DMA Email Marketing Council Blog

Privacy Policy and the Industry - Email Insider Summit

Yesterday I attended the Privacy session at the Email Insider Summit in Florida.

One of the key points that I took away from this presentation was an offshoot of a point raised by Return Path's Tom Bartel. Now we all know that in order to comply with legislation we need to publish our Privacy Policy and state within this policy what we will be doing with the data we collect and Best Practise advocates that that we link to the policy at the point of subscription. All well and good. But who actually reads the Privacy Policy?

The answer...very few. So, on one hand this is good right? Because it allows us to put the typical 3rd party rental disclaimer in easily and no one's the wiser right? Well...I guess so...but what kind of list are you growing? Is it a good quality list full of addresses which want to receive offers from 3rd parties?..or is it a list which is full of addresses who are not aware that they will be receiving 3rd party offers and are very likely to hit the 'this is spam' button as soon as they recieve an offer? If it is the latter, what value is this?

If your aim is to grow a good quality list then you need to be transparent and let your subscriber know what they're signing up for at the point of subcription..easily and obviously. So, if your aim is to share the data with 3rd parties, then ask them to opt-in to receive them, which means offering an empty checkbox with a clear and obvious option for them to select rather than a pre-ticked checkbox with some confusing text. This then will give you a better quality, more valuable database.

And if you're not going to share the data with 3rd parties -then proclaim it! Again- be transparent!! Have a disclaimer alongside of the form which states clearly that you will not be sharing the data with 3rd parties...This in turn will reassure the subscriber and very likely increase your subscriptions.

Email Preference - text or images?

It might be worth giving your email designers the week off occasionally.

It might be that something different grabs people’s attention or it could be that people can read text emails.  Recent text only campaigns Data Media and Research have sent out have seen results as good as the emails with images. However with further investigation it appeared that although the number of people responding was similar it was a different group of people.

This then led to undertaking some research (as part of a bigger study) to ask people how they preferred their marketing emails to be presented.

The outcome was as follows:
Of the 1072 people who recently participated in our survey...

The majority (46.60%) would prefer just images. However, this is shortly followed by 43.50% of people preferring just text.

The figures above are quite interesting, especially when you consider that only 8.70% would like both & 1.20% have no preference at all.

The highest results came from respondents aged between; 35 – 44 & 55+. A majority of which would just prefer images  This relates back to the previous mentioned figures, these two age groups are amongst the highest in the “just images” & “just text” categories.

What would you prefer?

Are you one of the 93 people that would like to have images & text?

Interestingly females would prefer “just images”  but a majority of males would prefer “just text”.

What does this research mean in real terms?  Well if nothing else it might be worth either asking people how they would like to receive emails and/or test an alternative to what you are using at the moment.

The sample used for the survey is representative of the UK population

Research conducted by Zussi Research

Sara Watts
Managing Director Data Division
Data Media and Research Ltd www.dmri.co.uk

The Cradle & The Grave

eROI, a US based email marketing agency, have released their report on the subscribe and unsubscribe process and how email marketers in the United States entitled ‘The Cradle & The Grave: Opt-In, Opt-Out & Feedback Loops’. Amongst many other findings the report noted that 76% of marketers did not give their subscribers the option to change their frequency settings.

Whilst legislation clearly differs between the UK and US the report provides plenty of interesting figures and ideas for how email marketers based on how US email marketers are currently differing in their approaches to getting subscribers to opt-in and what happens in terms of systems and feedback once they opt-out. So if you are looking for some ideas and think that there may be room for improvement in your process then download this report now.

The report has kindly been made available via eROI and the DMA’s partnership with the EEC (Email Experience Council) is available to DMA members, logging into the research centre. Thanks to both eROI and EEC.

Note: This report is based on the US legislation governing email marketing which is substantially different from UK and EU legislation governing email marketing. Members must comply with the UK legal requirements on email marketing.

Congratulations to the eec

Jeanniey Mullens, founder of the Email Experience Council recently wrote about the successes of a Project they did for the women's Bean Project. Led by Stephanie Miller of Return Path, the aim of the project was for peers and competitors of the email marketing industry to put their expertise to use and work together to help a good cause.

Not only does Jeanniey detail the successes of the program, but she also reveals the details of the program the experts designed - which is a great insight into how a typical, well constructed email program should look like. It includes Content Strategy, Design, Infrastructure, List Growth and a Wireframe Sample.

So congratulations to the eec and the volunteers of this project - by all accounts it was a great success and a fantastic example to us all.

You can read the full details of the project here.

Conference: Customer focused email - marketing to people not lists

The Email Marketing Conference Customer focused email - marketing to people not lists In 2007 email marketing volumes overtook traditional print direct marketing for the first time. Whatever sector you work in email marketing is a powerful tool to reach your customers and promote your message and brand. But are you maximising the advantage email can give you? With volumes set to continue rising how can you ensure your email acheives its aims? At this conference you will gain essential knowledge on the latest trends and practices on identifying your customer, delivering your message, maximising click through and measuring the response.

Course Benefits:

• Explore how to connect with your customers to maximise outcomes.
• Gain a fundamental understanding of how to use data to achieve your objectives.
• Get real-life ideas of what works and what doesn't in email campaigns.
• Discover how to effectively measure your campaigns.

Take away:
Delegates will receive a complimentary USB stick with all the presentations.

Date:	Thursday 5 June 2008
Time:	9.00am - 4.30pm
Venue:	London Zoo, Regents Park, NW1
Cost:	DMA Members Standard £295.00 (+ VAT) Charities/sole traders £250.75 (+ VAT)
	Non Members Standard £425.00 (+ VAT) Charities/sole traders £361.25 (+ VAT)

Agenda:

09.00	Registration and coffee
09.30	Chair's welcome Jonathan Burston, Sales Director, CACI
09.40	Panel discussion - Why being customer focused is so important? speakers from throughout the day
10.10	Keynote presentation How to focus on your subscribers: making a case for a new customer centric approach Are you suffering from diminishing returns, decreasing subscriber engagement, lower response, lower conversions, lack of engagement, increasing opt-outs, poor deliverability? In this session Stephanie Miller of Return Path will share with you why the days of mass broadcast may indeed be limited and how organisations can create a subscriber centric approach. She'll show you how to make a business case for doing it, ensuring senior management buy in, enabling you to create unique and powerful subscriber experiences. Stephanie Miller, Global Markets Catalyst, Return Path
10.50	Coffee and networking
11.20	Data for driving email marketing James Bunting, Head of Client Services, Communicator Corporation
11.40	Segmentation and targeting: how to speak directly to your customers In order to connect with your customers, every single element of every single email you send, from subject line to content, links and call to action, must be compelling and engaging. Get tips and real life ideas for stepping up your own email marketing through segmentation and targeting Denise Cox, Newsletter Specialist, Newsweaver
12.10	Relevancy in email Simone Barratt, UK Managing Director, eDialog
12.40	Lunch and pass to the zoo!
14.30	An eye-opening expose on 47 major e-retailers campaigns, and the lessons to be learned dotMailer’s Hitting the Mark report caused waves in the press this year. An eye-opening study of email campaigns from 47 major e-retailer from Argos to Woolworths, the report pulled no punches. Tink Taylor discusses the results - both surprising and revealing, and the valuable lessons to be learnt by every emarketeer. Tink Taylor, Business Development Director, dotMailer
15.00	Frequency and timing Skip Fidura, Managing Director, OgilvyOne Worldwide and Vice-Chair, Email Marketing Council, DMA
15.30	Tea and networking
15.50	Measurement - Metrics for understanding Dela Quist, CEO, Alchemy Worx
15.50	Questions and Chair's closing remarks
16.30	Close of conference

To Book:

Phone:	Catherine Gibbon on 020 7291 3355
Email:	catherine.gibbon@dma.org.uk
Fax:	Please click on booking form , complete and send to: 020 7323 4426 Please read our booking terms and conditions before making your booking

Silver sponsor:

Generating a demand

If automated demand generation is to be more than just the latest ‘craze’ sweeping the marketing sector, then we need to get back to basics – and fast.

Ah, for the days when direct marketing was easy! You identify the best prospects for your product, create a wizzy direct mail campaign, print, enclose and post it out, and wait for the responses to roll in. Now you need to think multi-media, web 2.0, push and pull, and get a space on Face Book for the campaign, which now involves a film shoot as well as the usual folding stuff. You need to make sure those emails are ‘compliant’- and hope that you’ve got the right combination of elements to create a hot hit that’ll get your target audiences (there will be more than one these days) gossiping around the legendary ‘water cooler’. And, of course, you need to be able to measure the responses – from whatever direction they happen to come – from hits on your website to sales calls. No wonder the days of direct mail look simple.

Hardly surprising then that so many are turning towards automation as an answer. Rather than just pull your audiences towards your product or service with complicated and complex email campaigns, how much better to identify the key triggers that make people buy, and then, having identified the crucial actions, slip out some carefully crafted responses which hit the customer or prospect before they’ve even realised they were in the market to buy. Once again, life looks manageable.

But hold on a minute. To make this really work, you need to know just who you are selling to…and by that I don’t just mean a carefully segmented prospect list or pool. You need to agree and prioritise just what makes a lead a lead – and to do that in B2B you might just have to talk to the sales team. Sounds straight forward enough, but recent figures suggest that 52 per cent of marketers don’t work with their sales teams to define just what a lead looks like. That’s a lot of people running marketing campaigns to generate business when they don’t even agree what that business should look like. No wonder a lot of in-boxes remain stubbornly closed to the well crafted inducements that land in them from time to time!

Automation does sound like an answer to a dream, but to stop that dream tuning into yet another data nightmare there’s a lot of basic groundwork to do first. If we are to make sure that increasingly complex campaigns really deliver – and in ways we can effectively measure and assess – we need to get back to the fundamentals first. Until we do that, I’d suggest, the miracle cures of the brave new multi-media world will remain just that – miracles.

Liz Woodbridge
Business Development Manager
Mardev

Test. Send. Analyse. Change. Repeat.

Email marketing is very cyclical by nature – it’s never ‘finished’, and that is the beauty of it. The cycle includes: testing, sending, analysing, changing and repeating. This process allows you to improve your results and ROI each and every time you send.

Here are a few of the cost-effective tools available to help you achieve your goals:

Testing - One of the most powerful aspects of email is how quickly you can get results from your testing. By testing elements of a mailing before you send, you can make changes based on the results prior to mailing to your entire list. Things to test include: subject line, sender from, day, time, call to action, article length, layout, clicks and conversions.

Metrics - A valuable element of email is its measurability. With analytics you can measure activities and behaviour of groups and individuals per mailing, as well as over a period of time. The metrics that can be measured include: delivery rates, response and click rates, identified opens, new subscribers and sales. Tracking this information will allow you to build a profile of your customers and prospects.

Benchmarking - If you are new to email marketing and don’t have benchmarks, then it's fine to start by measuring your results against general benchmarks. But you should then strive to create your own benchmarks to measure your own performance over time. Don’t measure just one mailing. Measure one mailing against many. Build up an overview of performance in general by doing trend analysis. Measure your key drivers of success, and seek to learn which links, promotions, offers, articles, etc are working (or not working) over time. Also check your list growth (and erosion) over time and measure your subscriber activity based on how active they are vs. how long they’ve been on the list.

Segmenting - Before repeating the cycle, your aim should be to use what you've learned from analysing to make changes. Segmenting out your lists based on this information will allow you to send more targeted (received by the right person), timely (coming at the right time) and relevant (containing the right information) emails to all of your subscribers. What can you segment by?  It can be as simple as separating customers from prospects, geographic region, type of business, size of business, who the email is from (e.g. Account Manager). It can be as sophisticated as dynamically generated content that reflects an individual reader’s interests, previous clicks and purchases.

Denise Cox, Newsletter Specialist,
Newsweaver