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January 28, 2007
Study: Links Missing In 28% Of E-Mails
From Wendy Davis, Wednesday, Jan 17, 2007 6:00 AM ET
A SIZABLE PROPORTION OF MARKETING e-mails land in people's in-boxes without images or working links, according to a new study slated for release today by the organization Email Experience Council.
"Our research shows that less than 50% of marketers are creating emails that render appropriately," states the report.
For the study, the group looked at 1,000 e-mails--both business-to-consumer and business-to-business--sent during the last quarter. Twenty-eight percent of the e-mails arrived without links, according to the report, while 21% of the e-mails appeared completely blank when images had been turned off at the e-mail service provider level.
E-mail newsletters rendered better than marketing messages, because the newsletters were "understandable and actionable" even without images, according to the report. "Across all samples reviewed, emails that were 'newslike' in nature contained a balance of images and text that did not seem to rely on each other in order to make a statement," the Email Experience Council stated.
The group attributed the problematic rendering of marketing e-mails to anti-spam and security efforts, noting that free e-mail services, like Yahoo and Hotmail, sometimes restrict functionality. One key to getting around those restrictions is getting Internet service providers to recognize particular e-mail marketers as legitimate. To accomplish that, companies need to build the type of reputation that will allow them to get on whitelists; once a marketer has been whitelisted, some e-mail services providers will then deliver messages with the links and images intact.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 3:21 PM | Permalink
January 26, 2007
Would You Read A Foriegn Email?
I am not sure about the rest of you, but what is currently going on with the black hats sending emails that you can't even understand? Enough with the clever subject lines sent from a first name that of course you know someone by that name, but why in Russian or and Asian character set? Seems this is just pure laziness. Not that I really care about the junk I get, well I actually do and take that back as I like to look and see when it actually makes it past into my inbox, but at least make it somethig good for my time.
If you have not seen this great blog where this writer takes time to cleverly craft an obituary on the sender of emails to their junk box, you should. Just for the fun of the idea. Not that would have time, but I would love them to try to craft one in all of these foreign characters or just write one about a lone Russian peasant that crafted these emails.
Always a good place to learn what and what not to do is the Junk Box and the inbox when they make it through. Enjoy the weekend.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:58 AM | Permalink
January 25, 2007
Transactional Messages in The Junk Box
So I placed an order for a shipment from Wine.com. Not something I typically do as I like to shop for wine and pick it up in person. But when I need to order something for someone else that lives far away, I do it online. Makes it easier than finding, buying and shipping (what if it breaks).
So the process and check out was great, but I never found my emailed receipt. Seems this transactional email went straight to my junk box. Could it have been the sent from email address? That alone scares me. (do-not-reply@support.wine.com). Couldn't this email simply come from orders@wine.com or support@wine.com? Then they could use a reply address that goes somewhere else. Seems like the right idea to me.
Either way I found it huddle against a ton of junk (which I always peruse for educational reasons) and flagged it out into a folder. But my assumption is that many others woudl have never found it.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:52 AM | Permalink
January 24, 2007
Adding a Checkbox to the Unsub?
This new check box in the footer of an email caught me as odd. Why would I want to take the step to check a box, then use the unsubscribe link. Seemed to double the amount of work to simply take myself off a list. I was trying to understand the rational behind this idea, but truly can't. I would think that complicating the process just leaves a strong disconnect and a bad UI.
My suggestion to you is to keep it simple, make it feel safe and don't think that adding complexity or steps will make it better.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:47 AM | Permalink
January 23, 2007
Good Crossover Marketing In Email
I found this email to highlight a great idea. It is a simple one, but it drives forward a method to keep the subscriber fosuced on you during the month. Now the idea is solid, but I am not sure why many men would make this calendar their wall paper. Tell me if I am wrong that most people that buy flowers are male so a cleaner, simplier calendar or wallpaper might have been better. I don't have the metrics on this retailer personally, but I am going to ask them as they are based here in the Portland Metro area.
Taking this idea into your own campaigns could be a good idea. I know that many people search for wall papers to replace the dreaded plain old, everyone has the same thing screen, so that is the opportunity. Can you build a series of wallpapers that your audience might like? Stay infront of them for more than 2-3 seconds and increase the value of your offerings based on just good will?
I am going to push for some eROI designed wallpapers this year. I get most of mine from TheFWA.com and suggest you take a look as well for simple inspiration. (As well as some of the best flash campaigns we see each year.)
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:41 AM | Permalink
January 22, 2007
Have You Subscribed?
If you have not yet taken advantage of subscribing to our weekly Blog recap newsletter yet, you must be an RSS purist. Well as an avid user of RSS myself, I can tell you that I enjoy getting recaps from some of the blogs I read. Not daily, but weekly. I think daily frequency is a little overkill personally.
Many of the RSS subscribers are using Netvibes, Google Reader and PageFlakes, which we do as well, but with all that happens each and every week in our collective lives, it is good to get a reminder. Who knows, you might have missed that one post that would have lifted your email marketing knowledge.
And did I forget to mention that not only do you get a recap of this blog, but as a bonus we throw in some posts from two of our other blogs, ReturnOnSubscriber and EmailDays. It is automatically produced using our RSS to emailROI system. This system is so much better (not too opinionated on our own products) than others I have seen competitors hawking and is included for all emailROI clients to use.
I have not nailed down the "Best Day" for this email yet, so you might find it shifting from time to time based on my own testing.
Cheers and thank you all for your readership and for your ability to read past my typos from time to time.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:32 AM | Permalink
January 19, 2007
Good Campaign from Brio
I came across this interesting campaign from Brio last week. Seems it has been up for a while. They used it to introduce their new Networking Toys. Really toys for office workers. I am not sure about any of you, but my office is a toy haven. I have found over the years that these little things sprinkled around my office help to drive creativity. Ask any of my co-workers and they can tell you that these type of things keep popping up in my office on a weekly basis.
Back to Brio... they have a collection of toys centered around the office worker, email, search, video, etc. With a great send to friend feature built in. That is why I actually think that this is relevant to you. Viral email marketing can be a large traffic driver.
Fun ideas, but the flash execution was well done. Just a diversion for you and fellow office workers for today.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:20 AM | Permalink
January 18, 2007
Is an Invite to Join and Email List Good
I am a little confused here. I am curious as to how Circuit City got my email address in the first place as I have never signed up with them nor have I bought anything online from them. Not that this email is bad, but it made me wonder how they got my email to begin with and why it was coming from them and not maybe a 3rd party they might have rented it from.
SO I did not opt in to this program from this email, only because I was skeptical as to where they got my email address from. I think that it was a good attempt to grow this list, and I would assume that it worked from my point of view, just not to happy with the approach. Is list growth your primary concern? Or is building a valuable list of people that want to hear from you that will buy more important? I vote for the latter.
Love to hear your thoughts on this.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:11 AM | Permalink
January 17, 2007
The Unsubscribe Loop
I got an email this week from a client that was changing email addresses and removed one from the emailROI system. He loved the fact that he got a personal confirmation email letting him know that his wishes were honored and that if it was a mistake he could take actions.
I often wonder when I remove myself from lists IF it actually took place. I have in some cases removed myself weekly for 8 months (will not name the culprits now) and still get the emails from them).
Never let them leave without saying goodbye and always honor the request immediately. Just a tip for today.
Here is our simple confirmation: (it is all text)
This email address has been unsubscribed from all at eROI email lists.We at eROI are sorry to see you go. If you unsubscribed in error, or if you would like to resubscribe, please click here.
Your email address has been removed from all lists.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 11:57 AM | Permalink
January 16, 2007
Ad Challenges in the Inbox
Many of you are familiar with the challenges of content driven ads in the webmail clients. Interesting study below tha they actually lost some 3% this past December. When you are crafting your email you need to be aware that you could be driving competing ads next to your own creative due to systems like AdWords. I am always interested to see who shows up in my inbox around the email creative. Testing your offers let's you see this before you send.
From Wendy Davis at Mediapost.
E-MAIL SITES CLAIMED JUST 44.2% of online display ads last month--down from November's 47.5% and October's 51.1%, according to new data by Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance.
Yahoo's e-mail service drew 36.4% of ads last month--also down from November's 40.4% and October's 43.6%. MSN Hotmail captured 6.4% of ads, up slightly from November's 5.7% and almost flat from October's 6.3%.
Overall, online advertisers ran 257.7 billion display ads last month, compared to 259.6 billion in November.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 1:37 PM | Permalink
New York Times Most Emailed List
I found this area of the New York Times to be an interesting idea. It may have been around for a while, but first time find for me. I think that if you run a site with a lot of information and even a blog that it is interesting to not only show how many people either vote, digg or link to the post, but also show them how many others are emailing it on. I would assume that these are only the people that use the Send This Article to a Friend feature and could not track all of those that simply copy the link from the browser and send it on in their own email client.
Nice way to show what is viral.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:23 AM | Permalink
January 15, 2007
Lousy Support For HTML And CSS In Outlook 2007
I found this from our friend Tamara Gielen at B2BMarketing:
Microsoft had published a pair of articles describing the support for HTML and CSS in Outlook 2007, and the news wasn’t good:
"Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses the HTML parsing and rendering engine from Microsoft Office Word 2007 to display HTML message bodies. The same HTML and cascading style sheets (CSS) support available in Word 2007 is available in Outlook 2007. "
The limitations imposed by Word 2007 are described in detail in the article, but here are a few highlights:
no support for background images (HTML or CSS)
no support for forms
no support for Flash, or other plugins
no support for CSS floats
no support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
no support for CSS positioning
no support for animated GIFs
In short, unless your HTML emails are very, very simple, you’re going to run into problems with Outlook 2007.
Read the Rest and See the new tool from MS to check your emails
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:00 AM | Permalink
January 10, 2007
The CES Email Challenge
So after cruising the floor of CES in Lost Wages Tuesday, we had this idea.... why not opt in for as many contests and booths we could to see what we get during and after CES. We wanted to take a look at companies large and small so that we could see what the qualifying and approach process is for each. We will be keeping them posted over at our other blog www.returnonsubscriber.com as they fly into the box. It will be interesting to see as I can tell you that the large companies based on the products and booths should make us proud, but some of the little guys here need to stand out in the inbox after the show to keep us engaged.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 7:34 AM | Permalink
January 9, 2007
Update on Email on the iPhone
Well after watching the keynote last night and scouring the web for other articles, seems that this phone is a great thing for email marketing as well as for mobile marketing.
"Jobs claims the iPhone is the first to enable "real" rich HTML email, through any IMAP or POP3 service, and boasts the "first fully usable HTML browser on a phone." That browser is, of course, Safari. In a demo, the device displayed the entire homepage of The New York Times, rather than just sections of it, as was shown by competing models."
This new phone is going to help us better track emails to individual and not the device. The individual can now check email on the go in full HTML spendor and not simply text. I love it. I am going to pick one up next week... if I can.. and do some testing.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:29 PM | Permalink
Apple Releases a Game Changer in Mobile Email
So I am at CES drooling from booth to booth when news comes in over my now OUTDATED blackberry about this. The new Apple iPhone. (http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-apple-iphone/)
Seems that one of the most powerful devices in the world just pushed the limits of what I want. It made the phone perfect. So on top of that it partered with yahoo for PUSH email services. Not sure yet how this is going to impact mobile email reading, but I can assume if it plays out anything like the iPod it is a game changer.
I am still looking to see what other email clients it supports for integration, but with the Safari browser all email is availble off the bat. Not sure about all of the data services, except I know it works with any open wifi network in range, so this might have less of an impact unless offered with a data plan from a carrier. I am still trying to fond out which carriers are going to sell this.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 10:32 AM | Permalink
January 8, 2007
Email Rendering in the Inbox
Not only is it important to know how your email creative is going to render in each email client (inbox type) but it is also important to know what it is going to look like if images don't show up. Will it have the same impact on click and conversion if is has unloaded images? iTunes recently had one that for some reason just did not load the images in my inbox even though I do not suppress images in my email client. I would think that testing had something to do with this, but also you never know which client will or will not have images enabled in the inbox. It drives me crazy at times to see email campaigns that are sent as one or two images with NO text. Why would you do something like this knowing that you have 2-3 seconds to get an action to take place with an email campaign?
We use a system from ReturnPath to help with pre campaign testing of these behavoirs. It helps us to understand when changes need to be made to the creative for the best devilvery and impact with that short time window in the inbox. Please in 2007 stop using images as your email campaign. Use HTML, Text or a hybrid of all the above.
Here is a sample of a Inbox Testing Report we run.
Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 5:00 AM | Permalink
January 7, 2007
Even iTunes Has Email Deliverability Issues
You would assume that a company like Apple (or any other major brand) would not EVER have an issue with being caught in the Junk Box, right? Well no one is immune from this dilema. It is a constantly changing world in the inbox and things can change even after you hit the send button for an email campaign. I noticed this one was flagged as one of the links they used in the creative was on a block list which caused it to score higher in our filters and ended up in the Junk box. I actually look at my Junk box at each and every email as at times you can get false positives just like this one.
We actually used ReturnPath to help us with our client email campaign testing to look for things like this as well as a myriad of other issues you might not think about that will help with campaign deliverability. A simple thing you can do if you don't have access to a system like this is to set up your own seed email list in your email marketing platform for Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Hotmail, Gmail, as well as your own email account and any others you have access to, and send a pre campaign to this list. Then go to each inbox and take a look where they end up and what the email headers say in the email itself. (like the example in this post.) This can help you get ahead of what you need to change before you send out your next email campaign.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:04 AM | Permalink
January 6, 2007
Why a Survey is Important in Email
I was excited to see that the location of the 2006 Winter Email Insiders Summit actually sent out an email survey after the stay. I think that hotels that are not doing this are missing the boat. If you cannot automate this action to get relevant and recent feedback to see how you can do better, than why do you continue to stay around? When was the last time you actually filled out a comment card with a pen after a hotel stay? I cannot remember and when these drop into my mailbox I am excited to let them know the good and the bad. But even more important, this was the location of the top email marketers in the US who stayed with them. So I am sure that they got a great click through and completion rate of this survey... right?
No matter what type of business you have, you should survey frequently after a transaction or just to get the pulse of your lists on a quarterly basis.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:59 AM | Permalink
January 5, 2007
Everyone Makes Mistakes in Email
It is always interesting to me when I see an email that flags a "We Screwed Up" notice at the top of the email. Everyone at some point in time has sent out a campaign that had an error OR was premature. Taking the high road to letting people know (and quickly) that you made a mistake and wanted to clarify to them what the right information is is great. But make sure, just as in this one from CES, to call out your mistakes so that people do not assume that you are sending them the same email TWICE. Makes them read the email again and not quickly trash it.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:54 AM | Permalink
January 4, 2007
What Kind of Email Do You Get?
Have you ever taken a moment to understand what type of email you get each day, week or month? It is interesting to see the make up of just what messages you are getting. I get over 300 emails a day in my inbox that I delete. And over 100 that I file away into folders for later reference. Managing your inbox is a task in itself. I have a folder that I keep just for marketing messages from brands that I watch that either I like OR I keep my eyes on for clients that I am working with.
I found this study published late last year to be interesting. I would challenge you to just keep track for a week and see what types of emails you get. This might help you to understand what your average subscriber might be getting on a weekly basis. If you really want to get deep into the data, take a look at a service from Bill McCloskey at Email Analyst. He grabs email campaigns from EVERYWHERE and you can use his service to take the pulse on what your comp might be doing and how it lifts traffic.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:48 AM | Permalink
January 3, 2007
What Do You Do With Data?
New E-Mail, Old Challenges, eMarketer.com
'Who gets this stuff and who reads it?'
As long as there has been advertising, marketers have been not only trying to identify their customers and potential customers, but also trying to understand what makes them tick and which campaign elements make them buy and which do not.
Some things never seem to change.
At least that is the conclusion of a new survey from Silverpop, an e-mail service provider (ESP), conducted by JupiterResearch.
In a poll of 422 e-mail marketers, 34% of them said that a lack of customer data is the largest hurdle they face.
Additionally, 32% said they struggled with analyzing campaign results.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:00 AM | Permalink
January 2, 2007
What Came in Your Inbox Stocking
Season's greetings: it's spam for the holidays
It was interesting to watch my inbox from the 24th to the 31st. Normal email goes on a holiday around this time of year (except for the come back and shop for what you did not get emails that started arriving Christmas Eve - Is that too early?) But the majority of my email was junk. Like I have more time to peruse my junk over the holidays.
The holiday season brings festive parties, family gatherings -- and a deluge of spam. Unsolicited messages, or spam, which account for nine out of 10 e-mails, fill up the inboxes of computer users more than ever at this time of year, experts say.
"Every year we see a seasonal increase around the holiday season. It's just worse than it's ever been before this year," said Daniel Druker, executive vice president of marketing at Postini, a company that provides message security services.
Spammers spew out millions of e-mails. Some hawk pharmaceuticals and sexual aids, others offer hot stock tips.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:01 AM | Permalink
January 1, 2007
Email and Podcasting
Why e-mail marketers should consider podcasting, BY KAREN J. BANNAN
More than 12% of Internet users have downloaded a podcast over the past year, according to a report last month from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That’s a significant jump from the 7% of users who reported the same in the research agency’s February-April 2006 report.
The upshot for marketers: they may want to consider podcasting as a way to extend their marketing reach. Existing marketing—particularly e-mail, which can provide a direct link to the podcast content—is an ideal way to spread the word about the new effort. Lisa Wehr, CEO of online marketing company OneUpWeb, provides some insight and advice for those looking to start or improve their podcasting efforts.
Q: Why should marketers consider doing a corporate podcast?
A: Podcasts let you build a one-on-one relationship by connecting with listeners and putting out a message that has an emotional aspect to it. Listeners hear a voice and associate that voice with your company, which is a great way to get them coming back again and again.
Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 5:02 AM | Permalink
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