So what’s the buzz for March 10th, 2010? The buzz is our daily collection of must read articles we’ve found from multiple sources around the web! We’ve reached out to gather them all together and bundle them up for email marketing newbees and ninjas!

Next Web

The CMO’s guide to the Social Landscape
There’s nothing like a good a cheat sheet and thenexweb.com has posted a great visual guide map to leveraging social media for marketing.

Takeaway: The social media landscape can be tricky. Having a map such as this handy will keep you on the right path to reach your goals.

The Email Wars

Black and white or white and black?
After reading a post from Anna Yeaman, Dylan Boyd at Email Wars began pondering what works best when putting things into “black and white” for email marketing layouts.

Takeaway: Maybe what we should all test in content heavy email newsletters to let the copy and content do the work, as that is what we are all really after right?

AWeber

Newsletter 101: Conquering Structure
You have 51 seconds to get to the point. That’s all the average email gets, according to the Nielsen Norman Group. In those seconds, readers determine the email’s value and decide whether to act.

Takeaway: Don’t try to convince your subscribers – instead, clearly present them with an appealing offer.

email experience council

A Click is a Click by Any Other Name, But Click-Through Rates Are Not the Same
Research done by the eec’s Measurement Accuracy Roundtable shows that ESPs use several different methods of measurement for the Click-Through Rate (CTR) metric.

Takeaway: It’s in the best interest of email marketers and ESPs to come together to standardize metrics.

CampaignMonitor

Where did I come from? Providing meaningful permission reminders
Letting the email recipient know how they joined the list may seem really simple and straightforward, however unless you give it a little thought, it can go all circular.

Takeaway: Making it clear and visible in your email as to where your recipients signed up is best practice, especially if you don’t send email on a regular basis. The result: Less spam complaints and more trust towards you as an email sender. Like with a lot of email techniques, one line can make all the difference.

If you’ve got something juicy to share via The Buzz, just tweet @TheeMailGuide or drop us a comment!

The Xobni plugin has been downloaded over 3 million times since their initial debut in 2006.  There is both a free version of Xobni, and a paid premium version. The free version of Xobni comes with the following features:

• View contact info & photos from LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, and Hoover’s
• Find attachments by contact
• Find links sent in emails by contact
• Lightning fast Search of email and people (Other emails from the selected contact will appear)
• View common contacts and conversations

Xobni Plus comes with all of these features and more, and the advertising is removed.


For a more in depth look at how Xobni works check out this product demo their team put together:

Bill Gates was so impressed with Xobni in Febuary of 2008 he demoed the product at the Office Developers Conference.  His demo from the conference is embedded below:

According to the CrunchBase, Xobni has received $14.6 million in funding to date.  This degree of funding should help ensure that the technology Xobni is producing remains cutting edge.  One example of this is a Salesforce extension that Xobni recently launched that allows Salesforce-specific data to be viewed inside of Outlook.

Xobni claims to have a presence in 80% of Fortune 500 companies thanks to employee adoption outside of the traditional I.T. infrastructure.

If you have any further questions about Xobni I recommend you follow the @xobni Twitter account and ask them directly.  If you do you might even catch cool tweets like the one below, which includes a link to a limited beta of xobni that is coming soon to blackberry devices.

What’s in store for the future of Xobni? Well you can sign up for an invite to the Xobni blackberry beta of course, and expect future Xobni integration with webmail platforms like Gmail, and even eventually with iPhones.

Beyond Outlook
Xobni is an excellent tool for managing your existing contacts in Outlook, but when it comes to any kind of email marketing campaign strategy, it’s simply not the right tool. Sure, you can get plugins for Outlook to use for email marketing but, it simply isn’t effective. If you are thinking of using Outlook for email campaign management, you first should check out our section about Outlook in our guide for email marketing newbees! As well, listen to this podcast interview from Janine Popick, who talks about the transition from Outlook to an Email Service Prodiver.

Feedback
What do you think of Xobni? We’d love it if you’d let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Yet another top prospect has joined The eMail Guide team! We’re excited to welcome Garin Kilpatrick to the rotation! Garin is well known in Twitter circles and he’ll be doing a lot more than blogging for us! You’ll see him tweeting and interacting with our community a great deal.

Garin brings insight to the team regarding Twitter and community interaction and he’ll be wearing the cap of “Director of Communities” here @ The eMail Guide.

Garin Kilpatrick is a Blogger and a Digital Strategist from Toronto.  He’s a new dad and just about finished writing a book on Twitter Tools, which you can learn more about at http://twittertoolsbook.com.

Garin is a preparing for a marathon in May, and is interested in everything to do with social media and technology.  Send a tweet his way anytime: @GarinKilpatrick.

Say hello to Garin!

So what’s the buzz today? The buzz is our collection of must read articles we’ve found from multiple sources around the web! We’ve reached out to gather them all together and bundle them up for email marketing newbees and ninjas!

Mashable

5 Ways to Use Twitter to Avoid a Backchannel Disaster
It’s one thing to be heckled by someone in the back row but, it’s another thing when a room full of BB users are giving you the “thumbs”. How do you handle that kind of scenario?

Takeaway: Engage and interact with your audience directly. It’s better to interact with them and be ready to change direction than to lose them completely. Twitter and smart phones aren’t going anywhere — be prepared to deal with this fact as a presenter.

MediaPost

Fans Grow on Farms
Microsoft went down on the farm to find some Bing Facebook fans and it looks like they harvested a cash crop.

Takeaway: It’s not just about finding where people are hanging out. It’s about finding a way to reach and relate to them where they are.

Blue Sky Factory

Green is the New Black, Don’t Email Without It
According to Nikki Schiavone, 2010 is the year of organic list growth.

Takeaway: Good content, constant learning and opening up communication with your subscribers can help you take the burden out of list building.

Direct

Slogging Toward E-mail Metrics Standardization
The EEC continues to work towards standardization within the email marketing industry…How’s that battle going?

Takeaway: Consensus may be the name of that Camel designed by committee but, we need standards and it’s in the best interest of every consumer and every email marketer to be aware of the progress and participating in the process.

MarketingProfs

When Best-Practices Aren’t: Five Ways to Break Rules of Email Marketing & Still Win
Are best practices written in stone? Will your hair catch fire if you step just a little bit over that line?

Takeaway: A best practice might not be the best way for your email marketing strategy to go — have you tried some A/B split testing to see if what works best for you?

The Email Experience Council

Win Back Programs: Smart Marketing or Failure of Strategy?
“If you need to do re-engagement after a long period of subscriber inactivity, that is a failure of strategy” – Stephanie Miller, VP, Return Path and Vice Chair of the eec.

Takeaway: There’s nothing wrong with trying to reengage  inactive subscribers but, shouldn’t every message be targeted at re-energizing and reengaging your list?

Harvard Business Review

One Café Chain’s Facebook Experiment
This one is from earlier this month but, perhaps you missed it. It’s an interesting read from the Harvard Business Review regarding an experiment in marketing with FaceBook.

Takeaway: Facebook (or any other one social media channel) is not the “cruise missile” for marketing your business. It’s a tool which can certainly help but, it’s just one of the tools you should be working with.

If you’ve got something juicy to share via The Buzz, just tweet @TheeMailGuide or drop us a comment!

Jeff Ginsberg, Chief Email Officer of The eMail Guide, talks email marketing with Nino Gentry from Citrix at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2010 in Miami.

It’s great to have the opportunity to meet up with our community members at these kind of events and get their feedback and insight. Nino (@nino304) is one of our favourite tweeple and we tweet with him just about every day. He works with Citrix applications such as GoToMeeting.

Nino’s big takeaway from MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit 2010 is that retention is the new acquisition. For more on that, check out our interview with Joseph Jaffe!

Great seeing you Nino!

Between November and December 09, the number of people reading the STYLECampaign newsletter on the iPhone, jumped from 4.4% to 10.4%.

Needing to test some new, iPhone friendly templates, I went searching for a mobile preview tool. Here’s 10 I’ve found:

1. { DeviceAnywhere }

Pros: DeviceAnywhere allows you access to over 2,000 devices. All emulators, not static previews. On the iPhone this means you can use the zoom and scale functions, view in portrait or landscape and test if your landing pages are mobile friendly.

They have an independent developers package, for the iPhone and Android only. Also a 3hr free trial.

Cons: Still need a second solution for email client previews. Have to install DeviceAnywhere on your system.

2. { Pivotal Veracity }

Pros: Pivotal Veracity’s eDesign Optimizer, is the most comprehensive email preview tool I’ve seen. Email clients, IE/Firefox testing and a large selection of mobile devices are available. They even support the iPad.

I’ve only had an hour long demo, but here are some unique features:

1. Link, alt tag and image validator.

2. Tells you how long it takes your email to load on a mobile.

3. W3C HTML code validation

4. Design guide on hand, need to know if Blackberry supports word spacing?

5. Can choose which screenshots to export as a PDF.

(too many to list…)

Cons: Not an emulator, you can’t do usability testing – zoom/rotate ect on iPhone. Same with all the email specific preview tools below.

3. {iPhone PC Emulator }

Pros: Finding a way to preview our newsletter on the iPhone – on a PC! – was my priority. Shaun Sullivan’s free WebKit hack, enabled me to log into my Gmail account and bring up our newsletter (See left).

The image on the right, shows the mobile version of my test account in Campaign Monitor.

Cons: It not perfect: zooms, scrollbars, shrink to fit and rotation are not supported. Need to install the iBBDemo.exe and Safari.

4. { PreviewMyEmail }

Pros: PreviewMyEmail have a public share toggle. View screenshots of 22 email/mobile clients including the iPhone, Windows Mobile 6.1 and even Outlook 2010 Beta.

Cons: If importing your HTML from your desktop, images need to be hosted externally. No Spam testing or preview pane view.

5. { Litmus }

Pros: Litmus currently support 19 email clients and 14 Spam filters. Paul Farnell told me,

“We are still working on iPhone email testing, but this is something we hope to release within the next 4 weeks. At the same time we’ll be launching support for Symbian, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry testing as well”.

Litmus show your email with images on/off and in the preview pane. You can also make your test results public.

Check out the Litmus email client share report, just released. They collected data from almost 250 million email recipients.

Cons: 4wks to wait…

6. { Campaign Monitor }

Pros: Campaign Monitor uses both Litmus and Return Path simultaneously. This ensures screenshots show up promptly.

Besides 20+ email clients and all the popular Spam filters, Campaign Monitor supports the Blackberry and Windows Mobile 5. You can view your emails with images on/off and in the preview pane.

Cons: No PDF export function or public sharing URL. No iPhone support at present. Though as they use Litmus, I’m guessing it will be available within 4wks.

7. { Nokia N70 / Sony K750 Emulator }

Pros: For 6 months I tested a,”Mobile Version” link in the pre-header of our newsletter. Only a handful of people ever used it. When viewing our mobile version on the Nokia N70 and Sony k750, I see how it could have been improved.

Compare how great eROI’s mobile version looks (left) with ours (right). They added color and styling, whereas we left ours plain text.

Also see free tool mobiReady. It gives you an in-depth analysis, code validation and mobile readiness score. (plus 5 mobile emulators).

Cons: No iphone emulator.

8. { TestiPhone }

Pros: TestiPhone is a free web tool, you can preview your email on the iPhone, in either portrait or landscape view.

Cons: iPhone only, did not render my tracked URLs. Limited functionality, no zoom and scale.

9. { iPhoneTester }

Pros: iPhoneTester is the same as TestiPhone. Free, web based with options for portrait and landscape views.

When I typed in a url with link tracking, it rendered (above). Whereas Testiphone would not.

Cons: iPhone only. Limited functionality, no zoom and scale.

10. Mac Only { iPhoney / Apple SDK }

Pros: iPhoney previews how your emails and landing pages display on the iPhone. Portrait or landscape view, zoomed to fit/full size.

Cons: It requires Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later.

Pros: Free Apple SDK comes with an iPhone simulator.

Cons: Mac only.

Takeaway: With 42% of US consumers claiming to own a smartphone, email designers are playing catch up. Pivotal Veracity’s research indicates that nearly 10% of B2C email is read on a mobile.

If you haven’t already, grab MailBoxIQ or Fingerprint. Find out how many of your subscribers are reading your email on a mobile and get testing.

More great iPhone apps for email marketing

About the author:

Anna Yeaman is the co-founder of STYLECampaign, an email creative agency in LA. With over 4 years experience in email marketing, Anna is the design heart of the company and author of the Style Campaign Blog. Prior to founding Style Campaign, she worked in the visual effects industry. She spends her free time daydreaming about email design and can be contacted at anna(at)stylecampaign.com

Jeff Ginsberg, Chief Email Officer of The eMail Guide, talks email marketing with JD Peterson, Director of Products, Lyris, at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2010 in Miami.

JD points out that the Lyris HQ value proposition is all about helping online marketers succeed. No matter what they need, be it through tools or services, the ultimate goal is to bring success to their clients. Clients range from very small businesses to larger enterprises but, their focus is primarily on mid-market.

Lyris offers an integrated platform, wrapping analytics, social and mobile marketing tools around their core email marketing offering.

JD also comments that his company takes a very hands on approach with clients and enjoys exposing them to new and different ways to get better ROI out of the tools and ultimately with the program. Lyris likes to get that message to the client via direct contact and via the user interface. They’re focusing on online community growth as well via Twitter and Facebook, so, users can interact and share resources and ideas.

According to JD, email marketing remains one of the most cost effective, high ROI means to stay in contact with your customers. It’s fairly easy to do even if you don’t have a list and one thing Lyris can do is help you build that list.

As you all know, GetResponse is used by marketers all over the world. We deliver 5B emails every year, and the number’s climbing!  We certainly have the volume, so we’ve been conducting all kinds of studies to learn more about how marketers use GetResponse and what kind of results they’re getting.  Today we’re excited to reveal the results of the 2010 Email Marketing Trends Survey

We asked a survey group of over 200 SMB email marketers from a wide range of industries and countries to share their opinions regarding hot topics like video emails, social media integration, and the “war on inbox clutter”. We hope you find these stats interesting and useful as you continue to improve your email marketing campaigns.

Happily, it appears SMB marketers are becoming increasingly convinced of the benefits of video email, social media, and personalization or targeting. More than 80% of respondents plan to use video emails in 2010 and more 90 % plan to integrate social media into their email campaigns this year. Almost 64% of SMB marketers who use video emails claimed that it delivers significant increases in conversion rates. Compared to last year’s results, these increases represent a 480 % Increase in video email usage and 90 % Increase in social media integration for 2010.

That’s awesome!

In general, the SMB email marketer’s toolkit is looking a lot more sophisticated and media-rich than at any time in recent history. That’s very gratifying to us. It tells us that GetResponse tools are user-friendly and affordable, even at the advanced level.

Here are a few highlights of the survey:

• Video email marketing: Over 50% of respondents stated that video emails can increase CTR. One in three marketers believes that video can enhance brand image and/or increase customer loyalty. Over 20% of marketers believe that video emails can also reduce support and training costs. Only 4.7% of email marketers do not see any benefits from using video emails.
• Social media: A 113.2% increase in use of links to new messages on social media pages; a 109.1% increase in use of sign-up forms on Facebook fan pages; 88.8% will increase share options and 71.6% more will place “follow us” links in email messages.
• Personalization: 53.80% of SMB respondents said they intend to increase targeting and personalization in 2010; 52.40% will try to improve email title and subject line personalization.
• Behavioral targeting: Nearly 75% of marketers claim that behavioral targeting can result in significant or moderate increases in email marketing effectiveness. Only 2.8% did not consider behavioral targeting an effective practice.

Where do your results fit into the email marketing picture for 2010? Are you ahead of the curve? We hope so! Download the whole report from here to find out!

Mick Griffin is the Key Account Manager for GetResponse Email Marketing. With over 7 years of Sales and Marketing experience Mick quickly adapted to Email when joining GetResponse in 2008. Now in charge of Business Development, Mick is the primary point of contact for new and existing customers with GetResponse. He spends the majority of his time interacting with them, understanding their needs and working to see those are met. Mick is experienced in social media and still continues to be involved in that aspect of GetResponse’s business. You’ll find him posting on the GetResponse Blog. You are also likely to run into him at any number of Email marketing conferences throughout the year.

One daily feature we’ve had here at The eMail Guide since day one is our Google news for Email Marketing. However, we’ve been thinking we could take this to a higher level and make the Google news feature into something even more valuable to you.

Starting tomorrow, you’ll see a new feature in place of our daily Google news at The eMail Guide! We call it “The Buzz” and it’s daily focus will be on the best and brightest blog posts about email marketing from around the web! We’ll sniff out those insightful posts which really resonate and gather them here all in one place for you each day.

Catch that buzz starting Tuesday here, @ The eMail Guide!

If you’ve got something juicy to share via The Buzz, just tweet @TheeMailGuide!

Love to hear your comments and suggestions too!

Every chance I get, I discuss the key to email marketing. It used to be to send timely, targeted, relevant emails to those who have asked. Recently (hat tip to Dela Quist), I’ve modified it to replace the word relevant with valuable. (Read more about value on the Blue Sky Factory blog.)

So, the new motto is: Send timely, targeted, valuable emails to those who have asked.

REI Understands Value

At the end of last year – December 29th to be exact – I received an email from REI. The subject line was simple enough: Your REI Events Calendar for January. Forgetting the timely and targeted portions for now, as well as the permission part (I definitely subscribed), let’s focus on the value portion. After all, that’s what really matters, right? Did I find value in the email that you just sent me? Breaking down the various forms of value.

REI Email (Top) - click to enlarge

REI Email (Bottom) - click to enlarge

1. Trust Value: This is all about the open. Did I value our relationship enough to trust you to open the email? In this case, the answer is: yes. I love REI. I love their emails. I love their store. I love their products. I love their employees. I love their community-focused approach. (Trust: +1).
2. Content Value: Was their personal value in the contents of the email? Was their enough in the message that got me excited about reading? How about clicking? Best yet, did I convert (buy something)? I definitely read and clicked. I didn’t buy but, part of that is because I’m not ready. Not yet, at least. (Content: +1).
3. Share Value: This one is where the digital glue (read more about social + email marketing) comes in. Was the email valuable enough to me that I wanted to share it with friends, family and random people (think: Twitter)? In this case, the answer was: no. But, that was mostly because I no longer live in Durham. More on that later. However, the content was great (see above). Had I still lived in Durham and been tied into REI, this email would have been share-worthy. (Share: +1/2).

So, if this had been a 3-star rating system based on Value, REI would have earned 2.5 stars. Not too shabby.

Bonus

There are a few other aspects of this email I’d like to acknowledge.

• While didn’t love the subject line (Your REI Events Calendar for January) as I prefer something with a bit more spice and character, it was definitely direct and to the point. I knew exactly what to expect. If they had included my preferred city, well…
• I think they did a pretty nice job with some of the social aspects. They called out “Find REI on…” in the bottom portion of the email. I could “find them” on the Big 3 – Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. However, why? What’s in it for me? Why friend or follow or subscribe to their various social channels?
• Finally, I loved (yes, loved) the “Interested in Events at a Different REI Store?” section. I’m not sure if this was personalized towards me or not, but it sure felt like it. As alluded to above, we moved from Durham to Salt Lake City in June of 2009. They provided me a nice button/link to update my preferences. Very smart. I often like seeing a totally separate “update your preferences” type campaign. Try it sometime. I dare you.

So, that’s the story on REI. I’m still a big fan. How about you?

Takeaway: As email marketers, we spend a ton of time thinking (and worrying) about best practices. I’m still a believer in following “generally accepted” best practices or “practices that are best for your company; however, at the end of the day, it’s all about value. Do your subscribers trust you? Is the content adding value to their day? Is it valuable enough to share? Value. Value. Value.

Image Credit: elventear

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

About the author:

• DJ Waldow is the Director of Community at Blue Sky Factory, an ESP based in Baltimore. With over 4 years of experience in eMail marketing, DJ is active in the twittersphere (@djwaldow), on blogs (blog.blueskyfactory.com), and in the social media space. He’s an administrator and regular contributor to the Email Marketers Club and other eMail-related social networks. DJ resides in Salt Lake City, Utah where he can be found thinking, eating, and breathing eMail.
• Website: http://www.blueskyfactory.com
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/djwaldow
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/djwaldow

For our #Follow Friday page this week we want to welcome some great new companies who’ve joined our community and tip our collective cap to some really cool people we’ve interacted with over the past week!

Speaking of adding, have you checked out our all new home page? We’ve completely revamped The eMail Guide and our listings! If you haven’t already claimed your listing and started building your “home away from home page”, then click here to find out how easy it is!

Companies new to The eMail Guide!

DIRECTIQ

ClickMail Marketing

StormPost, A Datran Media Company

Cogent Online

Power to our tweeple!

@jkrohrs:	@shannonholato	@tabsharani	@calcBob	@jvanrijn
@sharonmostyn	@nino304	@NicoleSchiavone:	@remybergsma	@KentMcGovern
@KNLorenz	@amygarland	@rorycarlyle	@djwaldow	@bronto
@EmailInstitute	@allwebemail	@ElenaH13	@jacaldwell	@francesdugan
@scottcohen13	@indiescott	@PhilipStorey	@socialemail	@JammMedia
@eliterate_email	@Lukes_Tweets	@MarketingSherpa	@gwdbis3	@ToddLebo
@tomsuchy	@InfobaseBR	@email_leads	@toktumi	@iOnlineMeeting
@RTSClientCare	@stevechamberlin	@fw079	@Port25Solutions	@mlmblog
@bestofjess	@socialbird37	@dmwdirect	@andrewkordek

There’s always that slim chance that we missed you here on our #Follow Friday page and that would be a shame! So, if you don’t see yourself here, please tweet us and we’ll add you!

We also highly recommend getting a Gravatar! It’s free, easy and gives you an avatar pic attached to any eMail address you choose.

Baseball’s grapefruit league has only just got going and already we have the first spring all-star team line up announced. Constant Contact started a ton of tweeting today from grateful selectees after announcing their email marketing all-star selections.

We start today’s coverage of Google news for email marketing with more on how Constant Contact made the picks and what rewards those chosen can expect.

Constant Contact Announces Recipients of Its 2009 All-Star Awards
MarketWatch (press release) - ‎6 hours ago‎
Winners were selected for meeting Constant Contact’s best-practice standards for the use of Email Marketing or Online Survey throughout 2009. …

Improve your results with email marketing
Bizcommunity.com - ‎11 hours ago‎
Email marketing capitalises on this prolific touch-point (some may call it obsession) with the online world by placing brands right in front of their …

Email marketing campaign management ‘is crucial’
Global Gold Internet Services - Adam Morris – ‎9 hours ago‎
Businesses must continuously monitor the health of their email marketing strategies to discover any chinks in the armour, it has been suggested. …

Want to make sales? Build a brand with a business marketing plan
NEBS Small Business News (blog) - ‎19 hours ago‎
Email marketing campaigns might include a link that brings recipients to an ecommerce website, and social media platforms can include a sign-up list for …

Study: 43% of Email Marketers Want a Slice of the Social Media Pie
Marketing Pilgrim (blog) - Andy Beal – ‎4 hours ago‎
Not sure what to make of the 66% that said they provide “Strategy & Consulting” alongside email marketing. I would have thought that ALL marketing firms …

Email marketing campaigns ‘benefit from customer segmentation’
Experian QAS - ‎22 hours ago‎
Email marketing campaigns can expect higher returns if they employ the use of customer segmentation techniques, it has been suggested. …

Cipio bags 20 times return from €60m eCircle exit
AltAssets - ‎10 hours ago‎
Growth private equity firm TA Associates has agreed to acquire a majority stake in eCircle, an email marketing service provider, from direct secondaries …

This week we have great insight and advice on subjects such as email reporting myths, deliverabitility, customer acquisition/retention, social media and getting value for subscribers into your email marketing messages! Now that’s one heck of an email marketing menu!

Takeaway: Reporting techniques such as viral effect reporting or deliverability reporting are used to give the closest reporting email marketers can get. Use these techniques as an indication – do not expect them to give you exact figures. Therefore it‘s important to know the nature of the metrics and the way they work.

Takeaway: Getting the message through is a two part process. One part is delivering it to the inbox and the other is making your message highly interesting for the reciepent.

Takeaway: Since email is a social medium, it’s not surprise that alliances and acquisitions are being made to integrate it with channels such as Twitter.

Takeaway: What’s more cost effective? Traditional advertising to acquire new customers or investing more in proactive customer support and a better customer experience which will turn customers into evangelists and ambassadors for your brand, marketing it to other potential new clients?

Takeaway: Demonstrate the value and benefits to your subscribers as to why it’s important to opt-in and divulge their social media credentials. Install your marketing mix, dedicated campaigns that are targeted to updating email preferences.

Takeaway: As email marketers, we spend a ton of time thinking (and worrying) about best practices. I’m still a believer in following “generally accepted” best practices or “practices that are best for your company; however, at the end of the day, it’s all about value. Do your subscribers trust you? Is the content adding value to their day? Is it valuable enough to share? Value. Value. Value.

In Inbox Reserve parts one and two, we discovered how socially centric preference centers and subject lines will lead to dramatically higher engagement and lower spam complaints. In part III below, we’ll identify challenges that are inherent with acquiring a subscribers social data points and what the benefits are to your brand once harnessed.

Challenge:  Develop a Preference Center Marketing Program
The challenge for today’s brand marketer is to find ways to seductively charm subscribers to fully or partially divulge their social media credentials through an intuitive preference center. Some subscribers will immediately acquiesce, while others will be more sensitive and allow the brand only a partial glimpse into their social networks.  For example, B2B focused subscribers may prefer to provide only credentials of their LinkedIn network and not necessarily Facebook or Twitter.  Future preference centers will allow you to prioritize which social networks you want linked to a given brand.

For this concept to work, marketers must demonstrate to subscribers the value of this initiative. Those subscribers who opt-in will glean more value and insight through their network associated with a given brand, because knowing what transactions are taking place with their social networks is in most cases desired.  Once brands amass these nuggets of data; designers, engineers and email marketing specialists will collaborate to produce instinctive methods of engagement while furthering your brands credibility.

Brands must take a proactive approach with subscribers to induce them to release this essential data.  A strategic marketing program targeted towards this master preference center with strong calls-to-action should be integrated into your marketing mix.  This marketing program should primarily focus on the features, benefits and value of updating socially centric preferences.

Emphasize Value and Benefits
One way to galvanize a brands subscriber base is to highlight reasons “why” updating your preference center is so valuable.  In your email marketing program, dedicate sends that emphasize the real value of managing and sharing social media credentials.  Market your preference center through other channels as well. Read Stephanie Miller’s stellar post on why earning permission is divine.

Future marketing programs for updating preference centers should illustrate value–based notifications of activity within a subscribers given network: For example, in the email message itself give subscribers the option to choose from a host of alert notifications such as:

• Alert me when a member of my network makes a purchase from this brand
• Alert me when a member of my network signs up to receive newsletters from this brand
• Alert me when a member of my network reviews a product from this brand

This type of socially centric messaging will echo well with subscribers and will develop an affinity not only your brand but just as importantly your preference center.  These notifications will go “prime-time” and will replace the current generic “marketing messages” we currently receive.  Messages of this nature could be an excellent resource for winning back dormant subscribers.

Furthermore, your subscribers might want to be immediately notified if a person from their network reviewed a nearby restaurant.  By giving your subscribers “night-vision” into their social networks, brands will have a simpler time summoning subscribers to release this coveted information.   Benefits to brands include far fewer defections from list segments, increased engagement, an awakening to dormant subscribers and significantly fewer “spam complaints.”

Immediate Benefits to the Brand
Credibility- As discussed throughout this series, socialized messaging of this nature provides a more intimate user experience.  It permits a subscriber to feel that the message is about their social ecosystem first and about the brand second.  It authorizes subscribers and their network to indirectly promote your brand, through a more relaxed conversation.

Reduced Costs- Socialized messaging, will significantly reduce a brands’ overall operating expenses, because of a higher engagement index, fewer spam complains and better inbox placements rates.  Socialized messaging will increase sender reputation which reduces message handling costs including more relaxed human filtering steps with a given brand.

Validation through Engagement- The ability to quickly connect with your peers before clicking the purchase button will soon be the “de facto” model for how to validate a purchase through a given brand. Acquiring validation from your trusted network means that an emotional and financial investment has been made on behalf of your friends and colleagues.  With a swift chat session with members of their network, your subscribers will discern information about a featured product/service, which accelerates immediate gratification for the purchaser.  Building a subscriber centric brand will add considerable value to your existing customer base and through crosshairs will magnify brand integrity.

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

About the author

Fred Tabsharani is engaged in strategic marketing initiatives for Port25 Solutions, Inc., a globally recognized email software company which serves Email Service Providers and leading enterprises. After receiving his MBA from John F. Kennedy University, Fred immersed himself into the world of email deliverability and constantly discovers new insight from thought-leaders in the email industry. He is a columnist for a few industry blogging portals and is also a member of several email based organizations including but not limited to MAAWG and the Email Experience Council. Fred’s goal is to continue honing his skills and knowledge in this space and to build timeless industry relationships that transcend business goals.

• Website: http://www.port25.com
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tabsharani
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/fredtabsharani

Jeff Ginsberg, Chief Email Officer of The eMail Guide, interviews Joseph Jaffe, Author of ‘Flip The Funnel’ and President and ‘Chief Interruptor’ of crayon at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2010 in Miami.

In the interview, Joseph speaks out about acquisition and retention and makes the point that the only reason we are in business is because of our customers and treating them better with a more proactive approach to customer support and the customer experience, will turn them into brand evangelists and brand ambassadors. He’s passionate about how we can grow business from the inside and demonstrate that retention as a strategic driver can become the new acquisition.

Takeaway: What’s more cost effective? Traditional advertising to acquire new customers or investing more in proactive customer support and a better customer experience which will turn customers into evangelists and ambassadors for your brand, marketing it to other potential new clients?

We’d like to hear your thoughts on this as well! Please post your comments.

Way back in my radio days, I was on staff at a brand new station just about to go on the air in Ottawa. Most of the jocks were from out of town and management failed to take this into consideration and provide them a tutorial regarding local pronunciations of street names and the like. Of course, the result was predictable (at least in hindsight), one of the drive announcers got on the air and completely screwed up the pronunciation of a main street in the downtown. The fact that this was a French name didn’t help the ensuing tempest in a teapot either (The capital city is very bilingual and very political of course). All in all, it was a mess which impacted the branding of the station – at least in the short term.

This is something we would all do well to keep in mind with email and online marketing as well. Translating your message into another language is not as straightforward as we would like it to be — there are many subtle culture issues to be aware of.  Hence, we are leading today’s Google news for email marketing with a post from MarketingSherpa with tips on how to localize international campaigns and avoid pitfalls such as I mentioned above.

Localize Your International Email Campaigns: 4 Proven Tactics
MarketingSherpa.com (subscription) - ‎5 hours ago‎
According to MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide: To help you get started with localization — or to make the most of your localization …

ListMarketer Launches New Email Marketing Software
Benzinga - ‎12 hours ago‎
ListMarketer Software’s email marketing software upgrade, SmartSender™ delivery engine, is out of beta and available to bulk email marketers everywhere. …

Email Marketing Firm, Listrak, Integrates Customer and Site Data to Provide …
Promotion World (press release) - ‎12 hours ago‎
Lititz, PA (PRWEB) — Listrak, a leading email marketing solutions provider, announced a new release to its web-based email marketing platform. …

Personalization Popular for Reducing Inbox Clutter
Marketing Vox News - ‎50 minutes ago‎
The “2010 Email Marketing Trends Study” indicates that SMB marketers are increasingly turning to personalization as a means of reducing the negative effects …

Cheaper Might Equal Better When Selecting an Email Marketing App; Other Myths …
Marketing Vox News - ‎Mar 3, 2010‎
Price doesn’t necessarily equal quality when it comes to selecting an email marketing application, according to a new study of 19 applications. …

Small businesses should write to the right recipients
NEBS Small Business News (blog) - ‎21 hours ago‎
Email marketing campaigns might help entrepreneurs save cash but they are only as good as the potential clients they reach. One option for building a …

jammmedia’s top ten html email marketing tips
Creative Boom (blog) - ‎Mar 3, 2010‎
We will be bringing you lots of helpful tips in the coming months, starting with our top tips for getting email marketing right! If there is anything you …

What is Social Media Management, and Why Should You Care?
Small Business Computing - Laurie McCabe – ‎4 hours ago‎
These can include other online activities, such as Web sites, search engine marketing campaigns, contact management systems, and email marketing, …

Email Spider Software Launched
SBWire (press release) - ‎15 hours ago‎
The creative mind of EPractize Labs Business Solutions Team, introduces Email Marketing Solution for internet marketing and newsletter management. …

We make it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Unlike some of our competitors, we don’t “dumb things down.” We take extremely powerful tools that sophisticated marketers use (like segmentation, a/b testing, and ROI tracking), and we make them accessible to anyone. And because our platform uses an open API, it’s easy to integrate internal systems (like Salesforce) and web applications (like Magento and Drupal) with our email marketing engine. That’s why over 275,000 users, who range from small 1-person startups to Fortune 500 corporations use MailChimp.

Our History & Where We Got The Funny Name

We started out as a web development company (The Rocket Science Group) back in April 2000. We specialized in “nerdy stuff” like database-driven websites and web applications (before they were called “web applications”) for companies like CNN, Coca-Cola, Arthritis Foundation, Worldspan, and Delta Airlines. We built a reputation for building quality applications that were “actually useful.”

Then in 2001, we saw that some of our clients were having trouble sending HTML email newsletters to their customers. They basically had two options. They could somehow rig Microsoft Outlook to send an HTML email with broken links, broken images, and broken attachments, or they could pay thousands of dollars a month for some bloated enterprise-level service that was packed with features they never used and never understood. We thought, “Sheesh, people are too busy running their businesses to learn how to code HTML emails. Email marketing is so easy, a monkey could be doing it for them.” We put our pragmatic programming skills to work and built a simple tool that included everything our clients needed and nothing they didn’t. We made it so easy, a human could use it. Our clients loved it. So we made it available to the public. The word kinda spread.

In 2007, we officially ended all web development work as “The Rocket Science Group” and focused exclusively on MailChimp. And the rest is history.

Using Outlook for Email Marketing
Email Marketing Laws
Buying or Renting an Email List
Email List Building and Growth
Email Reporting and Stats
Email HTML Creative Resources
Email Marketing Scalability and Growth
Email Marketing Support and Accountability
Email Marketing Tips & Tricks

So, you’re new to email marketing! We know how confusing that can be. Helping people get started in email marketing is why we created The eMail Guide! Have any questions? Send us an email: questions@TheeMailGuide.com or post a comment and we’ll be happy to respond!

So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get started!

Email marketing isn’t about what you send out. It’s about what you get back. Outlook or any other eMail client (using addons or plugins) just doesn’t support the reporting data which is so critical to building a winning email marketing strategy. At the most basic level, you need to know who opened your messages and Outlook can’t give you even this information.

Outlook means you have to handle list hygiene (removing unsubscribe requests and invalid addresses) manually. Don’t fool yourself into thinking this is not a lot of work because it is.

Outlook can tie up or even crash your company’s email server if you are sending out a lot of emails.

ISPs take a dim view of a lot of emails coming from one address/source. You may find your access turned off if you try to send out even just a few hundred eMails at one time. You may find your ISP shutting down your access or you might have server crashes as a result.

While there are creative templates available for Outlook, you really can’t be sure your creative design will translate on the receiver’s end as it looked on yours. An Email Service Provider provides the support to ensure your message’s creative arrives in the same condition it left. Considering Microsoft’s disregard for web standards with Outlook, this is a critical consideration.

Still don’t want to heed our advice and feel the urge to use Outlook?

Don’t put everybody in the CC field, use the BCC field. This prevents those you send to from seeing other’s addresses

• Check with your ISP to see what their outbound threashold is (the number of messages they will allow you to send out at once). This will fall somewhere between 20 – 50 addresses at a time.

• At the least if you want to go down this road, look into programs/plugins which work with Outlook for email marketing.

Knowing the basics of these laws is key to your success in email marketing. However, using a legitimate ESP will take most of that load off your shoulders since their livelihood depends on compliance. Any reputable ESP will ensure that you are provided the guidance you require to stay on the good side of the law with your email marketing campaigns.

Here are some other basic points you must follow to stay compliant with anti-spam laws in most regions:

• A valid reply (contact) address which is live and monitored.

• A propper unsubscribe address.

• Your physical address as an alternate for people to contact you at.

• Ensure your email header (subject line, from line and address) honestly represents who you are and the subject is not misleading.

Current anti-spam laws around the globe:

Asia
Australia
Canada (see also C-27 at CAUCE.org)
European Union
New Zealand
United Kingdom
United States (see also CAN-SPAM at Email Stats Center)

What’s your SPAM IQ? Take a test designed for email users here and find out!

Rule 1: You can’t legally buy an email list.
Rule 2: If someone is trying to sell you a list, refer to rule 1.

As for list rental, the only proper way is when a list owner or manager (not yourself), will send your message to their list either as a standalone message or an included advertisment.
Any other variations beyond this, fall into the realm of spam and will do your brand harm.

No Email Service Provider (ESP) will knowingly allow you to send to a list which is not permission based. In other words, you need to have a list of email addresses from people who have opted in to get email from you. You can’t buy permission.

Matt Vernhout of Thindata puts it in perspective in this video interview with The eMail Guide’s Jeff Ginsberg.

You can use your current contacts to build your own list. Send your first email to those you have established a relationship with and ask them to opt-in. When you do contact them, make sure you tell them front and centre, who you are and remind them of your relationship – which of course, is why they are getting an email from you.

Here are some more ways to help you build your email marketing list:

• Web forms: If you’ve got a website you should be asking people to sign up to your email newsletter there.

• Refer-a-friend: Include a forward to a friend link in your email newsletter and on your website. This is a great way to expose new potential subscribers to opt-in to your list.

• Social Sharing links should be included in all your emails and on your website.

• Always place a subscribe link right next to your unsubscribe link. If someone has been forwarded your message this is a golden opportunity to get them to join your mailing list. Never hide a remove or unsubscribe link in an email or shove it to the bottom. You’d rather have them unsubscribe then have them click the “report spam” button.

• Create a preference centre for your website. This automates management of accounts where your subscribers update their addresses, unsubscribe and change subscriptions. This will save you a lot of time and money.

• Offer incentives such as discount coupons or down-loadable content (white papers) to get people to sign up.

A word about postive and negative opt-ins:

• A positive opt-in is where you actually offer someone the chance to click a box to opt-in and recieve emails from you.

• A negative opt-in is where you might use your contact list to send them an email and give them the opportunity to then opt-out but, continue to send them email if they do not select to opt-out. In general, the positive opt-in method is the better way to go.

Email marketing is about building relationships and positive relationships take time and effort. The good news is that you already have relationships you’ve built and nurtured with current contacts and those contacts will form the foundation of your email marketing success.

As mentioned earlier, email clients such as Outlook don’t provide any statistical reporting. You can’t judge how effective your efforts are if you don’t know who opens your messages or who clicks through on links in them. Having this data is absolutely necessary if you want to get anything out of an email marketing strategy.

With a reputable ESP you’ll get a range of reports such as:

• Delivered: how many emails were sent out.

• Opens: how many emails were actually opened.

• Clicks: (AKA Click-Throughs or Click-Through-Rate) – how many links were clicked on.

• Bounces: a hard bounce is a non-existant address, while a soft-bounce means the email just didn’t get to the recipient that one time.

• Unsubscribes: how many people have opted to remove themselves from your list via the unsubscribe link.

• Forwards: how many email were forwarded by recipients.

• Conversions or Sales: number of those who’ve interacted or even purchased something on your website (via a link in your email).

More on metrics:
Email Stat Center
EEC Measurement Accuracy Roundtable

Most ESPs provide templates which are easy to customize for your needs. This reduces time and effort and frees up resources on your end to focus on other priorities. Anyone who’s ever dealt with an overtaxed creative department can tell you this is a life saver. If you need some creative inspiration, have a look at these eMail creative examples.

ESPs also easily support in-house creative designs as well. It’s usually a simple matter of cutting and pasting code to incorporate your creative.

You can NOT use MS Word to build HTML which is critical for creative email messages.

Coding HTML email messages is a very hard thing to do. Here are some links whic you will find helpful:

Email marketing templates
Campaign Monitor’s Guide to CSS Support in Email Clients
Template Zone

Or use a creative service to design a custom email template for you such as:
StyleCampaign

Using an Email Service Provider allows you to focus on the message and not on the technical problems of growing needs. Decide what your priorities are first before evaluating possible ESPs:

• Think ahead! Where is your list going?

• Do you see your list growing to thousands or hundreds of thousands?

• How many names you have on your list and how often you are sending to them all influences what solution may be right for you

What matters most to you regarding your email marketing needs?

• Is it throughput?

• Is it functionality/features?

• Is it data reporting?

Is the company you are thinking of working with stragetic and technical enough to get you where you want to go in the long term? You may have to try more than one vendor to see what solution fits your needs.  The eMail Guide has hundreds of eMail Service Providers listed and they all have their strengths and advantages — find a vendor who fits you and not the other way around.

The eMail Guide lists hundreds of ESPs

A good ESP can simply grow with you as your needs do. Most ESPs offer free trials and if your list is small enough, some offer a “free forever” service.

With an ESP it’s one stop shopping for both accountability and support. If you choose the in-house route, most support issues will require you to coordinate more than one department or individual to resolve the issue. This can result in “cat herding” and we all know you can’t herd cats.

We’ve complied a list of questions you should ask any Email Service Provider before you sign on the dotted line.

Scott Hardigree guides you through hiring an email marketing expert here.

• Start small and keep it simple!

• Connect with others and see what they are doing. A simple Google search for examples will bring up a lot of inspiration.

• Take a look at examples featured in industry blogs and at many Email Service Providers websites.

More helpful articles on email marketing:
What email marketers can learn from Sherlock Holmes
A good post to start with!
Glossary of email marketing terms explained in plain English
Knowing the lingo means a better comfort level and brings wisdom.
Great email marketing conversation starters
Some great talking points to get those meetings buzzing.
Using HTML to improve your click-through-rate
There’s more to it than just grapics and hyper-links.
Creating relevant email marketing campaigns
Your campaigns won’t work and your reputation will suffer if they are not relevant to your subcribers.
Never use a “no-reply” address…EVER
Your reply address should be monitored by a real person who responds to subscriber feedback.

Ah March…mushy, slushy March. The month pretty much everybody and especially parents are happy to see come but, happier to see go. How do you engage subscribers smack dab in the middle of the “March blahs”? Elena Hekimian of Blue Sky Factory, leads off today’s Google news for email marketing with some ideas.

4 Ways to Engage Email Marketing Subscribers While in the March Lull
March 3rd, 2010 by Elena Hekimian
Holiday promotions have long past us, Valentine’s Day blew by, the 2010 Winter Olympics have wrapped up, and now we’re at the beginning of boring, so-sick-of-the-winter, March…

C’mon, Make Me a Match
MarketingProfs.com (subscription) - ‎3 hours ago‎
When you hire an email-marketing agency, how do you decide which candidate makes the cut? Size, location, reputation? And has that process always worked for …

Small & Medium Businesses to Embrace Video Email Marketing
ReelSEO Online Video News - Christophor Rick – ‎21 hours ago‎
So Implix, who I found out sells an email marketing services, did a poll or survey of some 200 email marketers (not spam artists we hope). …

Email marketing must be anticipated and relevant
Marketing Week - ‎5 hours ago‎
I read with interest your article about email marketing (MW 4 February) because, despite a slight economic recovery at the start of the year, many companies …

High Price Suggests Low Quality Email Marketing Software, Says New Research by …
PR Web (press release) - ‎10 hours ago‎
An independent review of 19 leading web-based solutions reveals that the best email marketing systems are also the most affordable. …

Email marketing ‘keeps a company in customers’ min…
Experian QAS - ‎20 hours ago‎
She added that in her opinion email marketing is more effective than the use of social media sites when it comes to attracting consumers’ attention. …

Omnistar Interactive Introduces the Latest Version of Omnistar Mailer Email …
PR Web (press release) - ‎10 hours ago‎
Version 7.3 comes with a number of new features that make your email marketing efforts even more effective. “We have integrated the very anticipated RSS …

Email Marketing Firm, Listrak, Integrates Customer and Site Data to Provide …
PR Web (press release) - ‎10 hours ago‎
Lititz, PA (PRWEB) March 3, 2010 — Listrak, a leading email marketing solutions provider, announced a new release to its web-based email marketing platform …

MaaS Impact Helps Companies Achieve Massive Marketing Impact . . . in Record Time
BigNews.biz (press release) - ‎3 hours ago‎
Their platform is the fastest growing within the Marketing Automation Software, Email Marketing and Sales Lead Generation arena, and were recently named the …

Online direct marketing ’should reflect topical issues’
Equimedia Marketing News - ‎1 hour ago‎
But bathing suits? No,” she added. Last month, Ms Jennings, in a column for ClickZ, said subject lines play a key role in email marketing.

Constant Contact’s Potential Breakout
www.citybizlist.com (press release) - Zachary Scheidt – ‎4 hours ago‎
Constant Contact is primarily an email marketing firm which allows small businesses to build a contact list of prospective clients, and send regular emails …

The news today that ExactTarget has acquired CoTweet and their Twitter CRM technology, has already dumped a great deal of grist into the mill for tweeters and bloggers to analyze just what it all means. Some will point to this as being another sign that social marketing is replacing eMail marketing and while provocative, that couldn’t be more wrong.

The fundamental truth that many seem to missing in all of this debate regarding social and eMail marketing is that they are both social – by definition any kind of communication between two humans is in fact, a social interaction. The methodology for that communication may take different forms but, the reality is that communication (in all it’s myriad forms) is how we socialize.

It makes perfect sense that both eMail marketing companies and social marketing companies will form alliances or directly acquire, knowledge which facilitates better communication and a wider reach for their messages.

ExactTarget is making a smart move to strengthen their grip in the worlds of both social and eMail. By combining both, this gives ExactTarget more horsepower to track the interactions between people via social and eMail channels. It gives them a leg up in the industry with a direct link into the power of social and it’s one step further towards integrating eMail and social marketing. It wouldn’t surprise us at all if the next target for ExactTarget is some kind of video streaming platform to help advance video eMail marketing technology.

Are we on target or off? We’d like to hear your take as well. Post your comments!

Takeaway: Since email is a social medium, it’s not surprise that alliances and acquisitions are being made to integrate it with channels such as Twitter.

For more insight, check out this video of ExactTarget CEO Scott Dorsey discussing the deal with CoTweet founder Jesse Engle.

Email Marketing Meets Social Media – ExactTarget & CoTweet from ExactTarget on Vimeo.

It’s simple: I hate deliverability.
I can’t stand the word. And that is not a simple life when you are an email marketer. My skin crawls when deliverability is mentioned in the same sentence with, “one of the biggest issues” or “a big challenge in email marketing for coming years”. But hold on, I’m not “deliverophobic”. I’m not scared of the word deliverability. I’m just not pleased with how the term is used. Here is why:

Did you get the message?
Deliverability is how well your message is getting through — through to the inbox that is. Not through to your recipients heads. It combines all the issues concerning getting your messages in the inbox, nothing beyond that. And that’s the big problem.

Don’t mix it up!
The term deliverability mixes up technical problems with issues concerning common sense and marketing and that is not how it’s supposed to be. To put it simply: the technical stuff, your ESP should take care of that. But that doesn’t mean that they can guarantee the email is getting to the inbox. A part is to be done by the email marketer themselves. Those common sense and marketing issues should not only make that your message gets to the inbox, but also contribute to it getting opened, read and, if you can be so lucky, clicked.

“Interestablilty”
But what is a message in an inbox worth if it’s not being clicked and read and not contributing to your goals? Right, it’s worth nothing. I therefore would like to introduce the term “interestablilty” – making your message interesting. So interesting it moves your receivers to open your email and act on it. Mind though, this is not the same as relevance. So, what do we call the technical issues before that? Making sure the email makes it to the inbox? Let’s just call that email delivery.

More about “interestability” in my next post!

Until next time!
Jordie van Rijn

Takeaway: Getting the message through is a two part process. One part is delivering it to the inbox and the other is making your message highly interesting for the reciepent.

About the author
Jordie has more than 7 years of e-mailmarketing experience under his belt. Working at the dutch loyalty company Dunck “www.dunck.nl”, the focus on current customers and subscibers delivers a different view to marketing. Working with brands like AEGON, Cup-a-Soup, Unilever, CZ, Roche, Sport2000 and Univé. He has advised and realised many a customer life-cycle and engagement marketing concept. He spends his free time thinking about email marketing.

It doesn’t take a “rocket surgeon” to tell you that the big news for eMail marketing today is ExactTarget’s acquisition of CoTweet. We lead with our very own analysis of what this means to eMail marketing.

ExactTarget acquires CoTweet: What it means to social and eMail marketing
The Email Guide - ‎3 hours ago‎
CoTweet, the Twitter CRM tool, has been acquired by ExactTarget….

Incorporating  Social into Email Marketing
WebProNews (blog) - ‎4 hours ago‎
Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing but is still very effective. Social media marketing is a relatively new form of marketing but is …

Online Marketing’s “Instant Gratification” Takes Time
Fast Company - Eric Groves – ‎2 hours ago‎
… almost as quickly, it still takes time to build a successful digital marketing program, particularly when it comes to permission-based email marketing. …

Follett Software Company Achieves More Than 8000 Percent ROI on Marketing …
PR Newswire (press release) - ‎8 hours ago‎
In fact, the campaign was so successful that Follett Software recently received a gold award at MarketingSherpa’s 5th Annual Email Marketing Awards in the …

Which Goes Better With Email: Social Or Mobile?
Mediapost.com - Blaine Mathieu
Each channel can integrate with your email marketing program to expand its reach and ROI. But, which channel should you choose? You could opt to spread your …

Email marketing is a powerful tool that enables marketers to track and trace almost every interaction with the prospect. But whether you like it or not, there are still some things that can not be measured properly. Although some reporting figures are sometimes presented as being accurate, the truth is that they are just a rough estimate of what is really happening. This article will help you get a better insight in these email marketing reporting techniques.

The viral effect reporting

Motivated by specific marketing actions or tickled by the interesting nature of an email campaign, people are often prepared to forward the email to the mailbox of new prospects. This is what we call the viral effect. Being able to measure it would be fantastic – just imagine how great it would be if you’d know how many times your email was forwarded by your contacts. And to which new specific prospects…

And yes…it is possible.

But only if you do it like this: just ask your contact to forward your email through a viral module. By using this technique, the email address of the sender will be logged, as well as the email address of the new receiver. This type of reporting will give you a precise view on the viral effect of your email campaign, telling you exactly which of your contacts forwarded the email to a new prospect. But be sure to handle the information you get from this reporting with care. Although you are in possession of the new prospect’s email address, in most jurisdictions you are not legally authorised to use it without prior consent from this new contact. In other words, you must still get the new prospect to opt-in to your list!

The viral marketing reporting myth

Even if a viral marketing module is the only correct reporting technique, IP address tracing is sometimes presented as a reliable technique to measure the viral effect. Which it isn’t.

When measuring the opened ratio of email marketing campaigns, it is possible to track the number of times an html email message was opened by a specific email address.  This technique makes it possible to define the number of opened messages and the number of unique openers. When tracing the different type of IP’s used by one e-mail address to open the same email message, you could conclude that the email was forwarded to a new contact. An IP address is normally related to one email address, so you would think that different IPs per email address are new users, thus forwarded messages. Wrong!

Some Internet Service Providers use one IP address for different internet connections. That’s why it could be perfectly possible that you have the same IP address as your neighbor. Same goes for companies: they often work with one IP address for the entire organization, making it impossible to trace forwarded messages within a company based on the IP address.

IP address tracing and opened html message tracking only give a rough estimate of what the viral effect of an email marketing campaign really is. This manner of reporting can’t be considered as being exact, but is only there to help marketers get an estimate of the effect (when they prefer not to use a viral marketing module).

Spam or deliverability reporting

One of the major concerns of email marketers is to get an opt-in message through the spam filters. Due to the continuous flow of spam messages, spam filters are becoming more strict. Email is not only filtered at ISP level, but is also facing company spam filters and personal spam filters. Different techniques used by these spam filters — from blacklisting to content analysis — make it very difficult to create the perfect spam-proof email message. The result is that opt-in emails will sometimes be considered as spam – and will be consequently blocked. Can’t we track these false positives and – like so-called bounce messages — resending them after the problem is recognized?

No…impossible.

False positives are impossible to trace. The incoming email message that is falsely detected as spam will immediately be deleted or relocated to a specific mailbox. All this is done without notification or activation of tracking mechanisms. It’s as if your email was delivered to the recipient and that he has deleted it without reading.

The only indication of an email possibly being a false positive is a low opened ratio of your e-mail campaign. You could then consider resending the email message to contacts that did not open the html email, this time with a different copy or a less complex design. But be aware that most email accounts have standard ‘no image view’ settings. The recipient decides whether he wants to get the images in the email or not. Which may prove to be a problem for opened html email reporting, since it works with an image to detect open ratios.

Nothing I can do about that?

Yes, you can. You can analyze the email message with something such as our SpamCheck – a simple and handy tool that is programmed to react like most of the standard spam filters. The interesting part is that the spam check tool will tell you exactly why your email message would have been blocked. This gives you the opportunity to adapt the content or html design of your email campaign, increasing your chances to get through spam filters considerably. Although this technique is extremely useful, it’s not 100% infallible. It simply is impossible to program a spam check with every spam filter technique on the continuously evolving market. So, only the major and most common spam filter techniques are taken into account.

You can also use inbox monitoring via third parties such as ReturnPath. This will give you a better insight in the amount of false positives and spam complaints. It will also help you to manage the reputation of your IP.

Takeaway: Reporting techniques such as viral effect reporting or deliverability reporting are used to give the closest reporting email marketers can get. Use these techniques as an indication – do not expect them to give you exact figures. Therefore it‘s important to know the nature of the metrics and the way they work.

About the author:

Kenny Van Beeck is a certified Marketing Experiments Email Marketing professional and is past president of the Belgian IAB email marketing taskforce. Hi is a common blogger and speaker in the field of email marketing. Also known as editor of the EmailGarage weekly tipmail with more than 5000 readers. As email marketing consultant he worked for several international companies such as Unilever, Thomas Cook, 3M, Microsoft, …