Webinar: Designing Effective HTMl Emails

EmailLabs, Stefan Pollard, will be hosting a free webinar, "Designing Effective HTML Emails" on November 27th at 1 p.m. EST and November 28th at 10 a.m. EST. The webinar will cover:

• HTML design and coding for optimal inbox delivery
• Reducing Spam Signatures
• Combining Text and Images to improve readability
• Stylesheets and Tables
• Layout Tips for Preview Panes

Webinar: The State of Email Deliverability

Goodmail Systems and JupiterKagan's David Daniels are hosting a webinar, "The State of Email Delievrability". The webinar will be held on November 29th at 2 p.m. EST. The webinar will cover new research on:

• Average delivery rates
• Which delivery improvement techniques are commonly used today
• How does blocked links and images affect email results
• Paying for assured delivery of email
• Case study on how two leading Internet marketers improved email revenue and business results using Goodmail's CertifedEmail

ReturnPath receives Patent on ECOA Service

Looks like ReturnPath has received a patent for their Email Change of Address (ECOA) service. So if you are looking for those lost customers you may want to consider ECOA. At my previous job we tested ECOA on a list of non-delivered email and received about a 10% match rate. S

Straight from the markteting machine:

Thought that you would be interested in the news about Return Path's receipt of a patent for its Email Change of Address (ECOA) service. Launched in 2000, Return Path's ECOA service provides a fully permission-based way for businesses to find customers' new e-mail addresses and allows consumers to search for friends' and families' new e-mail addresses for free.

To date, it has been used by more than 400 companies and more than 31 million consumers have registered with the service. On average, 15,000 people register daily with Return Path's ECOA service. The patent awarded to Return Path from The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, number 7,080,122, applies to both the system and process for updating electronic messaging accounts.

Refer A Friend ( RAF ) Study

Chad White, RetailEmailReports, has released a new study that takes a look at the effectiveness of Refer A Friend viral marketing among some large online retailers. The study has some interesting information to ponder.

It looks like Chad publishes a new report every month since he started his blog (August 2006). This one blog that you will want to add to your blogroll.

5 Missed Opportunities Email Marketers Make

Chris Marriott, Acxiom Digital, released a new articled, "Bad Email is Bad Business". In the article Chris points out five mistakes that he often sess from email marketers.

1. No welcome message.
2. Not using the data gained from the questions asked about the recipient's preferences.
3. Treating everyone on your list the same.
4. Letting everyone in your organization mail to the customer.
5. Sending plain text transaction emails without any cross promotion or up-sells.

Here are some tips and best practices on some of the mistakes that Chris points out.
How To Maximizing Email Welcome Message
Six Tips For Your Welcome Message Email
Preference Prove Profitable for Email Marketers
What is a Transactional Message?
Key Guidelines for Integrating Promotional Content into Transactional Email

Technorati tags: Welcome Message, email best practices, email, email marketing, einfo

Sender Reputation Biggest Factor In Email Deliverability

ReturnPath released a new research brief that found Sender Reputation drives email blocking and filtering. Here is a break down on the causes of email deliverability that ReturnPath found.

• 77% - Sending IP's Repuation
• 17% - Email Content
• 6% - Domains in the email content

The take away here is that the biggest factor regarding deliverability is how ISPs look at the IP address that is sending the email. They are taking into consideration such factors as email volume, whether the server is authenticated, list quality, complaint rates, spam trap hits and listings on public blacklists and whitelists.

Canadian Q3 Email Trends

Canadian firm, Card Communications, released their 3Q Email Trend Report. Here are some pf their findings:

• Smaller lists achieve higher deliverability, open and click through rates
• Non-profit organizations and associations enjoy the best results industry wide
• event planning achieved high open and click throug rates but lagged in deliverability

Email Experience Council Releases Preliminary Survey Results

The Email Experience Council ( EEC ) released some preliminary results from their recent Deliverability Roundtable survey. The ECC is going to use this data to set some standards in the areas of bounce management and more. Here are some of those results:

• 20% of respondents are using a combination of internal email systems and ESPs with limited, to no coordination between the two platforms.
• 65% of respondents are not tracking whether their email is being delivered to the inbox or spam folder.
• 10% of respondents admit that they are not removing bouncebacks (hard or soft) from their list.

They hope to have the final results out in a few weeks.

Leveraging Behavioral Targeting for Your Email Marketing

Jeff Daniels, JupiterResearch, released a new report called, "The Connected Click-Through". The report looked at how email marketers are using their web analytics program to imporve their behavioral targeting. The report found:

• 15% actively use Web sile click stream behavior as an audience segmentation attribute
• 21% of marketers are planning to implement this kind of behavioral targeting in the next 12 months

The report also notes that there are some obstacles in implementing behavioral study into email marketing.

• Lack of staff expertise
• Lack of resources
• Web analytics vendors do not provide integration for easy use and movement of data between applications

Our Own 300 Millionth Baby

I have been away for a bit due to my wife having our baby (who we consider the 300 millionth baby born in the U.S.). Andrew Brennan was born 10/17/2006. We are so excited and tired! Consider this our virutal baby announcement.

Add Opt-In to PPC Landing Page

EmailLabs posted an short article, "Add Opt-In to PPC Landing Pages to Boost ROI". They suggest to include an email opt-in invitation on each PPC landing page to capture your most motivate shoppers and browsers. They propose that you sell your opt-in with 10 words or less so not to distract the visitor from the landing page offer.

- Search Engine Marketing Demystified

RSS – The Email Marketing Killer

Derek Harding, clickz.com, released a new article, “RSS: The E-mail Marketing Killer?”. Derek explains how he is skeptical that RSS is an alternative to email for mass marketing.

I agree with him that RSS has not matured enough for mass marketing. But I definitely see that RSS can be used for niche marketing in its current form.

Derek also states, “It’s not useful or effective to take a quarterly newsletter or monthly promotional e-mail and publish it via RSS for the mass market.”

By no means would you want to stop emailing and only offer a RSS feed. You want to compliment your email marketing by putting RSS into your marketing mix. By publishing your newsletter via RSS you provide your users/customers another marketing channel to access your content.

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Technorati Tags: RSS, email marketing, eINFO

comScore Top Five Web Email Clients

The Email Wars blog posted a comScore chart that provides the top five web email clients.

1. Yahoo! Mail
2. AOL E-mail
3. MSN Hotmail
4. Google Gmail
5. Comcast.net Webmail

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Technorati Tags: top web email client, email marketing, eINFO

Webinar: Habeas - Drive Holiday Sales Through Email

Habeas along with Forrester Research’s Sucharita Mulpuru will be hosting a webinar on best practices to help boost your email program for the upcoming holiday season. The webinar will be held on Tuesday, August 15 at 2pm EST. You can register at http://habeas.com/en-US/reg/reg.php?s=ecommerce.

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Technorati Tags: Habeas, Forrester, email best practices, holiday email, email marketing, eINFO

Microsoft Windows Live Email Offers a Universal Unsubscribe Button

DirectMag released an article, “E-mailers Call For AOL, Yahoo! to Follow Microsoft’s Lead”. The article notes that some users are noticing a universal unsubscribe link in their Windows Live Email.

Currently Yahoo! and AOL do not have any plans to follow Microsoft. I think this will be a wait and see how it works and then jump aboard. I think for all email marketers that this is definitely a step in the right direction to combat the “Report this is Spam” button.



Bill Nussey - Unsubscribe Button May Become a Reality

Mark Brownlow - You need another line in your header


eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing

Technorati Tags: Windows Live, Unsubscribe Button, Microsoft, email optimization, email marketing, eINFO

Webinar: Holiday Email Optimization with Eyetracking

ReturnPath is sponsoring a webinar, “How to Earn Higher Email Response This Holiday Season” on August 17th at 1pm EST. ReturnPath and Eyetools Research are providing an opportunity to publicly critique your email templates.

Eyetools Research: Email Optimization Webinar (and a chance to get your email template heatmapped for Free)

ReturnPath: FREE Webinar: How to Earn Higher Email Response This Holiday Season


eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing

Technorati Tags: ReturnPath, Eyetools, email heatmap, email optimization, email marketing, eINFO

eINFO: Blog Posts Now Available Via Email

I have added the ability for you to receive my feed via email courtesy of Feedburner. Go ahead and sign up on my homepage under the "Subscription" section. Enjoy!

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Advertise on My Email Marketing Blog

I have just passed 3000 unique visitors to my email marketing blog. I have decided to place AdSense ads on my site. You now have an opportunity through AdWords to advertise on this site. I typically have about 30 visits a day with an average visit length of 2 minutes 11 seconds. Talk about the "Long Tail". Since this blog is on such a niche topic there is a highly qualified audience to target. Thanks to all the readers!

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

US Mobile Consumption of Email on the Rise

M:Metrics released their latest data on U.S. mobile subscriber monthly consumption of content and applications. The report saw an increase of 5% in the mobile activity of viewing personal email. The report also noted an increase of 6.4% in the mobile activity of viewing work emails.



eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Technorati: Mobile, Email Marketing, eINFO

Gmail Sees 93% Increase in Users

Charlene Li, Forrester, has a blog post talking about Google being a “one-trick-pony”. In the post she looked at some user data from Neilsen//NetRatings on Google services. The data noted that Gmail’s unique users have increased from 4.3MM to 8.3MM in the last 12 months.

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Technorati: Gmail, Email Marketing, eINFO

Top Social Bookmark Sites List

I was curious as to which social bookmarking sites were the most popular. I took the list of social bookmark sites from TopRank Social Bookmark Link Creator and plug them into Alexa Traffic Rank to see.

Digg - 100
Del.icio.us - 147
Technorati - 247
Reddit - 1411
Furl - 2357
BlinkList - 4002
Spurl - 9870
Magnolia - 11536
Blogmarks - 12538
Shadows - 15021
Simpy - 16669
Rawsugar - 22406
Onlywire - 23680
Wink - 29121
Connetea - 29538
Blinkbits - 30773
Netvouz - 30958
Gravee - 39647
Citeulike - 41924
Scuttle - 45341
Linkagogo - 49738
Feedmelinks - 54967
de.lirio.us - 63676
Tagtooga - 85897
Feedmarker - 86606
Linkroll - 89059
Buddymarks - 90605
Maple - 137907
Talkdigger - 155583
Igooi - 188825
Givealink - 435866
Lilisto - 445219
Yahoo MyWeb - 1 (Yahoo ranking)

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Using Flash in Email Newsletters

In ChiefMarketers latest newsletter, E-Centric, they have a new article, “Tips for Dealing with Tough E-Zine Challenges”. The article had a good list of email marketing basics, until I got to the end. The last bullet point was:

“Only Outlook can accept a Flash e-mail, so do not use it across all e-mail clients.”

This bullet point peaked my interest because I just had a co-worker ask me about embedding Flash into an email. I did a little research on using Flash in email newsletters. I found a great resource at Campaign Monitor blog. They did a thorough test on the major PC, Mac and web-based email environments.

Campaign Monitor found that support for Flash was only found in Mac Mail. One blog comment noted that the ActiveX control needs to be enabled for Flash to work in Outlook and Outlook Express.

Bottom line…Do not use Flash in your email newsletter.

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Technorati tags: email marketing, flash email, email design

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Stats: Email Usage 2003-2010

eMarketer released some interesting email usage stats for the United States. Are 3 year olds actually sending email??



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Technorati: email marketing

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Email & Word-of-Mouth

eMarketer has released a new report, "E-mail & Word-of-Mouth: Connect with Your Best Customers". The report looks at whether using email in your word-of-mouth marketing strategy. If the offer is enticing enough the email becomes viral. But tread lightly, email messages that "were once welcomed can easily be seen as spam if the marketers press too hard, are too obvious or imagine that word-of-mouth can be direct-marketed".

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Technorati: word of mouth, email marketing

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

9 things to put in your list welcome messages

Mark Brownlow, Email Marketing Reports, released a new article, “9 things to put in your list welcome message.

I would probably add one more item to Mark’s list.

10. Place some copy to instruct the recipient how valuable it is to whitelist your “From” address. If your email program allows dynamic content, generate the whitelisting instructions based on the recipient’s email domain.

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Technorati tag: email marketing, welcome email, whitelist

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Case Study: Liberty Travel Honeymoon Emails

MarketingSherpa released their latest case study, “Travel Marketing Online – Lead Generation & Email Campaign” (open access until Aug 11). The case studies takes a look at how Liberty Travel used a co-registration site, TheKnot.com (remember Trump’s Apprentice – one of the teams used this same email list for one of the competitions) to market to Honeymooners.

Liberty Travel noted that the first email, sent from TheKnot.com, produced an open rate of 42%. The follow up auto-responders, sent from Liberty Travel, produced an open rate of only in the mid-upper teens. The case study notes that it is unrelated to the “from” brand, but I would think that TheKnot has a higher brand presence than Libety Travel.

The study also noted that short copy ruled. The long copy was edited by the travel agents and produced a higher sales closing rate.

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Technorati tags: MarketingSherpa, email marketing, online travel, co-registration

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing

SuretyMail Offering AOL Free Non-Profit Accreditation

The Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy (ISIPP) SuretyMail program is offering non-profit email senders AOL email acceditation at no charge.

AOL Pro Bono Email Acceditation Service for Non-Profits
"Through the program, qualifying non-profit organizations - and qualifying non-profit advocacy organizations - receive the full functionality of AOL's email system, including having all images and web links enabled in emails, at no charge to either the sender or to the recipient."

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Technorati: email marketing, ISIPP, AOL, email deliverability

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

How to Make Your Email Enticing in AutoPreview and Mobile

MarketingSherpa released an article, "Know-How: How to Make Your Email Enticing in AutoPreview & Mobile -- 16 Samples of Best & Worst Tactics" (Open access until Aug 6).

Tip 1: Start with compelling copy.I totally agree. I see alot of emails when rendered in the AutoPreview screen show me their "Web page version" HTML link.

Tip 2: Use CAPS to catch the eye.
While most spam filters will count this as Shouting, this tactic may increase your SPAM filter score. Use a content checker to see if there is any impact.

Tip 3:Use text symbols to catch the eye.
MarketingSherpa uses the following example:
*(:-.,,.-:)*"*(:-.,,.-:)*"*(:-.,,.-:)*"*(:-.,,.-:)*
Mobile Telecoms Daily Service

If I saw that in my AutoPreview screen I would think it was spam!


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Technorati: email marketing, mobile marketing, preview pane, marketingsherpa

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Optimizing a Landing Page Sequence

The current Excess Voice Newsletter provides seven tips on writing a web site landing page sequence. As an email marketer, once you get your recipient to click through to you web site you need to be able to capture that sale. So here are the tips the article provides.

• Reduce the length of the sequence. If it takes three pages to complete the purchase, try cutting back to two pages.
• Be very clear on the purpose and objective of each page.
• Keep all the important information within one column and create a strong linear flow from top to bottom.
• Write a strong headline. Express the value within the first few words.
• Work hard on the last few lines of the page. Just saying “Next…” is not good enough.
• Consider adding an email-capture field at the end of the first page in the sequence. Assuming that they did not come through your newsletter, you will be able to follow up with them if they did not complete the purchase.
• Use short paragraphs, bullet points and indents to make the page easy to read.

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Technorati: email marketing, landing page design

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Integrating RSS and Your Email Strategy

Lee-Ann Vermaak, iMedia Connection, released a new article, "Integrate RSS with Email for Best Results". Lee-Ann believes that you should look to integrate your RSS feeds into your customer life-cycle messaging strategy. RSS should compliment your email marketing strategy and not replace it. She also suggests to leverage the subscription information from RSS feeds to target your emails. You can create profiles based on the content that users subscribe to and then incorporate those profiles into your email marketing strategy.

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Technorati: RSS, email marketing

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

Key Email Market Trends in 2006

In their latest research, E-consultancy provide five key email marketing trends for 2006.

1. Increased understanding about the return on investment benefits of effective email
2. More strategic services, such as campaign optimization and behavioral response marketing
3. Widespread adoption of email marketin best practices.
4. Greater sophistication in terms of integrating email marketing within the wider marketing mix
5. Increased use of RSS and mobile as complimentary communication channels

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Technorati: email marketing, email marketing trends

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

UK Email Service Market to Grow 20 Percent

E-consultancy released their latest research, "2006 Email Marketing Platforms Buyer's Guide". They found that the size of the UK market for Email Marketing Platforms and Services will grow by $178 million (pounds) by the ned of 2006. This represents a 20% increase over 2005 and a 50% increase over 2004. Their latest report contains an overview of market trends and profiles of UK companies offering email marketing platforms and email-related services.

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Technorati: email marketing, e-cosultancy, email marketing buyers guide, email market trends

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Three Testing Tips To Improve Your Email Returns

Stephanie Miller, MediaPost, release an article, "Testing: Increase Your E-mail Batting Average" (free login required). The article provide three testing tips to improve your email return.

• Develop educated testing hypotheses.
• Segement. Not all subscribers are created equal.
• Usa a multi-variat approach (with or without the technology) to develop a "best landing page".

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Technorati: email marketing, email testing, multi-variate testing

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Case Study: Time, Inc. and Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail

Goodmail released a case study with Time Consumer Marketing, Inc. (Time Inc. brands including Fortune, Busines 2.0, People, Sports Illustrated, and Entertainment Weekly). “Time sent an email describing new functionality on their online customer service site to active readers of several magazines…. Users were given various options to manage their subscriptions, such as renewing, paying bills, and making changes to their account information.”

Here are some of the index scores that were reported from the use of CertifiedEmail compared to non-CertifiedEmail messages:

• Click through rate: 130 percent
• Site Login: 128 percent
• Customer service option selected: 127 percent

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Technorati: email marketing, TIME magazine, GoodMail, certified email

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Are You Surveying Your Email List?

In Jeanne Jennings lastest Clickz.com article, “Three Good Reasons to Survey Your E-mail List”, she asks “…when was the last time you surveyed your email list?”. Jeanne mentions that you should be surveying your email list two to four times a year. The article goes on to provide some best practices regarding surveys.

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Technorati: survey, email marketing

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Whitepaper: 2006 Email Marketing Audit

EmailLabs released their latest whitepaper, “EmailLabs’ 2006 Commercial Email Message Audit”. The whitepaper reviewed 203 commercial emails to see if they implement EmailLabs’ 18 recommended email marketing best practices. They found that few email marketers employ more than 1 or 2 of the best practices. The only best practice with an adoption rate of 100% among the senders reviewed was a working unsubscribe link.

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Technorati: email marketing best practices, CAN-SPAM

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Test Shows Specific Subject Lines Increase Conversion

The Marketing Experiments Journal released their latest findings in regards to their latest email subject line split test. The test found that the more specific the offer is in an email subject line the higher the conversion rate.

The article also points to three factors that have a significant effect on open rates, click through rates and final conversion rates. Subject lines need to:

• Help a reader recognize your company and remember the value of your previous emails
• Express urgency
• Be specific in their promise

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Technorati: email testing, split testing, subject line testing, email marketing

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Combat Email Image Blocking with CSS

CampaingMonitor blog has an extremely helpful tip in on how to use CSS to combat email image blocking. The article provides a step-by-step example that was used to provide the newsletter header for “CSS off, images off” and “CSS on, images off” scenarios. Worth the read!

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Technorati: image blocking, email design, css, email marketing

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

12 Email Tips You Can Not Ignore

Krill Popov and Loren McDonald released a new article on clickz.com, "If Email Clients Mangle Your HTML...Fix It!". I think the article should be titled 12 Email Tips You Can Not Ignore. Anyways here are the tips that all email marketer should follow:

• Design the top three or four inches of your email with text and HTML that will tell readers what offer or content they will find below.
• Code email by hand. Unnecessary code bloat can increase your file size and could potential mangle your email.
• Avoid using nested tables. Some email clients have a hard time rendering them.
• Avoid 1X1 pixel spacer gifs. These are often found in spam and could get your email blocked.
• Background images for individual table cells are generally accepted, but may not appear in email clients such as Lotus Notes.
• Host your images instead of embedding them. Some ISP filter emails with embedded images.
• Use inline CSS. Some email clients strip out all the header information prior to rendering the email.
• Keep HTML email 500-650 pixels wide.
• Use image alt tags. The only email client that renders the alt tag is Gmail. (Not so sure if this is that effective.)
• Avoid forms. Many email clients will not render forms correctly or pass data from an email form to your Web site.
• Host rich-media (audio, video, Flash) on your Web site. Put a link in your email to these functions on your site.
• Avoid scripting (JavaScript, Visual Basics). Some ISP will block the email because they are mistaken for containing malicious code.

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Technorati: email delivery, email marketing, email design, email html tips

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Image-Based Spam On The Rise

IronPort released new industry research that points to increased level of “image-based spam”. IronPort noted that image-based spam accounted for 12% of all spam sent in June 2006. This is a 12X increase over last year. This represents 5 billion image-based spam messages sent per day.

Image-based spam - Contains little or no text and includes a .gif or .jpg file with an image. The image contains the spam message in the form of text and graphics.

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Technorati: spam, ironport, email

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Lyris Finds InBox Delivery Rates Are Down

Lyris Technologies released Q1 2006 ISP Deliverability Report Card. The report found:

• U.S. ISPs and ESPs inbox delivery rate went down to 82%
• False-positive spam filtering also went higher in the U.S with a rate of 7.7% of valid messages being blocked

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Technorati: email deliverability, email marketing, Lyris, false-positive

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

How Critical is it to Personalize the Email Subject Line?

Melinda Krueger, The E-mail Diva over at Media Post, answers a question about how critical is it to personalize the email subject line. Melinda points to some testing that she has done concerning this topic. Melinda provides some interesting stats that back up the notion that personalizing the subject line affects open rates, click through rates and conversion rates. One reader of the Emial Insider blog ask how old the test results were. Melinda points out that the data was a year or more old.

I believe if your are not personalizing at least the subject line of your emails you are missing an opportunity to increase your open rates, click through rates and even your conversion rates.

One thing to remember, your data is only as good as the input. Watch out for the "fat fingers"!

Also, add the Email Insider Blog to your blogroll (requires free login)!


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Technorati: personalization, email marketing, e-mail diva, subject line testing


eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

9 Ways to Increase Your Email Click Rate

MailerMailer released a new article, "9 Ways to Increase Your Click Rates" in their latest email newsletter edition. The article provides nine tips on how to get your audience to click through your email into your website.

1. Have a clear benefit assocaited with every link (i.e.: Get a money-saving coupon).
2. Use teasers to get your audience to click to keep on reading what is on the "other side" of the link. (i.e.: Learn what Dromophbia is.)
3. Provide a full URL versus an embedded link.
4. Make your URL short and to the point with clear benefits.(i.e.: www.YourDomain.com/MoneySavingCoupon)
5. Be clear in what the recipient can expect once they've clciked the link. (i.e.: Read a helpful article about how you can save time)
6. Have your links active up to six months after the newsletter has been published.
7. Use temporary links to help create urgency to get your audience reading today. (i.e.: Start saving 20% now. Offer good until July 4.)
8. Have the URL open into a new window so the recipient can easliy get back to your newsletter content. You will provide the opportunity for that person to click deeper into your website.
9. Until people are completely ready to buy, they will not be likely to click through to a sales page. You will have more success by providing links to more information on your site.

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Technorati: email ROI, email marketing, click through rate, mailermailer

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Benefits of Managing Unsubscribes

Spencer Kollas, iMedia Connection, released an article, "The Benefit of Managing Unsubscribes". The article provide a couple of tips to help manage the unsubscribe process to help improve your marketing campaigns.

• Utilize bounce thresholds so you are not sending an large amount of invalid email addresses.
• Utilize a on-click unsubscribe.
• Use the feeback loop to process your complaints in a timely fashion.

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Technorati: email marketing, email subscription, CAN-SPAM, feedback loop

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

Publishing Email Marketing Content via RSS on the Rise

A new JupiterResearch report, “Feed Marketing: Use of RSS as an Alternative Messaging Medium” cites that more marketers are turning to RSS feeds to deliver their email content. Of those email marketers surveyed:

• 11% already publish email marketing content in RSS feeds
• 25% planned to publish email marketing content within a year

“Use of RSS rising among marketers, a Jupiter survey finds”, Internet Retailer


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Technorati: RSS, email marketing

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Whitepaper: 10 Things To Know About Email Authentication

SubscriberMail released a new whitepaper, "Email Authentication: 10 things you should know". The whitepaper provides email marketers the basics about authentication, why you need to understand the concepts of authentication, and how it will shape the future of email marketing practices.

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Technorati: email authentication, email deliverability

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Yahoo Email Problems

CNET News.com is reporting that Yahoo! is having network issues preventing email from being delivered to Yahoo account users. I tried to login to my account this morning and it returned a “Network Error” message. Supposedly the issue had started on Tuesday and has yet to be resolved.

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Technorati: yahoo email, email deliverability

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Sender ID Ineffective Against Spam

OnlyMy Email (www.onlymyemail.com) released some new research on the effectiveness of Sender ID as an anti-spam solution. The research found that emails sent by a domain without a published SPF record are actually slightly less likely to be spam than those sent by domains that publish Sender ID information in their DNS record. The study inferred that 1 out of 6 emails that “pass” Sender ID verification will actually be spam. The research goes on to note that spammers are publishing the SPF records for their “throw-away” domains to increase spam delivery.

Research Determines Sender ID Ineffective Against Spam, Fixing Email Weblog

del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | ma.gnolia

Technorati: email deliverability, spam, sender id

eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Slow Tail of Email Newsletters

With the average person maintaining 3.1 email accounts, Jacob Nielsen points to the "slow tail" of email newsletters in his latest email newsletter usabilty study. Some users will be checking these additional accounts sporadically and will be clicking and ordering from the not-so-fresh email newsletter. Nielsen points out that you should ensure that your links and special offers do not expire too soon.

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

Scanning Text, Skipping Intro

Jacob Nielsen released his latest email newsletter usability study, Email Newsletter: Surviving InBox Congestion. Here are some of the findings from the email newsletter usability study.

• Average time allocated to an email newsletter after opening it was only 51 seconds.
• Participants in the usability study fully read only 19% of email newsletters.
• 35% of the participants only skimmed a small part of the email newsletter or glanced at the content.
• 67% of participants had zero fixation within the email mewsletter introduction.

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

Impact of Increased Email Frequency

Krill and Loren, EmailLabs, released an article, Calculating the Cost of Increased Email Frequency. The article takes a look at a company who increased their sending frequency from 5 emails a month to 12 emails a month. Here are some of the potential impacts from increasing your frequency.

• Additional unsubscribes (unsubscribe rate increased 140% for this company)
• Increase in spam complaint rates (spam rate increased sixfold for this company)
• Increased list shrinkage (Potential loss of 41.3% of list over 12 month period for this company)
• Potential damage to brand and email reputation
• Increased cost not covering revenue.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Case Study: Emails Targeted to Gay Community

Bill McCloskey, Email Insider, wrote an article appropriately titled, Brokeback Email, that provided a couple examples of how companies are segmenting their list to target a specific demographic audience. In the examples Bill provides, the audience in the gay community.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Single Offer Emails Bring Higher Conversion

Marketing Experiments found that when emails focus on just one service they significantly outperformed the email which tried to describe and pre-sell four separate services. You may want to test sending out a single offer email versus a multi-offer email.

The only problem I have is that if a company has multiple product lines, the notion of frequency comes into play. Do I really want to annoy my subscribers by sending multiple single offer emails?

Testing Emails Offering Services, iMedia Connection

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Study: Email Marketing Trends Q1 2006 VerticalResponse

VerticalResponse released their Trend Watch Q1 2006 report. Trend Watch establishes benchmarks for companies not only on the basis of industry category, but according to their sizeas well. Here are some of thier findings.

• Offers that appeal to recipients' expressed interested experience better results than non-targeted emails.
• Companies with operations that lend themselves to intimacy, such as galleries, restraurants and wineries generally performed better than companies in more impersonal industries or with a strict online retail presence.
• Only a small number of small businesses reached the "10,000-member mark".

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

Case Study: Cirque du Soleil

MarketingSherpa released their new case study, How Cirque du Soleil Uses Email to Sell Out Shows at Local Cities (open access unitl June 11). The case study includes details on copywriting, design, and how to gather more double opt-ins.


eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

AOL Email Glitch Affects Delivery

AOL was experiencing email service problems due to a software glitch. Many AOL users were unable to send or receive new emails since 11:00am EST. The issue has been resolved and AOL is asking mailers to begin mailing after 3am EST, Friday June 2. The Email Experience Council also released an email news release on this as well that you can check out.

Email Experience Council - newsletter

Yahoo News - AOL email service delayed over software problem


eINFO – a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

Canadian Email Trends Report Q1

Card Communications, Ottawa-base email marketing service provider, released their Q1 2006 Email Trends Report. Here are some of their findings.

• Canadian email stats are pretty much the same compared to email norms from the United States.
• 80-88% deliverability rate (The smaller the list, the higher the deliverability.)
• 27-50% open rates (The smaller the list, the higher the open rates.)
• 10-28% click-through-rates (The smaller the list, the higher the click-through-rate.)

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

The Poor Lonely Email Sign Up Box

You have seen it over and over again. That lonely, un-explained “subscribe to our newsletter” box on the homepage of the website you are viewing. These lonely “subscribe to our newsletter” boxes need your help.

Start by linking to a landing page that has a call to action to sign up for your newsletter. Provide the necessary information for your users so they can make an informed choice as to whether they need to subscribe to your newsletter. Do not provide too many choices so they are not too overwhelmed. Provide the users some examples of your past newsletters so they understand what they are going to be sent. While you are at it, provide a “Welcome” message (within 24 hours) after they have subscribed to your email newsletter. Start making the relationship personal.

The Top 5 Email Sign Up Mistakes, e-Businessadvice blog

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Four Email Design Sins

Melinda Krueger, officially known as “The E-mail Diva”, released an article, Four Deadly Sins of Email Design on MediaPost.

1. Take into consideration that your recipients view a small sliver of your email. The small part of your email they are viewing may also have the images block.
2. Focus on copy versus graphics.
3. Test, Test, Test. Know what works…do not assume.
4. View your emails in different email clients. Make sure it renders correctly for all of the email clients versus your own inbox.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Study: eROI Q1 2006 Email Statistics & Survey Results

eROI released their latest email and statistics results. Here are some of their results:

• Noticed that the highest percentages of open rates take place on the day with the most email sent (Sunday and Monday)
• 2006Q1 saw an increase of 40% and 60% in open and click rates respectively over 2005Q4.

eROI also include results from their April 2006 eROI Email Marketer Survey.

• 83% of marketers see a significant increase in their lists from last year
• 34% of marketers use behavioral data for segmentation, while 66% use demographic information
• B2C marketers are much more likely to rely on behavioral data (42%) than demographic (27%)
• B2B marketers depend more heavily on demographic data (42%) than behavioral data (29%)
• 4% of email marketers track the lifetime value of an email subscriber/customer

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Whitepaper: Email Marketing Response Rate Study

ExactTarget released their latest response rate study, Email Marketing 2005 Response Rate Study. Here are some of their findings:

• Open rates are declining, while click-trough rates remain stable
• Friday was the best day for email opens
• Sunday was the best day for click-throughs
• Smaller lists generate higher responses

The stat that jumped out at me the most was the 16.5% open rate decline from 2004Q4 to 2005Q4.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Email Testing – How To Boost Your Email Response Rate

VerticalResponse released a new blog posting, Testing – How To Boost Your Response Rates. The posting provides some good guideline on how to test emails effectively.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Email Experience Council

Also check out Email Experience Council’s web site. There are some heavy hitters that are contributing to the site. The site is geared “to providing email marketers with case studies, learnings and access to reports and statistics that will enable you to effectively use email”.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Case Study: Optimizing Delivery Results

Email Experience Council has a new case study, “Case Study: Preparing to Deliver”. The case study highlights the best practices to optimize the deliverability, credibility and effectiveness of RAKMF email communications. The case study was provided by the email deliverability service provider, Pivotal Veracity.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Benchmarks For Email Appending And ECOA

FreshAddress just released some new benchmark data for email appending and email change of address services.

Commercial clients average deliverable email append results:

• Household appending: 16%
• Individual appending: 12%

Nonprofits average deliverable email append results:

• Household appending: 15%
• Individual appending: 9%

Average deliverable email change of address results:

• Email Change of Address: 8% (both commercial and nonprofits)

FreshAddress also noted that quarterly processing of the list more than doubled the success rate over the course of a year for both email appending and email change of address.

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

10 Reasons Your Agency Should Not Program Your HTML Email Templates (Part 1)

Lesley Cortright, Premiere Marketing Automation, release a new article, 10 Reasons your Agency (Marketing, Branding, Interactive or otherwise) Should Not Program Your HTML Email Templates. Here are the first five tips.

1. Agencies are generally trained to program websites, not HTML emails. You should use inline CSS as opposed to placing the CSS in the header of the code.

2. XHTML is not W3C compliant. XHTML can cause problems with un-closed tags and non-standard tag types and formatting.

3. Email is more science than art. They are multiple issues (rendering issues, spam filters, deliverability) to overcome to ensure the customer has a positive experience with your email.

4. Make effective use of campaign technology. Many times agencies are more concerned with their bottom line than they are making the content the most relevant and efficient to the end user and client.

5. Email delivery rules change constantly. If you are not in the space, there is no way to know what is happening with various ISPs.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Definition: Feedback Loop

George Bilbrey, ReturnPath, released a new article, Feedback Loops: Free Deliverability Gold. George defines feedback loop as “…a system by which the ISP provides the sender a copy of a message that a subscriber has reported as spam – usually hitting a “report spam” button.”

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Survey: AP-AOL-Pew Research Center Mobile Lifestyle

A new AP-AOL-Pew Research Center mobile lifestyle survey has found that U.S. cell phone users find themselves increasingly addicted to using their cell phones. Here are some interesting findings concerning email:

• 32% of respondents say they want to send mobile email with their next phone or currently do now.
• 8% of cell phone users currently access their email from their cell phones.
• 24% of those who do not currently check their email from their phones say they would like to be able to do so.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Webinar: Multicultural Email Market

eROI will be hosting a webinar, Emailing the Right Way to the Global Market, on April 13.

Topic: Multicultural Email Marketing
Date: April 13, 2006
Time: 11:00 am, Pacific Daylight Time (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)
2:00 pm, Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -04:00, New York)
8:00 pm, Europe Daylight Time (GMT +02:00, Amsterdam)
Friday, April 14, 2006
2:00 am, China Standard Time (GMT +08:00, Beijing)
Event address for attendees:
https://eroi.webex.com/eroi/onstage/g.php?d=922102153&t=a
Event number: 922102153
Event password: global
Teleconference: To be announced

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

WhitePaper: Email Blocking and Filtering Report

ReturnPath released a new whitepaper, Email Blocking and Filtering Report Second Half of 2005. ReturnPath noted that email blocking and filtering numbers have improved slightly over the past year. Earthlink, Mac.com, Compuserve, and USA.net had the lowest incidence of blocking and filtering. Excite, Gmail, Lycos and Adelphia had the highest incidence of blocking and filtering.

The whitepaper also cites a February survey about consumer’s view on email deliverability.

• 73.4% had email they wanted to receive end up in the junk folder or go missing all together.


• 56.7% have added at least four corporate domains to their personal address book to help ensure inbox deliverability.


• 16.7% added between one and three domains to their personal address book to help ensure inbox deliverability.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

WhitePaper: Email Blocking and Filtering Report

ReturnPath released a new whitepaper, Email Blocking and Filtering Report Second Half of 2005. ReturnPath noted that email blocking and filtering numbers have improved slightly over the past year. Earthlink, Mac.com, Compuserve, and USA.net had the lowest incidence of blocking and filtering. Excite, Gmail, Lycos and Adelphia had the highest incidence of blocking and filtering.

The whitepaper also cites a February survey about consumer’s view on email deliverability.

• 73.4% had email they wanted to receive end up in the junk folder or go missing all together.


• 56.7% have added at least four corporate domains to their personal address book to help ensure inbox deliverability.


• 16.7% added between one and three domains to their personal address book to help ensure inbox deliverability.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Webinar: Improving Your Email Relevance and Deliverability

Bluestreak is hosting a webinar, Improving Your Email Relevance and Deliverability on April 4.
ou can sign up at http://www.bluestreak.com/webinars/042006_reg.asp
Overview:
Join us for the latest Bluestreak Webinar to learn the latest email best practices and testing strategies to improve the relevance and deliverability of your email communication.

Learn how your marketing programs can evolve with the adoption of the new email certification services and with the emerging opportunities to extend your email messaging with SMS and RSS. This is an exciting time in email marketing and this is a webinar you won’t want to miss.

Date/Time: April 4, 2006 - 11am ET/4pm UK

Webinar Pricing: FREE

Presenters:
Shar VanBoskirk, Consulting Analyst, Forrester Consulting
Brian Cavoli, Senior Director, Bluestreak

Who should attend?
B2C & B2B Marketers
Online Marketers, Marketing Directors
Acquisition & Retention Marketers
Sales Professionals, Mangers and Executives

Whitepaper: Email Marketing 2005 Response Rate Study

In my previous post Email List Size Best Predictor of Open and Click Through Rates I referenced ExtactTarget's study. ExactTarget has now released this study titled, Email Marketing 2005 Response Rate Study.

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

10 Email Marketing Tips To Increase ROI

Barry Stamos, Senior Director of Strategy for Responsys, released an article, 10 Quick Wins for Email Marketing.

1. Relevance - delivers more revenue improvemnt than broadcasting.
2. Email Makeover - redesign your email template using best practices.
3. Subscriptions - add a subscription sign up at every touch point.
4. Automation - allows to improve efficiency and effectiveness from sales and service personnel.
5. Integration - determine the optimal number and best channel mix to market to your customer.
6. Segmentation - send the right message ot the right customer at the right time.
7. Testing - know what works and what doesn't
8. Experience - think about how you can gain visibility in the recipient's inbox.
9. Reporting & Analysis - analyze individual behavior and campaign performance to accurately identify your highest value customers and most successful email campaigns.
10. Delivery Audits - ensure that your emails are being delivered to the inbox

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

Email MArketing in Canada More Effective

The Intercative Advertising Bureau of Canada released a new survey that looked at the effectiveness of Candian email campaigns. The survey noted that Candian email delivery rates at nearly 93%, open rates at 55% and click through rates over 8%.

Email Marketing: Better In Canada, eMarketer

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

Email Marketing Meets Web Analytics

Elaine O'Gorman, Silverpop, released an article on MediaPost entitled, Incorporating Web Analytics Into Email Marketing (free registration required). This article is so relevant to me right now as I look at how to leverage web analytics to assist in being more relevant with our email marketing. The article suggested starting with the Five W's (Who, What, When, Where, and Why).

1. Who hasn't completed a trabsaction?
2. What pages do they visit?
3. When do they visit?
4. Where are they coming from?
5. Why do they do what they do?

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

Email List Size Best Predictor of Open and Click Through Rates

ExactTarget will be releasing a new study, The ExactTarget 2005 Response Rate Study, on March 16. Here are some of the studies findings.

• The study shows as email list size increases, the open and click through rates both decrease. This does stabilize after reaching 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers
• The study also found that most B2B list experience a higher open and click through rate compared to most B2C lists.

You can find the orginal press release with additional charts here.

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

Fewer American Consumers Using Work Email Addresses as the Delivery Vehicle for Opt-In Commercial Emails

Lyris found in a recent survey that fewer American consumers are using their work email address as the delivery vehicle for opt-in commercial emails.

• 26% receive opt-in commercial emails via Yahoo!
• 21% receive opt-in commercial emails via Hotmail
• 13% receive opt-in commercial emails via AOL
• 8% receive opt-in commercial emails via their work email accounts.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

How Many Email Addresses Do You Have?

According to a recent survey by Lyris:

• 30% of American internet users have one email account
• 37% have two email accounts
• 19% have three email accounts
• 13% have four or more email accounts

The next question should be, “How frequently do you check these email accounts?”. Personally I fall in the four or more email accounts. I only check two of them on a daily basis. I check one on a weekly basis and one on a monthly basis.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Whitepaper: Email Delivered to AOL for Free

ReturnPath released a new whitepaper, Get your email delivered to AOL subscribers the old fashioned way:Free. The whitepaper provides several tips on how you can have your AOL recipients whitelist you.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

How Does AOL’s Whitelists Work?

EmailLabs has a great FAQ on how AOL’s whitelists work. They provide a comprehensive answer with plenty of resource links.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Considering Whether to Sign Up for Goodmail CertifiedEmail?

Kiril Popov and Loren McDonald released a new article, AOL Delivery: With and Without Goodmail, on the subject of Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program. The article cites a benchmark from AOL, Goodmail, and Pivotal Veracity that between filters and lack of action because of disabled images and links, 43% of your AOL bound messages are loss. Goodmail CertifiedEmail program promises to give you back those 43% and add another 20% in “message effectiveness” (those people who would click on your message when the images and links are enabled).

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Report: Lyris Q4 2005 ISP Deliverability Report Card

Lyris released their quarterly report, Q4 2005 ISP Deliverability Report Card. The report cites that deliverability has improved in the US and Europe by 2% over last quarter. The report also noted that inbox deliverability rates have alos increased to an average of 87%.

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

Whitepaper: Incorporating Web Analytics into EMail Marketing

Silverpop released a new whitepaper, Incorporating Web Analytics Into Email Marketing. The whitepaper looks into ways on how one can incorporate the clickstream behavior of your recipients into providing more relevant messaging. The whitepaper goes over five tatics to enable you to gain and leverage a better understanding about your email customers.

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

Case Study: HP's "Technology At Work" Email Marketing Program

Forrester's Shar VanBoskirk, released a new B2B email marketing best practice. The report is title, B2B Email Marketing Best Practices: Hewlett-Packard. From the Executive Summary:

"B2B firms are aggressively moving more money into email marketing. But badly targeted, irrelevant business emails irk customers, don't generate sales or satisfaction, and can tarnish customers' perception of a once-trusted brand. Built gradually over the last five years, Hewlett Packard's (HP's) "Technology At Work" email newsletter provides a good model for B2B marketers planning to start an email program or those looking to advance an existing program to the next level. Because of its emphasis on deep customer research, relentless testing, and continual improvement, "Technology At Work" influences over $100 million in revenue and saves millions more in defrayed customer service costs."

eINFO - a collection of articles and case studies about email marketing.

More States Looking at “Do Not Email” Registries

MediaPost Publications released an article that points to five additional states that are now considering a “do not email” child protection registry (will need to sign-in to access). Those states looking at passing this legislation are Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, and Iowa.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Email Bounces Explained

Kirill Popov, EmailLabs, released an article from their enewsletter, “User Not Found: Email Bounces Explained”. Kirill gives a brief explanation on the types of bounces and how they are handled.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Inactives Making Up 30-50% of Email File

Loren McDonald, EmailLabs, released an article in their latest enewsletter, “The Number are In on Email Subscriber Inactive Rates. The article looked at members who did not open or click on any emails sent to them for six months. The article notes that in general, “inactives” make up 30% to 50% of a typical mailing list. The article links to some resources that talk about how to re-engage with your “inactives”.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

15 Rules For Your Email Subject Line

Loren McDonald, EmailLabs, released an article in their latest enewsletter, “Subject Lines: 15 Rules to Write Them Right”. The article provides 15 rules for creating a good email subject line.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Email Marketing Summit 2006

EmailSherpa will be holding their Email Marketing Summit on April 20-21, 2006 in Chicago. Looks like early bird registration goes through Feb 15.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Background Images and Colors in HTML Emails

MailChimp blog provides a quick tip to help you ensure that your background image or color appears in browser based email applications. Here is the tip:
• Set a big table that 100% wide, then specify your background color or image there.
• You can use the attributes “bgcolor=” or “background=”
• Then post your actual newsletter code inside the table.

Check out MailChimp’s “HTML Email Design Guide” pdf.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Whitepaper: HTML Email Design Guide

MailChimp Blog ( http://mailchimp.blogs.com) has a whitepaper, “HTML Email Design Guide” that provides several tips on HTML email coding and design. Worth a read.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Returning Trust To Email Marketing

Richard Gingras, co-founder and CEO of Goodmail Systems, released an article on iMedia Connection, “Returning Trust to Email Marketing”. Richard describes the challenges email marketers face in 2006. Here are the challenges he talks about. The article provides some solutions to overcoming these challenges.

• ISP blocking of images in high volume messages will increase.
• The use of whitelisting and the level of privileges provided will decline.
• Domain authentication is an important tool but not a silver bullet.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

AOL Moves To Certified Email

AOL is moving away from their IP-based Enhanced Whitelist and moving towards to Goodmail’s cryptographic CertifiedEmail program. The CertifiedEmail program should be fully implemented by AOL by June 30, 2006. AOL will add a ”trust symbol” to messages sent by Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail senders. Goodmail will charge marketers a fraction of a cent per message sent.

David Daniels, Jupiter Research, provides several reason why a move to third-party reputation programs is going to replace whitelisting. Read David’s post, “AOL Phases Out Enhanced Whitelist, Moves to Certified Email”.

Other source: AOL to Implement E-mail Certification Program, Clickz

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Flash in Email

Are you considering using Flash in your newsletter? Check out the Campaign Monitor blog post, “The truth about flash in email”. The CampaignMonitor blog ran a series of test in several major email environments (Outlook, Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, Mac Mail,…) on how they handle Flash in emails. The results were not too good.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Study: eROI Q4 2005 Email Statistics

eROI released their latest email study, “eROI Q4 2005 Email Statistics”. The study looks at day of the week email trends.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

The Halo Email Effect

“A well designed email will reinforce its message. Researchers suggest a ‘halo effect’ is created by this visual impression. If people feel positive about the design, they are going (to) feel positive about the content of the email.”

An excerpt from Blue Sky Factory blog referencing a recent study in the Journal of Behaviour and Information Technology.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Study: Email Address Validation Study of 50 Top Retail Websites

FreshAddress released a new study, “Email Address Validation Study of 50 Top Retail Websites”. FreshAddress tested the 50 top retail websites (based on Internet Retailer’s The Top 400 Guide) to validate nine common email address input mistakes.

• 16% allowed six or more invalid email entries
• 20% allowed five invalid email entries
• 50% allowed four invalid email entries
• 10% allowed three invalid email entries
• 2% allowed two invalid email entries
• 2% allowed one invalid email entry

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Where in the World is Spam?

Postini knows...world spam map.

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

MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Summit

MarketingSherpa is holding their Email Marketing Summit & Expo in Chicago on April 20-21, 2006.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Using Surveys to Support Your Email Newsletter

CheifMarketer.com article, Support Your E-Zine With Surveys, provides some best practices when trying to elicit feedback from your subscribers through a survey.

• Use short, interactive surveys.
• Start with seven questions and then try surveys with varying length to determine the ideal number of questions for your audience.
• Send a text message with a link to the survey from online.
• If you intend to survey often, ask your subscribers to specifically opt-in to be a participant in your surveys.
• Embedded forms yield higher response rates. (I would advise staying away from this since there are several render issues in various email applications with forms.)

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.