Text vs HTML and the winner is....

Jeanne Jennings released another article about the great debate over Text vs HTML. The article contains feedback from readers. Readers agreed that HTML is better than text. But remember you should always ask the recipient thier mail preference!

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies on email marketing.

Gmail Best Practices WhitePaper

ExactTraget recently released a whitepaper on Gmail best practices. Here are some highlights of some of their recommended best practices:

• The subject line is entitled up to 60 characters, and the snippet (bits of text pulled from the top of the email body) uses whatever space is left (up to 86 characters).
• Try adding a column with a strong border at the right of your newsletter to reduce the chance that the user's eyes will not drift further to the text ads.
• Plan on repeating your main message/call to action in text at the top of your email
• Give your subscriber the option to subscribe to receive a text version of your email.
• Best to reduce the use of images at the top of the message to reduce visual interruption of mulitple "image missing" icons.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Microsoft Junk E-mial Filter

This webpage is a description of exactly which words the the Microsoft Junk and Adult Content filters look for and where the filter looks for them.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

2004 ReleMail Email Privacy Survey

Relemail recently released it's 2004 Email Privacy Survey. Here are some of their findings:

• 87% of internet users believed that they have been spammed after they subscribed to an email newsletter
• 83% of users avoided subscribing to an email newsletter because they weren't sure they could trust the publisher
• 78% do not always believe companies ' own email privacy statements
• 91% of users say they are more likely to give thier buisness to an organization that follows ethical email practices and respects their privacy
• 72% said they are more likely to subscribe to an email newsletter that has been independently certified as trustworthy

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

eROI's Customer Lifecycle Value

eROI published a whitepaper recently about customer lifecycle value as it relates to email marketing. They give a nice customer lifecycle chart and a great explaination on how to effectively use this to increase your email ROI.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Tips to Build Your E-mail List

Kendra Wright, of Wright Strategies, shares a couple of tips on building you email list on the DMA website. Her first tip involves prominently displaying a sign-up form on your home page. This is a great tip. You should also be putting a sign-up form on all of your web pages. Not all of your customers come through the front door of your website.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Email Metrics 2005: Real-life Data from 2,293 Marketers teleseminar

SilverPop along with MarketingSherpa will be hosting a teleseminar on MarketingSherpa's 2005 Email MArketing Metrics Guide on December 16th at 4pm EST. You can sign up here.

eINFO - a collection of articles and stuides about email marketing

Promotional Incentives Significantly Increase Email Marketing Performance

A recent press release by Advertising.com finds that promotional offers can improve email open rates by more than 100 percent and clcik-through rates by up to 1,000 percent. The type of promotional incentive offered played a significant role in campaign success, whereas frequency was not found to be a major performance factor.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

MarketingSherpa Teleseminar on Latest Email Stats

MarketingSherpa hosted a teleseminar on Dec 3 on the some of their latest email stats. There is a recording and PowerPoint slides that features 11 useful charts on budgeting, open rates, filters, click trends, conversion rates, and gathering opt-ins.

PDF of PowerPointSlides: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/tele/SherpaEM.pdf
Audio (approx. 60 minutes): http://www.marketingsherpa.com/tele/mrktsherpa120304.wma

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

DoubleClick Releases Q3 2004 Email Trend Report

DoubleClick just released their Q3 2004 Email Trend Report. Here are some interesting stats:

• Average open rate (avgerage of 34.3%) declined 7.5% from Q3 2003 (37.1%)
• Avergae click-through rate (8.2%) decreased 10.9% from Q3 2003 (9.2%)
• Average click-to-purchase rate (4.2%) increased 25.5% from Q3 2003 (3.4%)

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Using Email To Improve Results From Your SEM Campaign

Andy Sernovitz, CEO of GasPedal, states that you should focus your search-based acquisition efforts on driving people to sign up for an email newsletter. The rationale is that if you can get a visitor to give you their e-mail address, then you can put them on a list and sell to them again and again at no additional cost. Email is your tool to convert that single, paid exposure from a search engine into multiple exposures with email.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Holiday Season is a Great Time to Publish

Merryl K. Evans, from eNewsletter Journal, thinks that your enewsletter should not go on vacation during the holidays. The reasons include:

• Those who are in the office are likely to have more time to read email.
• Other publishers don't publish, giving your newsletter less competition for attention.
• Your organization will retain stability by continuing to publish on schedule.
• You will avoid falling into the trap, "It won't hurt to miss this one time" as "this one time" could turn into "many times".

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Teaser Copy for Preview Panes and New Mail Notifiers

When a recipient opens an email in a preview pane and the images are blocked, chances are that they may see very little actual content. Ensure that your recipients can get a sense of the contents of your email at a quick glance. Try including some teaser copy at the very top of your email that is easily viewed in the preview pane.

In addition to preview panes, this teaser copy approach will also benefit “New Mail Notifiers”. Currently Outlook 2003 and Gmail have these Notifiers. When a new message arrives, the Notifier brings up a small slide-out window that displays details about the message: the sender’s name, subject line, and part of the message. So when the teaser copy is placed at the top of your email it will then display right after the subject line in these Notifiers.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Great Demographic To Syndicate Your eNewsletter To

Before I created this blog I came across an interesting tip to syndicate enewsletters via RSS. Through my own research I found that there are less barriers for enewsletters to be successfully sent out via RSS than traditional email methods.

In my research there was some correlation of people who receive RSS feeds and people who read blogs. Since there are not alot of ways to track RSS statistics (as of yet), the profile of a blogger can give you an idea of who may be reading your RSS feed.

There was a resent study, by blogads.com, that had a profile of blog readers. The study estimated that 69.3% of blog readers are aged 29-50, and that 40% of this audience are people who have household incomes greater than $90,000.

Forrester Research released a report called "Blogging: Bubble or Big Deal?", and found that most blog readers are more likely to be male, affluent, and broadband-connected.

ClickZ had an article that referenced Pew Internet & American Life Project that estimates that about 11 million (approximately 50 million) of Internet users are regular blog readers.

If you have not thought about syndicating your enewsletter via RSS you should think about doing this as soon as possible!

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

How Marketers Reduce Spam Clutter

A recent study by TrueFire, Reveries determined that marketing professionals reduce spam by:

• 35% use sam filters
• 27% unsubscribe from unsoliciated email messages

DoubleClick reports most consumers reduce spam by:

• 72% simply delete spam without reading it
• 20% try to unsubscribe

This eMarketer article also mentioned 11 roadblocks facing permission e-mail marketing:

1. ISP Blocking
2. Blacklisting
3. Creative limitations
4. Image, link and HTML stripping
5. E-mail reader compatability
6. Rich Media being not compatiable with email
7. Abuse Management
8. Inaccurate bounced logs
9. Best guess reporting
10. Delivery delays
11. Anti-spam compliance

Email/AdWords Require a Coordinated Marketing Effort

Here is a great tip that I recently picked up at a local DMA luncheon. Jay Schwedelson, Worldata, mentioned that you should coordinate your email marketing campaign with your AdSense campaign when targeting your Gmail users. Adsense keywords will need to be selected based on the copy within your planned email message.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Gmail - Swicthing back after the Buzz

Recent blog posting about the number of people joining and leaving Gmail based on a stats from a large provider of email forwarding and email change of address. Here are some stats to chew on:

• July - 375 people join Gmail


• August - 802


• September - 2396



• Gmail is stealing sharesfrom Hotmail and Yahoo twice as rapidly from Hotmail as from Yahoo -- and twice as rapidly from Yahoo as from AOL

In September this company recorded 2396 new Gmail users, but they also recorded 741 people leaving Gmail in the same month. The author believes that people are just trying to see what all of the buzz is about and making a quick switch back to their previous email provider.

Mother Using Email

There was a recent report by eMarketer concening the best way to target mothers in the US. Here are some interesting statistics by AOL on this:

• 96% of mothers use e-mail
• 67% go online to do product research
• 55% look for coupoms or discounts online.

AOL surveyed 1600 mothers in May 2004.

eINFo - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

7 Tips to Build Your In-House List

An article posted recently on BtoB Online concerning tips to build your in-house list. BtoB Online talked to Chris Baggott, co-founder and CMO of ExactTarget. Here are Chris' seven steps:

• Make it easy for people to opt-in to your newsletter


• Acquire through your own call center or send direct mail that touts your message and opt-in link


• Use an append service.


• Refer-A-Friend programs


• Let your sales force sell your email marketing program


• Find sponsorship opportunities


• Make your message catchy

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

EarthLink & Yahoo to Test DomainKeys

EarthLink Inc. and Yahoo Inc. said today they would begin tests of new anti-spam technology, Yahoo's DomainKeys. DomainKeys embeds outgoing messages with an encrypted digital signature matched to a signature on the server computer that sends the message. Google Inc.'s Gmail has already begun to use DomainKeys.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Check GMail via Outlook

Google is adding POP, or post office protocol, access to Gmail for all users over the next couple of weeks. The move will allow Gmail users to download a copy of their messages through other e-mail programs and devices, such as mobile phones, that support POP.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Adding a Respone Form Onto Your Email Preference Page

I came across a cool feature that could help email marketers understand why someone is unsubscribing from their email newsletters. The AMA offers a simple form field that asks, "Please provide a detailed response on why you wish to unsubscribe along with any suggestions you might have.". You could possibly learn that the content is not relevant, your email newsletter frequency is too often, or even suggestions to improve the look and feel of the email newsletter. Here is AMA eNewsletter Preference page.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Send Postcard to Your Dead Email Addresses

EmailUniverse published a Ezine-Tip recently. The tip suggested that instead of writing off email addresses that return hard bounces, try and send your recipient a postcard to update their email address or re-subscribe to your newsletter. The article mentions that it takes a lot less effort and investment to capture an existing member who left than it is to capture brand new members.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies concerning email marketing.

Email Marketing Use and Trends Report: H1 2004

A recent study was released on email preformance by MailerMailer. The study looked at 70+ million email messages sent by MailierMailer customers in the first half of 2004.

• 80% of emails that would be opened were opened within 48-hours after delivery
• 95% of all emails that would be opened were opened by the sixth day
• Average click through rates (CTR) for all industries was 4.27%
• Emails with personlaized subject lines were opned more often (32.49% compared to 26.65%) and received higher click rates (8.45% compared to 4.27%) than emails with personlaized messages only or no personalization.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies concerning email marketing.

Email Appending and ECOA Match Rates

A recent study on Email Appending and ECOA Match Rates was recently released by FreshAddress, Inc. Here are some of their findings:

• Average email append match rate for commercial clients was 15.1% with a range from 9.5% to 24.3%
• The average email append match rate for nonprofits was 10.3%, with a range from 5.5% to 15.4%
• The average ECOA update rate for bounced lists for both commercial clients and nonprofits was 10.2%. with a range from 5.7% to 24.2%

After doing some research and talking to people in the email industry there seems to be a gray area about email appending. One valid point was that if your customer has not given you their email address previously then maybe they do not consider the email channel the best way for you to communicate with them. I have seen that those customer who had their email addresses appending have low click through rates (CTR) in newsletters. You may consider this service if you are starting your email marketing endeavor to grow your list initially.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies concerning email marketing.