Email Users Want More From Marketers (and Their Inbox)

Subscribers around the globe know their importance to marketers, and would like to be treated accordingly. They have become more discerning about handing out their email address, and they look to marketers to customize experiences based on self reported data as well as insight passed through cookie-based technology and purchase patterns. Although there are some regional differences around the globe, the bottom line is that email marketing is welcome most when it’s used as a way to connect with customers, rather than just broadcast information.

These are some of the findings of a new global consumer attitude survey published by Return Path partner e-Dialog…

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Hotmail Using New Metrics to Influence Inbox Placement

Hotmail is now using a new level of engagement metrics to measure reputation and make inbox placement decisions. You can read about them in my Email Insider column today, but here are the highlights:

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The Truth About Engagement Metrics and What They Mean to ISPs

There is a lot of confusion in the marketing media as to what “engagement” means. Engagement is centrally important to email marketing success and many marketers use it to refer to subscriber response and loyalty. Engagement data – by which marketers’ mean opens, clicks and conversion – are vital to marketing success.

But these are not the metrics that ISPs mean when they talk about engagement. And, even when they do use the same or similar terms, how they think about those metrics is dramatically different from how marketers think about them.

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Gmail Priority Inbox: The Continuation of a Trend

First Yahoo!, then Hotmail, and now Gmail. (And soon AOL?) In their ongoing campaign to be the inbox of choice, large webmail providers are rolling out features that reduce email overload and improve the email experience for subscribers by, among other things, highlights messages that the user is likely to deem important.

It’s still way too soon to tell what this means for the future of email marketing. But it’s clear that the “first in, last out” model of email — one that has prevailed for more than 15 years — is breaking.

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What’s an FBL?

In spite of the best efforts of anti-spam staff, end users — the account holders, recipients of email — still receive spam. And users want to complain about it, preferably to someone who’ll do something to make it stop. So, somewhere in the later 1990s, mailbox providers created an easy way to complain directly to them.

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New YouTube Channel for Anyone Skeptical of Email Marketing

Next time someone asks you if email marketing is worth the time or effort, send them to YouTube. Well, specifically to the new DMA/Email Experience Council channel that includes a dozen or so quick videos from industry luminaries talking about various aspects of email marketing – and how to do it well.

Thanks to tireless work by Lana McGilvray of Datran Media, who is co-chair of the DMA/eec Speakers Bureau along with Stacy Kirk of Silverpop, the YouTube channel was launched this month to help promote the value of email marketing to business, and to outline some best practices. The DMA hopes to continue to add to the library. Perhaps you will contribute one?

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New Study: Many Marketers Miss the Opportunity to Re-activate Subscribers

Pundits in the email industry have been declaring the end of batch-and-blast email for years. Return Path wrote the obituary four years ago.

Oh, if only it were true.

Instead, our new study finds that way too many top-brand marketers ignore signs of inactivity and instead send the same type of message, at a high frequency, over and over and over and over.

In a follow up to our 2008 study of email practices amongst ecommerce companies, my colleague Stephanie Colleton and I analyzed email from 40 retailers who sent messages to a former buyer who did not open, click or purchase for more than a year and a half. What we found was not completely surprising, though it was a bit depressing.

Here were our key findings:

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Marketers Send High Volumes of Email to Non-Responsive Customers, Endangering Email Deliverability

Only 12.5% Take Steps to Re-engage With Lapsed Subscribers, a New Return Path Study Finds

August 16, 2010 – E-retailers continue to struggle with building customized, 1-to-1 email marketing efforts tailored to subscriber response rates, or more importantly lack of response, according to Return Path’s new study — The One-Way Conversation: Email Marketing to the Non-Responsive Subscriber, Return Path is the global leader in email deliverability and reputation management services.

A majority of the email marketers that Return Path studied sent email at a steady, high frequency for a 19-month period, despite a total lack of response from the subscriber (no opens, no clicks, no purchases). For the new study, Return Path studied the email marketing efforts of 40 online retailers over a 19-month period. Eventually, 11 companies studied (27%) stopped sending email to non-responsive subscribers. Yet, 10 of the companies stopped sending email without making any attempt to reengage the customer or specifically asking the customer whether or not they’d like to continue receiving emails.

“We were certainly surprised to see how these e-retailers were sending emails to a customer who was completely non-responsive,” said Stephanie Colleton, Director of Professional Services, Return Path. “We strongly recommend that email marketers, not just e-retailers, monitor their subscriber responses – opens, click-throughs and conversions – and adapt their campaigns to either slow down the emails to once per month or send a re-permission email to determine subscribers’ continued interest in receiving emails.”

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Investment in the Email Ecosystem

Last week, my colleague George Bilbrey posted about how (turns out – shocking!) email still isn’t dead yet.

Not only is he right, but the whole premise of defending email from the attackers who call it “legacy” or “uninteresting” is backwards. The inbox is getting more and more interesting these days, not less.

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Want to Get into Gmail? Check Your Sender Score (Plus 4 More Tips)

If I had a nickel for every time that someone asked me for tips to get delivered to the inbox at Gmail, I wouldn’t be writing this right now because I’d be retired and living on my own personal island. Gmail has been notoriously difficult for some senders because of lack of requirements and acceptable reputation metrics for getting inbox placement. I’ve listed five, simple tips to help you improve and maintain your delivery at Gmail.

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