Lesson from the Ecommerce Study: Getting The Second Date

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

The relationships that email marketers strive to build with their customers and prospects follow many of the same practices that exist for nurturing and growing personal relationships. When those practices are ignored or taken for granted, the relationships rarely flourish and often fizzle out quickly.

For example, when it comes to finding a mate, no one expects to get married without having a first date. When it comes to email marketing, welcome messages are just like a first date. They set expectations about what's to come, give the subscriber a chance to evaluate the email program's potential benefits, and provide the subscriber with enough information and incentive to take the desired next step (in the case of email that's open, click or purchase).

A successful first date will always lead to a second date, and an optimized welcome message will increase the likelihood that a subscriber will interact with future messaging and prime the subscriber to become active and engaged over the long-term.

And yet, many marketers still don't give the welcome message the respect it deserves. This was evident in a recent study we conducted of the email experiences created by online retailers: "Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers." You can download it now.

We bought merchandise from 45 retailers to see ...

Categories: Response

Desperate Times Don't Call for Desperate Measures

By Bonnie Malone
Director, Strategic Services

Industry news provider, Marketing Vox, recently published an article featuring the results of the newly released "View From the Inbox 2009" study conducted by Merkle. A number of interesting engagement factors were highlighted and the report serves as an important reminder for the marketer to maintain their diligence during these difficult revenue-generating times.

In the current economic environment, many companies are focusing their marketing efforts more heavily in online avenues due to the agility and low cost of the channel. Email, being one of the highest ROI generators, is often an easy communication medium for companies to leverage. And for executives looking to cut costs and drive more revenue, the temptation is high to send more email, in bulk, more frequently.

According to the Merkle report ...

Categories: Response

New Study: The Email Experience for Online Buyers

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

I'm proud to announce the launch of a new study on email experience: Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers. You can download it now and also sign up for our March 19 webinar.

For this study the Professional Services Group bought merchandise from 45 retailers to see what type of promotional email they would send to us as buyers. Then we also signed up for the same retailer email programs using a different email address and not making a purchase. This allowed us to compare the first promotional message sent to a buyer with the first promotional message sent to a prospect - would it be different? Would the retailer use purchase and demographic data to target the buyer promotion and make it more relevant, or would buyers and non-buyer be treated the same?

In most cases we found that the email wasn't different and wasn't targeted based on that initial purchase. The study also reveals interesting findings about ...

Categories: Response

Cool Email Idea: Prominent Email Sign-Up

What: Prominent email sign-up

Who: BabyCenter

Why we love it: The BabyCenter homepage is designed to convert new visitors to email subscribers. Besides being amazingly prominent, the process is super-easy: it only requires...

Categories: Response

The Render Rate: The Industry Debate

Earlier this year the Email Experience Council submitted a request to the email marketing community to review their proposal to replace the term "open rate" with "render rate" and to begin using a new metric called the Unique Email Action Rate. The EEC proposes that render rate more accurately reflects what is actually taking place in a subscriber's email client: an email is considered rendered when a tracking pixel is downloaded in an email, either in a fully opened email or in the preview pane. The Unique Email Action Rate takes opens and clicks into account to measure the overall success of the message in its ability to engage readers. The formula is as follows ...

Categories: Response

A Rose By Any Other Name: Distracting Us From Our Real Problem

By Bonnie Malone
Director, Strategic Services

I disagree with the EEC's efforts to redefine the methods marketers - and the industry as a whole - use to track email marketing behaviors. While changing the terminology from "open rate" to "render rate" may be a more accurate reflection of the measurement, a new name is simply a distraction from the real issue: accurate measurement of the impact of the email channel.

There are a number of challenges email marketers face every day to compile any sort of reporting on the performance of their program, including:

• Appending data from multiple, various sources (such as delivery reports, click tracking, web analytics, internal purchase/conversion data)
  
• Abuse of email-only coupons through deal sites that skew response data
  
• Tracking subscriber response in offline channels
  
• Technical errors that under-report link-tracking data
  

These challenges not only make it difficult ...

Categories: Response

Words Matter: Embrace the Render Rate

By Stephanie Colleton
Director, Strategic Services

I support the EEC's efforts to redefine the metrics we use to track, understand and learn from our email marketing efforts. The channel has evolved since the original terms were developed. The metrics need to change to reflect as accurately as possible how subscribers are interacting with marketers' email programs and how marketers interpret the data. In today's economy, email is being called upon to work even harder. We should do everything we can to understand what is resonating with subscribers and use that knowledge to improve response and increase ROI.

That being said, I don't think that changing the label "open rate" to "render rate" will make a huge difference as many email marketers know what the open rate is. But it is a more accurate label that better conveys what event has actually taken place. The subscriber hasn't necessarily opened the email. They may just have images on and have scrolled past your email and it briefly displayed in the preview pane. Render is a more accurate term. Making the change in UI interfaces and on report labels shouldn't be that difficult.

The EEC is also careful in their formulas to use ...

Categories: Response

You Like Us, You Really Like Us!

By Anita Absey
SVP, Sales & Marketing

Our good friends at Epsilon have released a new consumer study about email that should make the hearts of all email marketing professional sing! It turns out that email marketing - the much-maligned, eternally unloved tactic - is actually quite loved by consumers.

In fact, an astonishing 57% of consumers agreed with the statement "My impression of companies from which I purchased products/services is positively improved when I receive email from them." This is really great news and definitely shows the power this channel has to move the needle for business.

The study also has some interesting data that marketers should heed when they consider their metrics for success. ...

Categories: Response

Tips on Going Global - And a Checklist

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development

It's as old as the children's song about "One of these things is not like the other." Subscribers, just like children watching Sesame Street, quickly see which messages are from companies who truly understand them, and which ones are not. In order to successfully use email to build your business outside the US, there are three levels of globalization to consider: Language, Localization and Context. Only the last one will deliver optimal results.

We discussed this as part of our session at the DMA/eec Email Evolution Conference earlier this month with panelists Simon O'Day of eservices, a leading ESP in Australia, David Sergerstrom of Acxiom who has spent the past two+ years traveling the globe for a multi-national product launch for a major mobile phone manufacturer, and Jim Champlin, of the Allstate digital marketing team.

These three globalization steps build on each other, and provide a guideline for thinking about engaging customers and prospects across the globe as efficiently as you do here in North America. In plotting your own course, the panelists emphasized the importance of market planning, cultural understanding and good local partnerships. ...

Categories: Response

Cool Email Idea: Customer Bulletins Based on Past Purchases

What: Customer Bulletins Based on Past Purchases

Who: BarnesandNoble.com

Why we love it: Discovering a new author is a thrill for many readers. BarnesandNoble.com extends this thrill by including promotions for authors you've read before in their regular "This Week at Barnes & Noble" emails. These promotions get inserted to alert readers when a new book by an author they've purchased in the past is now available for order. This sort of highly segmented, super-relevant email breaks through the clutter in most people's inbox. It's a good example of advertising becoming valuable by focusing on the information - your fave author has a new book.

What would make it better: ...

Categories: Response