attribute you need, or you forget to add a Forward to a Friend button. Whatever the case may be, all those days of careful and cautious testing can go down the tube pretty quickly.

It happens to all of us. Evidence: a version of our October InSight was accidentally sent twice to a small group of subscribers. Ugh. While no one factor was to blame, looming deadline + miscommunication + technical issue + haste = embarrassing duplicate send.

We were lucky – the list was small, the impact was minimal, our metrics for the month were extremely strong, and InSight subscribers are a surprisingly forgiving bunch. Now that the smoke has cleared, it’s easy to see that this problem could have been prevented had our pre-send testing environment exactly matched our real send environment. So if you’re an email marketer, learn from our mistake. Here are some tips (a.k.a lessons learned) to help:

1. Your Test is Not a Test.
   Adding even one “untested” variable into the mix come send time can have serious repercussions. So treat your test like the real thing. Sending to an integrated list and a non-integrated group? TEST. Scheduling a send with a 15-minute throttle? TEST. Sending in Multi-Part MIME? TEST. TEST. TEST. Sending with various language encodings? Yep, TEST THAT TOO.
2. The More Eyes the Merrier.
   Send out your email to as wide of audience as possible for review. For example, we send out an “FYI” version of InSight to our entire sales and services teams 24-hours before we complete the send to our subscribers. Each month, I am surprised (and extremely grateful) for the feedback that comes in. I’d rather our internal teams point out a typo or a misdirected link than one of our subscribers (and they will!)
3. Put Yourself on Lockdown.
   We’ve recently started enforcing a 24-hour lockdown on our newsletter. This means that no matter what, the newsletter has to “sit” with no changes for a full 24 hours before we send it. This helps minimize last-minute changes that could be disruptive, and also provides more time for more eyes to review it. In fact, we’ve found this to be so helpful we’re looking to bump the lockdown up to 72 hours.
   
4. Balance Deadlines with Double-Checking.
   I’m a firm believer in deadlines. But there comes a point when, quite simply, you have to be flexible with deadlines in order to not compromise the integrity and validity of your tests. Know when to back off for the sake of your send. If that moment of hesitation flashes before you hit the send button, don’t do it! You should feel confident – not anxious – when you hit the send button.

If you have more testing / preparation tips to share, we’d love to hear them!

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

Animal lovers are a breed of their own (sorry, best pun I've got at 8am). Last weekend I joined a group of self -proclaimed animal enthusiasts for a National Disaster Animal Response Team (NDART) training workshop hosted by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

What's that, you say? Think Hurricane Katrina, Southern California wildfires, Kansas flooding. NDART teams can be deployed anywhere animals are caught in the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster or emergency.

Yes, this is an email marketing blog. Patience, friends.

Non-profits face many of the same questions as for-profit B2B and B2C organizations. Is email worth the investment? Can it show any real ROI? Can it really spread awareness and drive action?

I have to give HSUS props for their email marketing program. Just check out just a few ways email engages website visitors, increases issue awareness, and delivers transactional email communications:

- The Humane University email newsletter (eScoop)
- Pet Tips, Action Alerts, and Seal Watch email online opt-ins(complete with explanations of each type)
- "Email this page" website functionality to raise issue awareness
- Triggered transactional emails for training & event confirmations
- And much more!

And it gets better. Yesterday I visited the NDART site and had the the opportunity to opt-in for SMS messages. Major kudos for leveraging one of the latest one-to-one marketing technologies before most for-profit companies!

Take care,

Nicole
Marketing Communications Associate
ExactTarget

Like many marketers, here on ExactTarget's marketing team we're always looking for inspirational new ideas.  Recently, we found ourselves swapping lots of emails with "Hey, check out this awesome website" or "Don't you love the look of this email newsletter?"  In fact, we were so inspired that lots of ideas and tidbits were getting lost in the shuffle.

The solution?  The Cool Idea Box.  It's a big cardboard box Nicole, our Marketing Communications Associate, keeps stashed under desk. 

As you can see, The Cool Idea Box isn't fancy, but it's a great place to compile inspiring ads, direct marketing pieces, event giveaways, etc.  Nothing is off limits - as long as it's cool!  In fact, just today Nicole added a little packet of tea she found.

To compliment The Cool Idea Box, we also have an shared folder online called...you guessed it, The Cool Idea Folder.  Here we store marketing inspiration of the electronic variety, which includes engaging web sites like this and innovative online campaigns like WebTrend's "Meet Claire."

If you haven't already, I'd definitely encourage you to designate a central repository for collecting cool, inspriational marketing ideas.  Keep your eye out for innvoative new one-to-one marketing campaigns. We'd love to hear about what inspires YOU in your email marketing effots, so feel free to share!

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

If you send email to Yahoo subscribers, chances are you’ve heard of the recent rendering issues within Yahoo Classic. The email experience council’s RetailEmail blog helped identify the issue and the workaround to prevent it, while Pivotal Veracity confirmed via their testing that the coding solution listed there is indeed correct (so if you’re looking for the solution, make sure to check out the blog!)

Since we’re primarily a B2B email marketer, only 5% of our list is comprised of Yahoo addresses. However, as we prepared to send the September InSight, we figured it was a significant enough number to segment out Yahoo subscribers and include a targeted message about rendering to help combat the problem.

After creating a group called “Yahoo Subscribers” we did a simple A/B split using our random sample tool. For the “Group A” version of the Yahoo Message, we changed the “View as a Webpage” header at the top to read: Trouble viewing this message in Yahoo? Go here to view as a webpage. The “Group B” version included text within the body of the email that read: Trouble viewing this email in Yahoo? Click "View as a Webpage" found in the header. This was the only variable element in the email newsletter.

We sent the two versions off into the wild and waited to see which version generated a higher click percentage on the “View as a Webpage” link. And then we waited…and waited…and waited.

In truth, neither version generated many clicks on the “View as a Webpage” link. Certainly, the number was not significantly higher than any other email we send. In fact, rather than noticing an increase in clicks, we noticed that the overall performance of the email was pretty lackluster.

As we sat puzzling over the results, a member of our team pointed out that we rarely segment and send by domain – let alone segment out a commercial domain such as Yahoo. This revelation led to many more questions: Are our metrics low at just Yahoo? Or all commercial domains? Is it an isolated incident or a trend? Since we’re primarily a B2B sender, is it even worth the effort to try to find out?

For us, the consensus is that finding answers to these questions is a worthwhile endeavor – if for nothing else than to reconfirm that what we’re doing is working. So this month, we segmented our list by domain even further and are keeping a close eye on the performance of InSight. If the results of sending to commercial domains end up statistically significant enough to show that what we’re doing isn’t working, we’ll need to do some evaluating and testing about the envelope fields, calls-to-action, etc.

We’ll make sure to share the results of our tests with you if they’re significant. But the most exciting part about the Yahoo exercise is a reminder that we can find inspiration and direction for our email programs in the most surprising places – whether or not we’re looking for it. So the next time you find yourself wondering “What should I try next” or “Is it worth testing?” stop for a moment. Take a deep breath. The answer is almost always yes.

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communications

You know the old saying…for every two steps forward, you take one step back. If you’re an email marketer, chances are this really hits home. Running an email program – and more specifically, a successful email program – is not always a smooth road.

Here on the ExactTarget marketing team, we experience the same everyday challenges that each and every one of our customers face. Sure, we have access to the industry-leading one-to-one marketing platform and a team of experts that backs it up. We know our application inside and out. But I’m certainly not an HTML expert (or a deliverability expert, or an integration expert, etc…) Sound familiar? At the end of the day, we’re marketers juggling lots of different responsibilities just like you. And we’re trying to make improvements to our email program one day and one step at a time.

Over the past few months, you might have noticed some major changes to ExactTarget’s own email marketing efforts. After an intensive audit and an in-depth Email Marketing eValuation with our Strategic Services and Account Management teams, we identified key areas of improvement and an action plan to implement them.

Three months into the efforts, it sometimes feels like we’re taking two steps forward and one step back. The progress has been amazing - our goals have been established, the new look has been received to rave reviews, list growth is picking up, and our metrics are on a slow but steady incline. Though each one of these items may be small, together they certainly add up to movement in the right direction.

But of course, there have been a few hurdles as well. Take the August issue of ExactTarget InSight. We sent two versions of each newsletter out – one version rendered flawlessly in all major ISPs. But the other version (on the same template, no less!) had rendering issues in Gmail. Frustrating? You bet. It’s easy to get caught up in what’s not working with your email program. But ultimately, it’s more important to stay focused on the end goal. A couple of setbacks every now and then can actually be healthy, especially when they force you to focus and improve on areas of your email program you’ve been taking for granted.

Working with our Design & Deployment team, the following month we were able to optimize the HTML in our newsletters for maximum rendering. We’ve also implemented Pivotal Veracity’s eDesign Optimizer to catch potential rendering issues before it’s too late. If you've had similar issue with rendering lately, we'd love to hear about them. And I'm excited to share more of the email marketing challenges (and solutions!) we encounter right here on this blog.

Cheers,
Ashley Sales
Manager, Marketing Communication

Email marketers just might feel the ground shake a little on Saturday morning.  Why?  Because ExactTarget is updating our software with the Fall Release on Friday night and it will truly blow you away.  Of course it is loaded with enhancements that improve the user experience - fewer clicks, faster and more efficient navigation, streamlined email creation process, and even more reports.  We're relentless about enabling marketers with powerful, yet easy-to-use tools, so upgrades like this are a given.  What isn't a given are the innovative features that will revolutionize how you communicate with your subscriber list.

ExactTarget isn't just for email anymore.  With our new Integrated One-to-One Platform marketers will now be able to send and track multiple message types, including SMS and Voice, through their ET portal.  This is a whole new world for one-to-one messaging.  Using ExactTarget marketers could always deliver the right message at the right time.  Now they can also do it through the right medium.  Combine this with our new Automated Interaction Management (AIM) tools, which allow you to define, store and schedule routine tasks, and you've taken your program to a whole new level. 

We're ready to change the game.  Are you?

Chip Heath, author of “Made to Stick” was a keynote speaker at our Connections ’07 User Conference this past week. In addition to sharing a first name (I may be a bit biased here) I think Chip and I have other affinities. Among many other enlightening items, he spoke about the “Curse of Knowledge” which is the inability of experts to describe what they do in an effective or compelling manner. Or, rather in a way that a lay person would understand easily what the heck one is talking about. Effective and compelling, mind you, is what marketing is supposed to be…isn’t it?  So, perhaps I’m speaking to a few industry-types here, but as we all digest our weekly dose of e-marketing jargon and speak of relevance, targeting, multivariate testing, etc….are we losing sight of the ability to really be effective communicators?

I think too often as marketers we lose sight of a simple fact: The customer wants to know what is “in it” for them. They ultimately define relevance, we don’t. What we have to say is almost irrelevant. What the customer wants to hear, learn, read, buy is the only thing that IS relevant. The customer’s opinion really is the only one that matters. Wait, I don’t think that sunk in: the customer’s opinion is the only opinion that matters. Too often we promote as our inventory would support, as our preset promotion calendar would have us promote, or as our newsletter content schedule would dictate.

So how do we do it right you ask? YOU LISTEN!

Fortunately listening using web, analytics and email technology means you don’t have to actually “listen” (though that helps too) – you need to observe and respect. Respect data. Respect preferences. Respect behavior. Customers are telling us what they want. Are we listening?