Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s Director of Research & Strategy.
A couple of conversations today prompted me to take a fresh look at the "mobile email problem", as I have come to think of it. After reading our whitepaper "Email Marketing for the Third Screen" a client asked, "But I am still not sure exactly what to do!" Yep, you are not alone.
There are a lot of ideas out there about how to solve the problem. Some are better than others. Some are simply poor and short-sided... but I digress. Fact is, all of the proposed solutions are nothing more than workarounds to a complicated and baffling problem derived from the fact that no common coding standards exist. Optimize for one scenario and you mess up performance for another. There is no simple quick fix.
Now that I have rained on everyone's parade, the larger question really is "What is going to FIX the mobile email problem?" This question was raised in a discussion this afternoon. The following is an edited response I posted to that group. Enjoy!
The right answer is for mobile devices to adopt standards for rendering email such that current coding standards work. This is similar to the standardization efforts that helped unify the internet. Remember when the internet was littered with images like this? Thankfully they are gone now.
The initial thought was to muster the email troops and lobby for the adoption of standards that would better serve the consumer. However, the market forces against getting manufacturers to standardize how they treat email are simply too strong at the moment. Consider that iPhone recently leapfrogged the entire industry in their ability to render email and now RIM (Blackberry) has Apple pegged as enemy #1. How well these devices support mobile email is a huge competitive advantage and when you are talking about selling cell phones, you are talking about big, big bucks. In several attempts to engage with people who could influence the adoption of industry standards I was met with head shaking and laughing, as if to say, "How naive?"
Fortunately, Apple has done more for creating the necessary pressure than any lobby could ever hope to do. Their move with the iPhone was a huge step toward "rendering email properly". The pressure they have applied to the market to handle email and the online experience well (no matter how much one may agree or disagree about "how well" thus far) is already accelerating changes in the market. RIM knows they are in a fight as they enter the consumer smartphone market. They will need to update their enterprise mail server capabilities and get with the times... or get their teeth kicked in. All Apple needs to do is drop their price to $100 for a smartphone and RIM drops out of the consumer battle. Since the consumer smartphone market is is where the big money is in the coming years, it is imperative for RIM to upgrade the way they handle email and the web. I believe that B2B trends will follow quickly... or else RIM will go the way of Lotus Notes to be only used when IT has already invested too much to pull out.
My belief is that this problem will fix itself through market competition in the next 2-3 years, which is faster than a lobby would probably have an impact. We have not seen the long term solution yet, but it is coming--the competition is fierce, and that is a good thing for our cause. After getting laughed at realizing the economic forces at work, we stopped trying to beat the "thy must standardize" drum.
For now, mobile email remains a big challenge. Only a select few have figured out solutions that are even halfway decent. Nothing stellar. There is the trade-off between desktop appearance and mobile rendering. Where mobile is highly likely (e.g., travel alerts) then go with simple single column, boring old email. If simply trying to accommodate for a mobile audience where readership is more likely to happen on a desktop, then then trying to minimize the distortion of email on the mobile device by using tools like Pivotal Veracity eDesign Optimizer for mobile devices and then leverage a click to view solution (where the landing page determines the type of browser and then renders the page accordingly). Unfortunately, that is still the best I have come across.
ExactTarget is committed to investigating other alternatives. Moreover, this is a personal passion of mine and there are many others at ExactTarget passionate about finding better workarounds. We are optimistic that a decent workaround is on the horizon, but not foolishly so--there will not be a perfect workaround until standards emerge. If you have ideas that you would recommend or like to try, let us know, we would love to work with you.
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.
When starting a new email marketing strategic planning engagement, we often rely on a combination of tools to help assess a client's value proposition.
What is working now: For established senders, we start by looking at historical results. What has worked in the past and what has not? What types of links draw the most traffic? Etc.
What is working for others in the space: This is where competitive intelligence tools come into play. Email Analyst allows us to look at the email messages that competitors are sending and it provides insight on the traffic that those emails may be driving through an overlay of traffic data from Alexa. This provides incredible insight into what appears to be working for competitors. Thus, it provides good insight into messaging components that the client may want to consider.
Identify and validate key messaging components: Combining the learnings from the prior two steps, we come up with the key messaging components that appear to be on target for the client's audience. We then develop a survey around those key messaging components to validate which components subscribers want most.
Set the value proposition: The last step in the process is to codify the value proposition. Using all of the data gathered through these three steps, the key learnings are distilled into a single, straight forward value proposition that is used to guide future messaging and list growth initiatives.
There are several advantages to this approach... but the most compelling advantage is that it aligns your program with the expectations of your subscribers. In a marketing channel where the subscriber rules... this is a huge step toward ongoing success.
If you didn't see it already, ExactTarget and Email Data Source announced a partnership in November. Check out the press release.
Since then, I have been getting questions about how to use competitive intelligence to improve your email program. Here are just a few of the ways we use competitive intelligence.
The difference between doing email appends right and doing them wrong involves changing one significant step… the outbound message. Instead of the outbound message containing a link to opt-out, the outbound email marketing message should have registration as the primary call to action. This approach to email appends is called "opt-in" email append.
ExactTarget was one of the early proponents of this approach and we have now real life experience with this approach under our belts. Opt-in email appends have been very successful in delivering highly responsive subscribers without the headaches and pitfalls associated with opt-out appends. However, the challenge is in getting a significant number of people to convert on these outbound email invitations.
Success in converting opt-in email appends involves defining your value proposition. It involves having a compelling reason for subscribers to register--selling your program to the prospective subscriber. All of which is based in the bedrock of marketing success... a good strategy combined with strong campaign execution.
Once you have your strategy for enticing prospective registrants, follow the steps outlined in my previous post about opt-in email campaigns.
The thing that clients like about this approach is that they only pay for emails that are likely to perform. It can take a while to get past the reality that this is not going to add a million email addresses to your list, but that shouldn’t be the point. There are only two business models that can drive revenue from an unresponsive email address—list brokers and email append vendors. By working with these providers on opt-in programs, you eliminate waste and ensure that you will get email addresses of real, live people that are likely to respond.
Yes, this puts a premium on the associated costs and makes pricing more complicated. Don't expect to pay $0.50 per email address acquired through an opt-in append. Things like the loyalty of people on your house file, the strength of the call to action, the size of the input file, and anticipated conversion rates may be considered in determining costs. But at the end of the day, this is in the best interest of the client as it avoids the issues typically associated with opt-out email appends and the overall quality is much, much higher.
The Silver Bullet?
Companies looking at email appends are typically looking for a fast and efficient way to grow their lists. Don’t buy into the promises of a quick and easy solution to grow your list. To be completely cliché “If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.”
Done right, email appends can be effective—but they still take time, careful planning, good execution, and financial resources. It is not the silver bullet that most people imagine when they latch on to email append as the solution to their list growth woes.
Given this reality, 9 out of 10 times, I prefer to invest the same time and resources into other proven list growth methods. A couple consistent winners are:
If my inbox is any indication, list growth was a common goal set for this year. In the past week, I have been asked for information on email appends and other list growth tactics by several clients a day.
Most email append providers offer what we call an "opt-out" email append service. The process looks something like this:
1) Client provides a file containing street addresses of customers or prospects that is matched against a database. Where a match to the client's list is found, the email address is appended to the record.
2) An email is then sent to the individuals on the newly created list with the option to opt out. (Interestingly, many email append companies advertise the low number of opt-outs that are received... but more on that in a minute)
3) After allowing some time for people to opt-out (typically a week), two files are returned to the customer. The first file is a list of successfully appended and delivered emails. The second is a list of opt-out emails to be used for suppression.
Another compliment to the fine work the folks at Apple are doing to push the mobile world ahead. I am not saying the iPhone is perfect, but it is putting a lot of pressure on competitors. I suspected that they caught the other smartphone manufactures off guard, and the folks at Fortune seem to agree. BTW... this post came out the same day as my last posting on the iPhone. I promise I did not see it before I wrote my post. :)
Tom O'Brien of MotiveQuest also has a great post on how the iPhone has changed the meaning of cool.
The hoopla has started to calm down, but the impact of the iPhone is becoming crystal clear now. The battle between Apple and RIM is shaping up. B2B marketers hoping that business users are only using Blackberries need to take note. Optimizing your email for mobile rendering on the Blackberry is not going to be the long term answer.
Furthermore, other smartphone manufacturers continue to release phones that seem to be a direct response to the iPhone. Samsung's F700 and the LG Voyager are just a couple of the more notable recent releases.
It seems that iPhone’s full support of HTML on the web and email has fundamentally changed the definition of “mobile internet.” Where users had grown accustomed to having limited functionality on their mobile devices, the iPhone responds with a clear message, “you don’t need to settle.” iPhone delivered a user-friendly experience that makes huge strides (however imperfect) toward providing a web and email experience that mimics a traditional computer.
Whether or not Apple caught the other manufacturers off-guard or not is a moot point now. Fact is, that many of the leading mobile manufactures, such as Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson had joined the dotMobi bandwagon prior to the iPhone release. The folks at Apple recognized error of the dotMobi approach, which essentially creates two distinct online worlds--simultaneously creating both a fractured marketing experience and administrative nightmares associated with running parallel sites. Instead, Apple developers facilitated access of the traditional web and email on a mobile device... and by doing so, set a new standard.
In bypassing the dotMobi movement, Apple has done a service to all online and email marketers by creating demand for mobile devices that have full internet functionality, and by showing that it is possible. Email marketing professionals should praise this accomplishment. I believe it is a critical first step toward a solution to the current challenges associated with mobile email rendering.

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:
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.
EmailStatCenter.com recently released findings from a survey they conducted in September and October of this year on the State of Email Metrics. The survey consisted of 345 respondents, with 55% coming from client side marketers and the remaining 45% coming from agencies and ESPs.
The study provides some decent insight into the challenges that marketers are facing today. List development, time constraints (which can also be interpreted as resource constraints), and strategy/planning are all areas highlighted both as challenges and as areas for near term focus.
All of these are critical areas. We continue to test new list development strategies and will be providing some updates on this topic soon. Time and resource constraints... building out metrics and making the business case for getting email the attention it requires is a critical first step. Beyond that, recruiting experienced talent in this area is tough. Strategy and planning is near to my own heart, so I'm glad to see this on the list. It also makes sense given the considerable growth of our Strategic Services practice in the past two years which focuses the vast majority of its attention on strategy and planning.
Interestingly, another area many indicated as an important near term focus was “metrics and measurement”. Not that this is interesting in itself, but it puzzles me a bit to see this as the second highest near term focus area (behind list development) and then to see testing ranked lowest in near-term focus. There are three explanations I have thought of for this:
1) Marketers do not want to start testing until they have better metrics and measurement in place. If that is the case, I applaud that effort. The stronger the metrics and the more closely aligned to bottom line business goals those metrics are, the better a program can be optimized through testing.
2) Testing simply is not that appealing. Given the focus on strategy, planning, and metrics, this does not make sense. Even with the best plans in place, those plans need to be verified (see my recent post of Marketers Intuition). Moreover, metrics are only good for two things: a) convincing management that we are doing a good job and, b) improving the program—which requires testing new concepts.
3) Past testing has not resulted in the promised results. Let me be the first to admit that this does happen. Marketers run tests all the time that do not result in huge gains. I have run many AB subject line tests during my email marketing career that left little to be desired. I have also run tests that have blown the doors off a business. Sometimes it takes 4 or 5 tests to get the knockout, case-study worthy test results. Not every idea is a good one, but we can't get the huge improvements unless we are willing to fail now and then. That is precisely why we test!
The idea of sending an opt-in (or “re-opt-in”) campaign to subscribers to verify email permission is not new, but the frequency with which we deal with these campaigns is increasing. Over the course of the past year, I would estimate that I have personally worked with over 20 email marketing clients on these types of campaigns… and ExactTarget as a whole has run many, many more. Here are a few interesting things we have learned about how to run these:
1) Be clear in the subject line. Email subject lines like, “Verify your subscription continue receiving [XYZ]” or “Your subscription will end soon” tend to work well. Often these campaigns are targeting subscribers who have not responded in a while, so breaking the mold with this type of concise and straight-forward subject lines help get people to open the email.
2) Restate your value proposition. This is a simple reminder of what your email program offers. A concise restatement of what your subscribers can expect reminds them of what you are all about… and what they will miss if they do not confirm their email subscription.
3) Use YES and NO options. This is huge (read this part carefully)! The misconception is that if you only offer a “Yes, please subscribe me” option that more people will react positively by opting into the program. We have tested using a single “Yes” option vs. the “Yes and No” options for at least 6 different clients. In every instance the “Yes and No” option resulted in significantly more opt-ins! There is something about seeing both options that drives more people to respond. Maybe these emails seem like less of a gimmick, more genuine, or more serious. Whatever the reason, the reality is that by including that NO option, you will actually get more people to click YES. (See the Peppermill Example below)
In addition, this approach to email opt-in campaigns provides you with clear answers. There are three resulting groups: 1) Those that opt-in, 2) those that opt-out, and 3) those that did not respond (even if they opened the email). This third group of non-responders will be your target for a second request.
4) Try sending a second request. There are situations where a second request is not appropriate. For example, if you are trying to clean a list suspected of containing spamtrap addresses. However, if you have used the YES and NO options cited above, the non-responders are a prime target for a second request for email permission. We find that these second requests consistently get nearly the same number of opt-ins as the first, so failing to do so could have a material impact on the success of your campaign. We have worked with organizations that have tried a thrid request using the same logic, but the dropoff at this points has been substantial in our experience--two appears to be the right number.
Peppermill re-opt-in email example
The Peppermill decided to conduct a re-opt-in campaign to these subscribers and tested the following two emails:
Version #1
Version #2
Which version do you think resulted in the most affirmative opt-in responses? (Keep in mind that the only choice in Version #1 is “Yes”, while Version #2 has “Yes” and “No” displayed with equal prominence.) Given the context of this example, I hope you picked Version #2. It was the winner and the results are statistically significant.
Last week I spoke at the Email Insider Conference in Park City, UT with Matt Day of Agent SILVERFOX on the topic of search and email integration. One interesting case study Matt presented was related to how email campaigns affect brand search traffic. So, the scenario is straight forward enough, a customer or prospect receives an email from XYZ Corp and they then go to the web to search for the term “XYZ Corp” or possibly a product that XYZ Corp sells. This results in a bump in search traffic to the website that is normally attributed to search marketing instead of email marketing.
While working with Matt on preparing the presentation, we came up with a methodology for quantifying this traffic that many at the conference found useful: “search through rate”. To estimate this lift, compare the average search traffic on days where no email is sent and then compare it to the search traffic on days where an email is sent. The calculation for this is very straight forward:
This phenomenon is even more significant when emails are sent through partners. If you partner with a program like CoolSavings.com to send an offer to their client list the search through rate is usually higher than when sending to an in-house list. This makes logical sense since the people receiving this offer are less likely to be familiar with your brand and may choose to check out your site before proceeding with the offer. So, it follows that the conversion rate on these searches may be different than typical searches for your brand as well. Thus, we need to evaluate the conversion rate on these email influenced searches to get a good understanding of impact of these incremental searches. The calculation for the conversion rate on email influenced searches is:
Where:
The conversion rate on incremental searches should be compared to the average search conversion rates to determine if these email influenced searches are performing consistently with typical searches. By looking at the incremental conversion rates, in addition to the direct conversions from the email itself, we can get a more comprehensive view of the efficacy of our email campaigns.
In my experience, many (by no means all) third party email campaigns have had a tough time justifying themselves in terms of direct sales. However, looking at the influence of email on search and subsequent conversion provides a more comprehensive financial picture by which to evaluate the success of these campaigns.
We already know that the ROI of email is very strong. By looking at these metrics and adding them into your analysis of email campaigns, either to your in-house list or through third party advertisers, we reallocate dollars that should have been attributed to email all along—demonstrating even more value being driven out of our email marketing programs.
There is a lot of expectation around mobile marketing. The ability to reach all those people on the move and interrupt them with our messages is oh so alluring. Yet there are some brutal realities that we need to face. Friday, eMarketer featured a story, Mobile Marketing Ready for Takeoff, that adds to the expectation. They did include some wise caveats stating that “delivering something of value to the user is just as important as how a mobile campaign looks”. But, this is permission marketing 101 and mobile marketing is no different. Just because the majority of people in industrialized countries own a cell phone… and the capability of pushing messages to these devices exists, does not mean that it is a great idea. If anything, mobile marketers may be embarking on the toughest direct marketing channel yet.
The challenges with this channel were highlighted in another eMarketer story released yesterday Mobile Users Easy To Annoy? According to recent research by Web Visible and Nielsen//NetRatings, 92% of respondents say that local business ads sent to their mobile phones would irritate them. Surprise, surprise. Mobile marketing, at least when used as push technologies such as SMS and MMS are incredibly invasive. This study highlights a critical point—there will be significant lashback against companies that invade the personal space of their customers. Ill-timed SMS messages will be as welcome as a close-talking college professor with bad breath!
I realize that this is not the extent of mobile marketing. There are opportunities in search, in branded applications, in location-based advertising when leveraging GPS, but the reality is that we are not there yet. As Jordan Bitterman of Digitas stated at OMMA East last month in New York, “It doesn’t have the scale, our marketers are looking for scale.”
The critical point here is that we are heading for a collision course. Email marketing continues to struggle with SPAM related issues, and mobile marketing may be heading down a path that could be much worse. Invade my inbox and I may ignore you. Invade my phone, and well… remember what happened to telemarketing? Tread carefully, don’t buy into the hype without knowing the pitfalls. I say this on the heals of our recent announcement that ExactTarget is launching the ability to send SMS messages as part of our upcoming 119 release. Yes, I do think SMS will have its place as a direct marketing channel, but not as we have ever known it before. Before embarking on this new frontier, make sure there is an incredibly valid mobile strategy in place to ensure that messages are not perceived as annoying.
At the ExactTarget Connections07 conference two weeks ago I received a question that continues to stand out in my mind. “As a brand marketer, the trend toward the use of less images in email (due to image blocking, lower response, etc) is a real problem. Do you have any recommendations for dealing with this?”
This is a profound question that gets at the heart of a fundamental change going on in marketing. Questions about changes the internet is having on the way we approach marketing are common and several people addressed different aspects of this during the conference. As such, it seems appropriate to address the question by considering what is going on at a broader level.
The entire concept of “brand” and “branding” is shifting. “Brand” is becoming more about authenticity than it is about image--more about real experiences with your organization than about the emotion we convey through our marketing messages. By giving customers an outlet to respond to our brands, Web 2.0 has started to fuel a grass-roots movement against our “brand” affectations. Consider some of the recent missteps by major companies:
Verizon’s customer service department that can’t do basic math:
Or, the humiliating revelation of Sony’s viral marketing ploy:
In light of the reality that our brand can be destroyed on the internet faster than it can be built, the question becomes, “How do we create a valuable brand experience through email and the internet?” I think the answer is fairly simple. Be real. Be authentic. Set expectations and meet them. Have integrity.
Delivering on your promises goes a long way. Nordstrom says they have great customer service… and then they prove it. Apple claims to be innovative… and they are. WalMart says they are about low prices… they deliver low prices. The happy face logo has nothing to do with why I shop at WalMart. I shop at WalMart because I believe I will find what I want at the lowest price available. Consider Southwest Airlines, their color scheme is a creative director’s nightmare. Their emails don’t look great, but they are functional and they let me know about cheap flights, which is exactly what I expect from them.
So, deliver what users expect! Typically, email subscribers expect content, they expect information, they expect to be treated to special information not available elsewhere. In a few cases, creative is undoubtedly critical. For example, with high fashion brands, image is everything. For them, the issue of image blocking is something that warrants a lot of attention. However, even for brands where image is everything, brand is not just about imagery, it is about living up to your identity and establishing your company as being credible. And credibility does not ever come in the form of an image, it comes in fulfilling expectations. To me, this sums up branding in email.