E-mail guide 2008 by Michelle Zitz

guide

2008

ESSENTIAL

E-mail Marketing

Feature: A new age for e-mail by Dianna Dilworth Fundamentals: The big benefits of e-mail marketing by Eric Cosway Infrastructure: The next revolution in e-mail marketing by Peter Horan Optimization: E-mail marketing in a down economy by Ryan Deutsch

A Supplement to DMNews

Targeting: Think before you pull that e-mail trigger by Jon Sisenwein Cross-channel blending: Integrate e-mail into a multichannel mix by David Fowler Database maintenance: Key ways to optimize unsubscribe requests by Arthur Sweetser List strategy: Segment your e-mail lists for more effective campaigns by Chris Chariton

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Editor’s Note

oday’s e-mail marketers face a variety of technical decisions and creative challenges — deliverability, measurement, rendering and social network or mobile integration, to name a few. In this Guide, you’ll find answers to many fundamental and high-level implementation questions. But even more central is an underlying theme that runs throughout the Guide, best articulated by ExactTarget’s Chip House (p19). He says, “E-mail lists are people.” Cara Wood Editor-in-chief Bring that crucial phrase to your next e-mail strategy meeting. By now, the shift from consumer as ad-absorbing sponge to consumer as demanding participant has touched every marketing medium. Yet, it is perhaps still most salient in the e-mail inbox. This is a place most users go every day for personal tasks — inbox success is the ultimate invite. Marketers must move beyond mastering the technical elements of the channel. When crafting the messaging and strategy, it’s of course about reputation and relevance, but the most important “R” in upcoming campaigns will be relationships that are built from consistent, respectful, engaging and reliable messaging. —Cara Wood, Editor-in-chief

Table of Contents Feature 4 A new age for e-mail, by Dianna Dilworth Fundamentals 9 The big benefits of e-mail

marketing, by Eric Cosway

10 E-mail is just one tool in your marketing arsenal, by Michael Thompson

10 How to get the most from your e-mail campaign, by Kevin Mabley

12 Set the right benchmarks before you press ‘send,’ by Ben Chestnut

12 Essential e-mail ‘how to’ basics to keep in mind, by Michele Volpe

EDITORIAL: Editor-in-Chief Cara Wood Executive Editor Sharon Goldman Editorial Director Julia Hood ART AND PRODUCTION: Design Director Sandra DiPasqua Art Director Robert Falcone Production Manager Michelle Chizmadia ADVERTISING: District Managers Craig Bailey, Sammy Patel Assistant Display Advertising Mgr Deborah Hartley Associate Publisher and VP of Sales Steven Sottile HAYMARKET MEDIA: President/Publishing Director Lisa Kirk Chairman/CEO William Pecover SUBSCRIPTIONS: (845) 268-3156 DMNews (ISSN 0194-3588), incorporating iMarketing News 114 West 26th St., New York, NY 10001 Telephone (646) 638-6000 © 2008 Haymarket Media DMNews is published weekly on Monday (50 times a year), except for the following: July 2 and December 31. Publisher: Haymarket Media Inc., 114 West 26th St., New York, NY 10001. Periodicals postage paid at New York and additional points of entry. Reproduction of any part of DMNews or its trademarked or copyrighted supplements without express permission of the publisher is prohibited. Annual subscripton rate $49 US, $99 Canada & Mexico, $149 other international. Single copy $10 US, $16 international. Postmaster: Send address changes to DMNews, Subscription Department, PO Box 316, Congers, NY 10920-0316 USPS 496530

19 Which sender reputation method works

34 Use behavioral targeting to pump up

21 Tools you can use to your e-mail

34 Four steps for improving your 2009

21 Five ways you can make sure your

36 The power and wisdom of using e-mail

22 Overcoming inbox angst: How to build

36 Three components that lead to

best for you? by Elie D. Ashery

marketing advantage, by DJ Waldow

e-mail is delivered, by John Murphy consumer trust, by Carmen Curran

22 The effect of relevance on your e-mail’s deliverability, by Kevin Senne

your e-mail ROI, by Siara Nazir e-mail results, by Lora Downie

remarketing, by Simms Jenkins e-mail success, by Steve Jones

Integration

24 Five best practices to ensure e-mail

37 Integrate e-mail into a multichannel

24 FTC rule changes: Keeping up with

39 An exciting time for one-to-one

authentication, by Jeff Wilbur

CAN-SPAM, by Cindy Brown

Optimization

mix, by David Fowler

marketing to shine, by Ranen Goren

39 Holiday e-mail smarts can give you a year-round boost, by Luc Vazina

26 E-mail marketing in a down

40 Understand mobile e-mail for a better

27 How long does it take for readers to

40 E-mail: How to bridge the media

15 Every consumer or business has an

27 Improving open rates for your

42 Six of the e-mail marketing trends you’ll

15 It’s time to invest in e-mail marketing

29 Optimizing your e-mail to deal with

13 The key causes of e-mail fatigue and frustration, by Tom O’Leary

13 Reach your top customers with

relevant e-mails, by Nick Godfrey e-mail profile to use, by Mark Klein communications, by Elana Anderson

Infrastructure

economy, by Ryan Deutsch

remember you? by Stefan Pollard

acquisition e-mail, by Albert Gadbut image blocking, by Anthony Green

29 Responsible e-mail should be marketers’ next main focus, by Ashley Johnston

16 The next revolution in e-mail

30 E-mail marketing: Bells and whistles

18 How you can manage your company’s

30 Get it right: Expert advice on your

marketing, by Peter Horan

e-mail reputation, by George Bilbrey

18 Give customers control to keep

communication open, by Erin Ickes

19 Improve e-mail deliverability by giving consumers power, by Chip House

vs. customer data, by Walter Lamb

user experience, by Jeff Hassemer fragmentation gap, by Jere Doyle see in 2009, by Nicholas Einstein

Lists and Databases 43 Key ways to optimize unsubscribe requests, by Arthur Sweetser

44 Minimize your list churn by optimizing opt-out process, by Loren McDonald

44 Segment your e-mail lists for more

effective campaigns, by Chris Chariton

copy length, by Grant A. Johnson

45 The secret to e-mail success: No ‘garbage

Targeting

46 How to cultivate leads by using

33 Think before you pull that e-mail trigger, by John Sisenwein

in, garbage out,’ by Jodi Baier

e-mail sequencing, by Jared Vestal

46 How to ensure that e-mails get delivered to rented lists, by Sarah Barber

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Editor’s Note

Table of Contents Feature 4 A new age for e-mail, by Dianna Dilworth Fundamentals 9 The big benefits of e-mail

marketing, by Eric Cosway

10 E-mail is just one tool in your marketing arsenal, by Michael Thompson

10 How to get the most from your e-mail campaign, by Kevin Mabley

12 Set the right benchmarks before you press ‘send,’ by Ben Chestnut

12 Essential e-mail ‘how to’ basics to keep in mind, by Michele Volpe

19 Which sender reputation method works

34 Use behavioral targeting to pump up

21 Tools you can use to your e-mail

34 Four steps for improving your 2009

21 Five ways you can make sure your

36 The power and wisdom of using e-mail

22 Overcoming inbox angst: How to build

36 Three components that lead to

best for you? by Elie D. Ashery

marketing advantage, by DJ Waldow

e-mail is delivered, by John Murphy consumer trust, by Carmen Curran

22 The effect of relevance on your e-mail’s deliverability, by Kevin Senne

your e-mail ROI, by Siara Nazir e-mail results, by Lora Downie

remarketing, by Simms Jenkins e-mail success, by Steve Jones

Integration

24 Five best practices to ensure e-mail

37 Integrate e-mail into a multichannel

24 FTC rule changes: Keeping up with

39 An exciting time for one-to-one

authentication, by Jeff Wilbur

CAN-SPAM, by Cindy Brown

Optimization

mix, by David Fowler

marketing to shine, by Ranen Goren

39 Holiday e-mail smarts can give you a year-round boost, by Luc Vazina

26 E-mail marketing in a down

40 Understand mobile e-mail for a better

27 How long does it take for readers to

40 E-mail: How to bridge the media

15 Every consumer or business has an

27 Improving open rates for your

42 Six of the e-mail marketing trends you’ll

15 It’s time to invest in e-mail marketing

29 Optimizing your e-mail to deal with

13 The key causes of e-mail fatigue and frustration, by Tom O’Leary

13 Reach your top customers with

relevant e-mails, by Nick Godfrey e-mail profile to use, by Mark Klein communications, by Elana Anderson

Infrastructure

economy, by Ryan Deutsch

remember you? by Stefan Pollard

acquisition e-mail, by Albert Gadbut image blocking, by Anthony Green

29 Responsible e-mail should be marketers’ next main focus, by Ashley Johnston

16 The next revolution in e-mail

30 E-mail marketing: Bells and whistles

18 How you can manage your company’s

30 Get it right: Expert advice on your

marketing, by Peter Horan

e-mail reputation, by George Bilbrey

18 Give customers control to keep

communication open, by Erin Ickes

19 Improve e-mail deliverability by giving consumers power, by Chip House

vs. customer data, by Walter Lamb

user experience, by Jeff Hassemer fragmentation gap, by Jere Doyle see in 2009, by Nicholas Einstein

Lists and Databases 43 Key ways to optimize unsubscribe requests, by Arthur Sweetser

44 Minimize your list churn by optimizing opt-out process, by Loren McDonald

44 Segment your e-mail lists for more

effective campaigns, by Chris Chariton

copy length, by Grant A. Johnson

45 The secret to e-mail success: No ‘garbage

Targeting

46 How to cultivate leads by using

33 Think before you pull that e-mail trigger, by John Sisenwein

in, garbage out,’ by Jodi Baier

e-mail sequencing, by Jared Vestal

46 How to ensure that e-mails get delivered to rented lists, by Sarah Barber

04 FEATURE DMNews • E-mail Guide 2008

E-mailers look to data and sophistication as the channel grows up, Dianna Dilworth reports

-mail marketing is showing its age. That comes as no surprise — after all, the channel has been around for more than 15 years. But, like all teenagers, e-mail is going through a complex phase. While it is as sophisticated as ever, many marketers use it as a key part of an integrated brand awareness campaign, not just as a direct sales channel. “E-mail has become a critical mission for companies,” says John Rizzi, CEO of e-Dialog. “It started off as a slush fund extra for marketers, but now it is getting attention higher up the food chain and becoming more integrated into the marketing mix. We are talking to more CMOs and CEOs than we used to. It is getting more serious attention.” That attention also includes working to keep up with hungry competitors, which helps set the pace for a higher level of overall quality in e-mail campaigns. Marketers see e-mails from other companies and want to incorporate their strategies, Rizzi adds — which helps set the bar higher. Others point out that e-mail is no longer simply about pushing a product. “E-mail is not just about selling something, it can be used to engage people,” says Jeanniey Mullen, global EVP and CMO of Zinio and founder/executive chairwoman of the Email Experience Council. “For a publisher, an e-mail can be a way to generate site traffic and support ad revenue on a site.” For example, Zinio, a publishing company that sends e-mails for digital magazines from publications including Cosmopolitan and Elle, is using e-mail to help increase engagement with the brand. This

A new age for e-mail ESSENTIAL GUIDE

DMNews • E-mail Guide 2008 FEATURE 05

strategic thinking is perhaps why more high-level marketing executives are becoming increasingly involved in the once siloed channel. But while healthy competition is certainly raising the bar at one end of e-mail, it could be damaging as more marketers move into the channel. Some use e-mail with no real strategy in mind, leading to inbox overload. Consumers are getting overwhelmed by too much information and are fighting back. According to a recent study by JupiterResearch, The Brand Delivery Optimization Imperative: Tactics to Build Trust and Restore Email Reputation, 17% of the online population creates a new e-mail address every six months. “So many marketers have adopted e-mail recently. Its oversaturation brings a lot of unsophisticated marketers to the table who send batch and blast emails,” says Julie Katz, analyst, Forrester Research. List hygiene also continues to be a challenge for e-mail marketers looking to send to a tuned-in audience. “Even seasoned e-mail marketers are facing a constant battle against list attrition,” says Courtney Caldwell, account supervisor at Agency.com. “There is a struggle to keep consumers engaged and responsive, while still converting e-mails to dollars and proving the e-mail program successful.”

Better targeting through testing Whatever is a marketer to do? That’s simple. Test. “Testing will never end in this digital world, whether it be subject line, offer-based, frequency or various segmentation strategies,” says Caldwell. “E-mails need to [go] to people who want [them], want to purchase and want to constantly stay engaged with the brand.” While testing can certainly help with targeting and relevance, the attraction of newer and sexier channels such as mobile and social networks is taking attention away from e-mail. “Consumers are slowly turning away from the channel and

5 top trends in e-mail marketing Industry experts share their thoughts on the hot topics that e-mail marketers should focus on

looking towards new media like mobile and social networks to communicate,” says Katz.

E-mail increasingly going mobile However, mobile doesn’t have to be an e-mail killer — many marketers have designed their e-mails to render properly on mobile phones and have optimized their sites for the mobile Web. “E-mail is not going away, but marketers need to make sure that their messages are optimized for the [ways] that they are being read,” says David Daniels, VP and research director at JupiterResearch. “Not only should an e-mail render correctly on a phone, it should also have an appropriate call to action for the cellphone, and the links should work [to allow] a recipient to browse the mobile Web site.” Daniels notes that there are many opportunities marketers can take advantage of when integrating e-mail with social media, especially for those marketers looking to target a younger demographic. “If you’ve got a skateboard company, then you should also have an opportunity to ‘become a fan’ on Facebook if you want to reach this target audience,” he explains. Targeting the appropriate segment with the appropriate message is something that e-mail marketers have long talked about. But these days, more marketers are backing up their chatter with actual strategy and execution, focusing on the use of data. “One of the biggest challenges is relevance and getting your e-mail to stand out in an oversaturated inbox,” says Rizzi. “I believe that while consumers today are more likely to opt-in, they are also more likely to opt-out if you don’t treat them well. So e-mail marketers need to look at data and evolve to be database marketers.” Matt Seeley, president of CheetahMail, agrees with that assessment. “The use of data is helping

Oversaturation affects consumers “While an elite group of e-mail marketers are getting more sophisticated, e-mail in general is getting oversaturated and consumers are turning away from it. More marketers are entering the space and sending more e-mail because it is cheap. Even if response rates are going down, these marketers will increase their volume, because they are still getting transactions.” — Julie Katz, analyst, Forrester Research E-MAIL MARKETING GUIDE

E-mail has become a channel driver “We’re seeing more of our customers understanding that e-mail is a channel driver, and it affects other channels in a big way — be it in-store traffic, branding efforts or online sales. It’s not just about direct sales anymore.” — Matt Seeley, president, CheetahMail

06 FEATURE DMNews • E-mail Guide 2008

increase the relevance of e-mail,” he says. “Knowing your customer is key. Taking this information and integrating it into an e-mail program will increase response rates.” Still, while marketers begin to practice what they preach, and put catchwords like “relevance” into action, not everything that has been conventional wisdom lately has been adopted. Authentication and reputation have been popular points of discussion in the e-mail space for the last few years — yet according to the Authentication Online Trust Alliance, only 55% of legitimate permission e-mail uses authentication. “We are still not seeing a large adoption of authentication tools or marketers sending from a dedicated IP address, despite the fact that we’ve been taking about it for years,” says Daniels. Industry-accepted authentication tools include Yahoo’s DKIM and Microsoft’s Sender ID. Accreditation programs include Return Path’s Sender Score Certified whitelist, which validates a sender’s reputation; and Goodmail’s CertifiedMail, which sends e-mail through a special portal. Daniels says that e-mailers with a good accreditation program can open up opportunities to advance the channel. For example, video in e-mail, which has often been given a bad name due to deliverability challenges, is being approached again, now that getting delivered is less about the formatting of an e-mail and more about having a good reputation or sending through an accredited portal. Daniels says that with a good reputation, sending video in e-mails can help increase e-mail monetization through things like pre-roll ads in video. Marketers who keep clean lists and maintain good reputations can look to video and other creative options to keep the revenue flowing, while speaking to a smaller, yet more engaged, audience. Organizational issues are another challenge for email marketers. While CMOs are getting involved with the e-mail program within some organizations,

List hygiene is essential “E-mail marketers are still sending out a lot that they don’t need to send. If marketers want to get smart, they should focus on list hygiene and not send to people who are not responding. By being more relevant, they have a better chance of increasing engagement.” — David Daniels, VP and research director, JupiterResearch

many companies still have e-mail in a silo that doesn’t work with its overall marketing program. “There is a real organizational dysfunction when it comes to e-mail,” says Mullen. “E-mail has been owned by the e-mail marketing group, which has nothing to do with other departments in a company. If e-mail is going to work, it has to be tied back to the marketing goals of the larger organization and integrated with other channels.”

Increasing role for e-mail providers To combat this issue in an economic climate where more organizations are downsizing than upgrading, many e-mail service providers (ESPs) focus on service. “E-mail is complicated and it takes a lot of knowledge to pull off a program,” says Seeley. “ESPs are going beyond just offering a product and are also offering a service to help strategize these campaigns.” But a down economy has not hurt e-mail at all. In fact, because e-mail is a cheap way to communicate in real time with many consumers, e-mail continues to grow. “Even with the challenges in the economy, the message across the board is that e-mail is a valuable channel and it is not slowing down,” Rizzi adds. As the channel gets older and more mature, e-mail marketers are being forced to be smarter and savvier than ever. As consumers become overwhelmed with more messaging than ever, and more channel options, only a targeted and well-executed marketing e-mail stands to grab a consumer’s attention. “We have gone from near-empty inboxes and curious engagements to flooded inboxes and suspicious consumers,” Caldwell explains. “In making e-mail a viable form of communication and marketing, we have also made our own jobs that much harder. There is a struggle to stand out in the sea of e-mails to prove the brand worthy of engagement.” n

Not just product promotion

“We have gone from near-empty inboxes... to flooded inboxes” Courtney Caldwell, account supervisor, Agency.com

E-mail has become smarter

“People are looking for “E-mail is smarter, sleeker e-mails that make their lives and has earned its seat at easier. Marketing messages the ‘adult table.’ It has proven need to promote a lifestyle, to be a necessary solution “People are looking rather than just sell for a for effectively communicate-mails product — to offer something to the that con-will help ingmake with your customers. their lives easier.We’re also seeing sumer in a time of inbox overload.” Marketing traditional marketers turn toae-mail to supmessages need to promote — Jeanniey Mullen, global EVP and CMO, port their offline and online lifestyle, rather than just sell a productmarketing efforts. Zinio and founder/executive chairwoman,to Email — Courtney Caldwell, account supervisor, offer something to the consumer, Experience Council Agency.com especially in a time of inbox overload.”

Not

just product

-- Jeanniey Mullen, global EVP and

ESSENTIAL GUIDE

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 FUNDAMENTALS 9

Fundamentals FUNDAMENTALS Page 9

The big benefits of e-mail marketing, by Eric Cosway

Page 10

E-mail is just one tool in your marketing arsenal, by Michael Thompson How to get the most from your e-mail campaign, by Kevin Mabley

Page 12

Set the right benchmarks before you press ‘send,’ by Ben Chestnut Essential e-mail ‘how to’ basics to keep in mind, by Michele Volpe

Page 13

The key causes of e-mail fatigue and frustration, by Tom O’Leary Reach your top customers with relevant e-mails, by Nick Godfrey

Page 15

Every consumer or business has an e-mail profile to use, by Mark Klein It’s time to invest in e-mail marketing communications, by Elana Anderson

ver the years, e-mail marketing has become the cornerstone of many a marketing strategy. But while the sector has evolved in terms of new technologies and deliverability issues, the fundamentals such as relevance, strategy and testing remain the same. These articles share tips on how to put those e-mail building blocks into place.

The big benefits of e-mail marketing By Eric Cosway s e-mail marketing usage grows, so does its benefits. Marketers now use e-mail as part of their business-to-business and businessto-consumer integrated marketing mix, as most recipients accept and even welcome targeted, opt-in e-mails. According to a recent Jupiter Research survey, 60% of business decision makers prefer e-mail and the Internet over other mediums for receiving marketing messages. Not to mention that the cost-perqualified lead can be 5% to 15% less when using online media. Marketers intent on planning online marketing campaigns and practicing effective e-mail Eric Cosway design should QuantumDigital understand the importance of using and reaping these multiple benefits. Used correctly, e-mail is a cost-efficient tool for nurturing existing leads and formulating an effective marketing campaign. The Direct Marketing Association estimates e-mail ROI in 2008 at $45.65 for every dollar spent. E-mail, while offering a cost-effective way for targeting prospects, allows interested recipients to qualify themselves by simply responding to marketing messages. This saves time and effort for both marketers and consumers. For more targeted marketing pieces, marketers can customize e-mails by using variable data capabilities to speak to recipients on an individual level by including personalized information, such as using a name or mentioning

a recipient’s past inquiries. This tactic allows marketers to increase their opportunities for turning potential clients into active customers and information seekers. The benefits of e-Marketing include built-in tracking features, offered by many direct mail providers, which report campaign statistics such as bounce rates, deliver and open rates, and click-through analytics. The ability to update these reports in real-time can be a valuable tool to marketers with time-sensitive campaigns or for those testing marketing messages with the goal of standing out among competitors. A few practical takeaways for integrating e-mail into integrated marketing campaigns. E-mail serves as a quick and cost-effective way to test market messages and offers Before deploying full-scale campaigns, marketers with e-mail lists can initially select a sampling from the target audience, segment that sampling into groups and test their responses to different versions of marketing messages and offers. The marketing message or offer that receives the highest response rates can then be expanded into a full-scale, integrated campaign including both direct mail and e-mail. Send an e-mail message before delivering direct mail to boost awareness Multiple touchpoints in a campaign can be a valuable tactic for increasing the target audience’s awareness. Timing an e-mail to hit the mailboxes of target audiences immediately before they receive a direct mail piece may heighten the group’s receptiveness to receiving and reading a particular marketing communication. Follow up on direct mail deliveries with e-mail Send target audience members a friendly, little reminder after they receive a direct mail piece. A genuine and sincere attempt to communicate with them on a personal level and in a timely fashion may sway them to act on a marketing message or offer. Eric Cosway is CMO and EVP of QuantumDigital. Reach him at eric_cosway@quantumdigital.com.

10 FUNDAMENTALS DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

E-mail is just one tool in your marketing arsenal

How to get the most from your e-mail campaign

By Michael Thompson hen e-mail marketing began, the possibilities of reaching new audiences through electronic means and getting realtime results made marketers absolutely giddy. Today, many of those marketers find themselves wondering why they can’t raise their conversion rates. That’s because those marketers define e-mail as a contact strategy rather than a key piece of the overall interactive marketing strategy. While e-mail by itself remains effective, its uses have evolved. Marketers need to think of it as one tool in an arsenal that leverages other tools and disciplines to make it more effective. Teaching marketers to think of e-mail in these terms starts by engaging the right parties across an organization to define measurable business objectives. Business rules driven by a robust comprehensive database platform can help determine when a piece should be sent out and what it should say. Everyone involved in the messaging and creative strategy must be in agreement on these objectives before sending the first e-mail. Micheal Thompson Successful e-mail campaigns — ClickSquared Inc. along with having a good list of targets — also carefully define the attributes that drive the messaging and timing. Say a new cable customer recently signed up for on-demand programming as part of the package. This gets fed into the database, which triggers a communication welcoming the customer as a subscriber and offering a menu of on-demand programming. After a month, it becomes apparent that his/her on-demand choices focus on sports. Because e-mail operates in real-time, and he/she has indicated this preference, business rules dictate the automatic sending of information about upcoming sports programming days before a game, increasing the likelihood that he/she will tune in. But when the behavior changes, so does the information the customer receives. The new behavior triggers another communication on upcoming relevant releases to view. With Web 2.0, e-mail has become a key part of the central nervous system of the overall interactive customer relationship. It maintains a relevant flow of information between company and customer, and reacts quickly to changes in customer behavior. Effective e-mail marketing relies on a constant data feed that updates continuously for effective communication and outcome. Marketers should focus less on “how often” they send messages and more on “how relevant” those messages can be. By getting all the right parties involved, focusing on content more than frequency and creating messages based on quality data, marketers can transform e-mail from a contact strategy to the driving force in an overall interactive marketing program.

By Kevin Mabley re you getting the most from your e-mail marketing campaigns? The following questions will help you out. How do you welcome new subscribers to your program? Keep new subscribers out of your regular communication stream. Contact them twice as often for the first few months. Welcome messages can drive customers to preference centers to deepen their engagement (and provide valuable profile information), remind them of program benefits and set expectations about future content that they’ll receive. What are you doing with unengaged or “lapsed” customers? Between 20% to 50% of the addresses on most house lists are dormant, i.e., not clicked or opened a message in 12 months. Recognize these inactive customers, tell them they are missed and ask them to update their preferences. Try “sweeter” offers to reengage this lapsed audience. Too often online marketers look at campaign performance indicators rather than customer engagement metrics when determining a program’s success. How do you drive the dynamic content in your e-mails? Start with join date, last response (open, click), conversions, etc. Try domain-based campaigns, i.e., sending consumer domains (AOL, Yahoo, MSN) on weekends and business domains on weekdays. Basic data can drive reengagement messages, cross-pollination and cross-sells. What have you learned from recent tests? Campaigns should test something, whether an A/B split test of subject lines, or multivariate tests of combinations of content or placement. A/B tests generate 3% to 10% lift in response while multivariate tests drive a 20% to 80% incremental lift in revenue per campaign. Timing, Kevin Mabley targeting and frequency are Epsilon important variables. Is your e-mail contact strategy mapped to your customer buying cycle? Campaigns tend to reflect campaign calendars and seasonal product promotions. Use the e-mail channel’s ability to reach people at the right time — consider overlaying a typical customer shopping cycle on your campaign calendar to see where opportunities are out of sync or missed altogether. While auto manufacturers can tune campaigns to test-drive prospects, maintenance buyers and the need for re-purchase, other purchases are much more sporadic and difficult to predict. So integrate Web site and search activity to drive communication as a purchase (or up-sell) decision is made. Listen to your customers in terms of activity, interests and response, and keep your campaigns customer-centric. Asking the right questions of your program will get you started.

Michael Thompson is chief deliverability officer at ClickSquared Inc. Reach him at mthompson@clicksquared.com.

Kevin Mabley is SVP of strategic services at Epsilon. Reach him at kmabley@epsilon.com.

ESSENTIAL GUIDE

12 FUNDAMENTALS DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Set the right benchmarks before you press ‘send’

Essential e-mail ‘how to’ basics to keep in mind

By Ben Chestnut ou’re launching an e-mail campaign. You’ve got a top-notch mailing list. Your designers have whipped up some stellar creative. Your campaign is ready to roll. But wait, haven’t you forgotten something? A vital component to developing a campaign of any kind involves setting reasonable benchmarks for allocating the proper budget and calculating your return on that investment. With Internet marketing, you can stumble if you randomly assign benchmarks with no point of reference, as these can be unrealistic and often unachievable. Before you click that “send” button, make sure you know what to expect. Fortunately, a wealth of information exists to help you set high yet attainable expectations for your e-mail campaign. Before starting, consider the size of your budget and goals for overall return. The more money you dedicate to a program, the better the likely outcome. Check that you have clearly defined your specific conversion goals. Do you need list sign-ups, Web site visits or actual transaction? Make sure you’ve mapped the program to your specific goals. Consider the size of your company. Studies at MailChimp have shown that a company’s size impacts response and complaint rates. Firms with fewer than 10 or more than 50 employees have the highest click rates and lowest bounce rates. Smaller companies often maintain a more direct connection with their customers, who are more likely to be opt-in and included in address books. Larger companies have more brand recognition, which results in receivers more likely to trust their communications. Then, consider your industry. Industry categories tend to stay within certain ranges of open, click and bounce rates. For instance, our recent analysis reported that IT provider campaigns see a 62.28% open rate and publishing industry campaigns see a 45.98% open rate, much higher than the average of 26.05%. The publishing sector also sees the top clickthrough rate at 9.85% and the imports industry holds a close Ben Chestnut second at 8.95%. While IT MailChimp leads significantly in open rates, its click rate of 1.01% remains well below the average of 4.02%. Do your research, and find out performance stats on companies similar to yours. Knowing what to expect, in addition to helping you measure return, also helps calculate where your campaign might fall short. Make sure you integrate sophisticated analytics that provide real-time feedback. Plus, it’s advisable to conduct A/B testing on subject lines, from lines and other variables so you can optimize your campaign in its early stages.

By Michele Volpe ndoubtedly, e-mail remains a great way to build brand recognition. But how does a new e-mailer capitalize on all the benefits that e-mail has to offer? This dilemma comes up fairly often. As a result, I find myself giving a crash course in E-mail 101 to many a bewildered client. They don’t know how or where to start. They ask questions such as “I need to track the results on my end?” or, “I need to have a landing page?” I assure them that they will learn all they need, and I begin my overview. Here’s a short list of e-mail “how to” basics that I have developed over the years. Develop your creative in an HTML format Don’t sell the product/service in the creative. You want to give them a taste. Keep copy to a minimum. You want a clear call to action and a strong enticement so the recipient will click through to your landing page. Once they’re there, it’s up to you to close them. From and subject lines should get you noticed The From line must not be misleading. The subject line shouldn’t be more then 45 to 50 characters, so use this space wisely. You want the subject line to be like catnip to the reader. Tempting as it might be, try to refrain from using the Michele Volpe word “free.” Do remember to Media Source Solutions use spell check! Include unique tracking codes You will know with these which list a responder came from. Without this valuable information, you won’t know which list worked. It will also help you compare the tracking reports provided by the e-mail provider with the activity from your Web site. Be flexible E-mail urban legend No. 1: There is no best day to deploy your campaign. It really depends on your offer. For example, if you target work-at-home moms with school-age children, consider sending your message during the school day. Understand CAN-SPAM law I can’t stress enough the importance of this step. You must have a postal address (physical) for the mailer and an active opt-out link for the recipient to use. I recommend putting it in the footer of the e-mail. It must remain active for at least 30 days after the broadcast. If the recipient uses the link to opt out, you must remove them within 10 days of their action. By now, my e-mail neophytes have absorbed all they can from their first lesson. Soon, they will be ready to move onto E-mail 202, the deployment. But that’s a lesson for another day.

Ben Chestnut is CEO of MailChimp. Reach him at ben@mailchimp.com.

Michele Volpe is VP of sales and marketing at Media Source Solutions. Reach her at mvolpe@mediasourcesolutions.com.

ESSENTIAL GUIDE

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 FUNDAMENTALS 13

The key causes of e-mail fatigue and frustration

Reach your top customers with relevant e-mails

By Tom O’Leary can’t remember how many e-mail offers I subscribed to during the last two years. I don’t read most of them today, even if I haven’t unsubscribed from them officially. With demands on their time and attention, more people are experiencing e-mail fatigue and frustration. It’s my belief that e-mail fatigue stems from three primary factors: content, frequency and technology. Stale and valueless content With time, e-mail recipients become desensitized to recurring 10% discounts or “new” articles that repeat things. Are you saying something worthwhile? Does your e-mail offer value that merits your recipients’ attention each week? People tire of clever marketing, creative HTML designs and good copywriting not backed up by actual value. E-mail campaigns form a distinctive pattern over time. Patterns are good; they help build brand recognition and trust. But recurring message patterns can dilute interest and the perceived Tom O’Leary value of your brand. Do you Infacta trust the store with a perpetual “clearance” sign in the window? Frequency overload or underload If I hear from you too often, you’re demanding too much of my time. If I don’t hear from you enough, I might forget about you between e-mails. It’s imperative to find the right frequency balance in e-mail marketing. E-mail marketers once sent their messages on daily, weekly or monthly delivery schedules, in keeping with traditional broadsheet publication cycles. But, companies like Amazon demonstrated how e-mail could be used effectively in response to customer actions and behaviors, rather than by predetermined publication schedules. My wife once subscribed to Flylady.com, which turned e-mail frequency benchmarks upside down by serving up home organization tips and reminders to recipients in the volume of 500-plus each month. The frequency became too exhausting for my wife’s commitment level. She unsubscribed after two months. Look at your e-mail campaigns. How often would you like to receive them? Remember that content determines frequency. Complicated technology Technology alone does not make things efficient. Efficiency requires human thought to remove unnecessary steps. Don’t make things complicated. If your opt-in, opt-out, click-through or conversion processes require more than one click, your recipients may experience enough fatigue and frustration to abandon the process. Remember, the “Report as Spam” button requires only one click. People design systems and decide whether they should be easy or hard for users. The choice is yours.

By Nick Godfrey erging best customer marketing and e-mail marketing creates an explosive combustion of results. This includes higher revenues, profit margins and customer retention. Best customers are usually multichannel customers and e-mail marketing, on a cost-per-touch basis, remains cost effective for reaching this group. Best customers purchase higher volumes, purchase more frequently and prefer e-mail. Relevant e-mails reach customers when they feel ready, with information that they want. Relevant e-mails engage. Best customers already feel engaged with your brand, so they expect Nick Godfrey to hear from you about sales or Customer Portfolios new products. Managing best customer relationships can deliver significant results. It’s common to see a 50% or better lift for relevant e-mails over generic e-mails. Product propensity models for cross- and up-sell often generate more than 100% lift. Trigger-based programs linking multiple communications together for re-sell or on-boarding can yield up to a 300% lift. Bottom line: E-mails make your best customer even better. Get a 360° view Best customers interact with your brand through the store, Web site, e-mail, phone, events, promotions and contests. They reveal themselves through surveys, profiles and subscription centers. All behaviors need to be tied back to the individual customer in a database. This allows for segmentation, lifecycle definition and actionable marketing opportunities. Define best customer Best customers have different needs, wants and behaviors. Segmentation beyond RFM is needed and should include lifetime value, future lifetime value, product propensity, purchase patterns and communication preferences. Know and manage the buyer lifecycle All customers fall into specific buyer life-cycle stages. To move a customer through them and to truncate time between stages, actionable offers must be delivered. The more personalized the offer and relevant the timing, the greater the conversion. Metrics and measurement All customer marketing should be closed-loop and measurable. Automatic reports with measurements remain necessary to test and ensure effectiveness. For as little as $10 annually, 10 to 40 relevant e-mail touches using the key considerations above can create a long-term, fruitful relationship with your best customers. A bonus awaits companies that effectively marry best customer marketing and e-mail marketing. They discover that the resulting lessons and programs apply to the rest of their customer bases and drive even greater return on marketing investment.

Tom O’ Leary is VP of sales, North America, at Infacta. Reach him at oleary@infacta.com.

Nick Godfrey is partner/strategist at Customer Portfolios. Reach him at ngodfrey@customerportfolios.com.

E-MAIL MARKETING GUIDE

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Every consumer or business has an e-mail profile to use

It’s time to invest in e-mail marketing communications

By Mark Klein You feel ready to launch a sophisticated campaign, leveraging the low cost of e-mail to saturate your active file. But do you realize that every consumer or business receiving your e-mail has an e-mail profile that they use to segment incoming mail? That most companies sending e-mail either don’t know their customers’ profiles or ignore it with their “spray and pray” campaigns? Many marketers use segmentation strategies to characterize customers in ways they hope will assist them with effective consumer marketing. The best of those segmentation strategies, based on mathematical marketing, identify which customers are ready to buy, in addition to the purchase probabilities for several of your products. Don’t have a segmentation strategy? You’re not alone. But remember that your recipients are most likely segmentation specialists. Whether they Mark Klein have multiple inbox folders in Loyalty Builders Outlook or just a segmentation scheme in their head, your recipients triage all that incoming e-mail according to their e-mail profile. They examine who sent the message, the message’s subject and offer and the last time the sender communicated. Do your recipients open every communication you send or do they only pay attention when a particularly good deal catches their eye? They can have different profile settings for every company sending them e-mail. Unless you know their profile settings, you can only cross your fingers and hope. Discovering e-mail profiles can be frustrating.You may put a considerable amount of energy into predictive analytics, which gets wasted because you don’t know what and when to e-mail. Happily, a few ways exist to discover customer e-mail profiles. The easiest way is to ask. Give your customer the opportunity to share their rules. Do you communicate only when you have a personally relevant message? Or should it be weekly? Or perhaps they will give you permission to use your own judgment. Just make sure you stick with their rules. A customer’s behavior can reveal their profiles. Which kinds of e-mail get a response or lead to a purchase? How often do they open e-mail from you? What content is favored? If you go the analysis route, you need to do it for every customer, not merely for a test group. But two advantages exist with using analysis as opposed to simply asking: you do not need a customer’s explicit permission to analyze and you will look smart by communicating in a way that matches their implicit profile. Whatever route you choose, matching the profile with the customer’s perspective can improve response rates and revenue.

By Elana Anderson t’s time to invest in skills, processes and technologies to boost e-mail marketing communications. A February Forrester Research report stated that 77% of retailers see e-mail becoming a more important marketing vehicle over the next year, outranking other marketing tactics. Pair that with well-publicized facts about e-mail-fatigued consumers, dropping e-mail response rates and increasing opt-out rates, and it’s clear that marketing organizations must improve the relevance of their e-mail programs. Corporate e-mail marketing managers, concerned about optouts, unsubscribes and long-term engagement, use multi-layer targeting, segmentation and event triggers to increase relevance. Unfortunately, they also run into challenges, including the availability of timely, high-quality data; the knowledge needed to convert data into actionable information and the operational know-how to automate their data-driven processes. Sound familiar? This mimics the issues that drove direct mail marketers in the 1990s to invest in skills, processes and technologies around database marketing, relationship marketing and CRM. For online marketers, though, the similarities stop there. Why? Due to the perceived low cost of e-mail, online marketers struggle to justify the investment in database development, analytic skills and tools, and campaign management technologies — all of which help to effectively target and automate e-mail communications — and come at a cost. Analytics data mart A “data sandbox” to explore data, profile subscribers, analyze behavior and identify key data pieces that can be leveraged to increase e-mail program Elana Anderson success. Unica Corporation Analytics team People who can develop or validate business hypotheses and predict results must play in this sandbox. Marketing database This database offers a simplified data structure, which incorporates only the data required to define, execute, manage and measure current e-mail programs. Campaign management and automation tools These define, automate and execute campaigns. These vary dramatically in cost and scope and can be achieved in different ways, either with an e-mail service provider or with a multichannel database marketing service provider. Marketing software can help interpret your customer data, support data slicing and dicing, enable segmentation and targeting, and generally manage, automate and measure your programs. Proceeding depends on various factors. But if you don’t proceed, you can’t improve the relevance of your e-mail programs.

Mark Klein is CEO of Loyalty Builders. Reach him at markk@ loyaltybuilders.com.

Elana Anderson is VP of product marketing and strategy at Unica Corporation. Reach her at eanderson@unica.com.

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Infrastructure INFRASTRUCTURE Page 16

The next revolution in e-mail marketing, by Peter Horan

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How you can manage your company’s e-mail reputation, by George Bilbrey Give customers control to keep communication open, by Erin Ickes

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Improve e-mail deliverability by giving consumers power, by Chip House Which sender reputation method works best for you? by Elie D. Ashery

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Tools you can use to your e-mail marketing advantage, by DJ Waldow Five ways you can make sure your e-mail is delivered, by John Murphy

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Overcoming inbox angst: How to build consumer trust, by Carmen Curran The effect of relevance on your e-mail’s deliverability, by Kevin Senne

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Five best practices to ensure e-mail authentication, by Jeff Wilbur FTC rule changes: Keeping up with CAN-SPAM, by Cindy Brown

f you release an e-mail campaign and it gets blocked by an ESP, it’s like throwing part of your marketing budget down the drain. So, you have to play by the rules and do what’s needed to keep from being labeled a spammer. In this section, industry experts focus on issues related to reputation, authentication, deliverability and CAN-SPAM.

The next revolution in e-mail marketing By Peter Horan he e-mail inbox lies at the convergence point of two mega trends in advertising: Marketers forming direct relationships with consumers and marketers working to deliver more relevant, specifically targeted messages to consumers. The inbox uniquely allows marketers to address interested consumers in context. As a result, it verges on becoming a major online advertising medium. However, it remains to be seen how quickly the potential of the inbox will be realized. Much will hinge on Peter Horan eliminating Goodmail Systems the clutter and aggravation caused by spam, phishing and viruses. These attacks have forced ISPs to adopt draconian measures to protect their subscribers, impeding the medium’s creative and functional capabilities. Fortunately, we’ve started addressing these problems and have seen progress. The Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) announced that 51% of Fortune 500 companies use at least one technique to authenticate outbound e-mail. At Goodmail, we delivered almost three billion certified e-mail messages in August alone, by partnering with leading ISPs that permit carefully screened and qualified senders to achieve 100% delivery of opt-in e-mail with images and links enabled. The same level of trust facilitating these privileges today will open the door to a more interesting inbox experience tomorrow. Imagine

rich media and video, shopping cart functionality and quick and easy bill pay in e-mail. These features and more are coming soon to an inbox near you. Here are three topics to consider, to prepare you for the inbox of the future. The medium is the message Future e-mail will bring new experiences and standards of expectations to recipients, while introducing richer creative elements and functionality. Think about how you can make e-mails more engaging and useful. For example, video isn’t only valuable to media companies and their viewers. Consumer products companies and retailers can use video in e-mail to deliver product demonstrations and consumer reviews, while travel marketers can send video tours of the destinations they’re pitching. All eyeballs are not created equal The age of “spray and pray” marketing is over. Consumers have grown adept at ignoring irrelevant messages no matter how loud a marketer shouts. Intelligent inbox marketing enables advertisers to inform, intrigue and entertain customers by speaking to an audience of one. With the bridge of trust from marketers through the ISPs to consumers firmly established, the point of action gets moved even closer to the consumer. With diminishing attention spans, the fewer clicks between catching their eyes and driving them to buy something, the better. Greater accountability means greater revenue opportunities Firms across each vertical sector can develop e-mail programs to derive incremental advertiser revenue. In tomorrow’s world of guaranteed inbox deliverability and provable impressions and click-throughs, a sender can develop a more sophisticated and appealing performance-based advertising pricing model. They’ll be able to offer higher-priced ad vehicles like rich media banners, video pre-roll and “big ticket” inventory. Now’s the time to think creatively and prepare for the next revolution in e-mail marketing. Peter Horan is CEO of Goodmail Systems. Reach him at phoran@goodmailsystems.com.

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How you can manage your company’s e-mail reputation

Give customers control to keep communication open

By George Bilbrey Managing your e-mail reputation might feel overwhelming. But when clients focus on sound infrastructure, good list hygiene and collection practices and respect for subscriber interests, their IPs remain within acceptable limits for inbox acceptance. Here’s a list of some maladies. ISPs are blocking my e-mail because they don’t like what I sell/my political views/etc. Marketers find comfort in the idea that a person at a major ISP has personally decided not to deliver their e-mail. It sort of feels less arbitrary. In truth, large receivers get bombarded with billions of e-mail messages daily. Out of those messages, only about 20% can be easily identified as coming from legitimate, well-configured e-mail servers. The rest either come from servers that should not be sending e-mail or from servers too murky to identify — and that “legit” 20% includes plenty of spam. The bottom line: Joe Postmaster at BigISP.com is not personally blocking your mesGerorge Bilbrey sage. He doesn’t have the time. Return Path With “FREE” in my subject line, my e-mail will get blocked Research shows that reputation trumps content. Reputation factors such as complaint rates, unknown user rates, spam trap hits and poor infrastructure determine when most ISPs will block. Most receivers still use content filtering systems with a two-tiered approach — good e-mail (as measured by reputation) gets right through and bad e-mail (as measured by reputation) gets blocked outright. The e-mail that falls in the middle on reputation metrics enters the filtering system. Some of that e-mail gets delivered, some gets blocked and some lands in the junk folder. Reputation problems become a double whammy — you are more likely to be blocked because of content if you have a problematic reputation. If my IP is only on a blacklist that no one uses, my e-mail won’t be blocked Our Q2 Reputation Benchmark report on e-mail deliverability recently revealed some startling information: Appearing on a blacklist that no one uses strongly correlated to blocked e-mail. It’s not the appearance on a blacklist that gets your e-mail blocked but the reputation factors that landed you on that blacklist. This means that getting off the blacklist without fixing underlying factors won’t help your delivery rates. Don’t bother harassing the blacklist operator into removing your IP address because it won’t make a difference. A few spam traps aren’t a problem Marketers don’t pay nearly enough attention to spam traps, which really hurt deliverability. Our Q2 Reputation Benchmark report found IP addresses hitting just one spam trap had delivery rates 20 points lower on average than IPs that avoided all traps.

By Erin Ickes sk anyone who uses e-mail and they’ll probably tell you they’re overwhelmed with information from businesses — daily alerts, weekly newsletters, biweekly newsletters, quarterly reports. Information overload often results in customers closing the door on companies by opting out. Opt-out requests don’t have to be final. A customer opting out may not mean they never want to hear from you again. To make sure you’re not closing a door that needn’t be shut, offer communication alternatives — keeping in mind the Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM Act regulations on opt-out procedures. CAN-SPAM specifies two ways companies can allow people to opt out: Reply to the e-mail and write “opt-out” in the subject line or body of the message, or by click through to a Web page to opt out. FTC regulations specify that the opt-out Web page must be a single Web page and cannot require users to provide more than their e-mail address — for example, no passwords and no reason for opting out. By providing the option to click through to a Web page to opt out, you have the opportunity to continue the relationship. While a customer may not be interested in the product, service or information they’re opting out of, you may have other options that may be of interest to them. In other instances, people would Erin Ickes simply rather hear from you Message Systems less often or maybe they don’t want to receive your messages on a particular e-mail address. When customers ask to opt out, drive them to a page that gives them the choice of either being removed from your distribution list, or of selecting from a list of frequency choices. You can also allow them to opt in to receive messages from you on a host of different subjects or products. It is also wise to give them the option to change their e-mail address. For example, they may rather hear from you via their personal account rather than their business e-mail address. Consider taking it a step further. You can provide a free form for additional comments asking them for their advice and/or insight to let them know their input is valuable. You can ask if they want to receive a confirmation e-mail on what they have requested. Always provide a link back to your company’s Web site. When given choices, most folks will opt to stay if what you offer is of interest to them. By giving your customers control over the type of information they receive from you and how often, you maintain a good chance of keeping the lines of communication open over the long term.

George Bilbrey is general manager of delivery assurance at Return Path. Reach him at george.bilbrey@returnpath.net.

Erin Ickes is director of marketing for Message Systems. Reach her at erin.ickes@messagesystems.com.

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Improve e-mail deliverability Which sender reputation by giving consumers power method works best for you? By Chip House n the 1970s dystopian sci-fi thriller Soylent Green, Charlton Heston, as Detective Robert Thorn, discovers the secret source of the green tablets that he and his fellow earthlings have ingested and declares, “Soylent Green is people!” I bring up this item of relatively obscure Hollywood trivia to make a point about the way most e-mail marketers regard their e-mail lists. They often look past their individual customers and treat their lists as if they’re undifferentiated blobs. To these marketers, I want to say, “E-mail lists are people!” We’ve found that the most successful marketers optimize both deliverability and their e-mail reputation when they stop looking at their e-mail lists as a single, homogenous entity. Instead, they treat it as a collection of discrete individuals, each with their own preferences for content, frequency and channel. How do you do this? Basically, you need to give the power back to each individual subscriber. First, each subscriber “votes” with their permission when they ask for e-mails from you. The subscriber raising his/her hand and “asking” to participate in a dialogue becomes the best determinant for a marketer’s success in building their e-mail reputation and, in turn, optimizing their deliverability. Second, look carefully at your content. Did you make the effort to capture additional information about the preferences of each subscriber? Did you monitor their behavior through Chip House Web site analytics to determine ExactTarget what they like? Or, did you just decide to blast the same message to your entire list? Guess which method works best. Third, consider the frequency or the rate at which a marketer sends their promotional e-mails. Our recent data shows that marketers have good reason to set appropriate expectations with their subscribers for e-mail frequency; but they need to live up to them. One of our retail clients recently showed that they can actually entice formerly non-responsive subscribers to “reengage” (open, click and buy) by reducing the frequency of their e-mails. Counter intuitive? Maybe. Subscriber-friendly? Yes! Fourth is channel. In today’s iPhone world, consumers have the choice of multiple messaging and marketing channels, including e-mail, phone, SMS, social networks, RSS and Twitter. ExactTarget’s 2008 Channel Preference Survey found that consumers may prefer one channel for messaging and another for marketing. Want to improve your e-mail deliverability? Improve it subscriber by subscriber by asking them what they want, when and through which channel. Our research says you won’t be sorry

By Elie D. Ashery debate exists in the e-mail service provider community over the importance of assigning a unique IP address and creating a custom DNS for each customer. As with most things in e-mail marketing, no one answer exists and the practice that you should embrace depends on a number of variables, such as your monthly volume, reliance on email and branding importance. Regardless, a good sending reputation means increasing your chances of good deliverability — much in the way a person with good credit can score a good deal on a loan increase. In order to manage their customers’ sender reputations, many ESPs lump their customElie D. Ashery ers together on a single IP Gold Lasso address with a generic domain. The pros to this method? If you send infrequent volumes you don’t have to worry as much about your deliverability, while those with questionable sending reputations can piggyback off the good credit of other pooled ESP customers. The cons? It only takes one or two bad apples to spoil it for everyone else. If you send significant volume and rely heavily on e-mail, then you should consider switching to a unique IP address and custom DNS. Custom DNS serves as the last link in ensuring your e-mail sending reputation. In fact, not having a custom DNS and a unique IP address means you can’t participate in sender verification, white listing and reputation management programs. Also, many corporate phishing filters block links in messages that point to other domains other than the receiving authenticated domain. So if you send an e-mail from a generic domain and have a link in your message leading to your Web site, it’s more likely to get filtered in a corporate network environment. What’s a concerned marketer to do? First, get a unique IP address. If your ESP doesn’t offer a unique IP address then consider a new ESP. Then, ask your ESP to help you with your custom DNS. They should provide you with a string of DNS entries that include authentication. If you have clean lists and consider branding important, then choose a derivative of your corporate domain name such as e-mail.yourdomain.com. If your list gathering practices are even slightly questionable, then you should purchase a domain specifically for e-mail marketing. By understanding the status of your reputation, you can figure out which type of method best suits your needs. As a general rule, small infrequent volume works fine for a shared IP address and generic DNS. However, if you plan on dedicating a real budget to the practice, a unique IP address and custom DNS present the best solution.

Chip House is VP of marketing services for ExactTarget. Reach him at chouse@exacttarget.com.

Elie D. Ashery is president and CEO of Gold Lasso. Reach him at eashery@goldlasso.com.

EMAIL MARKETING GUIDE

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Tools you can use to your e-mail marketing advantage

Five ways you can make sure that your e-mail is delivered

By DJ Waldow o you take advantage of everything your ESP offers? Our research shows that many e-mail marketers don’t. A June 2008 Return Path study revealed that an alarming 60% of marketers surveyed don’t send welcome e-mails to new subscribers. The same study also indicated that while 70% of the companies surveyed collected more than just an e-mail address at the time of sign-up, three-quarters of that group failed to use additional information to further personalize and customize their e-mails. These numbers astonish, given the fact that most ESPs on the market today allow for easy set-up and automation of these crucial, relevance-boosting e-mail tactics. Why let these simple, seamless methods for boosting ROI, campaign performance and increased relevance slip through your fingers? Here are e-mail features, offered by most ESPs, that you should use to your advantage. Automated triggers A great tool for your e-mail marketing arsenal, triggers are most effective when used with transactional messages, such as DJ Waldow welcome letters, birthday offers, Bronto Software shipping confirmations and more. These messages basically allow marketers to “set it and forget it!” After the initial set-up, qualified customers will receive the appropriate transactional messages based on event or time-related triggers, all customizable by the marketer. This means you have complete control over which customers receive which messages without having to lift a finger. What could be simpler than that? Another perk: transactional messages often have extremely high open and click through rates, as they reach customers currently engaged with your brand and prove extremely relevant — especially, when personalized. Personalization If you collect more than an e-mail address at the time of sign-up for your newsletter, use this additional knowledge to make your messages more personal. Otherwise, why do you collect it in the first place? JupiterResearch reports that simply inserting a name into an e-mail increases open rates by as much as 10%. Create segmented lists so that you can send customized, relevant offers based on gender, age or region. A/B Splits Testing remains the single most important step in any e-mail marketing message. Many ESPs offer A/B split testing, which gives marketers instantaneous feedback on what works and what doesn’t in e-mail design and copy. The tools offered to you require very little extra effort. Yet, they can improve campaign performance and increase customer satisfaction. In the online world, where the customer is king and competition lurks around every corner, they’re worth it.

By John Murphy arketers know how difficult it can be to execute a compelling e-mail message. They also don’t want to see their hard work go to waste in the process of sending an e-mail and having it wind up in a junk folder. Here are five things you can do right now to create effective messages and get your e-mail delivered. Avoid particular words and phrases Secrets; Learn the secret; Money-back guarantee; Click here; Response required; Risk free; Be amazed; and Here is your new account information. Content filters, always alive and well, will definitely hold them against you in the process of deciding whether or not to deliver your e-mail. I recommend you use them sparingly. Better yet, don’t use them at all. As a bonus, here are additional words that content filters tend to catch. Proceed with caution when using these words: Abuse; absolutely; mailings; methods; offers; spam. Check your reputation Companies such as Return Path offer a free check to see if Internet service providers view your e-mail unfavorably. They can help you diagnose any potential problems and provide instruction on how to treat them. Design your e-mail for deliverability Do not design your email as one big image. Definitely break up the image into many smaller images. Make sure that at least 50% of your message includes text. Finally, keep your font sizes normal; make sure they don’t go below 14 points. Get rid of all dead, unresponsive e-mail addresses on your list Internet service providers turn older, dormant e-mail addresses into spam traps. If e-mails get sent to these dormant addresses, ISPs will automatically consider you a spammer. Such ISPs as Microsoft’s Hotmail and MSN service have adopted a particularly hard line with this practice. Take a look at your current e-mail list. Anyone who has not opened or responded to your e-mail within the last 12 months, definitely delete. Identify yourself Make sure spammers don’t impersonJohn Murphy ate you. I recommend using ReachMail the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to tell Internet service providers who you’ve authorized to send e-mail on your behalf. For example, the owner of yourcompany.com can designate various IP addresses which have the authorization to send e-mail with the sender’s e-mail address ending in yourcompany.com. The recipient of the e-mail can then check the SPF before receiving the body of the message.

DJ Waldow is account manager at Bronto Software. Reach him at dj@ bronto.com.

John Murphy is VP, deliverability, at ReachMail. Reach him at jmurphy@reachmail.com.

E-MAIL MARKETING GUIDE

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Overcoming inbox angst: How to build consumer trust

The effect of relevance on your e-mail’s deliverability

By Carmen Curran espite declines in reported identity theft and spam, increased media attention and a stream of unwanted e-mails have left people feeling increasingly fearful about e-mail security and privacy. Though companies advertise the security of their e-mail and actively combat threats to customers’ security and privacy, Americans still harbor doubts about their inboxes. Companies that want to use e-mail for effective brand, product and service marketing need to break through these fears to convince people that e-mail communication remains safe, secure and desirable. Mintel’s research shows that Americans’ online security concerns are growing at a significant rate. Our latest consumer survey revealed that nearly 65% of adults have more concerns about online security Carmen Curran than they did five years ago. Mintel Comperemedia Also, 53% said they’re less likely to open any type of email solicitation today as opposed to just one year ago. As consumers worry about identity theft and online security, it’s no surprise that they’re protective of their privacy. The study revealed that 58% feel the amount of spam they receive is increasing. Many tie this to companies sharing their personal information, and 80% of Americans believe companies share personal information. With people increasingly reluctant to disclose personal information online and through e-mail, direct marketers need to find new ways to re-establish trust and confidence online. Knowing the e-mail sender remains an important factor for consumers. A Mintel survey revealed that 50% of Americans rank knowing the sender as the most important factor in deciding whether or not they’ll read a personal or business e-mail. Marketers should take this cue and use e-mail primarily for current customer communication. Working with a partner who has a pre-established relationship with the e-mail recipient may increase trust and open rates. This strategy depends on practicing responsible affinity direct marketing. Work only with partners that abide by the CAN-SPAM law and honor unsubscribe requests. Viral marketing is valuable way to reach new clientele. Refera-friend and forward-to-a-friend links can increase a campaign’s success while easing consumers’ security concerns. Companies should employ innovative tactics within their e-mails. Including recognizable features such as an account number, using a “SiteKey” for familiarity, sending only certified e-mail and sending educational e-mails help marketers convince recipients that their e-mails remain safe and secure.

By Kevin Senne elevance is an e-mail buzzword we hear almost daily. How can we apply this buzzword to e-mail deliverability? Relevance means building a lasting relationship with your customer. This relationship takes many forms, whether based on content or simply trust. It doesn’t have to mean 500 individualized pieces of content. It just has to mean something of value to your customer. Look at the direct effect of relevance on e-mail deliverability. Your complaint rate (the ratio of customer complaints vs. the number of e-mails sent) is the most important metric in deliverability today. Large ISPs give recipients the option to report unsolicited e-mail as spam. Recipients simply highlight an offending message and click some variation of a “this is spam” button. ISPs also give senders the opportunity to participate in “feedback loop” programs so they can receive these customer generated complaints. When you join a feedback loop program as a sender, you agree to the terms set forth by the particular ISP. The terms usually require your agreement to unsubscribe all complainers immediately from your subscription lists. When your complaint rate goes up, your reputation score goes down. If an ISP sees high numbers of complaints, they assume your recipients don’t want your delivered messages. Relevant messaging remains the way to keep your customers engaged and away from those “Report Spam” buttons. Here’s a look at some specific ways to increase user interaction. Consider your subject line Do you have a subject line that clearly identifies you and states your intentions in the e-mail? Does your From name clearly identify your company? Remember these two pieces of information determine the reader’s open/no-open decision. What happens after the user Kevin Senne opens the e-mail? Does the Premiere Global Services layout of the content meet a reader’s expectations? Does the content contain value for the reader? Will the reader be engaged to open and read your next communication? Frequency is a top priority when planning your overall long-term e-mail communications strategy. Ask yourself: Do you overwhelm your audience with too much e-mail? Many great programs fail due to too many communications. A great subscription management program with multiple content and frequency options for the subscriber can be used to great effect. Relevance doesn’t always mean content. Think about your daily e-mail reading habits. Do your communications fall into that “must-read” category? Improving these factors will lead to long-term success in your e-mail programs.

Carmen Curran is an e-mail marketing specialist at Mintel Comperemedia. Reach her at ccurran@mintel.com.

Kevin Senne is global director of deliverability and product services, e-marketing solutions at Premiere Global Services. Reach him at kevin. senne@premiereglobal.com.

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24 INFRASTRUCTURE DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Five best practices to ensure e-mail authentication

FTC rule changes: Keeping up with CAN-SPAM

By Jeff Wilbur onceptually, it’s simple. You — a legitimate sender of e-mail — provide a way for the recipient to know it’s really you, and, together, we stem the tide of spam and fraudulent e-mail. Not all concepts translate into practice. Although several e-mail authentication standards exist, most senders and receivers only use some; others don’t use any at all. What’s a marketer to do? Authentication basics Two “families” of standardized approaches for e-mail authentication exist: Sender ID/SPF and DomainKeys/DKIM. Sender ID provides a text record on your DNS server and is easier to implement than the encryption-based DKIM, which requires encoding software at the sending end. Most ESPs and mail server vendors deploy both methods. Why authenticate When used by senders and receivers of e-mail, proper e-mail authentication helps the recipient decide about delivering e-mails. If they know you and correlate that with your sending habits, they’ll deliver more of your legitimate e-mail and reject messages from senders pretending to be you. Most major Web mail services (AOL Mail, Gmail, Windows Live, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail) check for standard authentication methods. Authentication also helps your messages get noticed. Some providers indicate authentication with an icon. There are five basic steps to ensure successful authentication: Involve the team You need support from everyone involved in sending your e-mail, including third parties sending for you. Take inventory Round up all sources of e-mail from your company, internal or external, centralized or rogue. Once you have this list, establish procedures within your company to control and monitor sources of e-mail. Pick an authentication method Unless you need an overhaul to get there, don’t sweat this one. Do both. One or the other may be the key to better delivery and visibility. Implement carefully Using your inventory of sending domains and IP addresses, you can start to authenticate. You should also authenticate Jeff Wilbur domains that don’t send e-mail Iconix Inc. to prevent pretenders from using your name. Proceed with caution by sending your initial messages in “test” mode because improper authentication will work against you. Monitor closely Stay on top of your e-mail infrastructure. New domains, new or different IP addresses and new third party services all need to factor into your overall authentication plans. When should you authenticate? As authentication and associated sender reputation become core components of successful message delivery, you don’t want to get left behind. The time to authenticate is now.

By Cindy Brown ffective July 2008, the FTC released updates to the CANSPAM Act of 2003 with a number of rule changes that will affect many online marketers. Enforced by the FTC, the Department of Justice and the state attorneys, CAN-SPAM preempts all state laws on spam. All marketers need to review these new rule changes with their legal counsel to insure their compliance. The new rule changes address four areas: (1) New opt-out requirements; (2) Designated sender rule for multiple advertisers; (3) More flexibility on displaying a valid postal address, and (4) Clarified definition of a “person.” The opt-out mechanism will affect a number of marketers. It specifies that marketers need to provide a clear and simple unsubscribe mechanism. By only providing an e-mail address, a recipient can simply send a reply e-mail message to unsubscribe or visit a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving a sender’s future e-mails. Forcing subscribers Cindy Brown to log into their accounts to Blue Moon Works Inc. unsubscribe or to provide information in addition to an e-mail address is now illegal. For some, this poses big changes. The designated sender rule can impact marketers utilizing coregistration services or providing multiple parties opportunities to participate in their e-mail communications. The sole sender appearing in the From line becomes the designated sender of the e-mail and bears the responsibility for all participating advertisers in complying with the key provisions of CAN-SPAM. The designated sender must process the opt-outs for all partners listed. Its impact comes when the subscriber simply replies to the e-mail message to unsubscribe. If a marketer includes many partners in an e-mail message, then the sender will need to either unsubscribe the recipient from all the partners’ lists or take the recipient to a Web page for this purpose. The third rule might make things easier for marketers. The Act has been changed to satisfy the requirement that a commercial e-mail display a valid physical address. Marketers can now use an accurately registered post office box or a private mailbox established under US Postal Service regulations. The last change stipulates that the term “person” doesn’t necessarily mean an actual, lone human. “Person” now applies to individuals, groups, unincorporated associations, limited or general partnerships, corporations, non-profits or other business entities. Each of these organizations, when sending e-mail, must offer an opt-out and comply with CAN-SPAM. This rule change could impact non-profits and associations that use e-mail as a service update or as a channel for raising funds.

Jeff Wilbur is VP of marketing at Iconix Inc. He can be reached at jeff. wilbur@iconix.com.

Cindy Brown is CEO of Blue Moon Works Inc. Reach her at cindy. brown@bluemoonworks.com.

ESSENTIAL GUIDE

26 OPTIMIZATION DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Optimization OPTIMIZATION Page 26

E-mail marketing in a down economy, by Ryan Deutsch

Page 27

How long does it take for readers to remember you? by Stefan Pollard Improving open rates for your acquisition e-mail, by Albert Gadbut

Page 29

Optimizing your e-mail to deal with image blocking, by Anthony Green Responsible e-mail should be marketers’ next main focus, by Ashley Johnston

Page 30

E-mail marketing: Bells and whistles vs. customer data, by Walter Lamb Get it right: Expert advice on your copy length, by Grant A. Johnson

ith e-mail marketing, there are always aspects of your campaign to tweak and improve. If you test regularly, you’ll get a sense of where your weaknesses lie, and how you can optimize your e-mails so they get the best response. Here, experts focus on branding strategies, image blocking, relevance and e-mail copy.

E-mail marketing in a down economy By Ryan Deutsch conomic concerns have forced firms to rethink how they allocate their marketing dollars — including boosting value from their e-mail program, while using fewer resources. With e-mail’s high ROI ($45.65 per dollar spent in 2008, according to the Direct Marketing Association), this is surprising. Yet, it’s the reality for marketers dealing with decreased consumer spending due to the economic downturn. The challenge for the marketer is allocating spending so the firm can gain the most benefit from each dollar spent. Companies look at the overall e-mail spend within their organizations and categorize the expenses — database development, customer profiling and segmentation, strategy, e-mail Ryan Deutsch creative, e-mail deliverability, e-mail production and e-mail deployment. Through this analysis, marketers (regardless of e-mail volume) can notice that a disproportionate amount of their e-mail spend is allocated towards the actual deployment of e-mail messages via e-mail service providers. Historically, these ESPs presented the only real option for dynamic and relevant e-mail campaign delivery. As e-mail technology evolved, insourcing became an alternative to outsourcing the task of e-mail deployment. Marketers can now own their e-mail marketing system without sacrificing ease of use or sophisticated capabilities. What’s the financial advantage of owning an

e-mail system? It virtually eliminates the recurring deployment costs of sending e-mail. Smart marketers allocate a fraction of this savings towards cost-conscious senior managers, then take the balance and redirect it to the real areas that drive program success. This includes e-mail strategy, A/B testing scenarios, dynamic content creation, database enhancement, transactional e-mail optimization and Web analytics integration — those mission-critical initiatives that never quite make it into the budget. Even if you’re managing e-mail in-house with a custom solution, a fully supported commercial-grade solution still reduces costs by streamlining ongoing maintenance to keep the system running smoothly. For example, The Parent Company, which operates eToys, BabyUniverse and eight other online brands, replaced a custom solution and e-mail service provider with a commercial in-house solution that currently generates a 253% ROI. After the elimination of e-mail deployment expenses, marketers can focus on their core competency: “How do I take my newfound budget and deliver the right message to the right target at the right time?” That’s when the real advantage of owning your own e-mail system really kicks in. On-premise solutions integrate easily and directly with customer databases and business applications within your organization, providing real-time access to business and customer data. It creates the ability to dynamically generate one-to-one messages based on customer profiles or past purchases. E-mail will remain one of the most effective and efficient tools for acquiring and retaining profitable customer relationships and so it’s crucial to maintain control of it. With shrinking marketing budgets, insourcing e-mail marketing can provide marketers with a way to lower their costs while improving their results. Ryan Deutsch is director of strategic services at Strongmail. Reach him at rdeutsch@strongmail.com.

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 OPTIMIZATION 27

How long does it take for readers to remember you?

Improving open rates for your acquisition e-mail

By Stefan Pollard admit it — I’m horrible with names. To make matters worse, I attend a lot of conferences and trade shows where I meet many people. For each person I meet, I have to go through the drill of repeating his or her name in my mind, so I won’t forget it. Subsequently, I start receiving e-mails from these people and I’m trying to remember who they are and why I’m getting e-mails from them. And what does this have to do with my e-mail program? Well, studies have shown that the first decision e-mail readers make is, “Do I know this sender?” All other actions follow from there. It’s unlikely that new subscribers to your e-mails have voluntarily drilled your company’s name into their memories, so it’s important that you help them remember you. Here are five places to insert your brand: A friendly “from” address and e-mail alias The brand should exist in both places. Should you Stefan Polllard Lyris personalize the friendly From address with real names versus the brand? User studies disagree whether this effectively increases open rates. My advice: test it on your own audience. Ask yourself whether recipients will more readily recognize a person’s name or the brand name. Subject line Put your brand name in the subject line whenever you can. You can’t exclusively rely on friendly From address tactics to help you get recognized in an overcrowded inbox. Value Statement This is the first line of text readers see in some e-mail clients, such as Gmail. A correctly worded snippet builds on your subject line and helps the reader decide whether to save the message or to read it immediately. View-online link Put your brand name here if you still haven’t incorporated a value statement or table of contents as a previewpane-friendly strategy. Here’s a link makeover using an example from my own inbox. Before: If you can’t see the images in this e-mail, please click here to view this e-mail through your Internet browser. After: If you can’t see the images in this edition of Browning e-Blast, please click here. Brand name in text copy Weave your brand name into the message copy in the first two or three sentences and remind the reader how you know each other. Build on the connection you have with them to drive brand recognition. Now that I’ve highlighted all the different places you can place your brand name in an e-mail, take a quick peek at your last message. How many times will the reader see your name? Is it enough to remember you for next week?

By Albert Gadbut s a panel participant at industry events, I am often asked a common question on the topic of online marketing: “How do you increase the open and click-through rates for e-mail?” I see hundreds of e-mail campaigns by dozens of marketers each year, and I’ve found it’s the fundamentals that marketers overlook when building their e-mail strategies. The following principles and practices, associated with acquisition e-mail, also apply to CRM programs and serve as strategies to help yield higher response rates and an effective e-mail marketing program. When analyzing your e-mail campaign, the first step involves assessing your open rates. As a metric, open rates can be flawed. Less than 25% of all e-mail clients allow images to be served when the e-mail is opened. In order for the open to be measured, the recipient must right-click on the message to request that the image be served. Only then can the opened message register as being opened. This means the number of people who actually open your e-mail can be much greater than those measured. How do you get the majority of people who open your message to right-click so they can view your images? It boils down to basic trust and value — that’s what motivates people to engage with your e-mail enough to take that extra step. As a marketer, how do you enhance the trust and value proposition associated with your e-mail campaigns? If you don’t have an established brand, you need to build both brand value and trust. When used properly, e-mail can be a cost-effective brandbuilding tool. However, other media, such as banners, search engine marketing and offline media may provide you with greater value as you build Albert Gadbut your brand. It’s critical to AcquireWeb, Inc. understand that if you have the budget and time commitment, you’ll get a better lift and stronger ROI by utilizing a diverse mix of online and offline marketing solutions that coordinate around a particular campaign and a clear, consistent message. It sounds simple, but marketers who misunderstand this point have wasted millions of dollars. Once you’ve maximized your branding and multi-channel strategies, it’s important to consider quality offers, along with frequency, to help increase the open rate of your e-mail. Offers by the same marketer that promote sales or discounts yield higher opens than non-promotional offers. The higher the discount offering, the better the response will be. Remember — the Internet and e-mail are tools for shopping. Consumers seeking bargains want to believe you’re offering them a special promotion.

Stefan Pollard is director of e-mail best practices at Lyris. He can be reached at

Albert Gadbut is CEO of AcquireWeb, Inc. He can be reached at albert@ acquireweb.com.

spollard@lyris.com.

E-MAIL MARKETING GUIDE

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 OPTIMIZATION 29

Optimizing your e-mail to deal with image blocking

Responsible e-mail should be marketers’ next main focus

By Anthony Green ecipients view e-mails through many different programs and screen sizes, from desktops to mobile devices. Readers also generally view e-mails through preview panes while images often need to be “right-clicked” so they can be downloaded. What does this mean for marketers? We need to test our audiences’ preferences and make sure we include a good ratio of text to imagery. Since recipients expect e-mail to be interactive, we can drive them to the Web where a more flexible environment exists. Video can play, for example and recipients can submit forms. With the Internet standardized from desktop to desktop, it’s easy to test campaigns on different Web browsers (Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox) with the confidence that most people will have the same interactive experience. Design for the inbox Do not re-use an offline piece or Web page and dump it into an e-mail. Optimize what you send to the inbox — the brand should remain consistent across channels. Use text before imagery, including your name/company name Even with image blocking on, the recipient can still read an introduction and know the sender before having to right-click. Host images online Avoid embedding images in your e-mail. Most firewalls strip these out and people won’t be able to rightclick to see them. Use headlines Recipients scan e-mails when they receive them; make sure your headlines allow for an understanding of the e-mail’s content. Do not use images for headings Make sure your text contains relevant content. Recipients should understand the gist of your message without having to right-click to download designer titles. Repeat your calls to action People are more likely to click Anthony Green on text than images so write Concep Global your actions out and repeat them within your e-mail. Keep the design simple Do not have too many colors or competing pieces of content. Your recipients will skip your e-mail rather than try to distinguish its important elements. Make sure brand consistency exists from e-mail to Web Create landing pages, if necessary, but make sure the recipients feel they are on the same message journey when they click on a Web link. Subject line and From address Recipients will first see these pieces of information upon receiving your e-mail. Make them intriguing, otherwise the time spent on your creative and content will be wasted and the e-mail might never be read. Be a safer sender Request that the recipient add you to a safe sender list. Your images will be downloaded automatically in the future.

By Ashley Johnston

ith “relevance” now everyday vocabulary, our focus should shift to the tactical elements of relevant marketing — i.e., responsible e-mail. Forrester Research data shows consumers trust e-mail more and use it more often than any online channel. We must reward this trust with responsible communication strategies to improve our position among everyday consumers. But, there are pitfalls surrounding our industry. Forrester analyst Julie Katz notes, e-mail is “like the crack cocaine of marketing — cheap, addictive and potentially dangerous.” While the channel’s appeal can’t be ignored, it must be approached with caution and responsibility. This is where some brands fall short. To put responsible e-mail marketing into action, create straightforward, robust preference centers. Make it easy for customers to tell you what they want, while keeping in mind that their stated preferences are not static and susceptible to change. Responsible marketers should provide customers with Ashley Johnston an easy method of updating Experian CheetahMail and changing their profiles, avoiding complicated logins and multiple usernames/accounts. By relinquishing control over the uniformity of marketing content and the method of contact, marketers can make positive impressions with customers. Our customers expect us to treat them as individuals. Nowhere is this more evident than with social networking, which has taught marketers that “unofficial” customer opinions are sometimes more powerful than official ones. Consumers want to feel important and increasingly require the brands they use to know who they are, acknowledge them, respect them and value them. During a given week, a customer stands to receive multiple relevant e-mails from an organization, yet most marketers do not prioritize the value of each message. These include a shipping notification, a birthday message, a standard promotional e-mail or a reminder e-mail, but are often sent without regard to frequency or importance. This is not only counterproductive and wasteful, but can result in a weakened relationship, or worse, unsubscriptions. Prioritizing and setting time limits on relevant messages should be part of the campaign process if you have numerous automated trigger campaigns or many business units. Soon, our success in preserving the efficacy of the e-mail channel will come down to incorporating responsibility and relevance into every customer interaction. Engaging customers in a more honest, meaningful way is essential to building and maintaining healthy, profitable and long-term relationships.

Anthony Green is president at Concep Global. He can be reached at anthony.green@concepglobal.com.

Ashley Johnston is VP of marketing for Experian CheetahMail. Reach her at ashley@cheetahmail.com.

E-MAIL MARKETING GUIDE

30 OPTIMIZATION DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

E-mail marketing: Bells and whistles vs. customer data

Get it right: Expert advice on your e-mail copy length

By Walter Lamb hough no longer a new concept, the potential of e-mail marketing remains largely untapped. Marketers too often are enamored with e-mail’s promise of ease, affordability and relevance, and lose sight of the best practices required to deliver on that promise. Customer-centric marketing — regardless of channel — depends on unfettered access to complete, reliable customer data. The bells and whistles of a particular e-mail marketing application shouldn’t distract marketers from that core principle.

By Grant A. Johnson ccording to the DMA, e-mail marketing routinely garners the highest ROI and remains the most frequently used online marketing tactic. However, e-mail success hinges on proactive planning and that includes figuring out the right copy length. Your copy bears the responsibility of gaining and maintaining a high level of confidence from your e-mail recipients. But what length works best? Will shorter or longer copy work better for you? Many marketers automatically want to shorten their copy, assuming readers have limited attention spans. While this might be true, we recommend you test and prove your assumptions based on your own target audiences with your own product/service. Only testing uncovers the true revenue potential of your e-mail campaigns. Since no universal rule exists for copy length, take a proactive approach and test, test, test. Offer-driven e-mail campaigns For shorter copy, stating the offer, deadline and call-to-action right off the bat might be the way to go. However, for one of our clients, we discovered an opportunity to expand on copy to increase the audiences’ confidence and increase click-throughs. The two leading competitors had e-mailed offer-heavy messages with very little supporting copy at all. We proposed competitive offers with more descriptive copy about how the timeliness and great value of the offer would impact the audience. The strategy worked. A one-step communications program You may need more copy to persuade the reader to buy now. You can be more persuasive with longer, more engaging copy and it’s a better form for “story selling,” typically used for high purchase prices and multiple payment options. In a two-step program, your e-mail can afford to be briefer. The call-to-action, rather than urging the recipient to buy now, suggests less commitmentdriven action, like requesting a free kit to learn more. Testing For each test group and e-mail send, track the open Grant A. Johnson rate, click-throughs, cost, cost Johnson Direct per click, revenue generated, ROI and conversion rate. These metrics will help you measure “apples to apples.” When testing copy, be sure to control your other e-mail variables. Page design, layout, graphics, etc., can all affect its performance. For each copy test, the other test elements should stay the same. The rules for copy length success remain in place. Test copy length vs. your leading competitors’ e-mails. Test copy length based on the type of sales communication. Measure the right metrics when testing your e-mail copy. But, whether short or long, remember that the quality of your copy counts. Make it relevant.

Walter Lamb is a marketing solutions specialist at Oracle. He can be reached at

Grant A. Johnson is president and CMO of Johnson Direct. Reach him at grantj@johnsondirect.com.

Many marketers are convinced that simply adding a recipient’s name to the subject line transforms a generic offer into a personalized offer — but even Nigerian con artists can use first names. Merging customer data into an e-mail offer is only effective if it adds value to the customer. For example, non-profit fund raisers might remind donors about their last donation and how that donation was used. They could say: “It’s time to give again.” Or: “We remain deeply grateful for your donaWalter Lamb tion of $300 on July 21, 2007. It Oracle helped provide art supplies to several area schools. Can those budding young artists count on your support again this year?” Customer data helps personalize images, formatting and entire blocks of text. Signature blocks and photos of a branch manager or agent can give a corporate message a more intimate feel. Other benefits to using customer data include the ability to determine who will receive an offer in the first place. When did you last contact customers and by what channel? Do they have a preferred channel? Do they have a seasonal purchase history or an interest only in a specific product line? Data of this type can help insure that customers get fewer, more relevant offers. Some might argue that with e-mail so inexpensive to send, why not just blast the entire list with every offer? Why not tell Boston residents about cheap flights from Tucson to Columbus? Customers quickly recognize how little these companies value their time and this only leads to decreased customer satisfaction, increased opt-outs and lowered expectations of value for future communications. Customer-centric e-mail marketing requires more than just the standard name and address fields. A great e-mail marketing application must be seamlessly connected to a larger CRM platform with rich customer data spanning multiple systems (campaign history, billing, shipping, service requests, etc.) and every employee who interacts with customers, such as sales agents, service reps and field personnel, must have real-time access to all e-mail marketing history and content. In the end, customer-centric marketing is all about the data. walter.lamb@oracle.com.

ESSENTIAL GUIDE

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 TARGETING 33

Targeting TARGETING Page 33

Think before you pull that e-mail trigger, by Jon Sisenwein

Page 34

Use behavioral targeting to pump up your e-mail ROI, by Siara Nazir Four steps for improving your 2009 e-mail results, by Lora Downie

Page 36

The power and wisdom of using e-mail remarketing, by Simms Jenkins Three components that lead to e-mail success, by Steve Jones

he right targets — the people most interested in reading your e-mail — are key to increasing conversions with your e-mail marketing campaign. Many strategies can help you, so that your targeting efforts truly increase your e-mail ROI. Topics here focus on touch strategies; remarketing; measurement and behavioral targeting.

Think before you pull that e-mail trigger By Jon Sisenwein o your e-mail didn’t convert as expected. Well, now what do you do? Should you blast them again? What about using a new subject line? Or do marketers need to become even smarter about their tactics when communicating with an increasingly savvy e-mail user in full control of his/her inbox? For example, take Client X. They’ve got a hot, new product they believe everyone will want. So they create an e-mail announcing a special “e-mail only offer” and send it to a list of over a million opt-ins. The conversion rate turns out to be less than they expected, so Jon Sisenwein they send it Merkle Inc. again — only this time, they beef up the subject line with more details about the offer. Still, conversions remain low. Should they keep sending the same e-mail in order to drive incremental conversions? Or is this the point where they rethink their strategy? In my opinion, the key to successful e-mail marketing campaigns lies in developing a touch strategy. Every time you send an e-mail with content not relevant to a recipient, you risk damaging that relationship. Send the same message to your uninterested recipients a second time and you have proven to them that they are nothing more than a name on your list, and perhaps they should consider — dare I say it? — unsubscribing. No easy answers exist for building a successful touch strategy. At Merkle, however, we

believe it’s crucial to take multiple variables into account. These include the age and health of the list, how each record gets added to the list and how relevant the send will be. I’ve learned that it’s not only how you formulate the touch strategy, but how and when you message recipients based on their actions. In other words, acknowledging engagement through triggered messages can be a key component to driving conversions. If you think about it, e-mail — along with other Web technologies — gives us the ability to track engagement with great precision. Yet, most e-mail initiatives stop at the send, measuring only the opens and conversions. What about the folks who clicked? Where did they click? How many clicks? And what are the follow-up or triggered messages to all those click-throughs? Marketers involved in leveraging e-mail communications often make the mistake of failing to pay attention to customer behavior post-send. By tracking where recipients go from the e-mail, whether it’s clicks to a particular link on the e-mail message or subsequent visits to other sections of a Web site, we can precisely determine what interests them. Let’s say, for example, that Client X sends out an e-mail where the “must have” product is a big blue beach ball. However, one recipient’s clicks led to a pink inflatable raft. Should that recipient receive more e-mails for beach balls? That’s one idea. Another involves Client X sending e-mails which offer a variety of inflatable rafts — and the sooner those particular e-mails get sent, the better. So before you pull that trigger, consider exactly where you should be pointing the gun. Make sure you’ve thought long and hard about your strategy before you decide to make your move. After all, it only takes one miss to scare your target away. Jon Sisenwein is the associate creative director at Merkle Inc. Reach him at jsisenwein@merkleinc.com.

34 TARGETING DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Use behavioral targeting to pump up your e-mail ROI

Four steps for improving your 2009 e-mail results

By Siara Nazir eady to climb the peak of e-mail optimization? From an ROI perspective, e-mail marketing can be more effective than search in increasing conversion rates, especially if you have the right tools and techniques. Consider those annoying renewal notices you might get in the mail from your favorite magazines. Next time you receive one, look closely to find your customer tracking ID. Magazines generally use unique customer IDs in their subscription models to track the source and progression of customers in their buying lifecycle. This same strategy can be easily applied towards creating a successful e-mail marketing campaign. Start by taking a look at your internal e-mail database and make sure that each customer has a unique ID. These ID tags allow you to analyze, target and personalize your campaigns, a key factor in behavior targeting. After setting up your e-mail database with customer ID tags, you can start segmenting. Begin by placing your customers into buckets based on similarities such as geographic location or purchasing patterns. By segmenting your list, you can target your e-mails based on customer demographics and behavior. Use these buckets to create a model for your next e-mail campaign, as they can help predict which customers will buy certain types of products at particular times. Once your list is segmented, send each group a multistep e-mail campaign with a promotional message on the product they are most likely to purchase. Consumers often need to see the same message multiple times before they act. E-Loan recently garnered 13% more purchases as a result of a three-part e-mail promotion Siara Nazir strategy, as opposed to sending E-Loan only one promotion and moving onto the next special. Take your behavior-targeted e-mail campaign even further by personalizing and optimizing the entire e-mail and Web site experience with statistical modeling. The same ID tags which helped you create segmented buckets can trigger A/B and multivariate tests that assist in further optimizing your targeting and personalization, and integrate your e-mail service provider with your Web site optimization service provider. By testing and optimizing your e-mail campaign, you can effectively reach out using sophisticated statistical recipes that work both through e-mail and on your Web site, and push consumers towards their next purchase. The end result? Optimization through effective statistical modeling can revolutionize your e-mail marketing channel from the top of the funnel to the bottom and hit your bottom line in exactly the right place.

By Lora Downie mproving your e-mail marketing results doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars. When every penny counts, basic, lowcost optimization techniques can yield significant improvements. Here are a few tricks of the trade. Capture audit We all lose track of the countless places we gather e-mail addresses. It’s time to take a good, hard look at correcting this problem. Audit each of your online and offline e-mail capture methods. Create a matrix with column headings that refer to each source (SEM landing page, Web site, POS). Complete the matrix by pulling e-mail metrics from the past six months and segmenting the results based on source of e-mail capture. Then, determine where your most profitable e-mail acquisition occurs. Focus optimization efforts there and lessen efforts in the least profitable categories. Capture forms Optimize your forms to capture only the most Lora Downie profitable subscribers. Catalyst Direct Sign up for Google analytics and run it on every form page. You need to know your completion rate versus impressions. What do people click on and what do they ignore? After evaluating the data, it’s time to test: Test copy, both its tone and length. If subscribers feel they have either insufficient or too much information, they’ll leave. Test the number of fields. Fewer are better. Test imagery. The addition of e-mail examples (expandable in a pop-up screen) could alleviate subscribers’ fears about content and relevancy. Test layout. Many researchers concur that a one-column design brings the highest number of conversions. Remarketing opportunities Before you dream up a new and costly campaign, examine previous campaigns and see where you might harvest new opportunities. Market to individuals who opened but didn’t click and to individuals who clicked but didn’t convert. Market to “loiterers”: those who opened or clicked on eight of your last 10 campaigns but still haven’t purchased. Optimize e-mail creative With mobile rendering now the biggest concern, it’s time to face the problem of unreadable e-mails. Reduce the imagery in the top three inches of your design and set the heights and widths on all images. If your call to action is an image, provide viewable text links. Forget open rates. Readers should be able to get the message without having to download images or click on a web version. Make your imagery complement, not carry, the message. Focus on conversions instead. Don’t pay for a complete redesign to spice up your template. Instead, test the addition or placement of one element and discover how it can impact your click-through rate. Here’s to optimization, and to a higher ROI in 2009.

Siara Nazir is director of customer acquisition and retention at E-Loan. Reach her at siaran@eloan.com.

Lora Downie is e-mail marketing manager of Catalyst Direct. Reach her at ldownie@catdir.com.

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36 TARGETING DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

The power and wisdom of using e-mail remarketing

Three components that lead to e-mail success

By Simms Jenkins -mail marketing can leave much to be desired on the strategic front. Many companies underutilize this ubiquitous marketing medium due to its reputation as a cost-effective, timely and elementary direct response method. But the best e-mail campaigns maximize their ROI by taking a highly calculated approach that includes strong e-mail design, industry best practices and detailed knowledge of subscribers’ preferences and behaviors. They also use metrics effectively — arguably, one of the strongest benefits of e-mail marketing. Few marketers, though, go beyond basic open and clickthrough rates. An E-mailStatCenter.com survey revealed that only 50% of e-mail professionals reported using metrics for budgeting and forecasting purposes. When promoting online registration for its Annual Fall Summit event, CoreNet Global, an association for corporate real estate and workplace executives, teamed with BrightWave Marketing for a metrics-based remarketing e-mail campaign. BrightWave Marketing based its methodology on the group’s e-mail audience profile, response rate and conversion data, refining a message capable of achieving overarching business objectives rather than internal marketing goals. First, the creative was redesigned — which, in the first e-mail, increased the response rate by 100% — 350% in one audience segment. This e-mail led to 118 registrants for the summit. But an untapped audience remained — those who clicked within the e-mail but had not registered. Our strategy now involved remarketing to these recipients. Before placing them in the remarketing cycle, the recipients were suppressed from all Simms Jenkins other CoreNet Global e-mail BrightWave Marketing communications. We then classified each recipient as either a current CoreNet Global member or a prospect, and offered everyone an additional discount on event registration. BrightWave Marketing also created a follow-up e-mail for registrants. This e-mail included additional information to help people navigate the event and connect with other attending professionals, while offering attendees the option of registering additional colleagues at a discount. These multiple e-mails paid off, resulting in 133 event registrations, $119,567 in revenue and a 3,886% return on investment. By focusing on more-interested recipients, our remarketing strategy helped maximize CoreNet Global’s conversions. Segmenting the audience that responded to the initial e-mails but did not register resulted in registrations 11% higher than what CoreNet Global originally hoped to achieve.

By Steve Jones easurement, relevance and integration remain the three keys to e-mail campaign success. Performing this kind of “MRI” allows you to examine your marketing effectiveness. Measuring Quantifying the incremental production of a campaign should be the first step any company takes in evaluating the effectiveness of its marketing mix. I’ve seen cases where as much as 20% of marketing expenses did not meet expected ROI hurdles. Dollars marked for such expenses can be re-allocated, or eliminated altogether. Implementing appropriate direct channel control groups, coupled with hold out regions in media, radio and TV can also effectively measure incremental production. This allows companies to accurately evaluate the impact of integrated campaigns upon their ROI. It’s important to note that many conversions from e-mail campaigns do not Steve Jones click through the actual e-mail, Analytics Direct, LLC but come through the call center or from a separate Web visit. Relevance It not only improves response rates; it enhances the brand by eliminating the perception of spam. Relevant campaigns involve some type of “triggered” action by the customer. I’ve seen up to five times the response rate from “triggers,” even when compared to highly targeted campaigns that have been segmented with a model. For example, financial services companies receive information about consumers when they quote, apply, borrow, pay and invest on their accounts. Examining the subsequent transactions that occur when customers perform these triggers can yield insights that identify additional opportunities. Requesting “pay off” balances for a loan might lead to additional disposable income for investing or for a purchase, such as a new car. With out-of-stock situations, offering substitutions for a discount or providing an incentive for waiting on the re-stocking of the original item can capture up to 50% of potential lost sales. Integration A significant portion of e-mail acquisition does not come directly from the e-mail itself. Leveraging a campaign’s visibility in call center interactions can lead to easy cross-sells, as the call center is an ideal source for capturing and storing the “triggers” in conversations with the customer. These triggers can then be used to populate banners and messaging on your Web site when these customers visit. Integrating customized landing pages that better transition the e-mail can yield double the conversions over merely linking to existing pages. Measurement, relevance and integration enhance perceptions of your brand. Using them as basic components of your effort can only improve the performance of your e-mail campaign.

Simms Jenkins is CEO of BrightWave Marketing. Reach him at sjenkins@ brightwavemarketing.com.

Steve Jones is the founder of Analytics Direct, LLC. Reach him at stevejones@analytics-direct.com.

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DMNews •E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 INTEGRATION 37

Integration IntegraTION Page 37

Integrate e-mail into a multichannel mix, by David Fowler

Page 39

An exciting time for oneto-one marketing to shine, by Ranen Goren Holiday e-mail smarts can give you a year-round boost, by Luc Vazina

Page 40

Understand mobile e-mail for a better user experience, by Jeff Hassemer E-mail: How to bridge the media fragmentation gap, by Jere Doyle

Page 42

Six of the e-mail marketing trends you’ll see in 2009, by Nicholas Einstein

istorically, e-mail was used as a direct sales channel, and often siloed with no strategic link to other parts of a company’s campaign. Successful marketers now know that e-mail offer opportunities must be part of a multichannel marketing mix. The articles here show how to take your e-mail strategy to the next level.

Integrate e-mail into a multichannel mix By David Fowler ith all the media channels available to communicate with your audience, it’s no wonder that the various media — online, offline, mobile, Web site, content management, etc. — seem on a collision course for integration. So the time has come to address and assess the opportunities for your brand strategy as it pertains to a multichannel marketing mix. But where do you start? What do you need to know, so you can implement your game plan? Any strategic and complex program must include the following. Notice The “notice” you provide your customers from the inception of the relationship will establish David Folwler your commitAlterian ment to their engagement. As a marketing organization, you have to provide the correct amount of notice as it relates to the criteria of data you collect and your intentions for using it. Consent Don’t assume you know what your customers want. You need to ask them. Allow them to establish their relationship with you. By receiving their consent, you can target very specific communications and offers. It’s advisable to reestablish consent on a regular basis, as it will also allow customers to see you operating according to their interests. Preferences Probably one of the quickest ways to alienate your client is to not honor their preferences. Communicate with them in the

way they prefer, and not the other way around. Again, if your customers set their preferences from inception, you’ll have crystal clear indicators of how they want you to interact. Relevance Don’t send any communication in violation of your customer’s preference settings. It sounds easy enough, but communication can often slip through the cracks due to inattentiveness. Before you know it, your customer feels out of touch — which, of course, is absolutely reflected in your relationship. Deliverability For years now, we have been obsessed with e-mail deliverability. The market has embraced best practices for senders of e-mail and will continue to do so. Any respective channel that originates a client communication must be considered for the successful delivery of that message. Online or offline, the issues pertaining to successful deliverability will evolve as we begin to understand the various issues pertaining to the respective channels. Respect for customer wishes Follow the golden rule of marketing: Communicate with your client in the way that you prefer people to communicate with you. I can’t think of a better way to keep your customers engaged with your communications. Vision execution Remember that your brand management, along with many other factors, will influence the overall direction your plan might take. You are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the strategy, so it’s crucial you execute it well. A successful, integrated marketing strategy will set the standard for your organization and its campaigns. Remember, it may start with e-mail, but as we begin to communicate with different media, our challenges will be reflective of these multiple channels. By following the above principles, your campaigns stand an excellent chance of success. David Fowler is VP of e-mail marketing strategy at Alterian. Reach him at dave.fowler@alterian.com.

DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 INTEGRATION 39

An exciting time for oneto-one marketing to shine

Holiday e-mail smarts can give you a year-round boost

By Ranen Goren arketers today face great challenges in generating results, what with ever-shrinking budgets, rising expenses and limited resources. But it’s also an exciting time for targeted, direct marketing to really shine. For years, a marketer’s only option consisted of launching a campaign with print communication, blanketing an entire recipient list and depleting a large portion of a campaign’s budget. But times have changed, due to electronic media. A recent InfoTrends survey found that 79.6% of marketers use e-mail for direct marketing, followed by the Web and direct mail. Also, the DMA states that commercial e-mail’s ROI for this year will hit $49.65 per dollar spent, so the future of direct Ranen Goren marketing is clear. XMPie Inc. E-mail is appealing for a number of reasons. It’s costeffective, environmentally friendly and, when used strategically, increases the overall effectiveness of one-to-one marketing. Using e-mail for the first and second campaign waves, then following up in print with those who didn’t respond initially reduces costs while reaching an entire targeted audience. It allows response channels, incorporated through Web-based Response URLs, to gather relevant recipient information. So when a marketer invests in a printed piece, it can be effectively targeted to become of greater value to the recipient. The immediacy of e-mail also allows for quick response to customer actions. A customer who visits a personalized Web site and updates their individual information would appreciate a prompt confirmation. What’s better than making this e-mail personalized, with more targeted offers and information? E-mail marketing’s popularity grows because companies can give consumers options in receiving communication. Marketers can no longer confine recipients to a strict scheme. Marketers must become media agnostic, supporting every possible communication mix to maximize effectiveness. Implementation tools also play a role in effective e-mail marketing. A unified variable-data, cross-media software solution provides everything needed to complete a one-to-one campaign spanning e-mail, Web and print, although this solution should feature a robust e-mail delivery system, allowing messages to break through spam filters while fully complying with e-mail regulations. It should also have a marketing analytics dashboard to track, analyze and adjust every aspect of a live campaign “onthe-fly” for maximum effectiveness and ROI. The technology behind e-mail marketing has come very far in a brief time and, it appears, we will continue to see it evolve.

By Luc Vazina etailers who count on the 20% lift of holiday sales know they can’t wait until October to formulate their seasonal sales strategy. Although consumers spent some $475 billion during the 2007 holiday season, the mixed forecasts for 2008 increase the pressure to make the holiday selling season extend beyond the traditional September-to-December window. As retailers review their arsenal of marketing strategies, e-mail — with its returns of $48 for every dollar spent, according to the DMA — should sit atop everyone’s go-to tools list. E-mail marketing strategies that build holiday sales and establish year-round traction aren’t accidental. Use a phased approach that improves e-mail marketing performance across all industries and segments. The first step? Ask what you want to accomplish. Pre-planning is key to focusing your value proposition, refining messages, analyzing what has or hasn’t worked in the past and designing elements that stand out. Timing comes next. With holidays, start early and build a schedule that’s based on increasing frequency rather than arbitrary mailing dates. Create “occasions” that support program goals. Early on, send information about products of prior interest to customers. As the season winds down, shift focus to a demographic — such as men, who typically make purchases late. Holidays also help marketers develop the quality of their house lists while continuing to build quantity. Avoid the short cut of renting lists; let your subscribers select their e-mail preferences to guard against list fatigue, and use sign-up forms and surveys to refine customer data. This information allows you to fine-tune your campaign content as the season progresses and results in a strong foundation that gives your holiday promotions legs. Personalization, a year-round strategy, allows you to sustain a relevant dialogue with customers. E-mail tools now support automated mass-customization with appropriate levels of personalization. Advanced e-mail tools also support segmentation and enable marketers to tailor offers and create dynamic, holidayspecific content. Don’t neglect the marketing Luc Vazina basic of measurement. Since Campaigner you’ll set objective goals early, you’ll also need to continually test campaign components, measure results and make adjustments as necessary to meet objectives. A successful holiday e-mail campaign will offer you year-round tools, metrics and benefits. As a component of a multichannel sales strategy, e-mail offers marketers flexibility, low cost, high impact and an unparalleled path to consumers during the holiday season and beyond.

Ranen Goren is VP of cross-media products and enterprise solutions at XMPie Inc. Reach him at ranen.goren@us.xmpie.com.

Luc Vazina is head of marketing at Campaigner. Reach him at lvazina@campaigner.com.

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40 INTEGRATION DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Understand mobile e-mail for a better user experience

E-mail: How to bridge the media fragmentation gap

By Jeff Hassemer ending e-mail today automatically includes you in the mobile e-mail business. Some companies realize this and have taken steps to address the issues surrounding mobile e-mail; others realize it, but ignore the situation. Many simply don’t realize that 20% of their e-mails are received and read on mobile devices. The mobile market is huge and an increasingly prominent part of our lives. The global mobile market subscriber base reached 3.25 billion in July 2007. In that same year, sales of smartphones exceeded sales of laptop computers for the first time. Mobile e-mail marketers face unique challenges. For example, since mobile e-mail generally redirects messages from the e-mail server, it’s virtually impossible to determine whether recipients read your e-mail on the mobile device Jeff Hassemer or in the e-mail client. Mobile Responsys devices generally turn off images, making open rates difficult to track. Plus, traditional tracking methods, including Web analytics providers and your ESP, don’t track mobile browsers. But many mobile device carriers have decided to follow Apple’s lead. RIM will release the Blackberry Bold, which promises a better user experience on the Web and within the e-mail client. Samsung, LG, Nokia and Palm have either released or plan to release mobile devices that render HTML as well. Until then, marketers can hunker down and hope, or take some simple steps to improve the mobile e-mail experience. For HTML e-mails, the norm is “Images off” Insert more smart text and fewer image-only types of e-mails. Be certain to test both traditional e-mail and mobile e-mail clients. Create compelling content Build both an HTML version and an xHTML (mobile-friendly) version of your e-mail to host on a Web page. Always give customers the option to view a mobilefriendly version, as well as an HTML version. Use compelling text in the first part of the e-mail body. Remember: Subject lines still matter in the mobile world. Minimize your e-mail file size E-mails should be below 20k — if possible — including images. Avoid multiple columns, wide graphics and tables. Scrolling down may well be a necessity, but avoid forcing the customer to scroll to the right. Keep your URLs short Sometimes this is unavoidable due to your e-mail software or international requirements. Don’t use unnecessary images. The mobile Web will only increase in popularity. Understand this channel, and you can support the user experience.

By Jere Doyle nce, marketers didn’t worry about media fragmentation in their marketing plans. Having only limited means to reach consumers made it easier to determine which form of media best fit their target audience. But with the array of new media now available, marketers can find their task overwhelming. Mass media advertising, diluted by consumers’ fragmented consumption, poses unique challenges for marketers in effectively reaching the right consumers. E-mail marketing, though, remains one of the best direct marketing strategies that marketers can use. While e-mail has a long history, many marketers still don’t understand its full potential as a marketing tool. E-mail allows marketers to easily navigate the media clutter and communicate directly with consumers who might be interested or have already demonstrated receptivity to their marketing messages. Surveys show that consumers want to hear from their preferred brands, especially through e-newsletters. Prospectiv’s August 2008 Consumer Coupon Poll shows that 56% of consumers wanted e-mail newsletters containing coupons from their favorite brands. Backed by these statistics, it should be a no-brainer for marketers to start incorporating e-mail marketing campaigns. I mean, consumers want it — right? Yes, consumers want to be contacted by marketers through e-mail. But, marketers must heed the importance of sending their customers quality information, aimed at their needs. Do this by building direct relationships with them, by asking about their interests and preferences, and sending them information they want. Consumers communicate more with trusted senders, so introduce yourself with that online handshake and show your customers that you exist to serve them. A key way to achieve this level of granular, one-to-one marketing involves working with an online lead generation partner. Online lead generation partners help marketers build highly targeted “house lists” of prequalified consumers who have expressed an interest in specific brands, products and services, and requested information. By using a “house list,” marketers can send tailored messages to their best customers, demonstrating that they listen to their wants and needs. If consumers know your brand Jere Doyle always sends information that Prospectiv interests them, they will open and respond to your e-mail and you will have created brand loyalty and trust. Incorporating e-newsletters to communicate and build strong relationships with customers also presents a win-win situation. Consumers receive information that interests them and consumer brand marketers reach their target audience.

Jeff Hassemer is director of product marketing at Responsys. Reach him at jhassemer@gmail.com.

Jere Doyle is president and CEO of Prospectiv. Reach him at jdoyle@prospectiv.com.

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42 INTEGRATION DMNews â&#x20AC;˘ E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Six of the e-mail marketing trends youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see in 2009 By Nicholas Einstein ith the rapid adoption of social networks and Web 2.0, marketers view e-mail through a new lens. Now an established online marketing channel, e-mail has an average ROI of nearly $40 for every $1 invested. Marketers no longer view e-mail as an acquisition-only channel and see its value as a tool for managing customer relationships and stewarding brands. The array of case studies and best practices shared by e-mail marketing vendors and their clients testify to the value of e-mail as a marketing channel and as media itself. As 2009 looks to be another big year, I foresee six trends: 1. E-mail marketing spend will rise as dollars shift from Nicholas Einstein less accountable channels. Also, Datran Media macro-economic forces will allow near-term, measurable ROI and e-mail will remain the channel of choice. 2. Social networking sites will realize synergies from levels of convergence, like ISPs did in the early 1990s. The current social

networks resemble the early closed networks of Prodigy, AOL, etc., which had limited value. The Facebooks of the world will begin opening doors in 2009, with e-mail playing a prime role. 3. Retailers will allot resources to win-back campaigns to reactivate existing customers through enhanced data intelligence. Marketers will better serve previous customers using tools allowing for intelligent re-marketing to inactive segments. Some firms have already driven significant revenue through such efforts. 4. Banners within newsletters will leverage contextual relevance and drive increased performance. E-mail ad serving technologies continue to enable programs that steward brands and enable relevant inbox experiences. In 2008, The New York Times leveraged contextual relevant advertising campaigns to great effect. 5. Stand-alone third-party advertisements will be the No. 1 method for monetizing data assets. Marketers will use intelligent e-mail ad-serving technology to deploy these messages and drive maximum revenue through minimal customer touches. 6. Brands that once used e-mail for acquisition only will see the value of e-mail as a branding tool and begin using the channel accordingly. E-Harmony saw a 38% lift in campaign awareness through integrating e-mail with other branding efforts. E-mail has matured as a channel but new, creative opportunities for its use will only be more exciting in 2009. Companies focused on building the processes and data assets to capitalize on these opportunities will continue to realize the benefits. Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic services and analytics at Datran Media. Reach him at neinstein@datranmedia.com.

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DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 LISTS AND DATABASES 43

Lists and Databases LISTS AND DATABASES Page 43

Key ways to optimize unsubscribe requests, by Arthur Sweetser

Page 44

Minimize your list churn by optimizing opt-out process, by Loren McDonald Segment your e-mail lists for more effective campaigns, by Chris Chariton

Page 45

The secret to e-mail success: No ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ by Jodi Baier

Page 46

How to cultivate leads by using e-mail sequencing, by Jared Vestal How to ensure that e-mails get delivered to rented lists, by Sarah Barber

roperly building and effectively using lists and databases can make or break your e-mail marketing campaign — without good, up-todate data at the core of your e-mail strategy, the chance of seeing campaign success is slim. These articles focus on optimizing unsubscribe requests; list segmentation; and improving databases.

Key ways to optimize unsubscribe requests By Arthur Sweetser s the Internet audience matures, convincing people to sign up for e-mail marketing has become much more of a challenge. That makes every address added to your database a valuable asset. Though many companies fixate on address acquisition, they don’t pay sufficient attention to the relevance of their e-mail campaigns. And that can turn opt-ins into opt-outs in the blink of an eye and increase the pressure to acquire more new names. It’s definitely a vicious cycle. So, what’s a marketer to do when they discover their hard-won consumers actually don’t plan to stick around? Arthur Sweetser Structure your e-Dialog unsubscribe process the right way and you can get customers to think twice before leaving. Measure twice, cut once It may sound silly, but the first step in your unsubscribe process might be to ask: “Are you sure?” If you reiterate the benefits, the customer might give you a second chance. Or ask for feedback. When you ask: “What could we have done differently?” you may be surprised at the responses. Also, try providing a phone number or e-mail address for customer service as part of your unsubscribe form and whatever issue led the customer to unsubscribe may be resolved. Pick and choose Don’t assume that a customer wants to unsubscribe from all of your messages. Some customers may not be inter-

ested in promotional messages but still want product upgrades or new account services. If you have more than one newsletter, or different types of messages, offer those as options. Many companies have loyalty programs or special memberships, which include exclusive e-mails or “members only” promotions. It’s smart to have a special unsubscribe process, allowing these customers to opt-out of your general e-mail messaging. Remind them of their status and ask them specifically if they’d like to stay subscribed to the e-mails which are a benefit of their membership. Preferential treatment A preference center can be a key component in retaining a customer’s interest and increasing the relevance of your e-mails. Let your customers determine how often they receive your e-mails and which e-mail address you should use to communicate with them. Allowing customers to self-select their interests creates ready-made segments for your marketing programs at a lower cost and level of effort. Don’t burn your bridges Industry research shows less than 20% of marketers send a goodbye message and less than 10% take the opportunity to inform subscribers of other ways to stay connected. Let the customer know your door will always remain open and provide an easy way for them to re-subscribe if they change their mind. Present your customers with other communication options, like blogs, RSS feeds or podcasts so they can keep up to date with company happenings on their own schedule. No one likes to think about divorce when getting married, so it’s understandable that e-mail marketers don’t like to think about losing subscribers when developing lead-generation strategies. But if you can think like a customer and place the control in their hands, you’ll have a happier and more successful long-term relationship. Arthur Sweetser is CMO at e-Dialog. Reach him at asweetser@e-dialog.com.

44 LISTS AND DATABASES DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

Minimize your list churn by optimizing opt-out process

Segment your e-mail lists for more effective campaigns

By Loren McDonald educing the number of unsubscribes from your mailing list remains one of the best ways to minimize list churn. However, reducing unsubscribes doesn’t mean you make it harder for people to leave. Instead, understand the reasons why people leave, offer them other ways to remain in the relationship and make the process a positive customer experience. Unsubscribes: A fact of list life Opt-outs are a fact of life in the e-mail world. Consumers control their destiny, choosing when to opt in and when to say adios. According to JupiterResearch, the reasons most people seek to be removed from e-mail lists are the content is irrelevant or e-mail is sent too often. Unsubscribes, however, can be a good thing. They point out a poor brand experience for the subscriber, spam complaints or dead wood on your list that mask true performance. Loren McDonald An easy unsubscribe process Silverpop helps you minimize spam complaints and retain the customer relationship through another channel. Consider these tips for optimizing the opt-out process: Make the unsubscribe and alternative links stand out in your e-mails Display a clearly labeled unsubscribe link in your e-mail message, in an easy-to-read font size and a color matching your e-mail design. Don’t try to disguise it by blending in the font color with a background shade or shrinking the type size. Users will either overlook it or retaliate by clicking the spam button. Deploy a combination unsubscribe/preference page A well designed, branded page explains exactly how to unsubscribe, thanks the user for his/her patronage, offers alternatives and completes the unsubscribe process without delay. Test it for ease of use and check it — and your unsubscribe link — regularly. Unsubscribe function Do not require any actions such as a login or password or filling out surveys to complete the unsubscribe. In a recent ruling clarifying aspects of the CAN-SPAM Act, the US Federal Trade Commission prohibited any actions other than entering an e-mail address to unsubscribe. Include a timing statement if the unsubscribe is not immediate While the CAN-SPAM Act allows companies up to 10 business days to remove someone from a list, consumers expect immediate compliance. If it takes several days to process an unsubscribe, include a statement such as: “When unsubscribing, there may be a delay of up to seven days. We apologize in advance if you receive further e-mails during this period.” Following e-mail best practices throughout the relationship and optimizing your opt-out procedure can go a long way in reducing list churn and spam complaints.

By Chris Chariton sed successfully for years in the world of direct mail marketing, segmentation has become increasingly common in the e-mail world. Segmentation, the process of dividing your e-mail list into distinct groups of people based on attributes such as demographics or purchase patterns, takes time and effort. Sending targeted messages to groups of people who respond in similar ways, however, can produce dramatically improved results. The more you match your messages and offers to your audience’s needs and interests, the higher your conversion rates. You also gain competitive advantage, increase loyalty and customer satisfaction, and strengthen your firm’s brand and image. Segmenting your e-mail list need not be difficult. You probably have most of the data you need. Before starting, make sure you develop distinct content for your groups. Segmenting is useless if you can’t speak effectively to each group in a relevant way. The first step involves dividing your entire e-mail list based on a single important attribute. A logical division exists between customers and prospects. Once a prospect becomes a customer, it’s time for them to receive e-mails designed to nurture the relationship, allowing it to grow. It would certainly be disconcerting for a new customer to get an e-mail promoting a discounted product they had already purchased at a higher price. There are other ways to consider segmenting your e-mail list. Product lines Does your company offer a range of products? Industry Append SIC or NAIC industry codes to your e-mail database if you have company names. Job function Tailor your copy to reflect the interests and needs of specific job functions. Online behavior Gauge audience behavior and communicate appropriately. Anyone clicking on an e-mail link about a specific product could be sent e-mails about related items. Geography Consumers in one area may not care about content specific to another. Once your e-mail list is segmented, you will need to assign new contacts that come in. Give your audience a choice when they opt-in to your e-mail communications. Provide a list of interest areas (segments) on Chris Chariton your registration form and let GlobalSpec, Inc. your audience check the ones they find relevant. It’s important to test how well your segments perform. If you don’t see an uplift in conversion rates for one segment, consider re-arranging the groups. With e-mail, you can quickly discover how well segmentation works. Make changes as necessary to keep up the momentum of sending relevant e-mails to your customers and prospects.

Loren McDonald is VP of industry relations at Silverpop. Reach him at lmcdonald@silverpop.com.

Chris Chariton is VP of marketing services and product management at GlobalSpec, Inc. Reach her at cchariton@globalspec.com.

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DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008 LISTS AND DATABASES 45

The secret to e-mail success: No ‘garbage in, garbage out’ By Jodi Baier arketers invest time and money on e-mail content, design, testing and performance metrics but may neglect another part of the equation: the data. How can our e-mail marketing campaigns possibly succeed if we begin with bad data? FreshAddress’s experience indicates that anywhere from 5% to 25% of e-mail addresses entered on Web site registration pages are invalid. In a recent study, we registered the same 13 invalid e-mail addresses on 50 top retail Web sites. No Web site we tested offered a correction for common spelling errors (yaho. com). Also, no Web site blocked more than 37% of the invalid e-mail addresses entered, as many overlooked misspellings, syntax and formatting mistakes, top-level or “dead” domains Jodi Baier and bogus e-mail addresses. FreshAddress With the money we spend on e-mail marketing, we risk losing thousands, if not millions, of dollars by using bad data. The potential ramifications of this can include disgruntled customers or prospects, lost sales and a negative brand impact. Worse, whenever malicious and/or repeatedly bouncing e-mail

addresses slip through, we risk being labeled a “spammer” and/or blacklisted by ISPs. We must continuously update our e-mail address databases, and improve e-mail address validation on our Web sites. A few possible ways to overcome “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Review the design and content of Web site registration pages Are database fields big enough to avoid truncating errors? Confirm that error messages are instructive. Communicate the value of the e-mail relationship up front, and reassure clients/prospects as to how their e-mail will be used. Use technology to confirm information and ensure accuracy Personalize the confirmation page so users recognize right away if they have made an error. Require double-entry. (This doesn’t always solve the problem as many users either cut and paste the second address or use auto-fill, which simply duplicates the original error.) Institute a double opt-in process. (This comes with its own set of issues such as deliverability hurdles, junk box filters and user abandonment.) Implement real-time e-mail validation technology, an effective and user-friendly way to automatically catch and correct invalid entries at the point of registration. By initially building a better e-mail database — and by then keeping it up to date — we reap multiple benefits including higher revenues, reduced marketing expense and reduced risk of blacklisting by ISPs. Most importantly, however, we provide a better customer experience. Jodi Baier is marketing and communications manager at FreshAddress. Reach her at jbaier@freshaddress.com.

E-MAIL MARKETING GUIDE

46 LISTS AND DATABASES DMNews • E-mail Marketing Guide 2008

How to cultivate leads by using e-mail sequencing

How to ensure that e-mails get delivered to rented lists

By Jared Vestal s e-mail marketers, we know that benchmarking, analyzing and refining campaigns help us achieve better overall results. We also know that a campaign with an audience of 100,000 and 2,000 total clicks (2.0% click-through rate) is less desirable than one with an audience of 10,000 and 1,800 total clicks (18.0% rate), although this campaign has a lower number of clicks. What about the marketing function acting as a lead generation engine, providing a stream of leads to fill the sales queue? Often, sheer volume is the only key performance indicator (KPI) for these marketing leads. Why the lack of metrics and actionable insight? Why the quantity-over-quality Jared Vestal approach? Because uncovering Cision similar KPIs for leads needs legwork, requiring sales teams to accurately input standardized qualitative data, tracking down leads posthumously through back-end database querying. The good news: We can improve this process without hours of tracking and analysis by using a lead cultivation e-mail sequence. A series of two or more e-mails, a lead cultivation sequence creates awareness by a lead of your firm or product. It begins with a general communication providing generic information about your company and it should end with a specific message with a call-to-action and/or simultaneous contact from the sales force. Here are a few basic lead cultivation e-mail sequences: Informational/Need-specific/Product-specific Informational/Need-specific/Company-specific/Product-specific Informational/Industry-specific/Company-specific These types of sequences can move a lead from lukewarm to hot, or at the very least, disseminate relevant information. Next, consider your audience. What leads are appropriate for them? Ask your sales force to answer: Which of your channels results in the best-informed leads? Which of your channels results in leads who ask the most “obvious” questions? Which of your channels results in leads who have never heard of your company or brand reputation? Which of your channels results in leads who have no knowledge about the benefits of your product? Your best-informed leads should be passed directly to sales, but every other category remains a strong candidate for lead cultivation. Design your campaigns to be two to four iterative steps towards achieving an understanding about your products or your company and set processes to automatically cultivate qualifying leads. You will enjoy a significant lift in lead quality without the commitment of intensive analytics or cumbersome tracking.

By Sarah Barber eliverability remains a hot topic in the e-mail realm. Every other e-mail white paper I see these days has deliverability as the theme. But what to do when you’re not in control of the delivery? How do you send a stand-alone e-mail to a rented list and guarantee your message to new prospects gets delivered? Here are a few “must-do’s” to get the best results for your next prospecting e-mail campaign. Creative Sending HTML e-mails with clean and favorable coding increases response rates significantly. Also, studies show you have less than three seconds to hook a reader. Many recipients view e-mails through preview screens while others only view a message’s top portion before deciding whether to scroll down or delete your mesSarah Barber sage. Design enhancement can Walter Karl, Inc. help maximize your message and increase response. Avoid spam trap words An oldie yet a goodie — avoiding spam trap words in the subject line and the body copy remains critical. For example, avoid the following: “FREE”; using the dollar sign character in the subject line; multiple exclamation points; “offer” or the excessive use of “click here.” Budget in “send time” When planning your campaign, allow at least four days to complete delivery for best results. The major ISPs (Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc.) have all recently clamped down on allowing too much commercial e-mail to come through. Take a page from the retention gurus and mail out over a series of days instead of hours. Follow-up is more important than ever Send a follow-up message to those who open your e-mail, with a new subject line and possibly a sweetened offer. Studies on this practice have proven at least a 15% increase in response to a multi-message strategy. Spread out risk and send from multiple list sources Be sure to spread out your risk and mail to different list populations, utilizing a variety of ESPs to ensure success. Also, ask your list provider when these populations last received mailings, as using a list which has not been contacted for several months greatly increases your chances of causing spam complaints to ISPs or to spam watch groups. Centralized tracking Be certain to use a centralized tracking tool to track results real-time online. This way, you’ll have visibility on opens and clicks. Many e-mail list rental vendors will have this tool. This way, you can monitor what lists remain in keeping with industry response rates as soon as they start deploying. Combined with always using reputable lists, these “must-dos” will increase the likelihood of your finding prospecting success and will help you achieve that ROI goal.

Jared Vestal is the database marketing manager at Cision. Reach him at jvestal@gmail.com.

Sarah Barber is SVP of sales and marketing at Walter Karl, Inc. Reach her at sarah.barber@walterkarl.infousa.com.

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