Good Example of the Address Change
Oct 03 2008
What happens when you have preached to people so long to add your email address to their address book so that they are a trusted sender and you now are changing that? Have you gone through this change before? It is wise to alert people prior to this change so that you do not end up in their bulk folder before you make this change.
Marriott went above and beyond IMHO at announcing this change. Now what I loved the most was the fact that this shows that they value email as a communication channel so much that they did not even try to get a booking out of it. Nice work. Sure they had their find and reserve in the top nav, but that is a typical element in their other programs. They took the road of making sure they they did not lose people as one campaign could do more to lift their program than the long term damage in lost bookings could drive if they added more than one thing to do.
I am not sure overall from an industry perspective of how many subscribers do take the step to add them to a “safe list” but I would bet that this had some people that had not done so before to take that step now.
Is this something you use in your programs at the opt in? And if so do you have any data that you would share on subscribers using it?
Posted by Dylan Boyd at 4:15 AM
Published in Behavioral Marketing, Best Of Email, Best Practices, Deliverability, E-Mail Delivery, ISP Relations, eMail Marketing Optimization on Friday, October 3rd, 2008
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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I am excited to join a great panel for an upcoming Software Association of Oregon event called 
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:35 am
I’m not typically a fan of the “address change” email and have criticized poorly done ones in the past – but I have to agree that Marriott did it beautifully here.
I even like the way they led in the subject line (”New Email Address”). It’s to the point – and more importantly, it’s the *exact* same wording I would expect a personal contact (the kind of people whose email I open first) to use.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:08 am
This is a good example of creative to use when switching providers or adding new IP’s during the “warm up” phase.
I’ll touch more on it in my next column, but the goal is to send creative that is not time sensitive, or likely to drive complaints. Conversion is not the goal of this message, delivery is.
I’ve seen many examples of this approach recently, and I expect we will see many more over the coming months as ISP’s continue to require slow and steady volume from new sources to build reputation.
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There was actually this great one I have saved to blog from this week from a little ESP called Lyris. Ever heard of them Stefan????
Cheers
October 6th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Please pardon my ignorance. I’ve got a minute list, and I was under the impression that when I used Aweber my internet service provider had no idea if I was sending 38 or 38,000 emails. If that is the case, I need not worry about providers seeing a rapid change of email traffic. Is that correct?
Neil Smith
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Neil:
I am glad that you asked. IF this is what your ESP is telling you, you are misled. As far as reputation, domains, complaints and sending spikes, etc etc go… They all know and they all matter.
Without giving away too much eROI Secret Sauce I can tell you that an ESP SHOULD be always reviewing, positioning and balancing clients/IPS/Volumes/Frequencies/Reputation and being proactive on all of these issues.
We have seen many ESPs that bulk clients on IP addresses, do not set up all the feedback loops, DomainKeys and other factors that do impact your mailings and do throw red flags to the ISPs
I will also tell you if you were to be sending 1000 emails and then 100,000 emails it would be a flag. It might not immediately impact you but when someone sees a IP change with a spike it is a warning that this is not an opt in list and that it does not match the past sending behavior for domains and IPs.
All I can say… but do actually talk to your ESP and get the straight dirt from them.