April 28, 2005
E-Mail Marketing: Alive and Well
David Hallerman, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the just-published report, E-Mail Marketing: How to Improve ROI, says e-mail is still a powerful marketing tool — if used properly.
"Despite the assault e-mail marketing endures from spam and phishing, even with the drag on delivery rates imposed by the filters, and regardless of the sheer e-mail overload in most people's inboxes, 71% of US online advertisers used e-mail marketing in 2004," says Mr. Hallerman. "That's only six points less than the number of respondents using paid search — the current interactive marketing favorite — and 12% of advertisers plan to start e-mail campaigns in 2005."
See the Charts on what vehicles e-Marketers are Using
See the Charts on Email User Attitudes
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 8:41 PM | Permalink
Spam filtering makes workers miss deadlines
Email messages mistaken for spam by filtering software -- known as "false positives" in the anti-spam business -- have caused four in 10 workers to miss a deadline, according to a survey released this week at a London security conference.
The Infosecurity Europe conference partnered with a US-based vendor of email server and security appliances for the survey, which noted that 42 percent of UK workers said they'd missed a deadline due to an email message gone astray.
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=18663
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:32 PM | Permalink
April 27, 2005
Let's Start by Hanging them All
So yesterday we were able to spend and hour in a "fun" discussion with an ISP Relations Department in a region with a 200K Cable subscriber base. The reason for this call is that they have started a policy of blocking ANY email that looks like marketing. This is what the ISPs in the old days did, unsuccessfully, but not the way they do them today.
Imagine this "scenario" that was explained.
1. You go to buy a ticket on United Airlines. You request an email confirmation of your ticket information.
2. They send it to you
3. Your ISP blocks it as it is "marketing"
4. You don't get your ticket info, and now need to call United to see why
The ISP says that they don't care. At least until one of thier customers calls to complain, which they are going to take a long time to do as they think that it is the fault of the Airline.
To me this is VERY anti-business and VERY assuming that all emails are spam. They told me that it is easier for them to assume everything is bad until told different.
Imagine signing up for newsletters, promotional offers for your favorite retailer, mortgage info, real estate info, etc and never getting your important mail.
We got them to make some changes for certain IPs associated with the businesses in that town, but they will not change it for anyone else.
I see a fire storm brewing in the local and state business community when they learn about this.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:00 PM | Permalink
Have We Gone Too Far With Viral Marketing?
My Initial take on this is no. It seems that we are just starting to scratch the surface of understanding what is "viral" and what is media and pr driven events. Just this past week I saw a Carl's Jr campaign that started to "go viral" and talked to the team behind it. They were actually surprised that it was getting as much attention as it was. Not saying that they weren't happy, but sometimes you really can't control what goes viral.
We know that some campaigns we have either done or seen are built with the intent of spreading the word. Humor, animals and sex sell no matter if in email or on TV. (Is there a difference now?)
Take a look at this article and here his take on this issue. My mind tells me that as marketers we have heard the term "viral" too much. How about changing it to well planned media campaings instead. Not as 1999 buzzworthly, but true.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:30 PM | Permalink
April 22, 2005
An ISPs Thoughts on SpamCop
I don't know if this is old news or not, but thought I would pass it on.
I just got off the phone with one ISP director and told us that he thinks that SpamCop is a scam because they do not adhere to RFC822 and they live in their own little world. He is a strong advocate against them and has convinced other ISPs to stop using them. Below is a description of RFC822.
Q: Why not allow bounces? They are required by RFC822!
A: Originally, SpamCop made attempts to forgive misdirected bounce messages - to reject them as evidence of spam. However, there are two factors conspiring to force us to rescind this policy. First of course, is that these misdirected messages *are* spam as we define it (Unsolicited Bulk Mail). They are objectionable to recipients and can even cause denial of service to innocent third parties. Users of our blocking service want us to stop them.
Second is that spammers have taken advantage of this policy, disguising their spam as bounce messages in order to avoid SpamCop. If we did not change the policy, this would become a highly popular way to "beat SpamCop".
Although bounces are required, it is possible to avoid the situation under which they are required (see above). So they aren't really required unless you have already 'painted yourself into a corner.'
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:36 AM | Permalink
6 Email Broadcast Firms Rated on Typical At-Home vs At-Work Email Delivery
We've never heard an email broadcast firm 'fess up and say their delivery isn't all that great. But, all industry insiders know some vendors get notoriously dreadful delivery.
So, we figured you'd be interested in an exclusive look at new study data from delivery "optimization" consultancy eDiagnostix.
How the study worked
The researchers picked six email broadcast firms at random and opted in their own seed email addresses (email accounts set up specifically for tracking incoming mail) at 15 large ISPs including AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Earthlink, and Roadrunner.
The goal was to see which vendor's own newsletters were actually delivered to the in-box (not junk folder).
Plus the researchers also ran the newsletters through almost a dozen filters commonly used by "client-side" -- ie. companies' IT departments filtering in-coming email. These included Norton, McAfee, Brightmail and SpamAssassin.
Study results
Almost all of the six vendors being studied were on at least one or more blacklists during the study. That's normal.
When you send lots of bulk email, no matter how perfectly permission-based, inevitably some recipient's going to complain to one of the more than 400 blacklists out there, some of which are less-than-scrupulous about cross-checking spam claims.
Blacklists aside, here are the delivery rates reported by the Study for each vendor (listed in alpha order):
ISP-Filtered At-Work Filters
Bronto 88% 80%
DoubleClick 75% 96%
eROI 80% 96%
ExactTarget 69% 68%
SilverPop 97% 64%
SubscriberMail 68% 59%
Important note: These delivery rates were for HTML newsletters created by in-house staff at each of these vendors. These are not delivery rates for their clients' emails.
Clients' email delivery could be lower or higher. Why? Because many filters -- especially the at-work ones -- stop mail based on HTML coding style and actual content. Each clients' coding style and content will vary, so their results will too.
We strongly suspect the at-work filter levels look more cheerful above than they really would be in reality. That's because this study only checked against the at-work filter programs and didn't factor in the fact emails would have run through some ISP-based filters before they reached the at-work programs.
Advice - how you should react to this study data
First, don't rush out to switch vendors unless you're tracking your own delivery rates with your own seeds, and you're darn sure your list, message content, and HTML coding are as clean as possible.
Troy Foss, Partner at eDiagnostix, told us emailers who've been mailing for a long time often have the biggest problems because their newsletters are a mess of old HTML code.
"Your email may be pleasing to the eye, nothing looks broken, but the HTML can be very sloppy. That's also a big characteristic of spammers' email, so it gets filtered."
So, ask your email tech team to review your HTML code for things like extra font tags, etc. They should check to make sure you're compliant with the rules posted for HTML at the World Wide Web Consortium's site (link below).
Also, if you're not already, before you send any blasts always run all of your text-content (including subject line and body copy) through one of the many spam filters out there to see if it will be flagged as spam. Most email broadcast firms now offer this tool to clients, but not all clients bother to take the extra step and use the tool before every single send.
(We use ours religiously and probably wind up changing words in our emails about once every ten messages.)
One final idea -- if you offer an at-work email newsletter, you probably should consider asking recipients for a "back-up" email address in addition to their work account. That way if mail doesn't get through, you have another account to ping.
If you're sending mail the recipients paid for, that's a definite must.
Good luck!
[Quick disclaimer: eDiagnostix started a formal business partnership with eROI recently; however it was initiated after the results of this study were in. In fact, they invented the study as way to guage potential partners.]
Useful links related to this article:
Email Deliverability Charts April 2005:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/emailcharts/study.html
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 1:29 AM | Permalink
54% of e-mail marketers don`t know if their message is being delivered
Although e-mail marketers say their biggest challenge is getting their messages delivered into consumers’ inboxes, more than half, or 54%, say they don’t use e-mail delivery auditing tools to proactively improve results, JupiterResearch says in a recent report.
The report, “Delivery Auditing Tools: Tactics to Improve E-mail Delivery,” says that many marketers rely on post-campaign methods to identify delivery problems, a strategy that “does little to proactively determine the likely delivery success of campaigns.”
It adds that the rate of non-use of delivery auditing tools rises to 65% among marketers who conduct their campaigns in-house instead of through an outside e-mail services provider.
Jupiter cites the following delivery auditing techniques as vital to campaign performance:
• Inbox seeding–checking to see how e-mail messages are received or marked as spam by multiple ISPs;
• Content and message scoring–checking e-mail content and structure against multiple spam filters to determine if e-mail messages have problems that will cause them to be trapped by filters;
• Messaging rendering–inspecting how e-mail messages will be rendered in different e-mail clients. (Jupiter notes that the EmailAdvisor self-service tool from Piper Software, a part of Lyris Technologies Inc., renders e-mail campaigns in minutes, while other tools can take up to a day to produce results.)
• Blacklist monitoring–alerting marketers when their IP addresses are added to blacklists that block e-mail delivery;
• Use of delivery service providers that manage relations with ISPs, audit e-mail practices and provide additional services.
The Jupiter report also rates the delivery services offered by four leading delivery service providers: EnhanceRate, Piper Software, Pivotal Veracity and Return Path. It gave its highest overall score to Lyris Technologies unit Piper Software.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 1:27 AM | Permalink
April 19, 2005
First Quarter 2005 ISP Delivery Chart
Here is a chart from eMarketer that is interesting. It shows delivery an filtering of legitimate emails by ISP.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:18 AM | Permalink
The Spam You Never See Can Hurt You
Spam is bad. So no spam must be good, right? Wrong.
E-mail has unquestionably changed the way people communicate around the globe. IDC estimates that the number of person-to-person e-mails sent worldwide in 2004 was 7.8 trillion, and projects that the number will reach 10.4 trillion in 2008. But the researcher reports that most people get about almost as many spam messages every day as they get e-mails.
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle stated that as much as 70% of all e-mail, 12 billion messages a day, was spam.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:10 AM | Permalink
April 15, 2005
Email Deliverability Maintaining Record Levels
Commercial emailers are finding the vast brunt of their messages actually getting through, according to Internet Retailer, with retail and catalog emails seeing deliverability rates hovering around record levels in the last quarter of 2004. The figures, provided by Bigfoot Interactive, show Q4's deliverability at 94 percent, down just a tad from Q3's 94.6 percent. Response rates climbed to 4.8 percent in Q4, up from 3.8 percent.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:44 PM | Permalink
April 8, 2005
IronPort Bonded Sender a protection racket?
IronPort Bonded Sender Program looks more like a protection racket than solid anti-spam technology
With great fanfare and plenty of headlines, MSN and Hotmail have joined the IronPort Bonded Sender Program, a scheme that requires companies to post a bond before being allowed to send email. The program is rather expensive to get into, putting it far out of the reach of legitimate email marketers, small businesses and non-profits that don't have deep pockets. The whole thing smacks of an inside job: IronPort's CEO is a former employee of both Hotmail and MSN, for one thing. It also looks more like a way to extract dollars from businesses rather than really solve the spam problem: money posted by businesses who want to participate goes directly to -- guess who? -- IronPort.
The message sounds like a protection racket: pay us or your email might get caught in the spam filters at Hotmail and MSN. Yet the whole scheme does absolutely nothing to stop spammers from sending email in the first place, so it's not really a solution for stopping spam at all. As Ray Everett-Church (from the counsel for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) says, the IronPort system is really just a way to let people buy their way into inboxes rather than getting customer permission. And that's bad news for everyone.
Legitimate email delivery needs to remain available to universities, non-profits, and organizations from poor countries who simply can't afford the fees demanded by IronPort. The Bonded Sender Program discriminates based on economic status: poor organizations can't afford the fees. In addition, the idea of one company controlling the whole system is undemocratic and goes against the free spirit of the Internet. We don't need another Network Solutions fiasco. For these reasons and many others, I believe the Bonded Sender Program is bad for the Internet: it is unfair, undemocratic, and ineffective in stopping spam. A much better solution is the puzzle solution proposed by Microsoft, which will very likely make the Bonded Sender Program obsolete.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:16 AM | Permalink
April 7, 2005
The First Volley has Been Fired
Well from a Study we did with Marketing Sherpa last year, we were happy to see that ET not only tried to DEBUNK our quarterly study (while confirming it) but also went as far to credit us with creating a trend with marketers in the 4th quarter of 2004 (which... surprise... changed the target for the best day of the week.
A big thank you to the ET team for not only verifying us, but also for sharing our name with the industry and your customers in your monthly email.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:04 PM | Permalink
April 5, 2005
Email Send Day Studies Prove Self-Influencing
"Best" day shifted
Email firm ET released a study on the effectiveness of email campaigns relative to the days of the week emails are sent. Several earlier studies suggested that Monday and Tuesday have been the most effective days of the week. But the new study suggests that the best day for opening emails aren't necessarily the best days for conversions.
Now just who could have such an impact with thier deliverablility studies that so may people responded to to try it out on Mondays and Tuesdays? Hmmmm.
How about eROI?
Read our studies and how marketers listen to our quarterly reports here >>
Or find the most recent one from 4th Quarter 2004 here >>
Email Send Day Studies Prove Self-Influencing
SHOT FIRED OVER THE BOW
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:06 PM | Permalink
April 2, 2005
How HTML Code Affects E-Mail Deliverability
A common e-mail marketing misconception is e-mail is filtered because it contains words such as 'free' in the subject line or body. By itself, that won't get your e-mail filtered. Though certain content combinations may get a message filtered, ISPs may be trapping your legitimate e-mail for infractions you rarely pay attention to.
How HTML Code Affects E-Mail Deliverability
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:05 PM | Permalink
April 1, 2005
Most Email Marketers Fail to Maximize Email Delivery
54% of e-mail marketers don't know if their message is being delivered
Although e-mail marketers say their biggest challenge is getting their messages delivered into consumers' inboxes, more than half, or 54%, say they don't use e-mail delivery auditing tools to proactively improve results, JupiterResearch says in a recent report.
The report, "Delivery Auditing Tools: Tactics to Improve E-mail Delivery", says that many marketers rely on post-campaign methods to identify delivery problems, a strategy that does little to proactively determine the likely delivery success of campaigns.
It adds that the rate of non-use of delivery auditing tools rises to 65% among marketers who conduct their campaigns in-house instead of through an outside e-mail services provider.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 9:04 PM | Permalink
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