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Coupons Boost Email Response Rates

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

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

Open Rates for Coupon Offers vs. Other Mailings

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

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

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

What About Mobile Coupons?

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

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

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

Top Tips for Using Mobile Coupons

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

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Be Careful: Marketing to Children Under 13

Friday, November 13, 2009 by Al Iverson
Marketing to children online? Be careful that you comply with COPPA, or else it'll cost you.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, in effect from April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information from children under 13 years of age. It details what a website operator must include in a privacy policy, when and how to seek verifiable consent from a parent or guardian, and what responsibilities an operator has to protect children's privacy and safety online including restrictions on the marketing to those under 13. (Wikipedia)

What can happen if you don't comply? Here's an example. The FTC reports: "Iconix Brand Group, Inc. will pay a $250,000 civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC’s COPPA Rule by knowingly collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children online without first obtaining their parents’ permission."

The FTC alleges that "Iconix knowingly collected and stored personal information from approximately 1,000 children without first notifying their parents or obtaining parental consent." Additionally, the FTC alleged that "on one [specific] web site, MyMuddWorld.com, Iconix also enabled girls to publicly share personal stories and photos online."

The FTC has a pretty straightforward overview of how to comply with COPPA, available here, as well as a COPPA Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

FTC action against marketers who violate COPPA may be rare but this isn't the first instance we've seen. Last December, the FTC announced a $1,000,000 civil penalty settlement with Sony BMG Music. The FTC alleged that "on 196 of [Sony's] sites, Sony Music knowingly collected personal information from at least 30,000 underage children without first obtaining their parents' consent, in violation of COPPA."
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E-Mail Plus is the Key to Success

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 by Kevin Nuest
Our very own Joel Book recently wrote an article that was featured in Online Strategies Magazine. The article, E-Mail Plus, addresses how to integrate your email efforts with other vital marketing campaigns, platforms, and tools to drive extraordinary results.

In the article, Joel talks about how companies like Johnston & Murphy, Pet Place, and the Cable Shopping Network leverage Email + Analytics. Also discussed is how companies like Carmax, Powell's Books, and Dreamfields Pasta successfully integrate a Email + Social Media strategy into their marketing efforts.

To see more amazing examples, you can check out Joel's posts about Motorcycle SuperStore, Mike's Carwash, and Gordman's.
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Design Tip of the Week: Email Rendering in Outlook 2007

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

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

However, that is not the case anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For additional information about rendering in Outlook 2007, check out our white paper, Seven Email Marketing Design Tips for Outlook 2007.
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Real vs. Perceived Threats to Email: Part 1 - Addressing Misperceptions

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by Morgan Stewart
The now infamous Wall Street Journal article announcing the death of email sparked a fire in the bellies of email marketers and social media gurus alike. The overwhelming response is that social media is not posing a significant threat to email. To date, all the signs seem to indicate that these two channels will continue to evolve together.

True, there are dissenting voices. However, I have found none that are backed by credible statistical data. Since there is no statistical validity in personal anecdotes, I don’t care (except for the value they provide in forming hypotheses to be tested in future research).  I care about what well-founded research tells us about the world at large.

Here is a list of the data sources I have located that reveal the truth about the current state of email use and email marketing:

Pew Internet & American Life: Online Activities Trends
  • 79% of Americans use the Internet 
  • 90% of online Americans use email, making it the most popular online activity
  • 57% of Americans check email daily

MarketingSherpa
  • 78% of users email friends a link to information they wish to share with friends over the internet.
  • 22% share through social media
  • MarketingSherpa’s research directly contradicts research released earlier this year from AddToAny, which suggested people share information twice as often through Facebook as they do through email. However, there were serious issues with the AddToAny research. 



USC Annenberg Digital Future Report
  • How Many Americans Are Using E-mail? -- Almost everyone who goes online uses e-mail (97 percent of all Internet users).
  • Regular Contact by E-mail -- E-mail users maintain weekly personal e-mail contact with an average of seven people in the current study, down from the peak of nine in 2006. Forty-nine percent of e-mail users said they maintain personal contact by e-mail on a weekly basis with five or more people.

Participatory Marketing Network
  • Email (26 percent) and text messaging (26 percent) are the activities least likely to be "given up for a week," followed by TV (15 percent), talking on phone (11 percent), visiting social networks (nine percent), reading magazines (seven percent) and visiting non social network sites (six percent).



Pontifelx / Harris Interactive Survey
  • 96% of online adults who have actually taken the step of providing brands personal information have shared their email addresses with marketers
  • 12% of online adults have been willing to share information like their Facebook user name or their Twitter handle with a brand in exchange for information or promotional offers

SmartBreif on Social Media

While not nationally representative, this poll is interesting in that is suggests even social media professionals are not significantly curtailing their use of email.
  • 59% of SmartBreif on Social Media readers (likely to have a heavy disposition toward social media use) report their use of email has stayed about the same despite the growth of social networks.
  • 28% are using slightly less often
  • 11% are using more often
  • 2% of these readers rarely use email



ExactTarget – Is Email Marketing Endangered?

We asked a question similar to the SmartBreif poll, however, the question excludes marketers—so it is a better representation of the population at large.
  • Net 25% of online consumers report using social networks more often over the past 6 months (42% using more often, 17% using less often)
  • Net 23% of online consumers report using email more often over the past 6 months (29% using more often, 6% using less often)
  • Net 21% of online consumers report using text messaging more often over the past 6 months (38% using more often, 17% using less often)
  • 71% of smartphone owners report sending more PERSONAL email on their smartphones than BUSINESS related email—it’s not all business.



ExactTarget – 2009 Channel Preferences Study
  • 57% of online consumers use email most often to send written messages to their friends, over text messaging (24%) and social networks (10%)
  • 75% of online consumers prefer to receive permission-based promotional messages through email—up 3.6% from 2008—followed by 17% who prefer direct mail promotions and 4% who prefer text promotions.
  • More than half of online consumers have made a purchase as the direct result of and email message they received, more than any other online communication channel.



Forrester Consulting – Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power
  • 34% of marketers believe email will become more effective over the next two years, 19% believe it will be less effective
  • Asked why marketers believe email will be more effective:
    • 74% believe their email communications are getting more relevant
    • 58% see email as an integral part of their multichannel activities
    • 44% believe customers prefer email as a marketing channel

That is not to say there are not threats to the future success of email. Stay tuned for part two where I share insights from a panel I moderated at Connections last week where Julie Katz from Forrester, Rebecca Lieb from eConsultancy, and Stefan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa were asked to share their takes on the real versus perceived threats to email marketing.
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Delivering Relevant News

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by Lisa White
The majority of people in the US prefer television as their source of news, followed by daily newspaper, radio and online sources.  Even though it is currently being beat by other news sources, a study found that US adults currently get close to 15% of the their news from online sources, which is an increase from 12.7% the previous year.


 
It would be interesting to see if more targeted email marketing would help give the internet the edge over tv and radio as a news provider.  Online news providers can target their audience geographically to give subscribers local news that is relevant to them.  Moreover, they can target the subscribers by preferences to give them easier access to stories that align with their interests.  The power of one to one marketing would allow for subscribers to receive news that is personalized particularly for them.
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Google's Kind of a (B2B) Big Deal

Monday, October 19, 2009 by Al Iverson
Google employees Tom Oliveri and Vivian Leung point out over on Google's blog that Google Apps has gotten very popular in the B2B email hosting space. Google Apps, if you're not aware, is basically private-label Gmail for your domain.

I've been using it to host my personal email domain for a few years now, and I love it. And I'm apparently not the only one -- Google says that "over two million business and 20 million users in over 100 countries and more than 40 languages" have adopted Google Apps.

What does that mean to you? It means that Gmail's spam filtering matters to you if you're a B2B sender. Lots and lots of companies use Google Apps for email, and the spam filtering is exactly the same as Gmail's spam filtering. (And engagement rules at Gmail!)

(H/T: Mark Brownlow via Tamara Gielen)

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Live Blog: Financial Services Solution Showcase

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

He starts by introducing the first segment:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Addressing Email Security Concerns
Matt Burton - GMAC/Ally Bank

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then the presentation wrapped up, and everyone started getting ready for the evening entertainment. I've really enjoyed live blogging the technology track for everyone today, and I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing it. See you between the lines :)
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Live Blog: Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
We've got a rather thin crowd for the Best Practices for Utilizing ExactTarget's SOAP APIs session. Apparently everyone is already implementing the API in the best possible way...or think they are :)

Manager of the Product Specialist department Dale McCrory returns to the stage for this presentation and starts the session by asking people what topics they would like to see covered today. The first question was on documentation.

YAY! I love when people care about the documentation!

Web Service API Documentation
Dale brings up http://wiki.memberlandingpages.com to demonstrate all of the wonderful web service API documentation that's available there. He takes the group through a technical article on asynchronous processing, the CREATE method, an object, and a property. Bryan Wade, the embedded expert at ExactTarget and emcee of the session, asks how many people in the room have been to the wiki before, and about half of the room had already visited. I think the rest will visit before too long.

Content Management
The second question is about content management and best practices for it. Dale pulls up the AMPscript page in the documentation wiki to find the HTTPGet() function. This function performs a get call against a URL and brings back the content. This tool can be used to interact with an outside system in include the content in the emails.

AMPscript also support XSLT now, so you can interact with ExactTarget with you XML content. The BuildRowSetFromXML() function extends this capability.

Slide Presentation
With the two questions addressed, Bryan prods Dale to get  back to the slideshow. The slides cover:
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Robustness
  • Flexibility
  • Messaging content
  • Stats retrieval - tracking events

Security
Standards-based SOAP security to support authentication

All calls transmit over an SSL connection. The API supports two forms of security:
  1. Plain text username token. This is what everyone's using right now.
  2. X509 certificate encryption for the username token will be available in the 135 release.
.NET, Java, and PHP work the best with our security. Perl is OK. Ruby, ColdFusion, and ASP have troubles dealing with it because they don't deal well with the standards-based security.

Reliability
In this section, we're talking about synchronous versus asynchronous API processing again. Asynchronous processing adds all calls to a queue to be processed when the system is ready, which prevents API calls from being lost if the server is unavailable for any reason.

Other benefits include:
  • The fact that you get a sub-second response to the fact that the call has been received.
  • You have multiple options to receive results: HTTP post, Email, and the RETRIEVE API call.
  • The ConversationID concept that's used with asynch API processing allows you to resend the same call without worrying that it will actually be processed twice if the system had already queued the request.
Question from the floor: sounds like we need to improve our XML API documentation. That product hasn't been enhanced for quite a while, so the doc has gotten a little stale. There's an item for my to-do list.

Robustness
Dale quotes Wikipedia: "Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance."

Triggered sends represent the quickest way to get an email sent from the ExactTarget system. Key points help decide whether to use user-initiated (list-based) sends or triggered sends:
  • How do you want to aggregate tracking?
    List based sends aggregate tracking by job. Triggered sends aggregate tracking over a time period when the triggered send was running.
  • How will email content be made available to the ExactTarget system?
  • How are unsubscribes managed?
    List based sends record unsubs at the list level, or at the All Subscribers level. If a person unsubscribes from a triggered send, they can be unsubscribed from all triggered sends.
  • How large are your lists?
    If you have 1.5 million subscribers, you should start with list based. If you are sending individual messages in response to customer activity, triggered sends are the way to go.
You can keep your subscriber information in lists or data extensions. To help you decide:
  • Are attribute sets going to be the same for all sends? 
    If so, you can use lists because you set up attributes for all lists together. If you need different attribute sets for different subsets of clients, then you want data extensions.
  • Is import performance critical?
    If you have 1.5 million subscribers to import, you can import them into a data extension in 10 minutes versus 1-2 hours for a list (this is an approximation...the number of attributes has a big effect on performance as well).
  • How will unsubscribes be managed?
    Each list maintains its own unsubscribes. Data extensions maintain unsubscribes in publication lists.
  • Bonus point not in the slide: if you are a partner building an application, you probably want to build on lists if possible, because they cost less.

Flexibility
This topic starts with a discussion of data extensions. Data extension are
  • The only way to use the API to do "rich" queries of data
  • The way you can add relational models of data en masse or row-by-row
  • Very fast
  • Tables in our database schema that are specific to your account
The DataExtension WS API object
  • Allows the use of upsert
  • Ties to the DataExtension by CustomerKey (called "external key" in the GUI)
  • Allows specification of Keys and Nulls
  • There's also a DataExtensionObject that you can retrieve to bring back a row in the data extension.
Messaging Content
Email, images, and files, oh my!

Text-only email will be supported with 135, in addition to the HTML and HTML/Text multi-part formats.

The Portfolio object allows you to host files in ExactTarget. Images and files that you import into our system are hosted by Akamai, so when people hit these files, they are highly available and don't use your company's bandwidth.

Using AMPscript, you can attach files to your email, but you should use this feature with caution. There's a page for the documentation that's going to be published very soon that talks about best practices for attachments so that you can protect your deliverability while using this feature.

Stats Retrieval and Tracking Events
We ran out of time for the stats retrieval, so we went straight to question and answer, which went by too fast for me to keep up, especially while I"m still on this documentation cloud. :)
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Live Blog: Email+Video - Take 2

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Kevin Nuest
This is a live blog from Connections 09 in the Email Optimization Track

Email is not dead. People that use social media are actually high volume users of email.

History of email:
(present by Chris Studabaker of ExactTarget)
Text Based only 10 years ago
HTML is now being accented by Rich Media and Video

Advertisers continue to increase spending in online video. All the more reason to use video in email.

How and When to use video in email

Benefits:
-Emotion
-Highly engaging
-Personal, even user-generated
-Great demonstration medium (show, don’t tell)

Concerns:
-Development cost and time
-Production quality and the “uncanny valley”
-File size and bandwidth
-Frame rates
-Deliverability

Deliverability methods:
Streaming – video downloaded as it plays
Embedded – video data included in sent message
Linking – click through to externally hosted video

When using video in email, make sure your subscribers want to see the video you have. Knowing your subscribers’ expectations is very important. Also, remember the messages primary goal. Is the video the Call to Action or do you want your subscribers to click on something else in the email?

Linking with Button or Image?
Do you link to your video with a graphic button, a clip of the video with a play button superimposed, or a rotating animated gif with multiple clips from the video. It depends on your subscribers. Experiment with all three. One type may drive more total clicks but another may drive more conversions.

Streaming Video in Email:
(Peter Horan of GoodMail)

GoodMail is a CertifiedEmail partner with many ISPs so messages sent don’t end up in the spam filter.

CertifiedVideo will create an interactive experience via email.

Every time you ask a subscriber to do one more step, you loose some of them. If a subscriber has to click to turn on images in their emails, they may not view your email.

Daily Candy currently sends CertifiedVideo in their email.

Fandango also includes movie trailers inside their video, not just a static button that a subscriber has to click to see the video.

Target includes essentially video commercials inside their emails to represent their products and brand.

Thrillist allowed Canon to sponsor a video displaying a new camera inside one of their emails.

The Effects of including video in email:
Increases Brand awareness in important categories, such as increasing how Target is perceived as caring for their customers.

CertifiedVideo emails currently only works on web-based email, such as AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail, but not Outlook.

Follow ExactTarget on Twitter  Follow Kevin Nuest on Twitter

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Brought to you LIVE: ExactTarget’s API Vision and Roadmap - Past, Present, and Future

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

10:58 am  So excited! The ExactTarget API enables the extension of our software and some incredible functionality.  Scott McCorkle is going to be speaking, along with Michael Ciancio-Bunch. They have some incredible insight. I am not technical, so I’ll do my best to convey the information presented here.

11:01 am Bryan Wade is introducing Michael Cianco-Bunch and Scott McCorkle.  McCorkle is speaking about our dedication to integration, improving our user experience, and how the API is key with CARBON-check it out online!

11:03 am Michael is on. We are a young company, but our API has a history. XML API (2002) was created originally only for content management. A bulk Asynchronous API was introduced in 2004.  Our SOAP API was launched in 2007—this is the foundation for our web services …

11:05 am … and actually, the Asynchronous Web Service API became available in 2008.  It seems that not many people are using it right now. Its advantages include quicker calls, better status reporting, and correlating conversation IDs. Start using!

11:07 am First thing we did in 2009 was support compression…coming your way in a release! We’re also beta testing API streaming, which helps with large packets.

11: 09 am Bryan Wade is highlighting current functionality. 

11: 10 am Michael is focusing in on streaming sends: we can send as we receive via the API, with triggered sends for example, instead of waiting until a certain number are received before sending.

11:11 am Did you know API calls are up 1.5x from last year? “This amount of use is a testament to the fact that the API is now better. More people are able to use it.”-Michael.

11:13 am What does the future of the API look like? The API is a platform to help customers and partners to integrate.  Michael is saying that there are a number of tools that allow us to integrate, extend, and embed ExactTarget.  These tools support functions not possible with just the API.  Here are a few of the tools: Programs, landing pages, AMPscript … the list goes on.

11:15 am There was a huge “Hoorah!” from someone when Michael announced the introduction of a REST API.  File based API and Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callbacks are on the horizon as well.

11:17 am A user is asking about tracking a file that is sent with new API functionality … You could give the file a conversation or correlation ID so you don’t have to worry about re-using file names.

11:18 am Why is the Authenticated Asynchronous API Results Callback so great? You don’t have to fish for errors with queries! BIG question…what is the timeline for delivering these advancements? … Next year! Be on the lookout!

11:19 am We’re changing topics to landing pages and their use for creating Profile Centers, subscriber capture, and promotion pages. The beauty of landing pages is that they extend the user interface and can be integrated with ET.

11:23 am More on landing pages! You can embed them within your application. Sign-up forms are an example.

11:25 am ExactTarget’s API roadmap … One set of items is pre-built templates “encapsulating some application function (e.g. Send Wizard, Data Extensions, etc).” … There is so much more information to convey here …. Trying to get it all down!

11:26 am Java will be supported on landing pages.  This is great news!

11:27 am “AMPscript is the future!” says Michael … just kidding … Java is going to eventually replace it. ExactTarget also wants to introduce JavaScript activities like data transformation and user defined functions. There is a lot on this roadmap! It is clear that ET is truly focusing on product development.

11:30 am Looking now at Data Integration … We want users to be able to import from external systems and export to them as well.  Data cleansing is also on the horizon, in addition to a number of other functionalities to help users integrate data. We have our sight on breaking down barriers that keep us from being an open platform.

11:34 am Again, we have a lot of information here! I strongly recommend reaching out to some of our developers while you are here.

UI Extensibility: even more features are coming. As a user, you will have the ability to define a custom home page, add buttons, add tabs to our toolbars, and add custom fields to forms.  McCorkle talked about building a user experience in our user interface. What a concept! It will allow a great degree of customization in each user’s account.

11:38  am The Program feature is going to be further developed as well. Whoa - EXCITING: templates will also be available for programs.  For example, there will be a template for a birthday program in the user interface.   This functionality will be extremely helpful for marketers and programmers with limited resources. 

11:41 am Question time! Yes folks, the API is almost too good to be true … and yet it is!

11:43 am Now we’re talking about Enterprise 2.0. With the API you can do things in the application “on behalf” of users without exceeding their permissions.  You will also be able to access objects in multiple business units via the API in 2.0. 

11:49 am And in closing…share your ideas! Let ExactTarget know how, as a developer, we can improve 3sixty for your use. Quite a few people in the crowd here use 3sixty and some of those are members of the Developer Community.  This community needs to be more active. We have deliver 100+ ideas on 3sixty so far…let your voice be heard!

Coming to you live from Connections ’09!  Enjoy the rest of the conference!

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1-to-1 Marketing and Beyond: Success Stories

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 by Amanda Cross
When you hear The World Society for the Protection of Animals you probably don't think of a standard B2C with a targeted marketing message. Even so, this group has achieved a 50% increase in online donations with the power of 1-to-1 marketing tools, specifically dynamic content through ExactTarget.

Meanwhile, Motorcycle Superstore realized double-digit increases in open rates as a result of integrating online browsing and purchase data into their email marketing decisions. In this case, the ExactTarget tool driving the relevant message to the customer was the integration with Webtrends.

In another case, the online photo book publisher, Inkubook, announces that email marketing through ExactTarget drove more than 60% of its first year revenue. While PetPlace.com went from zero to $1 million in online sales in less than 12 months with the help of ExactTarget email campaigns.

It doesn't matter whether you're selling sidecars or gathering signatures on a petition, people are more likely to hear your message when you're saying something that's important to them. Using the tools that help you send a more customized messages not only create more fertile ground for conversions, but also create more fertile ground for building a lasting relationship.
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Success in Honoring Subscriber Requests

Monday, October 12, 2009 by Amanda Cross
Subscribers Rule!Industries have their seminal moments that affect the direction of their development from that point forward. I see one of those happening right now in email marketing: the dialog between marketer and customer about what the customer wants to receive.

Powell's Books is among the pack leaders and is reaping the benefits, as this story on InternetRetailer.com describes:

Powell’s Books has been sending shoppers e-mail newsletters recommending books on subjects the recipients told the retailer they enjoyed. The e-mails were opened 70% more than generic marketing e-mails sent by Powell’s.

The campaign, launched in February, allows consumers to choose from 10 e-newsletters on various topics, such as romance or literature, and then sends the applicable newsletter via e-mail. “The Subject newsletters are proof positive that the more focused the content, the more likely customers are to interact,” says San Whitmore, online marketing developer.

Marketing email content driven off subscriber information has been and continues to be a powerful mechanism to get personalized content into the subscriber inbox, but when it's feasible and appropriate, asking the consumer directly is even better.

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World's Largest... AGAIN!

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Scott Dorsey

Connections 09Connections has sold out AGAIN this year with a record 1,300 marketers from around the globe scheduled to attend the three-day conference.  We’ve built a blockbuster lineup of talent to provide insight and information including three-time New York Times bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, academy-award winning actress Marlee Matlin and industry thought leaders hosting nearly 30 interactive breakout sessions ranging from e-marketing best practices to building multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Connections always creates great opportunities to connect with the world’s best marketers, and I expect this year to be better than ever.  I look forward to seeing you in Indianapolis next week.

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Canadian anti-spam bill far from a done deal

Thursday, October 8, 2009 by Al Iverson
Michael Geist, Internet Law Columnist for the Toronto Star says that the current Canadian anti-spam legislation under consideration in Parliment is under attack. On bill C-27 – the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, he reports: "Although support for anti-spam legislation would seemingly be uncontroversial, various business groups have mounted a spirited attack against the bill, claiming requirements to obtain user consent before sending commercial email will create new barriers to doing business online."

Read the whole story here. (H/T: Box of Meat)
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Get Personal: One-to-One Marketing with Personalized Product Recommendations

Friday, October 2, 2009 by Joel Book
An article in the October issue of Internet Retailer, observes that “although the Internet makes it possible to personalize offers to shoppers, most e-retailers and other online businesses are failing to optimize web site content to improve the chances that shoppers will become buyers.”

Mike Chertudi, vice president of demand and online marketing for Omniture notes, “The majority of businesses aren’t optimizing their on-site conversion,” Omniture has teamed with Marketing Experiments to conduct the 2009 Online Conversion Benchmark Survey. The purpose of the survey, which began in June, is to help online marketers better understand best practices in onsite conversion, and know how they compare to their peers. Data is being compiled from more than 1,000 companies, of which more than half are retailers. Among the findings as of late August: About 80% of retailers don’t present personalized content based on shoppers’ interests suggested by analytics and clickstream data.

One-to-One Merchandising Works for Motorcycle Superstore

Webtrends analytics integration with ExactTargetProving that personalized product recommendations work, Motorcycle Superstore saw a 21.7% revenue increase in the first week after launching an email campaign on September 21st that incorporated personalized product recommendations.

Motorcycle Superstore uses behavioral data -- gathered with WebTrends technology combined with its e-mail marketing application from ExactTarget -- to send email messages with personalized product recommendations. These items appear as “Your Picks” in the lower part of the email and are based on the customer’s website visiting habits over the previous two weeks.

Commenting on the power of data-driven offer personalization, Erick Barney, vice president of marketing at Motorcycle Superstore, says “I believe this feature is so effective because rather than guessing at a handful of products to appeal to our entire customer base, we can merchandise products directly related to each customer’s historical interaction with our store.” Motorcycle Superstore is No. 223 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

Learn more about combining precision one-to-one communications and comprehensive web analytics by integrating ExactTarget and Webtrends.
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54% of Marketers Caught Up in Channel Budget Battles

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 by Morgan Stewart
Last week, ExactTarget released a commissioned study from Forrester Consulting titled Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power.  To me, the most sobering statistic is that for 54% of marketers, “each channel they use competes with each other for budget.” Another 28% provided a neutral response to the question. Leaving only 18% that disagree with the statement.

Each channel we use competes with each other for budget

That these budget competitions are occurring is not a surprise to me, but what concerns me is what this leads to—debates about the relative value of each channel for the purpose of re-allocating budgets.

Marketers look to the pseudo-science of marketing attribution to help them resolve these questions and buzz about the topic is picking up again. Shop.org recently announced the creation of a new Online Marketing Attribution group, David Baker wanted a new attribution calculator for Christmas, and Ed Henrich (appropriately) wants to make sure email is included in the attribution equation.

The idea of attribution makes sense. The hope is that by properly attributing the influence of different marketing campaigns on actual conversions will allow marketers to spend their marketing dollars more appropriately. However, the reality of marketing attribution is mired in disagreements about how it should be done. As one marketing manager interviewed in Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power shared, “Multichannel efforts are hard to track. We’ll look at a sale, but it’s hard to determine whether it was the email or the catalog that closed the deal.”

In this age of marketing accountability, have our attempts to answer John Wanamaker’s conundrum about which half of his advertising dollars are wasted gone too far? Is it really necessary to know if it was the email or the catalog that closed the deal? Or do we simply need to know that both played a role and that fewer sales would have occurred if one or the other were to be eliminated?

Would love your thoughts as I continue to ponder…
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Huge Opportunity for Travel Industry to Leverage Social Media

Monday, September 28, 2009 by Blaine Cooper-Surma

With the third quarter coming to a close, and the holiday season approaching, it's about that time to begin making holiday vacation arrangements.  Personally, every year I travel to Florida to spend the holidays with my family.  So how am I getting down to the beautiful, sunny weather this year?  When it comes to planning my trips, I always purchase my flights online - quickly and painlessly.

There certainly is a buzz right now around social media in the marketing world.  eMarketer.com recently published the results of one of their surveys that analyzed the percentage of internet users that have been influenced by social media in making their travel/vacation decisions.  eMarketer found that 23 percent of respondents, who happen to be U.S. internet users, have been somewhat or significantly influenced by social media when it comes to making travel/vacation decisions.
 

US Internet Users Who Say Their Travel/Vacation Decisions Are Influenced by Social Media*, 2009 (% of respondents)


Although just less than a quarter of these people noted the effectiveness of social media in influencing their decisions, this still is an enormous audience that travel companies are reaching.  As I've already pointed out, I fall into the 23 percent of people that have made or changed travel plans due to some sort of social media.  A month or so ago I noticed an ad on Twitter that boasted cheap flights to Orlando, and within minutes had scheduled a trip across the country.  I see this as a huge opportunity for the travel industry to offer travel deals that are specific to Facebook and Twitter, as both of these social networking platforms have such an enormous user base.

Large social media platforms also have the ability to use 1 to 1 marketing techniques by pulling travel locations from user info in order to provide users with more relevant content - for example, if I lived in Anchorage, Alaska, it is likely that I would be interested in going on vacation somewhere a little bit more like Key West.  Once the user has purchased the trip, travel sites like Expedia.com send a confirmation email that contains the travel itinerary and purchase information.  In addition, travel companies have the ability to take this one step further by instituting an SMS campaign that sends customers an SMS message letting them know if their flight is on time - I know this is something that many frequent travelers appreciate and certainly take advantage of.

As soon as you've identified your 23 percent and have built your subscriber list, you are now able to send automated email messages that every-so-often offer your subscribers different travel deals and opportunities.  As I pointed out in my last post, email marketing is still the best internet marketing channel and is sure to be around for a good while longer. 

To see another example of how social media has benefitted personal travel arrangements, check out Liz's post.

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Email Marketing: Can you afford to let price be your bottom line?

Monday, September 28, 2009 by Caitilin Landrigan

In these rough economic times, it’s crucial for companies to deliver a high ROI on marketing, points out eMarketer's "Online Helps Marketer's do More with Less."  eMarketer notes that senior management is paying closer attention to “each dollar spent” on marketing and heightening accountability standards. Moreover, 43% of surveyed senior management stated that they view marketing as an investment. 

We all know that email can deliver a high ROI compared with traditional media marketing.  However, some ESPs are just plain cheap.  When selecting your ESP, you should expect more than a bundle of emails at the lowest CPM to blast.  Partnering with an ESP is an investment, and conversations with your provider should be about the value and customer experience you expect, in addition to the technology. You want the most bang for every buck you spend, not simply the most emails.  You want your ESP to provide you with the best email marketing resources, to be your partner in business.  Why? Because there is a lot more to digital marketing than getting your message out the door.  Your message needs to be relevant.  Emails need to make it to the inbox, to engage subscribers, to be shared virally, to drive ROI.

Attitude of Senior Management Toward Marketing According to US Marketers

As an ExactTarget customer, you have more at your fingertips than the emails you send from your account. ExactTarget considers itself your partner and ally.  We care about your business and want your 1 to 1 marketing strategy to succeed.  We will work with you to make you look like a hero to your clients.  Knowledgeable and responsive Customer Support Services are available 24-7 for questions and concerns. ExactTarget Services professionals are available to guide you through complex integrations and consult with you on deliverability and best practices. On 3sixty, our online community, you will find resources and tutorials that provide you with a means to communicate your ideas to other marketers and to our developers so that they can create the tools you need to succeed.  

Even more importantly, ExactTarget values your partnership so much so that we assign you a personal point of contact.  How many ESPs provide a personal contact ...regardless of the size of your account…for free?!  Your voice matters, and your relationship manager is your representative to the company.  The RM team is just as excited about your marketing plans as you, and they are eager to help you reach your business goals.  Call them to introduce yourself! Speak strategy with them as you are considering what ExactTarget  technology you will use.  Share your successes with them; they would love to show-off your marketing savvy in a press release or place you in the spotlight at our annual Connections conference.  I encourage you to take full advantage of ExactTarget’s value.  Cash-in on your investment and experience  the power of an email marketing business partnership that delivers.

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Design Tip of the Week: Links & Text Decoration

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Christopher Studabaker
Blue, underlined text = link. It's an internet gold standard. More than that, linking is the fundamental component of hypertext. Over time, web and email users have learned that any underlined text usually means a link, and we've learned to expect other visual clues indicating a link, too. Using text in a navigation bar, changing text color, or highlighting text on mouse hover, for example, can all be used to imply that text is linked to a page or action. When it comes to underlining links (or not) in your email program, the style should match your brand guidelines - or at least mirror the styles used in your website.

Email clients are typically going to underline links by default. You can remove the underline, but to do so you'll need to apply the following inline style to each link (<a> tag) in your code:

<a href="http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog" style="text-decoration: none; color: #e39312;">The ExactTarget Blog</a>

However, even if you want links to be underlined it's important to explicitly state the text decoration to achieve consistent results. A few email clients (such as Hotmail) don't underline links unless you specify this value. To force link underlining in all email clients, use the following inline style on each link:

<a href="http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog" style="text-decoration: underline; color: #e39312;">The ExactTarget Blog</a>

Underlined or not, assigning a text-decoration style to your links goes back to the basics of your online branding and helps subscribers immediately identify the linked calls-to-action in your emails.
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