Email4Thought

Email Insider Summit, Utah - catch up

Well, from all the twitters and blogs I've read, the Email Insider Summit in snowy Utah has been a great success.

You can catch up with the happenings and information shared here:

Mediapost Live Blog

#eis Twitter

Photos from the Summit

Videos from the Summit

Back to basics: Designing for Today's Inbox

The last edition for the year of EzeNews was sent out last week with the main article discussing designing for Today's Inbox:

Today's inbox is filled with less than desirable looking emails. This can be attributed to two main causes:

1: Email as a marketing medium has been thought of too long as being 'cheap'. If a company thinks this way of email, then chances are they're not going to invest time and finances into designing a great looking email. Can you imagine if we were to carry this thinking into print ads and TV commercials? We'd be seeing print ads designed by MS Publisher and TV commercials being recorded using with handy cam's. As a marketing medium, email gives one of the best ROI out there - so make the most of it and make a well-worth investment into your creative...

Read the newsletter

Study Finds US Marketers Risk Unsubscribe Woes

One out of five US email marketers send additional emails to subscribers after confirming an unsubscribe request, according to the new study Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After “Unsubscribe Me”  from Return Path.  On the surface, one of the most essential and basic requirements of all countries’ legislations, appears to be ignored by some very well known brands.

Furthermore the study found that  11% of the companies studied emailed subscribers more than 10 days after confirming an unsubscribe request - a violation of the US federal CAN-SPAM Act. 

Scary information - it appears as though these brands  are not giving the unsubscribe process the necessary attention it needs.

I think that there’s a lesson to be learn for all marketers – test your unsubscribe process today. Test, not just the unsubscribe link – but all offline and manual methods as well. Remember, by testing and ensuring those who unsubscribe can do so – easily - means that you are also minimising the risk of complaints, which will hurt your deliverability.

Email Evolution Conference - Discount Code

February 9 -11, 2009, Westin Kierland, Scottsdale Arizona

The Email Experience Council and the USA Direct Marketing Association will join forces for the second year in a row for 3 days of focused learning, networking, and exploring at the only conference for - and by - email marketers and I'm happy to say that I'll be moderating a panel on 'Marketing to Europe - the do's and don'ts'.

Step Up to Bigger Profits
The Email Evolution Conference will arm you with actionable strategies, illuminating research, and insightful forecasts to help you get up-to-speed with today's customer preferences, and stay one step ahead of the competition!

Customise your course of study by choosing from a variety of sessions, or follow one of three tracks:

    * Statistics and Research - Numbers and trends you need to know about
    * Case Studies and Action Items - Information you can leverage and apply directly to your role
    * Strategy and Theory - Insights and discussions about the inner workings of the Email Marketing Channel

DISCOUNT CODE
We have very kindly been given a discount code to use. This will give you $200 off the Full conference (pre-con and main) and main conference (2 days).  It will be off the member and non-member price.

The code to use is EECUK

Find out more...

February 9 -11, 2009, Westin Kierland, Scottsdale Arizona

The Email Experience Council and the USA Direct Marketing Association will join forces for the second year in a row for 3 days of focused learning, networking, and exploring at the only conference for - and by - email marketers and I'm happy to say that I'll be moderating a panel on 'Marketing to Europe - the do's and don'ts'.

Step Up to Bigger Profits
The Email Evolution Conference will arm you with actionable strategies, illuminating research, and insightful forecasts to help you get up-to-speed with today's customer preferences, and stay one step ahead of the competition!

Customise your course of study by choosing from a variety of sessions, or follow one of three tracks:

    * Statistics and Research - Numbers and trends you need to know about
    * Case Studies and Action Items - Information you can leverage and apply directly to your role
    * Strategy and Theory - Insights and discussions about the inner workings of the Email Marketing Channel

DISCOUNT CODE
We have very kindly been given a discount code to use. This will give you $200 off the Full conference (pre-con and main) and main conference (2 days).  It will be off the member and non-member price.

The code to use is EECUK

Find out more...

Successful Deliverability Lies with the Marketer

Originally Posted: Be Relevant!

Yep - you heard right. Back in 2005, George Bilbrey of Return Path wrote a blog "It's not your ESP - it's YOU!" and MarketingProf's also published an article recently "Email Deliverability is in Your Hands". This seemed to be the theme which was threaded through many of the presentations at both the London DMA's recent conferences. It appears that most marketers seem to think that they can buy deliverability - by changing ESP's or paying for accreditation. However, neither of these solutions will work unless the marketer is doing Best Practise.

From a combination of attending these conferences and with conversations with Dennis Dayman, Stephanie Miller and David Daniels, combined with my own experiences - I have come to the conclusion that deliverability is a 2 part process, both of which require due attention and ownership by the marketer:

Part 1 - Deliverability to ISP's - IP Reputation: This is a combined effort by the ESP and the marketer. The ESP needs to have everything ready and waiting for the Best Practise Marketer. Things such as the infrastructure, whitelisting, delivery monitoring, Feedback Loops, education about Authentication and enabling/assisting clients to become authenticated are all things which the ESP can do.

However, the main causes of emails not being accepted by the ISP is due to the percentage of spam complaints and bad addresses....and having a clean and up to date database is the responsibility of the marketer. This is where having a good Sender reputation is crucial and if you're on a dedicated IP address - well, hey..there's no one to blame but yourself if your reputation isn't as good as it could be.

Part 2: Deliverability to the Inbox - Brand Reputation. So, you got accepted by the ISP/mail server and they have delivered you to the recipients email client? Excellent - but will it be delivered to the inbox or the junkmail folder? This is where your brand, sender name, subject line, good clean coding, choice of copy, domain reputation, message relevance and things like image to copy ratio are taken into account - both by the spam filter and by the recipient.

ESP's can assist you with all of the above factors - but ultimately, the responsiblility of deliverability comes down to you, the marketer. Therefore, if your deliverability isn't as good as it should be  - look to implementing Best Practices rather than changing ESP's.

Yep - you heard right. Back in 2005, George Bilbrey of Return Path wrote a blog "It's not your ESP - it's YOU!" and MarketingProf's also published an article recently "Email Deliverability is in Your Hands". This seemed to be the theme which was threaded through many of the presentations at both the London DMA's recent conferences. It appears that most marketers seem to think that they can buy deliverability - by changing ESP's or paying for accreditation. However, neither of these solutions will work unless the marketer is doing Best Practise.

From a combination of attending these conferences and with conversations with Dennis Dayman, Stephanie Miller and David Daniels, combined with my own experiences - I have come to the conclusion that deliverability is a 2 part process, both of which require due attention and ownership by the marketer:

Part 1 - Deliverability to ISP's - IP Reputation: This is a combined effort by the ESP and the marketer. The ESP needs to have everything ready and waiting for the Best Practise Marketer. Things such as the infrastructure, whitelisting, delivery monitoring, Feedback Loops, education about Authentication and enabling/assisting clients to become authenticated are all things which the ESP can do.

However, the main causes of emails not being accepted by the ISP is due to the percentage of spam complaints and bad addresses....and having a clean and up to date database is the responsibility of the marketer. This is where having a good Sender reputation is crucial and if you're on a dedicated IP address - well, hey..there's no one to blame but yourself if your reputation isn't as good as it could be.

Part 2: Deliverability to the Inbox - Brand Reputation. So, you got accepted by the ISP/mail server and they have delivered you to the recipients email client? Excellent - but will it be delivered to the inbox or the junkmail folder? This is where your brand, sender name, subject line, good clean coding, choice of copy, domain reputation, message relevance and things like image to copy ratio are taken into account - both by the spam filter and by the recipient.

ESP's can assist you with all of the above factors - but ultimately, the responsiblility of deliverability comes down to you, the marketer. Therefore, if your deliverability isn't as good as it should be  - look to implementing Best Practices rather than changing ESP's.

New Insights On Time Of Day For Email

Originally Posted: DMA Email Blog

This week Media Post published an article : "New Insights On Time Of Day For Email" which whilst it doesn't reveal THE secret time to to send (hint - because there isn't one!), does provide some very interesting observations performed by the Center for Media Design.

• Email engagement peaks in the morning. Many users, myself included, start their day by rifling through their email inboxes. Mornings allow email users to spend uninterrupted time in their inbox.

• In-out-in-out in the afternoon. As the day progresses, users tend to have more fractured interactions with email. Email is checked intermittently throughout the day between meetings and errands. Thus, in the afternoon, there are more email episodes (any time users check into their email inbox), but those episodes are shorter in duration. Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., users are likely to have five individual episodes of 3-5 minutes apiece, compared to the 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. period when users are more likely to have a single episode that is substantially longer.

• Overall time in the inbox is fairly consistent throughout the workday. Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., email makes up between 30% and 35% of the average user’s media exposure. This drops off during the late afternoon and early evening, only to peak again in the late evening (between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.) as users go back to their inboxes to wrap up the day.

Along these lines, Skip Fidura has also written a very interesting post on the related subject of which is the best day to send email.... and comes to the conclusion that: "A standard day of week test randomly puts your readers into buckets so you end up identifying the optimal day based on the average. This would hide the fact that your most profitable segments might respond better at other times. In fact, the optimum time identified by the test may turn out to be rubbish."

BUT, don't despair!  Skip goes on to propose a strategy to ensure you're sending on the right day for your customers.... Read the post

Aussie's are buying more online

News Digital Media’s latest Digital Insight Report, was released today and they found that:

    * More than 50% have increased their expenditure on cars and groceries online during the past six months. At least 33% are spending more on travel and technology and more than 25% are spending more on financial services, home entertainment, music downloads, entertainment bookings and games/software.
    * Approximately 40% of respondents now spend more than an hour each week researching their purchasing decisions – up from less than 30% six months ago.
    * Time spent online is continuing to grow with nearly half of all respondents now spending more time online than they did six months ago, with those respondents averaging more than 1.5 hours online each day.

Read the article

Use of Personalisation in Subject Lines

At the DMA's 'The Practical Guide to Email Marketing' conference' earlier this week, Stephanie Miller from Return Path did a great presentation and briefly addressed the question should personalisation be used? Her findings were: Yes for UK subscribers, No for German subscribers and no for US subscribers as they find it spammy.

Last week Suretymail's, Ann P Mitchell came up with 3 reasons that personalising your subject lines can kill your email deliverability which is a very interesting read and this week Stefan Pollard has also approached this subject - but from a different angle with his article: Personalized Subject Lines: Benefical or Bad?

There are alot of valid points in both sides of the argument - but what it probably comes down to is testing (yes, yes I know - it's a boring answer!). However, what works for you mightn't work for someone else. A lot of the success of the personalisation comes down to your relationship with your subscriber. If you haven't got a real 'relationship' with your subscriber as such then maybe personalising isn't the way to go as they may see it as being artificial or spammy.

So, if in doubt -test.

Originally Posted: DMA Email Blog

Infobox - The Art of Segmentation

The November Issue of Infobox was published yesterday.

This month we have Stefan Pollard on the art of segmenting and the beautiful and creative Lisa Harmon on designing effective Holiday Season creatives.

Dela Quist asks are we discriminating against our best customers and Simone Barrett looks at how to protect your brand from phishing.

Read November's Infobox

Learnings from A Practical Guide to Email Marketing

On Tuesday I attended and presented at the DMA's 'A Practical Guide to Email Marketing'. We set up a twitter tag #dmapg for it and had various people twittering notes during the presentations.

Tamara Gielen over at Be Relevent! has put together some great points noted at the conference based on these twitters.....well worth reading.

If you want to read all the twitters (which also includes comments and questions from non-attendees who were reading the twitters in real-time please go here.