Is Email Recession-Proof?

mediapost.com - One of the advantages of going before heavy hitters like David Baker and Loren McDonald in the Email Insider lineup is that I get first crack at hot topics. Like this week’s for instance: email and the recession. Loren and David were both lining up to make some comments on the topic, and hopefully my brilliance won’t intimidate them too much from chiming in on their own columns this week. And actually, even I’m not the first to talk about it: Elie Ashery was first up with a column this week on the Email Experience Council blog:

My theory is pretty straightforward. While a recession is certainly not good for anybody, it may have a beneficial effect on email marketing. Or at the very least, email should be less affected by a recession than other marketing channels. Because of email’s low cost, high ROI value and the fact that it is a proven medium, marketers might see themselves directing more marketing dollars to this channel as a sure thing, and away from less proven (mobile marketing, RSS), less direct (banner advertising) or less costly (SEO) channels. Good old email: it works, it’s cheap, and my return is high. It’s a safe harbor in troubling times.

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HTML email coming soon on the Blackberry

campaignmonitor.com - Some important news if you send to a lot of mobile subscribers, or view emails on your own Blackberry. While existing Blackberry devices and software only support plain text email rendering, RIM has announced that an upcoming software update will add HTML and rich text support to the platform.

HTML and Rich Text Email Rendering – BlackBerry smartphone users will be able to view HTML and rich text email messages with original formatting preserved including font colors and styles, embedded images, hyperlinks, tables, bullets and other formatting.It is not yet clear whether this will be optional, allowing Blackberry users to select their desired format, or whether HTML will always be shown when available. In any case, sending multipart text+html will always be the safest option.

The update is set to be released in ‘the first half of 2008′, and once it becomes available we plan to run our normal HTML/CSS rendering tests and post here about the results.

Of course, if you do know your audience is mostly mobile, then you will want to ensure your emails are shorter, to the point and simpler than you would typically do for a an audience using a desktop client.

A mobile context is very different, and even the type of content itself may differ considerably - information that is useful when at your desk may be pointless when sitting on a train or in a taxi.

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Delivery & Subject Line Tests Results

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30280

marketingsherpa.com - Why It’s Best to Test Your Own Email Practices - Delivery & Subject Line Tests Results

SUMMARY: Honing in on the best day of the week to send an email and writing great subject lines are always key ways to raise response rates. What to do? Test, of course. See how an eretailer tested their enewsletter for the best delivery day and a shorter subject line. And they got some surprises, too, which they turned into a happy opportunity to lift conversions 50%.

CHALLENGE
The Organic Dish was continually disappointed with their monthly enewsletter — particularly open and clickthrough rates — even after following industry best practices.“We had reached the point where we were malcontented about every aspect of our performance,” says Toby Hemmerling, Managing Partner, The Organic Dish. “I was certain that the general content wasn’t the culprit in terms of why we weren’t getting a better response.”Hemmerling’s enewsletter advertises updated menus for their organic meals, so it’s critical to revenue. He and his team questioned their email delivery day. Days that were early in the week, like Monday and Tuesday, seemed good for their email, but would one day or the other make much of a difference? They also wanted to know which was more important: a stronger call to action or shorter subject lines.

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http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30280

Study Reiterates Importance of Consumer Loyalty

http://www.autoremarketing.com/ar/news/story.html?id=7276

autoremarketing.com - When it comes to pushing a brand, dealers can make all the difference on the front lines, a study recently highlighted. Good dealers can increase brand loyalty, while those who struggle generally don’t drive return customers.

According to research from Carlson Marketing and the Peppers & Rogers Group, dealer-customer rapport plays a vital role.

The Carlson Relationship Builder recently conducted a study, Turning the Corner in Automotive Marketing, which examined consumer loyalty and identified automakers that showed the strongest relationships with customers.

According to the research, the top three brands in terms of relationship strength were BMW, Lexus and Cadillac. Subaru, Toyota and Honda followed close behind.

Officials noted the importance of such rankings, as the relationship index highly correlates with consumers recommending a brand or returning for future purchases.

“Creating and maintaining a strong relationship with a customer basically is dependent on one thing: treating different customers differently,” explained Luc Bondar, vice president of loyalty for Carlson Marketing.

The study said this is achieved by understanding three important concepts about relationships:

• They are cultivated with individuals and not with “market segments.”
• Customers and sellers must have an exchange of information.
• All parties involved must make some sort of “behavioral change.”

One interesting point the research found was that the customer satisfaction index, a traditional indicator, is often “inadequate.” Instead, all the various components of the brand-consumer relationship are more indicative of an automaker’s strength.

Must-keep resolutions for online marketers

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/17939.asp

imediaconnection.com -Improve your marketing this year by following this plan of action outlined by Renegade’s director of strategic planning.

I typically start the new year with ideas to improve myself. This year I’m applying that critical lens to my life as an internet marketer. Here are some resolutions I intend to keep; you might want to add them to your list as well:Embrace the negative review
I won’t be so darn sensitive and controlling when people say bad things about me. After all, negative feedback is better than none; it means someone wants to help.The web is a great place to practice because hundreds of consumers will willingly tell you what’s wrong with your product, what’s off-base in your communication, and how to improve.Take Gamespot critic Jeff Gertsmann, who was fired because of his negative review of Kane & Lynch, an advertiser. The gaming community got wind, ranted about Gamespot’s lack of integrity, made it a top story on Digg and viewed it 300,000 times on YouTube. So this year I will not silence my critics, but will listen to their constructive feedback, and admit my mistakes graciously.Stretch beyond paid search
It’s easy to be lazy and keep doing what has worked before, and there’s no doubt that search works, especially for big brands with the money to get their message center stage on Google. That’s great for reaching consumers who know exactly what they want, but not everyone takes the direct route.

Web 2.0 has changed the dynamics of online search. Peer recommendations direct consumers toward second tier, smaller brands that people love enough to tag, or recommend on review sites like CNET, Epinions and BizRate. Googling “cool gifts” produces suggestions that are not as personal as those that trusted peers have tagged on Stylehive or blogged on Gizmodo.

Social SEO is a new approach to picking keywords based on language consumers use when they talk about your brand in social networks, blogs, forums and social media outlets. This year, I will go beyond paid and natural search efforts and tune into the intimate conversation between consumers.

Collaborate with consumers beyond user-generated ads
Sometimes relationships get stale and you have to infuse them with new life. Not long ago it was fresh to ask consumers to conceive ads; the Converse Gallery, MasterCard’s Write a Priceless Ad contest and Current TV leveraged consumers’ brand passion and creativity, but that was then.

In 2008, I will take a hint from Facebook and Google (and Marx) and supply my audience with tools and features to build next generation web applications. I will expose the product-development process to consumers who are invested in participating in my brand. I will not succumb to the comfortable lure of old-fashioned “campaigns” but will stretch to create interactive brand experiences that leave a tangible and indelible impression. Foremost, I will be inventive and open-minded when imagining the future of consumer collaboration.

Hire a social media director
I’m sick of hearing “you never listen to me” from my consumers, so this year I’m going to pay someone to listen for me — a social media director. While listening tools are still rather primitive, consumers are accessible online voicing their needs and frustrations in real-time — the web is one huge user group and opinion lab. Okay, maybe several user groups and decentralized opinion sources, but they are out there 365/24/7.

An influential, thoughtful few are all you need to impact your business. For instance, listening taught us that consumers are confused by technology and leery of products they have to learn how to use. HP made a mint off that insight with its Easy Share photo solutions, so the photos you were so excited about taking make it out of your camera and onto paper in two easy steps. Apple brought us the iPod/iTunes combo so that, even though you can buy music elsewhere for less, you don’t because iTunes is so easy.

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How Long Is A Customer Lifecycle?

http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/?p=567

mediapost.com - IF YOU ARE LIKE MOST people, you have stages of life and all things around you; people and environments change dramatically over time. We have an early life stage where we learn the primary elements of surviving in this mixed world, the basics, as we could call it. This is where we form our basic judgments, values and shape who we are and the paths we’ll lead. This is where we learn to develop our community of generations, or simply break out and build our own communities. We have many milestones that we go through: high school graduation, college for some, young adult life in the working force, family development and planting roots into a community. We then drift into the middle stages of our life, where many foster these communities and evolve the next stage of life till we get to the celebrated later stages of our life and bask in our wealth and watch our families grow up.

If you are a legacy brand that has evolved in the 20th century, you have likely reinvented yourself several times over. I wrote an article on the “The Generation Changes” that spoke to the differences in the generations and the influence of technology in their lives. What makes this such a fascinating topic, along with lifecycle management, is that each product or service on the market caters to each of these generations, yet many support a linear view of a customer lifecycle.

Ask the Expert: How can establishing a good reputation with ISPs improve e-mail deliverability?

ask the expert - Most Internet service providers have systems in place to scan incoming messages individually for viruses and spam. The messages are then checked against black lists and evaluated with other attributes. Reputation is a newer criterion that ISPs are using to evaluate mail. A sender’s reputation is determined when ISPs request the sender’s reputation score from a central, third-party reputation database.While reputation management can decrease the amount of spam received by ISPs, it also means that senders must be able to implement a variety of specific sending rules to comply with each ISP’s requirements and be able to facilitate header markups to incorporate third-party accreditation solutions.

Some e-mail solutions readily accept new standards to adapt easily to changing ISP sending environments. Less flexible solutions make it more difficult to comply with ISP requirements, which can inadvertently damage a sender’s reputation if the company is using poor or unchecked sending practices.

Complying with individual ISP “throttling” requirements—the speed and volume at which an ISP will accept your e-mail—is a key factor in maintaining a good reputation. As a marketer, you should know if your e-mail platform (either in-house or through an e-mail service provider) allows control over settings such as total outbound connections, total message volume and volume ramping, and gives senders a way to match their sending practices to each ISP’s requirements, which change on a regular basis.

Senders should also be aware that a vast database of reputation data based on the global sending practices of thousands of companies was collected recently and published by anti-spam and accreditation vendors. This report provides ISPs with another way to filter e-mail by producing a “gray list” of senders. ISPs will make judgment calls based on the sending history published on this report to determine whether to send or block e-mail from unknown gray-listed senders.

Establishing a good reputation with ISPs is vital to deliverability. To protect your company’s reputation, consider doing the following:

1. Use throttling to insure that you are not over burdening ISPs by sending too many messages too fast. If you use an ESP, make sure they provide you with the reporting to understand exactly how each ISP treats your mail.
2. Contract with a third-party accreditation service that certifies sender policies and practices and makes those certified lists available to the ISPs.
3. Depending on the type or volume of mail you are sending, establishing an in-house ISP relations team can help ensure that your mailing practices and reporting are contributing to maintaining a good reputation and relationship with each ISP.

Retailers Ready For Narrower Opt-out Windows

mediapost.com - THERE’S NO SERIOUS TALK OF revising the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, but one of the constant fears is that Congress will narrow the window during which companies must honor opt-outs. The buzz has been that lawmakers will reduce the current window of 10 business days (14 days) down to three days. While I’ve heard several marketers fret about that possibility, the Email Experience Council’s latest research indicates that most marketers will be able to comply with that narrower window should it be enacted.

We’ll soon be releasing the Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study, which looks at the opt-out practices of 94 of the top online retailers, including how long it takes them to honor opt-outs. We found that 86% honored opt-out requests within three days, with many of those retailers honoring the requests immediately, as evidenced by the high proportion of retailers that sent no more emails after receiving the request. Another 4% honored opt-outs within seven days, and another 3% within the CAN-SPAM-mandated 14 days. The remaining 4% either didn’t honor opt-outs in time or didn’t honor them at all because of technical failures.

The EEC is also currently running a one-question survey on its homepage that asks marketers how long they need in order to honor opt-outs. Currently 82% of respondents have indicated that they can honor opt-outs within three days, roughly in line with our study results.

The results of both the study and the ongoing survey are proof of how the email marketing industry has matured in the wake of the CAN-SPAM Act in terms of technical ability. It’s surely also a sign of the need to respect consumers’ inboxes or face spam complaints and deliverability problems. For those retailers and other businesses that take longer than three days to honor unsubscribes, this should be a wakeup call to tighten up your processes to keep up with the rising standards in the industry.

Of course, while retailers excelled at quick unsubscribes, there were a few areas where their opt-out processes were lacking, like providing consumers with alternatives to actually unsubscribing. For more on that and much more, check out the study when it’s released in a week or two. Or better yet, register for the EEC’s Email Evolution Conference in San Diego next month, as every attendee will get a copy of the report for free. Hope to see you there.

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