The Email Wars

We can tell you that copy converts. It is not the images or the calls to action in many cases, but the copy. We read our emails, or maybe we scan our emails for items of interest. So being as clever as possible in giving a carrot and not the full meal is KING. Read below from ClickZ some good points in developing copy skills.

E-mail advertising is a relatively recent phenomenon. As a result, many very experienced copywriters are inexperienced in crafting e-mail messages. So, I’ve created a little primer.

Funnel Your Creativity Into the Subject Line

You have about 45 characters in a subject line to work with. Make them count. If your readers are BlackBerry users, you only have 15 characters to grab them. Hopefully, your sender line clearly identifies your company and brand. That way, you don’t have to repeat it in the subject line.

From there, write a list of mandatory subject-line items. For a Webinar, for example, you must include the Webcast’s name and date. That will probably take up most of the characters, so get creative.

Read Full Article on Clickz

Great article today from eMarketer. This is a topic we deal with all the time with clients. When is opt in email spam? Well it is all in the perception of the end user. Anything can be “Spam” for a user to report it. You might have an opt in, double opt in, time stamp, date stamp, web page, tracking history of 30 emails read, clicked and a customer relationship with this person, and still they can hit a button and report you as spam. Funny huh.

Many people do not realize the financial impact they cause to companies, ESPs, ISPs and more by reporting a spam complaint that is not legitimate. The leg work and follow up that opt in marketers must do to handle each and everyone costs money. It is Guilty before the trial. Before the Evidenence and before the judge.

I think everyone should take back the inbox, but do it the right way and opt out. If you are getting junk or spam, that is real, report it.

From the Article:

Who Says It’s Spam?

Who decides what is spam and what isn’t? The consumer perhaps?
What are legitimate e-mail marketers supposed to do? They follow CAN-SPAM guidelines. They use proper permission marketing techniques. They mail only to opt-in lists. Still, recipients are increasing hitting the “This is spam” link.

After all, while marketers may have a set definition for spam, and know that they don’t practice spamming, consumers have a broader view. Legally, e-mail isn’t spam if a consumer has opted-in to receive messages. However it could also be argued that, if there is something in a user’s e-mail box, and they don’t want it there, it is spam.

Read more:

It’s time again for the eROI quarterly email study on deliverability. The eROI, Q4 ’05 email study breaks down, by list size, which day is the best day for email campaigns. In general terms the Study indicates a 29 percent drop quarter over quarter in read rates, and a 21 percent drop in click rates in Q4 over Q3 2005. Additionally, the Q4 data shows a similar trend from the third quarter in that the noticeable high point in the week occurs on Friday for both reads and clicks. So, from this quarter eROI reaffirms that sending volume is inversely related to how reads and clicks react.

For Q4 eROI sees similarities to last quarter with read and click rates generally declining as list size increases, but there are some major differences. Read rates are much more erratic between 500 and 10,000 emails. Click rates see a more consistent behavior and do not decline in nearly as consistent of a pattern as last quarter. Volume for 250,000+ lists takes a huge jump upward resulting in approximately 20 percent read rate. We believe this goes to show, segmentation works and the general B2C marketer really needs to adopt more targeted mailing campaigns. B2B mailers are starting to adopt them more and more.

For the full study and charts go to: http://www.eroi.com/eroi-email-marketing-statistics-q405-study.html

This study on viral email should not come as a surprise to anyone reading this blog. How many emails do you get a day from friends and co-workers that have a funny video or cool website. I know we get a ton. The thing about this is that we all want that cool first know-er factor. Email provides this in a way that you can share things that make you FIRST with friends and co-workers. It is good to have some data to back up how cool you are.

Viral Email Study:
Nearly 90% of Internet Users Share Content via Email According to Sharpe Partners’ Study on Viral Marketing; Humorous Marketing Messages Are Shared the Most

A study by Sharpe Partners, an award-winning interactive marketing agency, revealed that 89% of adult Internet users in America share content with others via email.

Sharpe Partners’ study on viral marketing also found that 63% of the respondents share content at least once a week, with 25% sharing daily or almost daily, and as many as 75% of the respondents forward this content to up to six other recipients.

Read the Full Viral Email Study

It is nice to see that the larger ad and email groups have stepped up. Although a little late, we knew it was coming. I think that choosing Utah by itself is an interesting idea instead of both Utah and Michigan, but we need to hammer down one at a time. Other groups came out earlier to challenge this, but they did not carry as much street cred and power as these unified groups.

Go get em. One law (CAN SPAM) should be enough for the nation instead of creating one per state and a national law. Too much, too confusing and really increases the costs, complexity and value of email marketing when you are an opt in marker.

From MediaBuyerPlanner.com

Six leading advertising associations and civil rights watchdog groups have applied to file an amicus brief in a lawsuit challenging Utah’s “Do Not E-mail” registry and say in their application that the case is important “to all parties with a vested interest in free and unfettered availability of email as a communications channel,” MediaPost reports (via MarketingVox). The lawsuit was filed in November by The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment trade organization that wants Utah’s Child Protection Registry Act invalidated.

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If you did not realize how many americans are spending more time with their computers than others in their immediate life, well we are. And the fact that you are here reading this now proves it. We are growing to have more time with those online through email and social networking sites, that most nights when I drive home through my neighbohood, I see more families in their windows in different rooms typing away with their best friend.

Now imagine that with the love for the cell phone and SMS. We are growing to spending more time in the virtual world than we are in many cases with the real world.

FAR FROM ENCOURAGING ISOLATION, THE Internet actually facilitates stronger social ties, according to a new study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The report disputes the notion that increased use of the Web will lead to a dystopian future in which people interact with their computers at the expense of spending time with each other. “There has been this enduring fear that the Internet would turn us into a nation of hermits–that technology would take us away from people-to-people contact,” said John B. Horrigan, associate director at the Pew Internet Project. “This study persuasively finds the opposite.”

The report’s major conclusion is that the heaviest e-mail users are more likely to also meet with friends and acquaintances in person–or talk to them on the telephone–than are those who don’t use e-mail as often. Horrigan said that this finding held true for all age groups, not just the young adults who increasingly turn to specific social networking sites such as MySpace.

Read the Full Article

Not sure how your holiday campaigns went, but many of the ones we saw were amazingly done and well targeted into micro mailings. Interesting to see that 1 in 3 people complained of spam emails in the bulk of emails that they had deliverd to the inbox during the 2005 Christmas retail season. We saw well segmented campaigns with many of our clients and many of the large brands we watch. One thing that might have contributed to the perception of spam was the frequency. I collected a few hundred email from opt in large box retailers during that time frame and I can tell you that as the window got closer to ship, the offers got more generic and the email targeting size got wider and less specific.

Keep to task and focus focus focus on your audience and targeting with dynamic email content.

According to a ReturnPath survey, 44 percent of consumers said they received more email than they expected when they registered with a Web site this holoday season, DMNews reports. And 34 percent said they reported marketing emails to be spam just because they did not want to receive the emails any longer.

Still, email marketing led to more purchases this holiday season than last, DMNews reports. Half of the more than 1,800 shoppers surveyed in late December said they used emails to make purchases, up from 44.8 percent the previous year. Meanwhile, 50.2 percent said e-mail had some influence on their shopping habits, a 10 percent jump from 2004.

Read more from DM News

I noticed a very interesting thing tonight in the new MSN Live Mail Beta. This is a newsletter form ClickZ that I get a few times a week. The odd thing is that it is flagging the email as a Phishing Scam from an unrecognized sender. Now I know that this is a legitimate sender, but MSN does not seem to. I wonder if this again stems from the email address that they use. It is VERY cryptiq and one other facet is maybe they have not implemented SenderID for MSN. Something that everyone should do.

If you notice anything like this in other mail programs, comment and let me know.

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Join us for a series of webinars covering a range of topics that will help you to fine tune your email and e-marketing campaigns.

January 24 and January 26 - 11AM - List Management: We will focus on list management within emailROI including, import, export (lists, with filters, etc.), new list creation, basic segmentation for new lists, and Master CRM overview.

February 2 - 11AM - Opt-in Best Practices: Difference between single opt in and confirmed opt in (also known as double opt in) including response rate difference, bounce management and spam complaint resolution. We will briefly touch on the state of authentication including SPF, Sender ID and Domain Keys.

These events are opt in only so please sign up here.

A new report by Ipswitch indicates that the number of spam e-mail message may be down, but surmises that spam may just be appearing elsewhere instead. In watching these in some Honeypots I have set up, I can say that I really have not seen the tide turn. I watch the same 20 offers a week with different subject lines and different senders over and over again. No real change in my eyes except it seems like they are just predictable.

The most common types of spam subject matter should be no surprise to anyone who uses e-mail: mortgages and loans, pornography, lottery/gambling (including phishing e-mails), gift cards and medication (in that order). Mortgages and loans account for over one-fifth of spam e-mails, down from one-third in Q3 2005. Pornography became more common, while medication-related spam fell from 18% to 12%.

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It is really important to get the actionable items to display in the Preview pane of email clients. Make sure that you are testing on a few different clients and set your testing window to a different size. I have recently seen a study from Marketing Sherpa that says that the preview pane in email clients as well as ISP web based email is increasing. This is due to the all the new flat screen monitors and increased knowledge of the average user on how to change the display settings on the monitors.

But test, test, test for yourself.

I loved this recent study from eMarketer. With all of the new email clients turning to default to block images from loading (Gmail, Outlook 2003, etc) isn’t it nice to see how many are looking to load the images? What this tells me is that whether the email is junk or just image suppressed, you should be using good ALT tags to let others know what they are missing by not seeing the images.

Give them a carrot to load those images in 06.

I love it when I see an email done right. Timberland does a great job of not only creating a beautiful email, but they also know that people don’t just shop online. They used this email to cross promote the outlets stores and drive conversions to the physical world.

Good job. Think about this for your own business if there are other channels (VARS, OEM, Retailers, or your own stores) that you can cross promote. In the end it is a sale and you do not want to control how each user can buy all the time.

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What consumers ask for via email is not necessarily what they get from marketers, according to an email marketing survey from integrated email agency Quris, reports DM News. Though 77 percent of consumers want to receive “unscheduled offers” from marketers, only 8 percent say they get them; also, 75 percent of consumers sign up for scheduled discount alerts and circulars, but only 19 percent find them worth reading; and although 69 percent want email product catalogs, regular updates on products and sales specials, 81 percent say that’s not what they receive.

However, some 66 percent say purchase, shipping and transaction confirmation messages are what permission email does best. Also, 48 percent say permission email is best for providing electronic statements or other account information, and 43 percent say email is best for promoting special discounts and other limited-time offers. Also, 51 percent of respondents are open to receiving relevant marketing messages within those service emails.

Some 77 percent say email is the best medium for transaction confirmations, 60 percent say it is best for customer service inquiries, 52 percent say newsletters should be sent by email, and 50 percent say electronic coupons should be available via email.

Now we all get alot of spam, but do you get offers each day that want to sell you lists of names for close to nothing. This one is a sale on Spam. End of the year clearance, Everything must go. If you are looking for that perfect gift for a marketer you know after the holidays, then this spam is it.

This blows my mind each day as I get emails from complete spammers hawking me more ways to spam. It is something that needs to be stopped.

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