The Email Wars

Return Path’s Q2 Reputation Benchmark Report

Return Path recently released its  Q2 Reputation Benchmark Report. Here is George Bilbrey’s high level take on what they found:

Most of the servers sending email shouldn’t be. Only 20% of the IPs we studied were legitimate, well-configured, static email servers. It’s important to point out that this doesn’t speak at all to the quality of the messages from those servers - lots of horrible spammers know how to configure a mail server. The other 80% of the mail is coming from servers that are either identifiably bad or unidentifiable and probably bad. No wonder ISPs and other large receivers feel besieged. 

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I am sharing this campaign with you a little prematurely. Now I am not saying that this campaign has not gone out and did blow away the long running subscription control by a double digit factor, but it is getting a full campaign case study written up now. It will be out soon with all the details, but want I wanted to focus on was the slight factor that changed the response rate. 

When this creative was first passed by my desk I had to stop and think about it a little bit. How was it different from what was sent out prior? What would tell people what to do and would that effort beat that of ones prior? The whole idea of this campaign was to drive subscriptions and we did not want it to make people think of anything else besides the images and the value of having a print subscription. We loaded it up into an inbox to see how it displayed. Did it drive the eyes to the action. Did it convey value and on top of that did it make me want to get a subscription. Well it was close.

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Here it is… another great survey on email marketing and email marketer from eROI. Now this one is juicy as well as good looking. I know I am a little biased, but I love the design work our team is doing. Also be on the look for new case studies coming out on Email Design, Campaign Sites, Publishing Client Campaigns, and new methods of email marketing that are delivering ROI in social media.

Here is what you will get in the new study:

We examine all the elements of a great email, and show where email marketers are hitting (and missing) opportunities to increase deliverability, opens, clicks and conversions. We uncover rising trends and current opportunities. How do your email marketing campaigns need to evolve to take advantage?

Download our presentation of the full results!

Interesting that Pizza Hut would take this approach. It is sorry we F’d up email, but they sure do alot of appologizing. Why not take that opprtunity to say sorry, and then give them the pickle (old saying about give them something that they don’t expect by a famous ice cream parlor owner) which would be order one now with an extra topping or save $1 on your next order with us. 

What is trying with this opt in process is that in order to place your order online for a pizza you HAVE to opt in to email from them. Not sure when that became the standard. It is an aggressive strategy and has been written up on blogs like The Consumerist and others. 

Try to do what you would like done to you in this situation if you ever come up against it. You only have one time to have a bad customer experience while giving people the best treatment over and over again keeps them coming back. 

Here is the email:

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When Do You Check Your E-Mail?

I might not be like you and you might not be like me. I know two people that actually wake up, roll over and the first thing that they do is scroll through the blackberry. Sick? Maybe. But it is their routine. Personally I check mine before I head out the door to work, look for breaking news or fires that might have sprung up overnight, and then drive in to work… where I will check continuously throughout the day. 

I will also be driving, yes hate me but I swear I have a 3rd eye in the middle of my forehead, and at stop lights and check emails then. I need to stop that behavior. But really where do you check email that is odd or where do you check it that is normal? Do we know best times of day when people are showing that they are ADDICTS?

Do we care? As it seems that people are checking email everywhere and at all times of day and night. Even from places like the bathroom and in locations that they might have not reported. 

Is this a sickness? Do we all need to chill out a little bit as addicts? Or should we embrace it as email marketers (aka dealers) and sling them what they want when they want it?

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That’s right boys and girls… a new Email Marketing Guide in the Resources center @eROI. And not just one… but 3 new guides. And hold tight… wait for it… wait for it… wait for it… now - Look next week for the RESULTS of our latest email study there as well. 

I know you say this is TOO good to be true, like the Flowbee or the GoateeSaver, but it is not it is 4 for the price of 1 visit. I know these guys at eROI really go above and beyond to think about what is working in email marketing and how to share this knowledge with the world. One would think that they are a 3000 strong global force of Ninjas and Revolutionaries (we are but less that 60 with 2 offices) but alas we just like to make you smarter to do your job better. 

Now if we share like this with everyone can you JUST imagine what we share with our clients and customers? I would wager that some AWESOME ideas come out of here and some campaigns that rock. 

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The other morning I was forwarded the email opt in from another ESP by a co-worker at eROI. Now I am not going to share it at this point as it got my juices flowing. I started to wonder… if all of the ESPs out there are stumping on their soap boxes about best practices, studies, and how people are not doing A-B-C of the basics of email marketing… then are they following these rules themselves. 

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If you are familiar with Twitter, then you are very close with the Fail Whale. For those of you that have yet to meet the Fail Whale (and I think that the community might have named it such, not the brand) I have placed a image of it in the wild for you below. I can tell you it is much better than a animated GIF of a monkey banging on a server with a wrench and even a better user experience than a 404 error page. But what can we learn from the Fail Whale.

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Blog post from Fred Wilson - Union Square Ventures.

http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/07/are-your-invite.html

I think this is interesting because Twitter is such a hot Web 2.0 company these days, and yet they’re facing the same issues that many other companies face, making sure that their emails get delivered to consumers’ inboxes.

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More than 75 percent of all email today is spam, placing a significant strain on your network, budget, and employee productivity. Our objective is to leverage mail security intelligence from the Symantec Global Intelligence Network to help protect your business from spam. By offering up-to-date expert resources, such as the monthly State of Spam Report, this site gives you a central source to turn to for the latest on spam.

Overall: http://www.symantec.com/business/theme.jsp?themeid=state_of_spam

July 2008 PDF http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/other_resources/b-state_of_spam_report_07-2008.en-us.pdf

I have been reading over this study a few times now. It is well done and yet totally confounds my sense of thinking around keeping it short, driving home the point, telling me what to do, and being relevant. So if you have not read it yet it is the Alchemy Worx study that is reporting longer subject lines have a great impact on read to click as opposed to shorter subject lines that are just read…

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This is great news and also amazing in some ways. 35% vs 25% of companies are using email versus direct mail in this recent study. Direct mail has really dropped significantly. Amazing. What they don’t show, which I would like to see, is how when DM and EM are used together what the success rates are, the lift, and how many companies are using both in tandem.

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Email Preferred Communicator by Consumers For Business Dealing
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

Eighty five percent of companies failed to personalize the first e-mail message sent to new subscribers, Return Path discovered with its new Return Path Subscriber Experiences study. This lack of customization, combined with other missed opportunities, leaves marketers unable to leverage the true power of email marketing.

Return Path, the leading e-mail performance management company, conducted the study by subscribing and studying the e-mail programs of 61 companies from the retail, consumer goods, travel, and media/entertainment industries.

The problem is not lack of data. Marketers are collecting information at sign-up that could be used to personalize their initial and subsequent e-mails. In fact, seventy percent of the companies studied collected additional information beyond a subscribers’ e-mail at sign up. Yet, 75% of the companies that collected that additional information did not use it to personalize their e-mails.

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2008/06/research-study-creating-great.php

Return Path has recorded a webcast with Bonnie Malone Fry reviewing the study findings. Download that webcast here: http://www.returnpath.net/landing/subscribers. Downloading the webcast will also trigger an email message with a link to the study.

Take our latest email marketing survey!

At eROI, staying on top of the latest in email marketing is always a top priority. In this new email marketing survey we ask you, our customers, “What are the elements of a great email?”
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To show our appreciation, all survey participants will be automatically entered to win one of a handful of iTunes gift certificates!

This survey should take just a couple minutes of your time, and we will share the results with you upon completion. At the end of the survey, be sure to download our new eROI Email Marketing Guide from our Resources Center, updated for 2008! You will be given a link to the guide upon the completion of the survey.

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