The eROI presenters, Dylan Boyd, Alex Williams, and I, have traveled all over the country to give presentations on various topics from Building Community Online to The Value of a Welcome Email Program to New Trends in Measuring the Success of your Online Marketing & Social Media Efforts. This blog post is an overload of resource material for 3 great presentations - enjoy!
I love that YouTube videos are timeless and all of us can re-live ridiculous moments years later. At eROI, we have dozens and dozens of those moments captured over the past many years on the eROI YouTube channel here >>. So, why am I doing a Flashback blog post? Yesterday, I had a client meeting with my friend James Adair and the typical client meeting turned into something so much better after watching the below video on our big screen. The second video is of distinguished Portland PR specialist, JulieAnna Little Giannini. She was the winner at eROI Idol, so it was only appropriate to include her video as well.
I recently wrote an article for iMedia Connection titled “11 Email Design Best Practices” and thought I’d share it with you if you hadn’t already checked it out. It starts like this:
Remember the last great offer you didn’t see? The savvy email marketer knows that you catch more conversions with honey than you do with vinegar, so make sure your email design is sweet!
If you’re starting a new email marketing program, or looking for an edge to take your email campaigns to the next level, consider these ideas for designing emails that get your compelling offer noticed. These tips and tricks will start you off right, and even help experienced email marketers amp-up existing campaigns, turning precise communication into profits and visibility.
1. Before you start
Prior to constructing your email, make sure that your message is clear and concise. Develop and refine what you want to say so that readers don’t lose interest or get confused about what your call-to-action is. What is your offer? How will reading and clicking through this email help the reader? Make sure they know what’s in it for them. Before and during the building process, continually ask yourself, “What would I think if I got this in my inbox? Would I immediately delete it? Or worse, report it as spam?” Rule No. 1 — don’t be spam.
Even the most compelling message can be rendered ineffective if it’s presented in an undesirable way to your readers. During this process you may encounter many challenges and obstacles. Your design team may want to create something striking and beautiful, but your audience may not want it. At the same time, don’t throw readers for a loop with a design that is off-brand. Your email design should be able to flow well with the look of your website as well as any pieces collateral offered. Consistency is good. Also, design the email around your readers by responding to their personality. Are they tech savvy? Parents? Students?
According to a new study published today by eMarketer, “57% of consumers had a more positive impression of companies they had purchased from when they received e-mail from them—and 40% said such e-mail made a future purchase from the company more likely.”
I just got eMarketer’s daily email showing a study by Epsilon where email delivery rates are steady, open rates have dropped a little over time (which makes sense as many default email environments like Outlook 2007 and Gmail have images turned off), and click-through rates are slightly down probably due to some fatigue from email recipients where the expectations have raised for better call to action and compelling email content to lure email recipients to the landing page. Good article below.
E-Mail Performance Steady
Consumers are still reading marketing e-mails, and still clicking on them. That steady performance is driving an equally steady rise in e-mail ad spending. Full Article
At eROI, we launch a quarterly email marketing study on things that make you scratch your head and do a bit of a double-take. Conventional wisdom says that EMAIL IS DEAD among high schoolers and college students. So, we decided to test that hypothesis, and this report has some fascinating discoveries.
Our latest survey uncovers exactly how high school students, college students, and recent college graduates communicate online. 283 high school and college students participated in the study and 29 states were represented.
These survey results reveal eye-opening trends and preferences of this demographic in how it communicates digitally. We also get valuable insight into the effectiveness of marketing messages received through email, and discover areas of opportunity for marketers to connect with this in-demand group.
Students can be an elusive demographic for marketers. From this study, you will learn about a lot of new trends and valuable information about students. You will also learn specific data on which marketing channels will carry and present your message most effectively.
CHECK OUT OUR REPORT ON STUDENT USE OF EMAIL AND SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS >>
At eROI, we try hard to be a resource to folks in the email marketing industry, and one of the ways that we’ve done that over the past 5 years is to do a quarterly study (based on a survey or aggregate data from our email marketing platform) and present those results to everyone in the industry. It always amazes us that there is a HUGE difference between what email marketers know to do as best practices for their campaigns versus what is actually done in the real world (where time, money, process, and other factors get in the way of best practices).
In this Q3′08 eROI study called “The Elements of Email“, there is a shocking difference of best practices vs. real world practices. For example, only a quarter of marketers test their subject lines. Fifty-five percent of online marketers don’t know how they authenticate emails (to ensure that more of their emails reach their email subscriber’s inbox. Lastly, only 10 percent of us create mobile versions of our email campaigns.
People are talking about the study, so make sure you check out what they are saying. And, if you’d like to draw your own conclusions, click here to see the full study >>
Articles on this study:
http://directmag.com/magill/0819-email-markers-slopping/
http://www.marketingvox.com/email-marketers-missing-opportunities-040449/
http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/email-marketers-missing-opportunities-5665/
Please comment below to let me know your take. Also don’t forget to subscribe to this blog. Now that I’m refreshed from vacation, I promise to post blog entries more frequently.
Loren McDonald explains it well. With rapid agreement among email industry insiders, Loren really nailed the answer to the question of the relevancy of the common email metric “open rate.”
The MediaPost article begins:
Email Open Rates: What’s the Alternative?
by Loren McDonald , Thursday, May 8, 2008
MY PREVIOUS COLUMN, “WHY THE Email Open Rate Must Die” spawned a spirited debate, mainly on these three topics (click here to read the first column and all 17 comments):
Don’t kill the open rate, but view it in the proper perspective.
PLEASE let it die!
What can we replace it with? You don’t offer any suggestions other than to say we can do better.
I stand guilty as charged of not offering an alternative to the open rate in that first column. I will remedy that in this column.
The Open Rate: Rename, Rethink, Redefine
So, what are the alternatives to the open rate?
1. As I understand it, none exist today or in the near future. Some have suggested using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to track opens, but many email clients also block CSS. The major email providers (Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail/Live Mail, Gmail) can more accurately track “open or read rates” because the email client resides on their servers and does not have to hit an external server. But, the chance of these email providers sharing open data is as likely as world peace.
2.So, let’s rename it the “Email Render Rate” or something similar that reflects what the tracking images really measure. My proposed “render rate” would more accurately reflect what occurs when images are loaded in a recipient’s email client. This includes in preview panes, software clients such as Outlook or Web-based services such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail.
This redefinition (nothing else changes) will benefit retailers and others for whom product images are important to conversion. A render rate of 25% lets the sender know that their email rendered with images in 25% of the messages seen by recipients’ inboxes or smart phones.
Analyzing the subscriber base by render rate over time would help the marketer better optimize creative for subscribers who normally view images and for those who don’t. As smart marketers and the industry make this shift, I’m sure dozens of other creative uses of the render rate would also emerge.
3.Next, let’s de-emphasize the open rate and focus the email scorecard on output and business metrics. I’m not devaluing email process metrics. In fact, I find tremendous value in spam-complaint and unsubscribe rates, for example.
But ultimately, the only metrics your CEO and CFO care about are those that measure how the email program supports business goals such as growing revenues, increasing margins, improving customer retention and lowering communications costs.
Here at eROI we go to great lengths to keep you up to date on the latest trends in email marketing. Our latest survey asks for your input on the Subscribe/Unsubscribe Process.
This survey should take just a minute or two, and we will share the results with you when complete.
All survey participants will be automatically entered to win one of a handful of iPod Shuffle mp3 players!
On June 21st at 11am PST, Eyetools Inc. CEO and founder, Greg Edwards will join eROI’s Dylan Boyd to speak about best practices in email design and how eye tracking studies can impact your design. You will be amazed at how eye tracking is so different from click tracking and what it can tell you about how lift your email campaign results and metrics.
Learn the ‘What to dos’ and the ‘What not to dos’ from these seasoned industry professionals. They’ll be looking at some before and after case studies to explore the difference even the smallest tweaks can make to the performance of your emails.
A recent study from DMA shows just how critical an element email is when it comes to successful direct marketing campaigns. While the study’s main focus is to show that the lines of direct marketing and brand marketing have blurred through multi-channel campaigns, the study’s statistics point to the predominance of email – and web in these campaigns. It is email’s ability to personalize and track and motivate with clear calls to action that makes it a key ingredient. By Integrating and coordinating across multiple channels, marketers can create cohesive brand messaging that can lead to powerful brand experiences.
How does email fit in? In a fully integrated campaign email is an element that can breathe “interactive life” into 2 dimensional print campaigns. Direct mail and print advertising should no longer be stand alone elements. Email and web can be coordinated with traditional marketing efforts to dynamically drive messaging. Even more, email opens the lines of communication with your audience allowing them to respond, participate and own your brand. This leads to a better understanding of your audience and your brand, which will improve messaging, targeting and personalization. Check out the study to see how email is influencing today’s best direct marketing tactics and principles.
Does Design and Coding Matter in Email Marketing?
We are closing this survey down at the end of the week. We would love a few more people to take part. IF you have 5 minutes and would like to get the results of this study, please give us your answers. We really appreciate it.
We like to ask people what they think about certain issues facing email marketing. We started last fall asking people about their email inbox preferences. Seemed that we hit a nerve as so many marketing sites and bloggers picked up on it and carried the message around the global block.
This month we are curious about another issue, Email Design and Coding Perceptions. Does either design or coding of your email marketing campaigns really matter? Do you design emails for specific segments in your audience or do you keep your messaging broad so that you don’t seem like you are only speaking to one group of people? With the email client market so fragmented, are you changing the way you design and code emails?
Help us understand how you feel about this issue and we will post the results for you this month in our latest quarterly study. Thank you for your help with this study.
Does Design and Coding Matter in Email Marketing?
We like to ask people what they think about certain issues facing email marketing. We started last fall asking people about their email inbox preferences. Seemed that we hit a nerve as so many marketing sites and bloggers picked up on it and carried the message around the global block.
This month we are curious about another issue, Email Design and Coding Perceptions. Does either design or coding of your email marketing campaigns really matter? Do you design emails for specific segments in your audience or do you keep your messaging broad so that you don’t seem like you are only speaking to one group of people? With the email client market so fragmented, are you changing the way you design and code emails?
Help us understand how you feel about this issue and we will post the results for you this month in our latest quarterly study. Thank you for your help with this study.
In my last blog posting, I mentioned Microsoft’s deliveribility guy Brian Holdsworth but ran out of time before jotting down my notes about his talk, so here they are:
MS Outlook and Windows LiveMail (formerly Hotmail) represent 600 million people / users in the world. Microsoft expects this to climb to 1 billion in the next few years.
Big change in Outlook 2007: it automatically postmarks emails to email addresses NOT in your address book. It delays the send several minutes per email address not in your address book. This will significantly reduce the amount of spam generated by botnets and zombies that send email through unprotected PCs (which is responsible for 80% of the increase in spam in the past year).
Spammer Trends and Tactics:
Microsoft has brought 376 successful lawsuits against spammers in the past 3 years. Part of the lawsuit process requires the spammer to come into Microsoft’s office and explain why they spammed. Recently, a 17 year-old came into to talk to the Microsoft deliverability team - he started when he was 9 years old and was now sending 25 million emails per day and made $300 per day on affiliate revenue (which breaks down to roughly $1 per 100,000 emails - not great ROI, but pretty good when considering there are no costs other than his eventual fine and jail time).
Of the 4 billion emails per day that Hotmail processes, 90% is spam. Much of this is image spam, and spam generated from botnets and zombies.
Next version of Hotmail is Windows LiveMail which is very similar to Outlook.
An Unsubscribe link is built into every email in Windows LiveMail in the Return Header.
Microsoft Goals:
1. Reduce Spam in Inbox
2. Improve deliverability for legit senders:
a. volume based reputation
b. Sender ID + past reputation (Outlook postmark)
c. Unsubscribe built into Windows LiveMail
Last note is the phenomenon of communication barriers within Microsoft. The Outlook team makes major changes/shifts every 3 years, and for Outlook 2007, they are moving to a content rendering engine built in MS Word instead of the natural choice of Internet Explorer. Microsoft’s deliverability found out about this at the same time the general public saw the press release a couple weeks ago - doesn’t know why this decision was made by the Outlook team. Maybe the next ReturnPath event can address this topic in more detail…
I attended Return Path’s Seattle Workshop yesterday and learned a lot more about “Email Strategies that Increase Deliverability and Response” than I expected. They even had a guest speaker from Microsoft Hotmail (now branded Windows LiveMail) - Product Planner Brian Holdsworth who shed light on Microsoft’s deliverability strategies. Apparently, over 50% of email browser use is MS Outlook, so maybe we should listen to what he has to say.
Here are my notes from the event (Return Path speaker):
Large ISPs getting significantly more email volume each day - recently showing 7.4billion emails per day.
What is Email Reputation?
1. Complaints (Informal)
2. High Unknown Users (unclean list)
3. Spam Traps (spamcop.com and other types of spam-catching email addresses)
4. Sending Infrastructure (IP address must be clean)
5. Sending Consistency (similar daily email volume)
Where you are sending from matters a whole lot more than domain reputation and email content.
Feedback loops are important - automatically unsubscribes people who complain. Added benefit of decreasing complaint rates up to 40% at Yahoo, Hotmail, when feedback loops are implemented by senders.
Strategies to Reduce complaints:
Here is a great example of making your transactional email more than just a notification. When done right, transactional email can be a great branding opportunity.
Check out this awesome shipping confirmation email from Cd Baby below (click to enlarge).
I saw this…
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