Out-of-Stock Doesn't Mean You Have to Lose the Sale

An eMarketer article reports that a survey conducted in May 2007 by the e-tailing group and BetweenMarkets asks online shoppers what they do when a merchant is out-of-stock on the item they want to buy. Almost half reported that they go to a competitor website for the same or similar product. However, 25% will sign-up for an email alert that notifies them when the item becomes available. An additional 31% will check back later. It would be interesting to know how many of those 31% would sign up for email alerts if they were available.

Online shoppers crave convenience. If a consumer has spent time finding what they want, at the right price, from a retailer they trust, only to discover that the product is out-of-stock, it’s frustrating to have to start the search all over again. By contrast, it’s easy to sign up for an email alert. If the item is exclusive to your brand the shopper may make a mental note to check back later. But what if they forget? Email alerts allow you to remind them!

If you don’t have email inventory alerts, you may be missing a great opportunity …

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The DMA Acquires the EEC

As part of a larger announcement on a number of email initiatives, the DMA announced today that it is acquiring the Email Experience Council (EEC). The Email Marketing Council of the DMA (of which I have served as Vice Chair for two years) will merge with the EEC under the banner of the Email Experience Council.

As someone active in leadership roles for both groups, I see the strong synergy between the mission and activities. I’m delighted for all involved – and especially for the industry. Merging the groups will help focus the work of so many talented and dedicated email marketers, and we’ll all enjoy the power and support of the DMA behind us.

I’m not Pollyanna about this at all – we have a lot of work to do to make the combined group a bulwark for the industry. But we will be doing so from a dual foundation that is solid and has really strong leadership at the helm and at the committee level.

Here are my predictions …

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Bolstering Authentication in the Direct Marketing Community

Back in 2005, when commercial emailers started adopting authentication en masse, the Direct Marketing Association stuck its neck out a bit and took a leadership position by requiring that all of its member companies authenticate their email.

Of course, this was much easier said than done. First, marketers found authentication confusing and weren’t sure exactly what standards to implement or how to do it from a technical standpoint, or how to ensure comprehensive enterprise-wide authentication across all outbound email servers, including those of vendors and partners. And then, for the DMA, tracking compliance was nearly impossible in a comprehensive way, although secret shopping and spot checking have been producing positive results since authentication became de rigeur (apparently, I am feeling very French today).

In my role as chairman of the DMA’s Interactive Marketing Advisory Board I saw a great opportunity to use Return Path’s Sender Score technology to help solve both of these problems. The result is the soon-to-be-launched Email Reputation Registry (see official announcement here). …

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World-Class Education

Increasingly, marketers find themselves incorporating a wide array of marketing techniques into a cohesive, successful plan. Whether it is figuring out how to leverage email and search investments or doing a multi-channel outreach across online and offline advertising platforms, we are all in need of new ideas and methods. That is one of the reasons that Return Path is supporting the regional Online Marketing Summit series…

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Render Me This: Solving the Riddle of Image Suppression

Rendering has been a hot topic in email marketing for most of 2007, but many clients still aren’t sure exactly what it means or exactly how to deal with it. This is why we ran a webinar last week on this very topic.

In the webinar we revealed the six steps to most effectively deal with image suppression…

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A Brand New View

By: Anita Absey
VP Sales & Marketing

I woke up today with a new way to look at the email industry, Return Path, and my role in both of them. No longer am I just focused on sales and client development – today, I add marketing to the mix. As Matt wrote yesterday, with Jennifer Wilson’s departure I become the SVP of sales and marketing, and I am more than ready to embrace the new challenges and opportunities that role brings.

I’ll be looking for ways to synergize our sales and marketing efforts – making both of them more effective. I’ll also be on a mission to expand my view of the email world under the marketing lens. I’m sure there will be lots of “ah-ha” moments as I discover what I know, what I don’t know, and all the things in between.

For my peers out there for whom this is old hat – tell me what to avoid, and maybe share a few gems. Tell me …

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Ch-ch-ch-ch Changes

For those of you who have known Return Path for a long time, you know that Jennifer Wilson has been here running the show for our marketing (and various other things on and off) since we acquired Veripost back in 2001 — and for Veripost for a year before that. Jennifer is leaving the company next week as she prepares for her second baby and a full-time career as a mom.

It’s often said that the five stages of emotional response to a loss are: (1) denial, (2) bargaining, (3) anger, (4) despair, (5) acceptance. I never really hit “anger” when Jennifer decided to switch careers, but I sure cycled through the other four (just ask her about the bargaining sometime for a good laugh). Jennifer has been an incredibly valuable part of our team here and will be sorely missed. …

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Hotmail Images and Links Automatically Enabled for Sender Score Certified Email

It’s not easy to be a big ISP these days. Consumers expect to be protected from unwanted email and from images that might offend them or link that might be dangerous. Marketers, meanwhile, complain about their permission-based messages that end up in the bulk folder or get mangled beyond comprehension by image suppression.

Microsoft is now offering a way for best-practices email marketers to bypass image suppression and be sure their images show and their links work, automatically. They have decided that users of Sender Score Certified will have images and links enabled by default when sending to Windows Live Hotmail. Because companies accredited by Sender Score Certified meet such high email standards, Microsoft knows that their subscribers will be safe with this decision.

We are obviously excited about this – it offers a huge new benefit to our certified senders and gives even more reason for senders to apply to be certified.

Why are the inclusion of images and links important? …

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The Myth of the Magic Email Frequency

How often should marketers send email to their subscribers?

According to Chad White at the Email Experience Council (eec), that depends to some extent on the industry norm. He compiled frequency data for 92 major retailers over 16 weeks and found that the average number of touches is 1.7 per week.

What’s a marketer to do if you fall above or below the industry average? The knee-jerk reaction is to submit to the peer pressure of your industry’s frequency statistics and fall in line accordingly. But will that really make a difference when it comes to response? …

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Great Resource for Email Designers

Earlier this year we wrote a blog posting detailing the design challenges posed by the release of Outlook 2007. In that post we detailed how Outlook 2007 does not support dozens of CSS elements that previous Outlook versions support – a huge issue for anyone involved with designing email.

Well, our friends at CampaignMonitor have taken that idea a step further and put together a comprehensive PDF that lists the major email readers and what CSS elements they do, or don’t, support.

On a related note …

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