The Email Wars

E-mail played a less important role in the mid-term elections than in last year’s presidential race, with just 12% of American adults receiving political messages in their inbox this year, compared with 15% in 2004. That’s according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The organization, which surveyed 2,562 adults last month, also reported that registered Republicans were the most likely recipients of e-mail ads, with 16% reporting such messages, followed by Democrats (12%) and Independents (11%).

Wealthier respondents also were more likely to get e-mail, with 20% of those earning more than $75,000 a year receiving ads in their inboxes, compared to 6% of those earning less than $30,000.

While e-mail use appeared to dwindle this year, direct U.S. postal mailings increased. Sixty-one percent of respondents said they received snail mail from candidates, up from 49% two years ago.

The report doesn’t speculate on why use of e-mail dropped, but one explanation is that politicians were more afraid of being labeled “spammers” than in the past. Of course, it’s also possible that consumers weren’t receiving as many e-mail messages now due to overly aggressive spam filters that weeded out the political solicitations.

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I love seeing these studies. They really help me to better understand just what people are doing. And in this case I use the word people to refer to adults. Most of us target the grown up in our campaigns and looking at data on kids and teens only goes so far. Read the study extracts below and see if you fall (or your consumer falls) into these buckets. It actually brings up a good idea for an exercise that you might think about doing yourself. Make a chart and see if you can classify your subscribers into online demographic profiles. Who is on your lists? What else do they like besides you? Could you find some things to do with your lists based on this type of targeting? I know I could.

Adult Online Habits Top 10 Activities Of U.S. Adults With Internet Access

Source: MRI’s Fall 2006 Survey of the American Consumer

Used Email: 70.5%
Got Latest News: 40.2%
Made Purchase For Personal Use: 34.2%
Paid Bills: 30.7%
Used Instant Messenger: 26.8%
Got Financial Information: 24.8%
Got Sports News/Information: 23.8%
Played Games: 22.4%
Made Travel Plans: 19.8%
Got Medical Information: 17.4%

Online: Reading Blogs, Video Grow Most; Email, News, Shopping Most Popular

Visiting blogs, watching online videos and making phone calls online posted the biggest year-to-year increases in the number of users among internet activities; however, email, newsgathering and personal shopping remain the most widely used internet activities among U.S. adults, according to responses from Mediamark Research Inc.’s recently released fall 2006 survey.

Some 11.4 percent of adults said they had watched an online video in the previous 30 days – a year-to-year increase of 123.7 percent, according to MRI. Those who report they visit blogs increased 163.9 percent during the same period, to a total of 6.7 percent of the adult population. And 2.6 percent of respondents report making a phone call online, an increase of 197.7 percent.

Nevertheless, those three internet activities remain the least-used by the adult U.S. population. The internet activities performed by the greatest number of adults are emailing (70.5 percent), obtaining news (40.2 percent) and personal shopping (34.2 percent).

Looking over a four-year period, the biggest increases in the number of adults conducting an internet activity were for making a purchase for personal use (up 57.7 percent, to 34.2 percent of the adult population), making a purchase for business use (up 51.5 percent, to 10.7 percent of adults), obtaining real estate information (up 36.6 percent, to 12.3 percent of the population) and visiting a TV network’s or TV show’s website (up 35.1 percent, to 14.1 percent of the population).

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Just so you know, I am completely against these ideas. Why would I want to give anything away if I know that I am going to have a database full of emails that are bad and will begin to bounce once I send the confirmation (if your sends are delayed). This is going to cause an increase in list management and invalid emails sent to your lists. Will this hurt your online email reputation?

How many times has this happened to you? You visit a web site but registration is required, with a valid email address needed for confirmation. But maybe it’s just a message board you want to read one time only, or a store you have no interest in shopping from again and from which you don’t want to be saddled with a lifetime of spam. And you can’t use a made-up email address because you have to confirm a link or send back a reply.

One solution is to register for a free email account specifically for uses like this by visiting one of any number of web-based mail systems, such as Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, or Gmail, but registering for any of these takes an eternity. Then there are passwords to contend with, a mother’s maiden name to input, all kinds of overhead in getting the account set up and logged into. I use these kinds of accounts, but sometimes the password gets lost, and eventually they fill with spam, making it a pain to navigate.

Here are 3 in the Growing Market:
http://lashback.com/
http://www.mailexpire.com/
http://spambob.com/

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Just how important is it to get make your email impactful? Well if I just looked at this report alone I would think that getting the attention of the average young person in email is impossible. (80% of them are multi-tasking when using email). But then I look at myself and others around me. I am not “young” and not “old” but in the middle. And in the demo that marketers want in most cases. I have email ADD worse than most and am often asked to stop typing while I am doing anything (or everything) else. I multi-task always and at all times. So does this study concern me? Not really, but it does make me think more about what is going to drive that conversion, sale or brand exposure when placed in the middle of IM, RSS, SMS, Blogs, Social Media, and that damn dog barking outside. (there are more distractions than just the computer you know)

Consider your audience and put yourself in their shoes, or sandals or heels.

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This came in an email last week from my MSN account. Not the lesson I wanted to learn but interesting that they are pushing it as 1 of the 4 messages in the email. The email promoted all the things that are new in Live Mail but also continues to educate. I love the education of the consumer, but what about one addressing what actually happens when you flag it as Junk? It states (and I bolded) do not reply or unsub, just flag as junk. Now come on, how does this help anyone?

How to report junk mail
MSN® Hotmail® provides several ways to help protect your account from unsolicited e-mails. To help combat junk e-mail, you can report and block all messages sent from a particular user.

To do this:
Within the Inbox, click on the check box next to any e-mail messages you want to report as junk e-mail.

On the toolbar, click Junk.

Click OK to confirm the messages as junk e-mail.

Notes:
Reports are used to improve junk e-mail filters and lessen the amount of spam you receive
To report an already opened message, click Junk on the toolbar. Do not reply to junk e-mail, even to ask to be removed from the sender’s mailing list. You may only be confirming that your e-mail address is valid. It’s best to delete the message and to set up the junk e-mail filter.

“Startup Makes Spammers Pay By John Hudson- Wired.com”

The title of this article alone “really” builds credibility with this new company. So they are going to charge people to email you. So if you remember each time to add the sending email address of newsletters, etc that you sign up from (hey what about transactional emails after you just bought some more christmas gifts at Pottery Barn? Think those will be charged?) then they don’t get charged. Or what about those friends that email you that you have not heard from in years? Do they get charged? And how does that work? And the most important of these to me is How many of these emails will go missing? ISPs already have issues with MIA emails, if they are going to be another layer on it, will you run a larger risk of losing emails?

One last thing, THEY are going to make money on your email. So the more you use it, the more they make (this is as long as you don’t have everyone flagged in youe white list.) They aren’t doing it for the good of mankind, but as a business to make money.

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If you’ve ever wished you could bill spammers for the time spent reading and deleting unsolicited e-mail pitches, your day has come. A new e-mail-forwarding service hopes to make senders pay for access to your eyeballs, and is offering you a piece of the action.

San Francisco-based Boxbe lets you set up an e-mail address and add your friends, family and co-workers to an approved senders list, allowing them to e-mail you for free.

Anybody else who wants to reach you will have to pay. You set your own price, which can be as low as 3 cents or as high as $99 (if you think you’re all that). Boxbe will give 75 percent of funds collected from advertisers to users, who could optionally direct the money to a favorite charity.

If you have not had a chance to see our company holiday video (you should subscribe to our newsletter) I wanted to share it with you. We are a zany bunch here at eROI that works just as hard as we have fun. We actually pride ourselves on wanting to wake and come to work in a place and culture that we have fostered. Not many places that have kids schwinn bikes in the office for getting around inside. (That kind of throws visitors off at times.)

Warning, the video is not corp, and may not make much sense, but man it really shows some of the team in real life. Seriously, watching this video could make you dumber. Which in turn could make us seem even smarter. (or at least that is what our copy writer thinks) Be you own judge.

Enjoy some time away as we will be pounding away like Santa’s elves on Adderol.

I know I have been a little slow since returning from The Email Insiders Summit. It is not that I have not been blogging, I have, but I have not been posting. I am working on them over the next few weeks to give you some better content. It just seems to me that the 2nd and 3rd weeks of December are busier than any other time of year… and even noisier in email , blogs, news and video. So I am giving you a little rest to get you ready for 2007. It is going to be a break out year for email marketing and one of new directions for alot of people that have been doing the same old thing time and time again.

If you need some reading, check out Ryan (our CEOs) posts on his blog Email Days. He has posted his annual 10 predictions for the new year on not just email, but online marketing as a whole. (If you didn’t know eROI is not just one of the best email marketing agenices with our emailROI platform, but also a FULL service interactive agency.)

Another good read is RetailEmail.blogspot.com. Chad really does a great job covering what is happening in the world of retail email marketing from major brands each and every day. It should be one you read regularly.

Thank you for all of your support these past 2 years and we look forward to staying busy blogging to bring you our (my) perspectives. Also look for my columns coming twice a month in the Email Insiders newsletter and on the blog at Mediapost.

And if you need a recap each week delivered to your inbox, sign up in the right hand side for automated emails from our blogs (using our RSS to EmailROI engine).

Cheers.

Just wanted to throw out the news that we have changed out RSS feed address. For those of you that subscribe by RSS, make note to update your feed for us to: http://feeds.eroi.com/TheEmailWars

And for our other blog:emaidays.com
http://feeds.eroi.com/LoveEmailHateEmailViralEmailMarketingInbox

And for the ReturnOnSubscriber.com
http://feeds.eroi.com/ReturnOnSubscriber

IF you have no clue how to use RSS, then you can subscribe on the right hand side for weekly email recaps using our new RSS to EmailROI platform. That’s right, you will be using RSS and have no clue how or why, but it powers the emailROI plaform for you automatically. It’s magic like how Santa gets his big can down that skinny little chimney.

Thanks for continuing to read the rants.

David Baker, Jeanniey Mullen. Loren McDonald, Bill McCloskey – The Email Insiders

Bill: So happy to see everyone throwing the good and the bad out in the open. Why are we, the good email marketing folks here, the ones that are trying to work so hard at creating better programs, better content, better value for subscriber when we have to fight the real bad guys polluting the inbox? When will the C level execs start seeing the value in email marketing as a channel?

Jeanniey: One of the biggest benefits of this event is that people are sharing so much with one another, sharing collective insights, successes, agencies and vendors not acting competively but working to advance email overall and sharing with one another. (Like cats and dogs sleeping together.. is this the end of the world?) the people that are here some some of the most impactful brand marketers in the world and really working hard at doing all of this right.

David: This event has fostered so much collaboration and openess. So many people have said that they are taking so much back with them, and so many close new contacts that they can communicate with after they leave here. ( I personally saw Lenovo and HP having a great conversation). The biggest challenge for us is how we craft our email stories when we walk out of this event. Taking this understanding that we all have and face the same or similiar issues and collectively we have helped to solve a few this week.

Loren: Is part of what we have been talking about is that email does not have that ONE thing anymore? It has so many other benefits and roles now. Acquisition, Relationship, Promotional, Customer Lifecycle Value, etc. We are opening up our eyes to how we can best leverage it and how people want to get it.

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Morgan from ET made some good points about the following:

Bigger lists are better. Cutting dead weight may result in a lower number of total opens/clicks/conversions.

It is not true at all. Keping your DBs cleaner and lists smaller may perform better than just mailing to the same large list.

Example 1: Cosmetics Retailer
Cut lists from 5.2 million to 2.1 million
59% reduction in costs post opt in
30% increase in total sales after opt-in
222% increase in total revenue per email sent

Example 2: Retail Store
67% reduction in email lists size/email costs
5% lift in average number of unique clicks
40% increase in total conversions

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Reputation Rules:

What is Reputation?
1. End User Complaints: hit the junk buttons, sends to abuse@
2. Unknown User Rate: an Account that does not exist at a domain.
3. Spam Traps or Honey Pots: Accounts that have NEVER opted into any newsletters.
4. Sending Infrastructure: There is a Checklist of 40 things that ISPs look for – Wish I could type it all out for you.
5. Sending Permenance: If your email frequency is not even or it is bursty then it is a flag for ISPs. Balancing out your volumes and sending schedules helps.

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Case Studies on Segmentation Practices

Michele Souder, General Mills
Betsy Alperstein, General Growth Properties – Large Retail Malls
Mark Braitsky, Peterson’s
Loren McDonald, JL Halsey, Moderator

Segmentation, we all know we should be doing it. Targeted segmentation drives 5X revenue returns vs batch and blast marketing that many email marketers use. Many plan on using dynamic data (from last year’s study) so we should expect more email marketers to be using it starting 2007.

Overcoming the Challenges:
Capturing the Data
Accesing and Segmenting the Data
Creating the Versions of the Content
Getting the Resources and Budget

General Mills: Opt in forms drive to a self selection of content and issues
Many people internally thought that the form was too long and asked too much, but after some A/B testing they found no difference (long or short) with completion rates). So there was not any noticable difference in conversion to subscriptions. Some extra non required feilds provide extra (Box Tops) points if they complete.

Creative: Using tests based on geo driving online couponing and recipes. Retailers like to participate in the emails as they see offline lift in sales with the couponing.

General Growth: Paper forms at the malls drive lead capture (Gender, Kids and birthdate (for age) are the most important). The online form asks for basic data, HHI, Family members and ages,

Peterson’s: Short forms, Basic information on first page. Secondary page asks for more information. They believe that shortening the forms into steps helps completion. They are concerned about geo, role (parent/student/educator), expected date of enrollement (timing), and program of interest (can provide leads to schools). There are multiple forms on the sites that roll into a single CRM/database that they can then use to market out of.

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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has promised to introduce a “privacy bill of rights” that would give consumers the right to sue when privacy rules have been violated (don’t they have that right already?), freeze credit when their identities have been stolen (sorry, too late), and challenge the government to exercise best practices in dealing with their personal information (sorry, too vague). Should such a bill become law, chief privacy officers will batten down every hatch while outside lawyers will exploit every gray area. Great for the lawyers, but not much good for everyone else.

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