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August 31, 2006
Spam Obituaries - Where Junk Goes to Die
I came across this blog that takes the names of the spam and brings them to life, then kills them off. It is a great idea and fun if you find that you are the one person in this industry that has an hour or so to kill each day writing this.
http://spamobituaries.blogspot.com/
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 6:43 AM | Permalink
A Guide to Viral Content
Most of this is common sense, but it is always nice to see it in a chart, and hear others “definitions” of points w/in a campaign.
From a vidcast on http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/
Content: something that people want to spend time with, and share with others (video game, education, story, etc)
Seeding Angle/ Viral Hook- The teaser to encourage someone to dive into the message
The Seeder: Spreads the marketing material to the desired connection points
Connection point: Areas of distribution to your target market
Initial Spread: To encourage sufficient spread, you have to start “in the middle of the viral pyramid” with as many people as you can. The number of connection points influences this
Viral Levels: Finally the viral aspect has enough umph to do its job.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 1:28 AM | Permalink
August 30, 2006
The True Face of RSS Today
Really Seldom Syndication
RSS has marketers' attention. Most US employees do not know what it is.
By James Belcher - Senior Analyst - eMarketer
When eMarketer last looked at Really Simple Syndication (RSS) in March, the little-used technology had caught the interest of marketers eager to use it as an end run around spam filters.
Since then, more data have been released suggesting that RSS is...a little-used technology with which marketers hope to make an end run around spam filters. Research by Media Buyer Planner and Workplace Print Media shows that merely 2% of US employees subscribe to RSS feeds, and only 9% know what such feeds are.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:08 AM | Permalink
Alaska Airlines Newsletter Finally Let Me Down
I have come to think that Alaska Airlines has a key logger on my computer as they always seem to send relevant emails and offers. Well once again I was ready to buy. But when I clicked through to the page to book some travel, for the first time they let me down. There were not any deals available, as they stated due to the time of the year.
So why give me the carrot I want to eat if the fridge is empty? Just a case in point, if you are going to send relevant emails, make sure that the landing page is active with content. IF there is a chance that you might sell out of an item, make a note in the email like "limited inventory available".
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 1:24 AM | Permalink
August 29, 2006
Holiday Initiatives Swing to E-mail
This is an interesting report. I have had the holidays already on my mind as I am sure many of you have as well. What are your plans? Are they locked down? Will you use email RIGHT this year?
E-mail marketing and search engine marketing will be the focus of many Internet and multichannel retailers' marketing campaigns as they approach the holiday season, according to a new study released by WebTrends.
Forty one percent of the 300 retailers surveyed in the 2006 Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report, said that the holiday season accounts for over 20 percent of their annual revenue. According to Forrester Research, the industry has already experienced an incredible 33 percent compound annual growth rate, and by their predictions is expected to increase by yet another 20 percent, totaling over $200 billion by the end of 2006.
demand generation activity for this holiday season, followed by search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Overall, the biggest increases in spending according to the report will be in email marketing (52 percent), search engine marketing (46 percent) and search engine optimization (38 percent). The biggest decreases in activity spending however will be in online banner ads (17 percent), print advertising (16 percent) and broadcast advertising (14 percent).
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 3:20 PM | Permalink
Adobe Changes The Edge Email Format
Not that this is any stop the press kind of news, but as a reader for many years I was interested as to why Macromedia changed the email newsletter layout. I would assume that change happened due to the new ownership, but none the less, I like it. I would be interested to learn what impact this changes to an image newsletter format had on the click through rate. I would naturally assume that the click through rate was higher, simply due to the fact that readers wanted to learn more.
I think that keeping it simple sometimes has merit. And in this case where they sell tools to develop image driven content (think flash) this is the right way. I will keep my eyes on the next one to see what changes occur in the next vesion.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:01 PM | Permalink
August 28, 2006
How Can You Get Verbal Opt in to be Confirmed
I had this great question come in last week that I wanted to share as it is very relevant.
I was just wondering, what are your thoughts on whether or not to opt-in a user who has verbally subscribed to an email communication stream? My personal concern with regard to this possible scenario is that the user may forget that they subscribed to the communication and we wouldn't have indisputable evidence that they had. I'd definitely appreciate your two cents on this matter.
After some thought, we surmized that using a double opt in form, you can enter that person's email address and then trigger the confirmation/opt in email to hit them back to confirm. Using this strategy you can get the IP, Date, Time and Double Opt in stamp to give you that record.
I would also suggest letting this person know to expect an email from your company and tell them how to act on it and opt in.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 3:24 PM | Permalink
August 25, 2006
Email is Still King - Redux
I found this latest eMarketer graph to hold some interesting data on where marketers are dipping thier toes into the water. I know that all of these methods are great when used right and in combination with email triggers and drip campaigns with viral send to friend built into the sites.
We have sites that we have design or worked on like:
deathJr
MusicInEveryDirection
SilentHillifier
Create Your Case
Barber Brigade
Send A High Five
and more that use these types of new media that we have launched.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:49 AM | Permalink
August 24, 2006
Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study
Chad White over at RetailEmail.BlogSpot.com put together a phenomenal study on the top 101 retail emailers and the entire process of subscribing to their email communications. This is worth a read for sure. Not only is this study great, but he also comments on the campaigns that come in daily and weekly from these subscriptions.
He also wraps up a his daily posts with the Subsjectivity Scanner. Which hightlight the subject lines daily.
Here is an example:
SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Staples, 8/22, 4 pm — Staples Easy Mobile Tech is here to help with a $10 coupon!
Polo, 8/22, 5 pm — Introducing New Multicolor Big Pony Styles
Saks Fifth Avenue, 8/22, 1 pm — Just in: SAKS.COM FALL CATALOG + New Fashion Incubator
Bass Pro Shops, 8/22, 3 pm — RedHead Sale and Sweepstakes at Bass Pro!
Harry & David, 8/22, 4 pm — Going fast: The world's biggest, sweetest Peaches - order now!
L.L. Bean, 8/22, 4 pm — Fall Favorites under $30 + Lower Prices on Polos
Office Depot, 8/22, 12 pm — Toshiba Week Savings
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 10:00 AM | Permalink
eMarketer - The Cost of Spam
A quick take away, they can place a financial value on all other types of spam, but not email spam. I was hungry to see what the value of this would be.
By Ben Macklin - Senior Analyst
Spam is the scourge of the Internet. It clogs inboxes, crashes servers, wastes time and money and is an abuse of privacy. More than half of the two trillion e-mail messages sent in 2006 are likely to be spam. According to the anti-spam Web site Spamhaus Project, about 200 spammers worldwide are responsible for about 80% of all spam in Europe and North America. There are an estimated 2,300 spammers in the US.
Spam is one of the costs one pays for being online. Most of us are prepared to pay that cost because the benefits of being connected to the Internet far outweigh this cost, but data from Consumer Reports' "State of the Net 2006" report puts some figures to that cost.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:17 AM | Permalink
August 23, 2006
Interesting Gmail Spam/Phishing
I noticed this past week a large increase of spam in one of my gmail accounts (yes I have too many email accounts - more than most humans). This spam was "sent" from Gmail and flagged and caught by their filters as well. Thanks GMail.
Keep your eyes out fot this one as it is flooding the inbox. The odd thing is I only use this email account for opt ins form gaming companies I watch for competitive information for client campaigns... so I wonder where it came from.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:45 AM | Permalink
August 21, 2006
Americans Sure Love to Eat Out
One thing that I found interesting in the way that this study was presented is that it covered total clicks and reads. It is something that we all track but rarely find interesting to report on. I am thinking that we could report on some more interesting metrics from some deep reporting deatils our emailroi product features and might take some time next month to pull those numbers together to see how they compare.
If you are testing and aren't trying new metrics, you aren't developing campaigns that convert.
Restaurant Industry Leads Open Rates: Harte-HanksThe restaurant industry had the best e-mail open rates, exceeding 100 percent, according to the Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index for January-June.
Restaurants had open rates of 167.7 percent for the period. Open rates exceeding 100 percent include pass-a-long and reopened e-mail. The industry also had the highest clickthrough rate of 57.7 percent.
Of the 13 industries, retail had the lowest open rate, with 35.3 percent, and automotive had the lowest clickthrough rate, 5.7 percent.
E-mails sent to consumers had higher clickthrough rates of 19.9 percent and open rates of 78.9 percent, while business-to-business e-mail had rates of 11.2 percent and 67.7 percent, respectively.
The 13 industries surveyed in descending order of clickthrough rates were, restaurants (57.5 percent), publishing (55.6 percent), pharmaceutical (23.8 percent), travel and hospitality (23.4 percent), conference events (14.2 percent), financial services (11 percent), technology (10.9 percent), government (9.5 percent), insurance (9.5 percent,) consumer packaged goods (8.6 percent), entertainment (8.1 percent), retail (6.0 percent) and automotive (5.7 percent).
The Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index for January to June is a comparative aggregate including 4,300 business and consumer e-mail campaigns compiled through the Harte-Hanks Postfuture Enterprise Edition, an e-mail marketing platform.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:57 AM | Permalink
August 16, 2006
MSN Adds in Window Unsubscribe Button
Now this has been reported in many blogs these past few days, but I have yet to find it myself in my own MSN account.
If you have a JPG of it, please send it over or let me know where to find it.
E-mailers Call For AOL, Yahoo! to Follow Microsoft's Lead Now that Microsoft has added an unsubscribe button to its e-mail user interface, marketers are calling for other Internet service providers -- especially Yahoo! and AOL -- to follow suit.Microsoft last week became the first e-mail box provider to answer e-mail marketers' calls to include an unsubscribe button in its interface so consumers will be less likely to mistakenly report permission-based commercial e-mail as spam.
"We hope that all ISPs follow suit and we get to a level of accountability that is consistent across the Internet," said Ben Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for e-mail service provider Cheetahmail's parent Experian.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:43 AM | Permalink
August 15, 2006
Here is Who I am Hiring For My Email Marketing
Now I am not the kind of person to want to just hire someone from an email, but with a junk email like this hitting my inbox this past week ( and a award winning subject line) why would you not consider them as an ESP. I left all the contact info if you want to place your trust in a person like this too.
Subject: email maketing servicesHello,
We are interested in providing email marketing services for your company at very low costs.(lower charges per hour).We are located in WestAfrica, city of Lagos to be precise.We have highly skilled work force fully proficient internet research, email marketing (mail sending),affiliate programs,form filling and other emarketing services.
We can process large volume of work at a very short time and we operate 24hours /7days,we have excellent high speed internet connection ,30 computer equipped seats (including VOIP).
If interested in our services or expanding your company/email marketing jobs to our region,do contact us so we can discuss further.Assuring you of excellent and on time service.
Kind regards,
e. david.
B.stone ent.
PHONE:23418985737
EMAIL:bitterstone2@yahoo.no
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 12:46 PM | Permalink
eROI Releases Q2 2006 Delivery Study
Home and work users have different preferences.
For e-mail marketers looking to make the biggest impact, it makes sense to pay attention to whether users are receiving their e-mail at home or at work.
According to a Q2 2006 study of e-mail marketing preferences by eROI Inc., 79% of people who subscribe to business-to-business e-mail marketing messages receive them at a business e-mail address. Just 19% of people who receive consumer-oriented e-mail marketing messages subscribe with their business e-mail address.
Those who receive consumer-oriented messages were also much more likely to use an e-mail address created specifically for e-mail marketing: 24% did, vs. 6% of those who received B2B messages.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:51 AM | Permalink
August 14, 2006
New emailROI email marketing ESP BETA launched
After 12 months of surveying customers, rewriting millions of lines of code and testing a new user interface we are happy to announce our latest version of emailROI is going to be released to ALL emailROI customers currenlty using the email marketing platform.
The new system will was built as an upgrade to the already amazing functionality of the emailROI platform and will allow customers and agencies even greater control over the system. New XML API and CSS abilities will permit clients to create a system that is perfect for their needs.
Also introduced is a new RSS to Email system, as we had email to RSS in Dec 04. This new system allows you to set up automatic email campaigns using the RSS feeds you have produced from your site, blog or other source. It automatically wraps the RSS feed (and segments number of articles, day, time and frequency as you choose) into your brand template and sends it out through the emailROI platform. It was orginally built in mind for news and publishing clients, but has uses in consumer (think product feeds) as well as B to B product, events and news updates on a daily, weekly, monthly or date of the month based format.
The greatest of all new functions (IMHO) is the ability to completely rewrap the entire UI for agencies or companies to allow them to have a completely customized email marketing platform that allows them to level the playing feild against all other ESP and agency competion.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:30 AM | Permalink
August 11, 2006
Damn the Torpedos - The Spam Reflex
Good report from Return Path: "Consumers Overreport Spam"
MORE THAN ONE IN THREE consumers mistakenly report e-mail that they have signed up for as "junk" or "spam," according to a report released Thursday by e-mail marketing services company Return Path.
The study, based on a June survey of 2,035 Web users, found that 36 percent of consumers hit the "spam" button when they want to unsubscribe to e-mail that they have agreed to receive. Almost that same proportion--31 percent--said they don't use the "unsubscribe" links that are found in commercial e-mails.
The overreporting of spam is considered problematic for e-mail marketers because senders that have been wrongly characterized as spammers are at risk of ending up on blacklists by e-mail service providers.
But consumers seem to feel they have no choice. When asked why they didn't use the "unsubscribe" links, consumers indicated that they suspected that the clicking on unsubscribe would just result in yet more e-mail. Reasons given by respondents for not trusting unsubscribe links included: "If I do I just get more junk email," "I think email clients only use this as a ruse to certify an email address," and "Most often they do not work."
The study also found that a large proportion of the e-mails consumers receive every day are commercial in nature. Nearly half of respondents said that more than 60 percent of the e-mails they received were commercial mailings.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:29 AM | Permalink
August 10, 2006
Stats on Web Email Clients Penetration
I came across this study on NY Times. Yahoo is the clear leader followed by AOL, MSN/Hotmail and then Gmail and Comcast for total accounts.
Google, by contrast, is much less consistent. Its map service is now a very close third behind MapQuest and Yahoo. And the two-year-old Gmail is now the No. 4 e-mail service in the country, with 8.6 million users in June. That is not bad in a market where people do not switch e-mail addresses casually. But over the last year, according to comScore, Yahoo added 11.8 million e-mail users, more than Gmail’s entire user base.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:52 AM | Permalink
August 9, 2006
Will we See a Rebound in AOL Email Accounts
I was wondering this AM if we would see a rebound in AOL users again as they are giving back email accounts to those that claim them for free going back for 2 years. Will we see people want these back or use them as new email accounts again?
Do you think that we will see our list percentages change to a higher concentration of AOL accounts as subscribers? Will we see more people go back and get them to use as subscription accounts? Watch your lists to see if a shift occurs, or maybe there will be ZERO impact.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:32 AM | Permalink
August 4, 2006
I Lose Sleep at Night With Emails Like This
I can't tell you how many emails like this I get a day/week. It blows my mind still that people are selling email database left and right and spamming people to do it. I have actually opted out of this email so many times I cannot count. And still... here it is again.
Are you people buying this crap? Would you? Tell me. There must be some people that still are and they are just as guilty of this spam issue that still plagues us today.
I actually had my entire laptop fry this past week and I had to go to the server to restore my email. That was painful, but not as painfull as weeding through 45K emails and learning (as this was a manual 10 hour process) how much damn spam I am still getting. Even with all of the systems we have in place for our own company, it never ends.
Anyway, if you get these offers, please tell the man in the overcoat to go away. Help us, help you.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:41 AM | Permalink
August 3, 2006
How to Keep Text Ads off your Gmail Campaigns
I noticed the other day as I got an alert from gtalk (Googles IM program) and read the email from that alert, that there were not any visible contextual ads surrounding my email newsletter. I had not noticed tihs before (is Google Missing a Revenue Opp?) and thought it was an opportunity. Many of you have competition that buy keywords that you most likely use in your email and newsletter campaigns. Now knowing that a percentage of people will use gtalk and check email from it, helps me know that my message will stand out better in come cases, allowing focus with my brand and messaging.
I am not yet sure on the adaptation percentage of Gtalk yet, but I am looking, and how many check from this applicaiton as opposed to web access login. But at least we know that there are opportunities to stand out better .
If our own office was a fair representation (as at eROI we live on Gtalk) I would rest well, but alas I know many others are not slaves to technology like we are. Sigh...
I actually just found the stats, and they are disapointing:
The user numbers coming out on Google Talk are staggeringly terrible. Comscore usage numbers show that nearly a year after launch Google is a distant, distant 4th after MSN, Yahoo and AIM. They hold a pitiful 1% of total instant messaging market share, with 3.4 million unique users in May 2006.
Below is an example.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:30 AM | Permalink
August 2, 2006
ClickZ Taking the High Road.. about time
I want to congratulate ClickZ for taking the road less traveled by some ESPs and actually send the email from the domain. I have fought a battle for years to get this email into my inbox but in the past too many whitelisting criteria have changed and it always ends up in my Junk in EVERY program I have signed up with. Look at the FROM address in the below creative and see how scary it is to a general user and to ISPs.
Looking forward to seeing it in my Inbox in the future.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:22 AM | Permalink
August 1, 2006
Take Me To The Moon
I love this as it reiforces some work we are doing for some top Lexus Dealers in the US. I know that (I can't let the results out of the bag yet, you need to look for the study on this blog in the next few weeks) the ROI on the email channel vs the DM channel has been HUGE. I mean IF 50% plus of consumers are online searching for cars, configuratiing models, and comparing, why wouldn't you be using email as the outreach tool? I know MB. LandRover, Ford, VW and some other brand get it. Love to see Saturn come to the table and get aggresive.
Saturn Tries Direct, Email for New ModelsSaturn is turning to direct mail and email to promote its 2007 Aura sedan, Vue Green Line Hybrid SUV and Outlook SUV.
The mailings, which will continue through the end of the year, use leads from Saturn events and dealer drop-ins, where interested consumers are asked to fill out cards, BrandWeek reports . So far, 300,000 direct mail pieces have been sent - and even more emails - for the Sky, Aura, Outlook and Vue campaign, according to a rep from Carlson Marketing Group, the agency leading the campaign.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 8:39 AM | Permalink
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