The Email Wars

The Oregonian is asking people to vote for their favorite Rose Parade float. Please take a minute to support Oregon 150 by voting for theirs. (It already won the 2008 Leigh Abbott Award (Best Use Of Humor!!) It’s #17… the Seski float! And for those of you who don’t know Seski, the brain child of Andy @ eROI, will be seen a lot all over town the next few months so keep an eye out for him (you can even follow him on twitter if you so desire).

Read Seski’s Story on the site and get to know one of Oregon’s oldest residents

VOTE today>>

Email Preferred Communicator by Consumers For Business Dealings

According to the 2008 study of consumer attitudes towards email and online interaction with businesses, completed in May 2008 by research firm Ipsos for Habeas, Inc., 67% of consumers prefer email as a primary method of communications in their personal and business capacities, and 65% will continue to prefer email in the future despite the rise of online threats and the emergence of other communication channels and Web 2.0 applications.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1720

Great study from ReturnPath this past week if you have not read it already. But it hits on one of my favorite topics, the immediate trigger. So often when I am auditing a customer’s email marketing program it starts at of course the opt in. Great I signed up and then the first miss… the thank you page. Such an opportunity for a personalized cross sell, exposure to something else, and even just a simple “Here is what you can expect with your opt in”.

Then I watch for the thank you email. You had me at hello and now with your brand in my immediate conscious you have the opportunity to start talking to me or even training me to expect what arrives from you. This is an ideal time to set the standards of the from line and even give a little something-something where you can drive a special offer or even some proactive profile expansion with data you did not ask for at opt in. Progressive profiling of your opt ins works really well here as we are building a relationship.

But then on top of that many people/companies/brands miss the opportunity to drop that immediate trigger. A recent audit I did had a 2 week welcome email and I was already so detached from them. Even with a newsletter sign up you run the risk of a month between email touches. Stop the insanity and jump on the wagon. Get something out to them immediately, even if it is the most recent newsletter. Get them engaged and trained to get emails from you.

The benefit of immediate triggers holds many benefits for your program and the personalization effect helps to solidify the cognitive relationship you are trying to foster using email.

Read the Study after the jump>>

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Executive Summary

Image blocking has become pervasive, with approximately half of all email users suppressing images by default. However, email marketers have not fully adjusted to this reality and reflected it in their email design.

The two strongest weapons in their arsenal in the fight against image blocking, HTML text and alt tags, aren’t used nearly enough. Only 42% of the 104 top online retailers included in our study designed emails that were a good mix of HTML text and images, and only 63% used alt tags adequately or extensively.

Consequently, emails from 23% of the retailers reviewed in this study were completely unintelligible in an inbox environment–and there were some significant shades of gray among the 77% that were intelligible, because of lackluster HTML text and alt tag usage.

In addition to our observational study of retailers, the Email Experience Council and SubscriberMail, the sponsor of this study, surveyed 472 marketing executives in March. When it comes to designing for images off, only 47% of the survey respondents said that their company had taken action. Those actions ranged from adding alt tags or a “click to view” link to minimizing images above the fold.

Get the Full Study at the Email Experience Council’s Resources Center

Keep reading after the jump >>>

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I had the pleasure today to get a chart from Michelle Eichner at PivotalVeracity showing some testing of forms in email clients. I wanted to share this as we get questions all the time from clients if they can use a form in an email. Will it work? Will it work “right” is more of the question they should ask.

Forms will display most of the time in email. But will the submit button work properly is another answer. Sometimes and it depends on what email client. I typically steer clients away from forms if they cannot segment out email addresses by known email clients. Now who really knows 100% of where someone reads the email? I would wager no one.

From Michelle: “We conduct a research study yearly to understand which Email clients support Forms. There are two parts to the test, A) Do they render B) Are the operable. Below is a chart showing the results of the major email clients. * These clients allow you to access/send information via a form in the email but warn the user when the submit button is clicked.”

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So what do you do? You drive them to a landing page to complete the form and enter the data where you have some control on how it works. Getting it out of the email client is a much safer route.

As GI Joe always says, “Knowing is half the battle”, so good luck in your own personal email wars.

If you ever needed a reason, you really don’t, to get out to Portland, Oregon during the best time of the year, here is one you can use with your boss. The Internet Strategy Summit 2008. And even better I have a Discount Code (REACHROI) for 10% off.

Titans of E from Forrester, eMarketer, Disney, Nike, Intel, IBM, WebTrends and Fandango at Internet Strategy Forum Summit in July. This event has been GREAT every year and promises to be even bigger and better this year. It sells out, so make sure to register soon. And when was the last time you could attend an event with the caliber of speakers for $200?

Geoffrey Ramsey and Charlene Li are some of the best speakers and always have given me so much at events like OMMA and SXSW and now right here in Portland.

Internet Strategy Forum Summit 2008, July 17-18, 2008
Governor Hotel, Portland, Oregon

Presenters include:
* Geoffrey Ramsey, Co-founder & CEO, eMarketer
* Nancy Bhagat, VP of Sales and Marketing Group, Intel
* Daniel Stickel, new CEO, WebTrends (formerly with Google)
* Charlene Li, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
* Chris Shimojima, VP, Global Digital Commerce, Nike
* David Placier, VP, Consumer Insights, Disney Online
* Shane O’Neill, Chief Technology Officer, Fandango
* Mike Moran, Distinguished Engineer, IBM, author (highest-rated speaker at 2007 Summit)

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This article was really not that large of a surprise. Considering the digital divide is alive and well, we all understand that not everyone is using email. And this begs me to ponder, do we want them to? Is it really that important that not everyone is using email? 20% seems like a big number but in the grand scheme of things it is not something that is going to slow the growth and use of email.

It talks about homes without connectivity and people who might not use it in a work environment. You have to consider that there are many people in jobs/roles that do not depend on email and do not have access to a computer in the work force. Really how many blue collar (not to be rude or insulting) use desktops or laptops in their jobs?

Which bodes well for the lifespan of all the other communication mediums that are in use like TV, print, outdoor etc.

But on the flip side… 80% is a huge number to consider having access to email and the internet. The flip side is what makes this industry so attractive.

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From the CNET News Blog: The digital divide is apparently alive and well.

About 20 percent of all U.S. heads-of-household have never sent an e-mail, and about 20 million households, or 18 percent, are without Internet access, according to a study released earlier this week.

Read the full article

Typically I would not be even mentioning the two people in these ads, but I noticed these on a political news site the other night. Yeah, I follow politics. Who doesn’t? But ads typically don’t catch my attention much anymore. Just clutter around information in most cases.

But these two were calls for newsletter sign ups, so my interest was piqued of course. So I clicked through the first one which was for good old Newt. I had wondered where he had squirreled off to anyway. The lead capture page was good. It was clear what it was about, offered content to support why I would want to opt in, and then showed me a sample email. Great tactics.

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Hotmail users getting locked out

Imagine getting an e-mail from a friend or family member with the following subject line: “ITS IMPORTANT YOU GET BACK ME TODAY.”

CNET is aware of a couple of Hotmail users who have recently gotten locked out of their accounts. In one case, someone who had hacked into an account sent a desperate-sounding e-mail asking for money under the account holder’s name.

Microsoft had no direct comment.

Read Article

Just like one of my favorite old time ads that is still running today (thanks to my TV watching with my 5 year old son) just how much copy does it take to get your point across? (Just How Many Licks Does It Take to Get to the Center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop… One…Two…Three. Three) I often see emails that I wonder just WHO was the copy writer? Were they paid by the word?

We have limited time in today’s world sadly enough, and as marketers we need to be cognizant of just what we need to say, how to say it clearly, and how to get them to take action. Simple right? Well not always.

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