What you don't know can hurt you in email marketing

Later this month, we will be releasing the results of a survey of European email marketers. However, one finding was so worrisome (and astonishing) that I wanted to gauge your reaction now. It seems that there is a woeful lack of knowledge and understanding among email marketers for how to get past the spam filters, reach the inbox and earn a response – what is known as “inbox deliverability.”

According to our survey of several hundred European email marketers (which will be released in full later this year), too few marketers have deep enough knowledge about the causes of delivery failure and the rewards of success to manage and optimize their inbox delivery. …

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Demand Accurate Deliverability Data!

Here at Return Path we talk a lot about how good deliverability yields great response. The concept is so simple to us that we find it a little hard to believe that some marketers still don’t monitor deliverability. Unfortunately, some marketers think they have all the information they need to accurately measure the success of their program, but the problem lies with the data they are receiving. It’s just not complete. Most marketers are looking at simple bounce reports and making assumptions that their email reached the inbox. Unfortunately, the email that didn’t bounce may be delivered to the junk folder or be blocked completely – a purgatory state that we call “missing.”

To understand this problem, you need a comprehensive email delivery report to truly gauge the impact of your email marketing program. If your reports don’t tell you what percentage of your email was placed in the inbox or junk folder and what percentage went missing in cyberspace, your analysis is flawed.

Wouldn’t you like to know the truth about your email program? Consider this. …

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OTA Proposes Online Trust Principles

In our recent webinar with the FTC we confirmed that the agency is open to continued industry self-regulation – as long as they see some action. I suspect that like me, most of us in the email industry prefer the self regulation ideal. We took the opportunity with our conversation with the FTC to point out many examples of how our industry works together to build and maintain trust in email with consumers.

We continue to have an opportunity as service providers and industry associations, to lead our industry by setting and adopting realistic best practices guidelines that businesses can implement. The email and advertising industries are graced with numerous agencies and associations doing just that, including the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), the Direct Marketing Association, the Email Experience Council, the Email Sender and Provider Coalition, Network Advertising Initiative and the Internet Advertising Bureau, to name a few. Each of these existing industry associations have produced best practice guidance that has resonated with us and helped us manage our businesses properly. The latest effort comes from the Online Trust Alliance (OTA) who has just released a timely draft of Online Trust Principles for public comment.

The thing about any set of principles, and these from the OTA are no exception …

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Episode #9 of Reputation Radio is LIVE!

Our new episode of Reputation Radio is available now on iTunes.

In our first segment we interview Return Path’s Margaret Farmakis and Stephanie Colleton about their study of email practices by some top US retailers. Then, in our Cool Email Ideas segment Margaret shares a great example of fun (and funny!) transactional messaging from CD Baby.

Is there someone in the email universe you think we should interview? …

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What's In a Name?

One of the great promises of email marketing is to have a one-to-one dialogue with your customers and prospects. Unfortunately, not many email marketers in either the U.S. or Europe today are actually delivering on that promise – most email marketing is mass marketing, with the same message going to everyone. However, since technology makes it easy to insert a first name salutation, some marketers and publishers try to give the appearance of friendliness and a personal touch.

Generally, I caution against using personalized salutations in broadcast email marketing. There are several things to consider:

1. Consumers know that you don’t know them. Assuming too much familiarity too early in the relationship may have the reverse affect intended. Consumers may be off put by the forwardness, and tune out this message and all others to come. This is especially risky early in the relationship. Be careful with personalized salutations …

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Is Email Impacting the Environment?

I recently ran across an article in the New York Times titled Spam and Global Warming?. Trust me, I was skeptical about this, how could email really be impacting our environment? The article was extracted from The Carbon Footprint of E-mail Spam Report published by McAfee which had some interesting information about the environmental impact of unwanted email.

I have always believed that email is generally free for the sender, but expensive for the recipient. But thinking about it as an irresponsible use of global resources was something that I just hadn’t done before. Unfortunately, McAfee’s research methodology has been called into question – seriously by spamnation and hysterically in a column by Ken Magill.

But even if spam does not contribute to global warming – at least not in a way that can be quantified …

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Permission is Not Enough

A digital marketer in France said to me the other day, “I don’t need to worry about inbox deliverability, I have permission.” I was shocked that this myth could be so firmly held by an otherwise smart and savvy email marketer. “Do you stop trying to earn a second sale just because you made the first?” I said. “Doesn’t what you send and how you treat subscribers after they give you permission have anything to do with subscriber satisfaction?” He paused, and then agreed.

After all, it’s subscriber satisfaction, not permission, that earns our place in the inbox and gives us a chance for a response and revenue. And subscriber satisfaction is all about the experience we create with every message, over time.

Consider that …

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We Are All In the Digital Publishing Business

At this week’s DPAC III event three hundred publishers, brand advertisers, agencies and technology solution providers gathered to discuss the state of the digital publishing industry. The content was great and the conversations very thought provoking.

Key takeaways for me, along with links to the Digiday Daily blog posts that I wrote from the show floor:

The new consumer priority is saving, not spending. Marketers must adjust our messaging and channel strategy to engage with consumers who value savings, quality and collaboration when buying. The “I want” culture is shifting to a “We need” mentality. …

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Cool Email Idea: Email Welcome Series

What: Email Welcome Series

Who: HMV UK

Why we love it: We’ve been evangelizing on the power of a welcome series to introduce new subscribers to your email program for a long, long time. But it’s still relatively rare to find a great example of one in action. HMV sends a three-message educational series about using their UK site that is really top-notch. The first message is a true welcome and gives the subscriber important information about their account. The second message is aimed at helping the subscriber navigate the site more efficiently by highlighting the search functionality and the recommendation features. Finally, the third message includes additional information about their pricing and return policies, a pitch for their “jukebox” feature and information about their email alerts program.

What would make it better: That email alert feature mentioned in the final email could be …

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New Return Path Research Study: Subscriber Experiences in the United Kingdom

I’m pleased to announce today the release of our newest research study: Creating Subscriber Experiences That Maximise Returns for UK Marketers.

We’ve spent a good amount of time in the past year studying the subscriber experiences created by top brands in the U.S. First was our Creating Great Subscriber Experiences: Are Marketers Relationship Worthy?, which looked at sign up, welcome messages, targeting techniques and more. We followed that up with a look at the experience created by the same companies when subscribers chose to opt out of receiving email in Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After “Unsubscribe Me.” And finally, our study on Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers looked at how some of the top retailers in the U.S. handle email for buyers versus non-buyers and some of the tactics they use in their transactional messaging.

So this year we decided to turn some of our attention to the experience for email subscribers outside the U.S. We’ve said before that marketing in Europe is neither ahead nor behind the U.S. – it’s just different. This new study certainly proves that point. U.K. marketers aren’t doing demonstrably better or worse than their American counterparts. But they are definitely missing opportunities to improve their results with email marketing.

A few key findings …

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