The Email Wars

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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Brent Hill: Feedburner
Sean Meehan, eWay Direct
Bill Nussey, Silverpop
Corey Honza, Quiznos

eWay Direct: Desktop Applications
Why did we look away from email and look at desktop applications to deliver the email messages to the desktop and away from the inbox. Integrates into any email client. Improves performance 5 to 50%.

Provides a way to isolate best and most enthusiatic customers.

Using this allows you a way to bypass the ISP and inbox for 100% delivery.
Time based events – ie 12 hour sale – then disapears
Toggles with email, so they can remove the app and still be engaged in email inbox
Own space on the desktop

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Brian Ellefritz: Cisco
Syd Jones: IBM
Stephanie Miller: Return Path
Denis McGrath: P&G
Daryl Neilson: HP
Geoff Atkinson: Overstock.com

Relevancy and Consumers Having Control:
Daryl: Email is viewed as a relationship vehicle, 80% of our business is through email communications. Challenges are finding good information on each person ad pulling the communications into a brand communication and not a product channel communication strategy. The US is the hardest market. It is here that they can invent solutions and campaigns to pass out globally.

They were hitting people in asia 2-3 times a week and were seeing bad results. Moved to 2-3 a month and saw rates rise. With the global countries, the world is still working in the mindset of 1995 where people are still climbing online faster than the US.

IBM: They have the same issues. Keeping brand channels from emailing so many times and not getting in sync with frequency.

Steph: Why did you use Spam in your answers?

P&G: First round of consumer research was shocking as to how fluid the concept was. Not just what we think it to be, but anything they get that they don’t want is “spam”. Might be appropriate today but could be junk tommorrow. The consumer changes relevance perceptions all the time. Let the consumer be able to change the frequency rate. Is the point of view consistent with your lists? Are you segmenting and delivering the right content? You might not experience the issue if you explain up front and continue to communicate the focus (CLV).

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Has Email Lost Its Way?, Brian Ellefritz Cisco Systems

Email is a prolific and great tool for Cisco but it is also a changing tool.

In the Beginning… (1995) What are you going to do to control the online world? Email and the web browser were to tools to grow your subscriber base and business. It was a great time to be a brand. Everyone was opting in to everything at a rapid pace and loving everything they got in this new INBOX place that they have.

Search disrupted the love. Consumers no longer needed to wait for the email, but they could go look for it. Changed the email opt in rates. Brands had to reposition as consumers are all about finding what they need when they need it. They have community sites, peers, blogs, youtube, IM, search.. all of these make email more important and more of a focused approach is what needs to be done.

Letting go of control and becoming part of the consversation is what we need to do. People are becoming responsible participants.

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Proctor and Gamble
Denis, P & G for 18 years. In online with PG since start.
Created P&G Everyday Solutions Program

What’s Right with Email Marketing
“A Praise Sandwich” some positive with some negative with some positives.

Success is based on Relevance
What your delivering is what the consumer wants to hear every time.
Consumer Relevance takes many routes and you need to identify what yours is.

How do you deliver an engaging message on a low involvement category – Many brands are doing and sending things that they believe that the consumer might not like to hear about on a daily basis. Deodorant, Toilet Paper: Charmin, Batteries: Duracell? Do you want an email about these items?

How do you craft a message that works. Aggregation is the solution. Bring them into other combined efforts. 10-12-14 interesting tid bits to talk about monthly instead of stand alone brand emails.

They are successfully using product sampling or couponing camaigns, contests, sweeps, special offers as part of the monthly mix.

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Well today the Email Insider Summit is wrapping up. I took time to blog the comments made by most of the speakers. I will be editing my fat fingers (typos) work tonight and posting it for you over the coming days.

Lots of great people. The Email Experience Council, ReturnPath, Goodmail, Pivotal Veracity, David Baker and the Ave A/RZRFSH team, Ogilvy NYC and SF, Barclays, Jenn from Summit, David Fowler, Lola from Warner Music Group, IBM, Quiznos, Datran Media, Charles from AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Weather.com, HP, Robeez, and many many more. And of course Bill McCloskey a personal favorite. The eROI team had a great time (last night was a late one) and learned so much.

I just can’t stress what a great group of people there are that come to this event. Put the May 07 event in your plans. You can’t attend a conference where people are so open and willing to share. Companies and Brands large and small (even competition) share openly about what is working, not working, challenges, and solutions. The most important part is that they are all here to move the industry forward and make it better for eveyone. you can’t get this much collective knowledge in a room anywhere else and have them all really want to share and grow. Trust me as I go to alot of events.

If you are reading this blog daily, weekly or monthly, make the commitment and join us in May. Also think about OMMA in LA in March 07. One of the best collective intereacrtive events out there.

Thanks MediaPost and The Email Insiders for putting this event on.