The Email Wars

Did you know that if you just add this (bolded below) it makes you exempt from Federal Law? Hell if I only knew this and I could just spam people all day.

This gentlemen took a list from a government official through the Freedom of Information Act and spams residents of Portland on issues he feels is right. I have asked to be removed many times, called his home (spoke to his wife) called his business multiple times and still get spam from him.

Time to take the WAR back to him. Oh Richard, come out and playaaaa.

From the Email:

Richard Ellmyer
3-6-9 Resolution author and project champion
Writer/Publisher – HAP Watcher commentary – Published on the Internet and distributed to 13,000 readers interested in public housing policy in Multnomah County.
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org

President, MacSolutions Inc. – A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses. Located in Portsmouth, the neighborhood with the second highest concentration of public housing clients, 15% and rising, within HAP’s Multnomah county jurisdiction of 117 neighborhoods.

Note to readers: HAP Watchers is written, distributed and published with the intent of changing government policy on public housing. It follows the path laid out in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America which guarantees both free speech and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. HAP Watchers is political free speech with no commercial interest in product or service. Political free speech is at the heart of our democracy. Without it we have no democracy. Technology gatekeepers beware that you do not become censors and spies as your counterparts in China. Commentaries seeking a change in government practices, such as HAP Watchers, are specifically exempt from the federal regulatory legislation called the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 also known as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

It is counter productive to the goal of changing government actions to send HAP Watchers to those who are not interested. Any recipient of a HAP Watchers email, with the exception of public officials and their personal staffs, who does not want to receive HAP Watchers need only ask to be removed by replying to any HAP Watcher email and writing Remove or Unsubscribe in the subject or at the top of the reply body. Requests for removal must be made from or include the same email address to which HAP Watchers was sent in order to be found and deleted.

Occasionally new lists of names are acquired and added to the email database. This may cause some email addresses that have previously been removed to reappear. I apologize for any inconvenience. Please follow the removal procedure to be taken off the list.

Ninety seven percent of sending IP addresses’ reputations are so bad that e-mail box providers are likely to block their messages, according to a study by e-mail deliverability concern Return Path.

Moreover just 0.9% of sending IP addresses scored well enough that their e-mail is likely to be delivered, the company determined.

Read the full article here.

Return Path’s George Bilbrey: “when it comes to email deliverability, reputation is the most important element for marketers to work on. It matters more than content, subject lines, and the typical cosmetic fixes that marketers gravitate toward. Sure, content matters for driving response. But it does not make much difference when it comes to blocking and filtering.”

Download the white paper here.

Good Tips from David Baker at Agency.com. Actually words to live by in email marketing.

In the e-mail industry, quality assurance has been difficult to maintain consistently. How does QA survive in a world of multiple iterations and last-minute demands? Same as it has in other areas of business. Just because we have a new medium to syndicate en masse doesn’t mean we sacrifice the principles of quality assurance and redundancy in checking our work before it goes out.

With e-mail, the discipline of QA requires exactitude and a reliance on checklists. In order to minimize the risk of things that can go wrong, you want to make sure that:

The database is set up and mapped for personalization (content and data).

Content is properly coded and optimized.

All links and redirects are accurate and inclusive of proper link-naming conventions for tracking purposes.

The text is accurate and the typographic treatment is maintained.

Any custom code (passing variables to a site) are applied or tags are inserted.

The site and tracking system is properly tracking.

Responses are routed properly.

All forms pages are active and posting data properly.

Subject lines and “from” names are consistent and spelled correctly.

The spelling is checked throughout.

The image is validated.

SPAM scoring and HTML validation is complete.

Stephanie Miller at ReturnPath puts out some great studies. They are very helpful to many of us in this industry.

E-mail testing can be measured like a batting average–if you’re a .300 hitter, you are in the big leagues.

I’ve always been amazed that even really good baseball players can miss more than half the time and still be considered great. (I’d sure like those odds on my work projects, please!) E-mail house program testing is similar. You won’t get a home run every time, but every hit is solid progress and really important.

Since there are literally an infinite number of elements to test, and only a few of them will result in dramatic findings, it can feel like your testing program is striking out. Maintain your emotional and professional fortitude–and stick with the testing program even when you don’t see big results every time. Even incremental results can turn into real revenue.

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It is nice to see some new data on the Goodmail system. I would assume that they are only going to release studies that show good results for now as it would be suicide to not do so. I would hope that in the coming months they can roll up multiple clients and data points over multiple brands, days of week, times of day and transactional vs retention emails and show us a complete view. This will allow many marketers to make up their own minds around this pay to deliver system.

By Wendy Davis of Mediapost.com

E-MAILS DELIVERED TO AOL ADDRESSES saw click-through rates rise by 30 percent when the messages had been “certified”–meaning they were delivered with intact links–than when delivered without the certification, according to a study released Tuesday by e-mail certification company Goodmail Systems.
For the study, Goodmail sent messages on behalf of Time Inc. to more than four million magazine subscribers who had accounts with AOL–a corporate sibling of Time Inc., and the only major Internet Service Provider so far to start using Goodmail’s certified e-mail delivery program. Half of the e-mails had been certified by Goodmail, so they arrived with a Goodmail icon and with all images and links enabled, while the other half were sent absent certification.

Goodmail intends to eventually charge marketers a per-message fee to certify e-mail, but did not charge Time Inc. for the e-mails sent as part of the study.

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I can tell you that I have mixed feelings about this article. I know the value of email and as a brand, retention and traffic driver. I know that we all use IM on a daily basis at eROI, but on the same note everyone still uses email. Everyone.

I have not yet met a Tween, Gen Y or Adult that does not still rely on email. Every medium has its spot, and we are all ADD today. Take this with a grain of salt, but consider the impact on messaging and the vehicle you use.

Here are some stats to counter the below article:
>> Email is the #1 online activity for Americans! (Pew Internet Survey)
>> Out of 1,000,000,000 (1 Billion) Internet users worldwide, 90% use email! (PostFuture)
>> 82% of online consumers have made at least one purchase as a result of an email! (PostFuture)
>> People now use email to communicate MORE than the telephone! (Marketing Sherpa)
>> 90% of consumers use email multiple times per day! (DoubleClick)
>> 30.1% of people use email for gift ideas! (ReturnPath Survey)
>> 40.9% of people comparison shop with email! (ReturnPath Survey)
>> 59% of people have redeemed an email coupon at online OR offline store! (PostFuture)

E-mail is so last millennium. Young people see it as a good way to reach an elder _ a parent, teacher or a boss _ or to receive an attached file. But increasingly, the former darling of high-tech communication is losing favor to instant and text messaging, and to the chatter generated on blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

The shift is starting to creep into workplace communication, too.

“In this world of instant gratification, e-mail has become the new snail mail,” says 25-year-old Rachel Quizon from Norwalk, Calif. She became addicted to instant messaging in college, where many students are logged on 24/7.

Much like home postal boxes have become receptacles for junk mail, bills and the occasional greeting card, electronic mailboxes have become cluttered with spam. That makes them a pain to weed through, and the problem is only expected to worsen as some e-mail providers allow online marketers to bypass spam filters for a fee.

Beyond that, e-mail has become most associated with school and work.

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In an effort to expand our latest study we are currently working on, we would like to invite you to participate in this survey. This survey will help us to combine some key data points we analyze over our emailROI network and provide you with the combined results in August.

Take the short survey

Sign Up for our Study Release and download past studies.

I found this older study that hit home with me, as I process about 400 emails a day. I have a personal rule not to EVER let my inbox exceed 50 emails by the end of every day. I would prefer 35 or less, but I know what is possible. I wonder if other people are like this as well. The amusing thing to me about this report was that it cites 20-30 emails a day. So 2003, right.

I know just in my sent items that I have not filed or deleted that I have over 20K emails for search reference in the past year alone. Sick, I know, but it is the easiest way to communicate in a busy world and across oceans and time zones.

Take a read if you are wondering about your own inbox as well as what trauma your own customers and prospects might be facing as well.

Description: This report, available as a PDF download, describes a simple method that will allow any user to cope with increasing amounts of incoming e-mail. This includes a simple method to solve the hassle of incoming spam.

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I could not help but whare this article on the Email Experience Council. The council has grow even more in the past week and it is amazing how many companies have already joined the membership. If you have not yet joined and email marketing is truly important to your business take the time today.

Annual memberships are not expensive and the collective research, data, and conversations you will get out of this group is amazing.

E-mail is a great marketing tool, but despite the movement over the last few years toward centralized databases and integrated marketing programs, some agencies and e-mail solutions providers remain at odds with the siloed approach most companies continue to take with the medium.

E-mail services providers such as Gather.com and Pivotal Veracity, along with agencies like MRM Worldwide, OgilvyOne Worldwide, and Agency.com, have banded together to form the Email Experience Council to focus more awareness on the strategic value of e-mail marketing.

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From DM News today:

I agree with most of this data and will be interested to see how our next study matches up with this article. We have seen that everyone has a different “Best Day to send email” and picking sweet spots on Fridays as a whole might not work for everyone out there. Every industry and consumer segment performs differently. There is not a magic bullet. If there was, we would all be hammering the end users at the same days and times.

E-mail is a growing space for sales and marketing but consumers and Internet service providers are getting more discriminating.

In a presentation June 21 at the DM Days New York show, Worldata corporate vice president Jay Schwedelson advised attendees on how to navigate the tough, sophisticated e-mail world. One recent Return Path study found that 20 percent of permission-based e-mails were not delivered, he said.

He suggested a few tactics to bolster e-mail campaigns.

Read the Tips

Great study from Stephanie Miller, VP Strategic Services, at ReturnPath.

I was personally surprised to see 51 seconds. I think about my own reading habits and I think about 15-20 most times. But then again I read for headlines and then skim content and click through or trash it.

Readers spend an average of 51 seconds with email newsletters, typically skimming the contents. Only 19% of newsletters are read fully. (Nielsen Norman, 2006) That’s good news and bad news for B2B email marketers, who are most likely to produce content newsletters rather than tips or pure promotions.

Good news is that 51 seconds is a long time in the email world, as promotional emails get about 15 seconds (Marketing Sherpa, 2005). The average person reads about 200 words a minute, which means, I’m loosely figuring, you’d get about 100-150 words after headlines and images to communicate and engage – or about 5-7 headlines if the reader is skimming.

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It was funny, but not really, that I got this email from the “IRS”. Now the IRS has spent some money on educating people through TV and Radio that they will NEVER email you. EVER. But there is a rash of low hanging fruit out there that will fall for this scam. It is sad and does anger me about how many people are abusing email as a communication tool each and every day.

But the real amusing part of this email is that they told me I have a refund of $3.80. Really that would cover my AM Starbucks stop. Come on now. Does this really work on people. I mean if it had said $380 I might have seen it as a good con, but this goes in my highlight reel on stupid phishers.

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Liz Tascio, at Mediapost wrote this article and I think if you have not read it yet it is worth the read today. We are BIG believers in testing and trying new things. It always comes down to resources and time with many clients. I would bang the drum that you need to make time and you need to set aside the staff and financial resources to start testing. Stop doing the same old thing each and every campaign and look at what is happening not only with the email statistics, but with the overall sales, lead, brand and conversion goals.

When it comes to online marketing, does an e-mail’s subject line really matter? How to revive a failing pay-per-click campaign? What’s the best way to distribute a digital press release? And how much more money could you be making if you knew all this?

The people at MarketingExperi-ments.com test online marketing tools, then publish the results for free. MarketingExperiments partners with companies to test and analyze online marketing techniques, then publishes briefs on its Web site and in a twice-monthly online journal. Audio clinics discuss topics such as a/b split testing, marketing intuition, click fraud, and how to use search to boost site traffic.

The site’s 70,000 subscribers range from new business owners to CEOs to marketers. “We don’t target a specific group, we just are trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t ,” says Jalali Hartman, senior analyst, strategy.

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If you have not yet taken a moment to either subscribe to the Email Experience Council’s Newsletter or downloaded the new case studies, get on it. This group have a little over 1000 active subscribers in the past few weeks and they are represntative of some of the major brands, agencies and marketers in the email marketing space. The EEC will be bringing you some great resources, events, interactive online Ask the Experts chats on Gather.com and much more.

They have just opened up real membership (annual and not expensive) to all. If you are serious about email marketing, this is going to be one of the main resources you will come to count on from here on out.

Learn About the EEC and join today.

I found this from John Ouren, Goodmail Systems. I understand the value proposition that they are selling in thier marketing and PR efforts, but I am still having a problem with the basic idea shift. I assume that we will see a change in mentality from larger brands that can afford this cost and I am still waiting for some first hand testimonial from some marketers in this space that tell me that this concept has changed the ROI on thier email campaigns.

Everyone understands e-mail’s economic advantages over physical mail. Aside from cost, e-mail has a richness and interactivity that makes it more than a simple one-directional communication vehicle.

But can we really rely on e-mail? When a marketer pays 39 cents to send a piece of First Class Mail through the U.S. Postal Service, he doesn’t worry about the final disposition of that message or wonder how it will be regarded by the recipient. What about with e-mail?

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