DMA Email Marketing Council Blog

The Email Form Factor

I had the pleasure of presenting at the DMA E-mail Marketing conference recently and discussed the subject of using forms in e-mail marketing campaigns as a method of data collection. This seemed to touch a few raw nerves with some of the delegates I spoke to afterwards who are finding it increasingly complex to include this functionality in their campaigns. This certainly tallies with our experience but this tactic can still deliver great results if implemented cleverly.   So I thought I’d use this blog to share e-Dialog’s experience in this area.

E-mail compatibility across multiple e-mail clients is a major challenge for all e-mail vendors. Now, with the recent boom in e-mail on mobile devices, the possible browser, machine, operating system, and e-mail client combinations jumped from 20 or so (of the most widely used software) to tens of thousands.  One of the most contentious issues with compatibility is the functionality of data collection forms within e-mail. AOL.com, Hotmail.com and Outlook 2007 have stripped form functionality from their e-mail clients, though Gmail has yet to follow suit.

Our approach has been to offer the functionality of forms by offering the capability to merge in textual links and calls-to-action to web-based versions of forms for AOL.com and Hotmail to get around this issue.  Search forms in e-mail still remain the most popular features of our clients' e-mail campaigns, consistently ranking in the top 3 of links clicked in their campaigns. We have also found a significantly high number of AOL and Hotmail users clicking through to the web-based versions of the e-mail to complete forms.

So called ‘Drip-Poll’ programs which use a series of single question, prioritised, data acquisition forms to complete a customer's e-mail profile are still some of e-Dialog's most effective and popular campaigns for our clients. Interestingly we have not noticed a significant decrease in the submission of embedded forms in e-mail since AOL and Hotmail limited form functionality over a year ago. In fact, we've seen many more clicks to the hosted versions of e-mails, activating imagery and forms for clients in webmail clients and mobile browsers.

So yes the use of forms in e-mail, like the channel as a whole is becoming more complicated. However, if your e-mail marketing partner offers you the proper tools, you can still deliver the most interactive, relevant marketing experience to your customers and collect valuable data through forms at the same time.

Hope this helps

Simone Barratt, Managing Director, e-Dialog EMEA

Making the Case for Email Resources

Email marketing is the darling of direct marketing for a reason - it is inexpensive and it works really well.   Maybe too well.   Whenever we send out a blast, we earn revenue.  It costs us little in hard expenses to do so.  Just like letting children loose in the candy store, this can be very addicting!  And so many email marketers send more messages than are relevant to most subscribers, and often many more than promised at the point of sign up.   Alas, eating too many sweets will give you a tummy ache.  There is a cost to over-mailing - both in real missed revenue opportunity as well as deliverability, whether your messages actually reach the inbox.

It's no secret that subscriber experience matters. Relevancy matters. We all know that creating great subscriber experiences is key to driving even more revenue and higher ROI.  Yet, in order to do that, we need resources.  Those resources are technology and human -- and often involve expertise that we don't have resident in our marketing departments.  How can do the data integration, segmentation strategy, list management, tracking and analysis, deliverability management and compelling creative when we barely have enough resources to get the messages out the door each week?

How?  We have to make a business case for the email channel.  I presented two ways to do this during my keynote presentation at the recent Email Marketing Conference at the London Zoo.  Central to both strategies is speaking the language of our CFOs and executive management.  We need to speak in terms of real costs, real customer satisfaction measures and real revenue upside. 

The first way to make a business case is to show the real costs of sending more messages than are relevant and valuable to subscribers. The short term revenue boost from sending "just one more" email blast this month has a real long term negative effect. 

Your CFO (or CMO or CEO) thinks that sending more messages is simply the cost of broadcasting them - the CPM we pay to our email delivery vendor.  Actually, the real costs include the costs of replacing all those lost via increased unsubscribe requests, complaints (clicks on the This is Spam button) and fatigue.  It also includes the cost of unrealized future revenue from those lost subscribers.  And it includes a "brand slam" factor based on negative brand impression and lower loyalty.  When we do the math on an sample mailing of 100.000 records, we show that a mailing that the CFO thought cost 300 GBP actually cost us 8.000 GBP.  That is real revenue!  And a real missed opportunity for future sales.

We also discussed how deliverability failure -- caused primarily by things like overmailing, low relevancy and poor list hygiene  -- can have a dramatic effect on the bottom line. Most permission-based email marketers who do not actively manage their Sender Reputation and deliverability can expect that up to 20% of their messages never reach the inbox.  You can hit "send" all you want.  But some of those messages will get blocked by the ISPs and receivers because of a low Sender Reputation.  The good news is that all of the factors that go into a great Sender Reputation (and high inbox deliverability) are the same things that smart email marketers do to drive higher response and revenue.  Like keeping the list clean, honoring permission grants, processing bounces properly, removing complainers (those who click the This is Spam button) from your file and making sure your content is well constructed.  Sender Reputation is all about how your messages are valued. If your messages are welcome by most subscribers most of the time, your Sender Reputation will be good. 

How do you know?  Use this free site to get more info on your own Sender Reputation:  www.senderscore.org  (disclaimer, it's owned by my company Return Path)

And use this simple calculator to understand the impact of poor deliverability on the ROI of your programme: 
http://www.returnpath.net/senderscore/calculator/

Okay, you may be thinking.  "Focus on the customer."  That sounds reasonable.  Yet, if this is so obvious, why don't we do it?  Oh yes, we love our subscribers.  But we are so caught up in telling our own stories through email that we forget our subscribers have THEIR own goals.   Sure, they give us permission.  But then they don’t respond.  They don’t unsubscribe, but they ignore our messages.  They click on links to take advantage of offers, and they also click on the This is Spam button and (without knowledge) also tarnish our Sender Reputations and thus lower our chances of reaching the inbox for any of our messages.

We must effectively make the case for more resources and more support, so that we can optimize subscriber experiences and ensure that our email programs continue to deliver for us in the long term.  Feel free to email me for a copy of the presentation, or to discuss in more detail how you can effectively make a case for email marketing resources.

Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
Return Path, Inc.

DMA's EMC represented at Inbox/Outbox

This year the DMA's Email Marketing Council is represented at Inbox/Outbox by Skip Fidura, Dela Quist and Kath Pay. For the full programme click here.

Lunchtime Keynote: Email in a Web 2.0 World (Session 6) DAY ONE

Presented by Skip Fidura, Email Partner, OgilvyOne

Hosted by The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

Skip Fidura from OgilvyOne and the DMA’s Email Marketing Council showcases best practice in e-marketing and provides practical advice for maximising the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

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Lunchtime Keynote: Subscriber Focused Email - Marketing To People Not Lists (Session 6) DAY TWO

Presented by Dela Quist, CEO, Alchemy Worx & Kath Pay, Managing Director, Ezemail

Hosted by The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

Email is evolving. The old mass mail methods don't apply anymore. Today's subscriber is savvy - they know what they want...and it's up to us as marketers to deliver what they want, when they want. We’ll discuss the many benefits of focusing on the subscriber as well as show you how to best utilise customer focused reports which will enable you to create unique and powerful subscriber experiences.

To register or find out more about the event go to: www.inbox-outbox.com

Email marketing – making it customer centric

The better we understand our customers the better we can communicate and use the power of email more effectively.

Sounds blindingly obvious doesn’t it, but just how many companies do communicate effectively ‘one-to-one’ with their customers, with a channel that allows them to do it, cost effectively. Not that many as most see email marketing as a cheap or free communication channel that can produce short term results. Sounds great doesn’t it, but there is a but! We run the risk of alienating the customer, who we’ve worked so hard to obtain, who has the power with one click of a button to unsubscribe or add us to their junk mail filter. Not a pretty picture is it.

Well last week’s Email Marketing Conference at London Zoo focused on that very issue: Customer Focused Email – Marketing to people not lists. The conference brought together industry experts to show how we can treat our customers as individuals and not as a collective mass, who we bombard with email offers.

I chaired the day and thought it would be useful to summarise the key learnings that I took away, that I believe we can all apply in our organisations:

1. Data is key – collect enough but not too much as you risk customer disengagement. Use the data you collect and continually ask your customers questions to build up a richer picture of their attitudes. Also gain an understanding of why people no longer want to hear from you, so that you can apply those learnings to your strategy.
2. Protect your customers and protect your brand. Change the perception of the value of email within your organisation. Use email to drive long term growth and not continued short term offers to generate short term results. Continue to do the latter and your at risk of losing your customers and diminishing the value of your brand.
3. Make your email campaigns customer driven not marketing driven. Remember there is an individual at the end of your communication. Put yourself in their shoes, think about what’s in it for them and what they need to do to respond. Build an experience with your customers and give them value back. Remember that customers judge you on each and every email you send.
4. Make your emails relevant. Relevance makes your email work harder for you. Segment your customers, use triggers, personalise, add interactivity and continually test. The more relevant you are the more often you can communicate.

By applying these key learnings we can achieve our goal keeping our valuable customers engaged with our organisation so that we can build long term profitable relationships.

Jonathan Burston
Director, Customer Solutions Group
CACI
www.caci.co.uk

Affiliate Networks - Email Best Practice?

The email marketplace is a crowded one.  Volumes of emails being sent are rapidly increasing as it is continually being proven to be a responsive and cost effective means of customer communication and acquisition.  It has therefore never been more important to ensure that communication with consumers via this media is effectively managed so as to ensure solid response levels and perhaps more importantly, sender reputation with ISPs.

Of late it seems even affiliate networks are starting to get in on the act too, delivering email to support the activity running across their partner sites.  Networks offer an important way of delivering response on a CPC and CPA basis, but is it sensible to support this activity with email and is the necessary caution and understanding of the media being applied?

There is a danger that unregulated email communication from networks seeking to boost sales or fulfil response can serve to undermine a lot of the good work being done by Email Service Providers and media owners.   Where specialist ESPs are at pains to develop quality services and products taking into account all the fundamental hurdles and challenges this media presents, it is a concern that such insight is not always exploited or understood by those using email as an acquisition tool.

A number of issues are worthy of attention where email is used as part and parcel of network activity.  Central to these is the issue of control as an advertiser may have no knowledge that response is also being driven through email channels.  Given that the brand being promoted is considered the instigator of any campaign, it is ultimately the brand owner that must carry the can for any fall out should recipients feel they have received an unsolicited communication.  Would a brand  want to be put in the position of being held up as a spammer where they had no knowledge of running an email campaign?  Probably not.

It would be churlish to suggest that all email resource used by networks is unsuitable for third party purposes, but the ability to audit its provenance is seriously challenged if a brand does not know where it is being used.  That being the case another fundamental issue concerns data quality.  Any sensible advertiser using email for acquisition purposes should be 100% confident that the necessary permissions have been obtained and that the delivery of any campaign is in line with PECR and DMA best practice guidelines.  Under normal circumstances it is extremely easy to check, although with network sends it’s not always the case and communications can be received with no indication of where an email has been sourced from.  Normally you would expect this to be indicated in the from line and again within the email template.  There is no excuse for any media owner to conceal their identity especially if the source or brand from where the permission has been obtained to send commercial email can actually endorse the communication and reassure the recipient that their personal information is not being misused.

It is equally important to consider the extent to which a network might be able to translate the demands of using email to their affiliates or other media resource being used.  Where email-centric organisations are often able to educate their clients as to how best utilise email for either CRM or acquisition purposes, it is because of a solid understanding of the email marketing landscape.  Gone are the days of bulk untargeted sends to recipients who have offered only the flimsiest of permissions.  Such an approach these days is unsustainable in the face of increasing scrutiny from ISPs and recipients alike.  Quality media, robust delivery procedures, more sophisticated database management and relevant targeting are some of the most important factors to consider for email marketing to flourish.

There is no reason why networks cannot work successfully alongside ESPs in order to make email an even more effective channel of communication.  It goes without saying that many publishers will have extremely valuable databases if used sensibly, and in this respect the DMA and the network operators have an important role to play in developing a far more credible and integrated online environment.

Simon Jeffs
Head of Data
www.tmnmedia.com

B2B marketers accelerate use of email marketing

B2B marketers accelerate use of email marketing.

Recently we conducted a survey with B2B Marketing magazine and found that UK businesses are increasing their use of email to engage with both customers and prospects. Over three quarters (78%) of UK B2B marketers consider email to be either a "critical" or "very important" part of their marketing mix. And, of the 175 B2B marketers who completed the survey, 68% believe that the versatility of email is on the increase and are integrating email more into the overall marketing mix.

Over 70% of B2B marketers said that the number of email campaigns and the volume of email they send has increased in the last year. Clearly this shows that marketers are growing in confidence in their use of email. But as they increase the number of campaigns and the volume of email they are sending, companies must strike the right balance and strive to send only timely, targeted and relevant emails.

Interestingly, the results of the survey also highlighted that most B2B marketers are only using the minimum personalisation in their email marketing. Less then a quarter (22%) use more than just name to personalise their email and as few as 16% are using dynamic content. Segmentation and personalisation allows for more targeted and relevant emails, which are key for B2B marketers to engage readers and achieve the best ROI possible from their email marketing. There is clearly a lot of room for improvement through to get the maximum benefits from email marketing.

According to the survey, the biggest challenges facing email marketing are "Inbox overload" and "Spam undermining the medium". A wanted and valued email is always welcome in the inbox. This is why it is so important for marketers to create campaigns and relationship emails that are coming at the right frequency, with the right information and to the right individuals. These types of emails will always cut through the clutter and get opened.

For more information visit www.newsweaver.co.uk/press_b2bsurvey.php

Denise Cox
Newsletter Specialist
Newsweaver

Spam is in the eye of the beholder

The spam issue reared its head again recently in a widely unreported, but very interesting survey from Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa. It revealed that over half of US respondents (56%) consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message "is just not interesting to me". A further 50% said they received "too-frequent e-mails from companies I know" and 31% were sent "e-mails that were once useful but aren't relevant anymore".

It is all too easy for marketers to rely simply on ‘opt-in’ or ‘data protection’ to keep their emails legal.

However, as the survey clearly demonstrates, recipients don’t view emails in these terms; the ‘data protection’ and ‘opt-in’ status of a message is not their primary concern. All they want is an email that is relevant to them - anything else is unwanted. A message that is not interesting is just as annoying as any phishing attempt or offer of a lottery win.

ISPs, whether rightly or wrongly, have much to do with this mindset. The junk/report button is now prominent in the majority of email clients. It is an easy click for any user and gives them the power to make a stance and a declaration of intent. And why not? For the recipient, it solves the problem of removing unwanted emails in their inbox. According to Jupiter Research, a staggering 26% of users admit to using the junk/report button to delete unwanted email.

But the consequences for marketers of users using this as a delete button can be catastrophic. Not only does this potentially end a relationship with a customer, it can result in significant damage to your sending reputation, contribute to brand apathy and, on a wider scale, diminish the effectiveness of email as a genre.

So what’s the solution?

There are two important steps to try and combat this. Both are fairly obvious and are not hard considering the range of tools that are now available to email marketers. Yet they are still widely ignored.

The first is to ensure that emails are relevant and targeted. This relies on having enough data about a recipient so that it is possible to make valid assessments about what they want and how often they want it. Finding this information is as easy as asking the questions and it is impossible to undertake any form of segmentation without it. Data acquisition should be developed over time as part of a sustained strategy, incorporating a number of techniques, from microsites and surveys to viral campaigns and competitions.

The second is to ensure that a recipient is offered the chance to feedback if they feel the email is either irrelevant or being sent at the wrong time or to the wrong person. This can be achieved through a simple link to ask for further preferences if an email is not appropriate. In addition, place an unsubscribe link in a clearly visible position; if someone wants to unsubscribe, don’t make it a difficult or arduous process.

With the right strategy it should be easy to send interesting and relevant emails. Once again, this survey suggests that we are at a crossroad. It is time for marketers to realise the value of email marketing as a highly targeted genre. With the DMA valuing an email address at nearly £9 it makes sense to fully appreciate and maximise the value of this asset .

Tink Taylor
Business Development Director
dotMailer

Reminder: Customer Focused Emails: Marketing to people not lists

Just a quick reminder about our next DMA Email Marketing Conference: "Customer Focused Emails: Marketing to people not lists", which is being held at the London Zoo this Thursday, June 5th.

We've got some great speakers lined up, including Stephanie Miller of Return Path who's flying over from New York to be the Keynote Speaker....if you've never had the chance to hear Stephanie before, come along to the conference as you're in for a real treat. She's a renown international email marketing thought leader and a pioneer for subscriber preferences.

To find out more about the conference and all the other great speakers and presentations on the agenda please go to: http://dmaemailblog.typepad.com/dma_email_marketing_counc/2008/05/conference-cust.html or to book your place call Catherine Gibbon on 020 7291 3355.

Don't miss out!

Cooking-up the perfect message - Ready, Steady, Email

A recent event, jointly organised by the DMA and IAB prompted me to think about the diversity of expertise that email marketing requires. At its best, email marketing should be a convergence of different skills and techniques – a mixture of design, content, strategy and dissemination tactics, not to mention analysis and testing – all working in perfect unison.

The educational half-day seminar used a format from the long running BBC2 programme: Ready, Steady Cook – but with an email marketing twist!

Over fifty enthusiastic marketers from a range of companies and with a range of experience descended on the Oval cricket ground in south London to test their skills with the best in the business.

The idea was a simple one. Delegates were placed into teams and briefed on a fictitious scenario: as email marketers, they had each been approached by a venture capitalist who had recently acquired an ecommerce store – the imaginatively named, My Cup of Tea Shirts! The challenge was to come up with a strategy and tactic to improve the revenues of the company through email marketing.

This in itself was no easy task and to help, each team was given a shopping bag (think Ainsley Harriot) with a number of cards (or ingredients) to help guide them through the process.

The sheer range and depth of considerations on the cards was overwhelming – strategy, data acquisition & management, segmentation & targeting, design & content, measurement & evaluation, legals and ongoing testing & refinement.

Even though I live and breathe email marketing every single day, to see the various processes and considerations involved laid out in this format made me appreciate how daunting it can be.

The challenge with email marketing is that every single factor has to be assessed and taken into account. If there was one takeaway from this event for me, it was that no matter how skilled or accomplished you are in any one element, the real challenge is in making sure everything fits together and works in unison.

Our recent retail benchmark report – Hitting the Mark – came to the same conclusion. Whilst the retailers we assessed excelled in some areas, very few managed to score consistently in each of the 20 criteria we outlined as being important for effective email marketing.

The group that came out on top at Ready, Steady, Email was the one who managed to factor in every required element – both strategically and tactically. To bring back the cooking analogy, those who blended every ingredient in the right order with the right amount ended up with the best result.

Email marketers need a portfolio of skills and accomplishments. Unlike other marketing disciplines, practitioners are expected to be able to handle the entire process. Arming yourself or your team with all the skills is fundamental to success. It is very important for our industry that the IAB and DMA continue to take the lead. Events like these are eye-opening not only for the delegates but also for the ‘experts’!

Tink Taylor
Business Development Director
DotMailer