Research Reveals Consumer Attitudes Towards Permission and Privacy

The Ponemon Institue released their 2005 Online Consumer Permissions Study. Here are some interesting facts from that research.

• According to the study, most consumers (92%) wouldn’t mind being contacted by an online merchant – even after they’ve specifically opted out of the merchant’s marketing program. Consumers are overwhelmingly accepting of marketing messages that are relevant to their interests, and are looking for marketers to use their data intelligently to increase relevancy.
• Understanding customer interests is a far better way for marketers to demonstrate that they value a customer’s business than simply sending personalized messages.
• 84% of respondents indicated that having direct control over the types and frequency of Internet ads sent by online merchants would be preferred.
• Over 56% indicated that the ability to exercise control is a way for Web merchants to demonstrate that they value the customer’s business.
• Customers worry less about their privacy when they feel there’s a value exchanged. Consumers are generally more willing to share their data if they believe that a marketer will use that data to directly benefit them. If they are certain that a marketer can be trusted to handle their data with care, and to use the data to benefit them in some way, consumers will be much more willing to share that data.

As you can see relevancy is the key. Customers don’t mind if you stick something in front of them that is relevant to them right then. They would even give you more personal data if they thought that the company could send them more relevant messages.

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

Holiday Email Success

Return Path released its Holiday Email 2004 Consumer Survey. Here are some of the key survey finds:

• 98.6% of consumers surveyed felt they received an increase in email volume this holiday season
• 60.1% said they just deleted the additional emails unread
• 27.1% unsubscribed to email that cam too often
• 23.4% hit their ISP “this is spam” button

What these numbers show is that relevancy to the consumer is meaningful. Without relevancy, subscribers complain, unsubscribe or ignore your messages – flattening response, diluting brand value and risking the deliverability of all your email.

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

Email Deliverability Improvement Tactics

A recent article on Clickz revealed 13 tactics and approaches that increase the likelihood your recipient will get, and consider opening, your email messages:

• A well-executed double opt –in approach will likely capture 80 percent or more of the subscribers and provide additional benefits (cleaner lists, audit trail, higher quality list).
• No prechecked boxes. A lack of affirmative consent leads to lower-value subscribers/customers, reduces customer trust, lowers response rates, and potentially hurts the brand.
• Visible “update email address or preferences” link.
• A recognize, expected, consistent sender name.
• You want your message to be easily, immediately categorized as “recognized and wanted.” It helps to brand your subject and reinforce it in the sender name.
• Ensure copy is creative and compelling but doesn’t trigger spam filters or get delayed by users who confuse your message with spam.
• A message content checker is a decent indicator of potential problems that may have gone unrecognized by the marketing teal.
• Understand the different kinds of filters and content that are high risk.
• Always send proofs of your message to yourself, coworkers, and, if possible, a large seed list.
• The more relevant and personalized a message, the better the chance it will be recognized by a subscriber, not missed or deleted.
• Images instead of text. Certain content is contained in images rather than text. The approach has potential downsides, including image blocking, increased file size, slower loading, and potentially more work for the design/production team.
• On sign up, clearly convey to subscribers the frequency, email type, content/purpose, and value proposition.
• Send time.

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

EmailLabs Predicts the Top Trends of 2005

EmailLabs recently sent out a press release with their top trends for 2005.

• The “Email Marketing Manager” role emerges as a full-time position.
• Email marketers that deploy best practices, adopt emerging authentication, accreditation, reputation technologies and solutions, and allocate the necessary resources will achieve superior delivery rates.
• Resource constraints fuel demand for consulting services.
• Companies continue shift from software to hosted model.
• Increased integration with corporate databases and other applications.
• Increasingly segmented and triggered emails will be driven by behavioral data, such as which specific links a recipient click, whether someone did or did not open an email, and what pages they visited on the company’s Web site.
• Design has become critical on a number of fronts including designing for challenges such as blocked images, the increased use of the “preview pane”, and using images instead of text to protect against content filters. Layout, readability and usability are critical to differentiating emails form “competing” emails, conveying value and trust, driving action and retaining subscribers.
• Look for email marketers to interface more with other departments, within the organization to increase the quality, effectiveness and brand building components of these “non-marketing messages”.
• Most legitimate marketers will be forced to improve their email practices, if they haven’t already, or they will find that their messages will be neither delivered nor opened.
• Look for savvy email marketers to spend more energy retaining, “reactivating” and recapturing subscribers and maximizing return through behavioral segmentation and analysis, than on growing their lists.
• Marketers cede control to customers; focus on building trust and lifetime value.
  

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

Using Testimonials To Add Credibility To Email Creative

Paul Soltoff recently released an article on Clickz mentioning using testimonials as a means to add credibility to email creative. Paul goes through a couple of interesting statistics on people who have rated a product. Paul suggests to add testimonials to your emails to give potential buyers a solid degree of comfort in your product.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Getting Your Enewsletters Read Seminar

Loren McDonald, Vice President of EmailLabs, will be hosting a virtual seminar, January 26, on how to get your enewsletters read. The seminar will cover:

• the challenges: filters, bounces, ISP practices, junk folders, spam complaints, overloaded inboxes, consumer habits, preview panes, blocked images and more.
• best practices: double opt-in, bounce management, email design and format, email authentication, ISP relations, building subscriber trust, understanding spam filters, analyzing your email results, testing, and more.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Average Email Open Time is Just...

Last October EmailLabs measured "read time" across millions of messages sent by their more than 300 clients to permission lists (i.e. people who had signed up for and were expecting to get the email). Their intitial results showed that on average readers are spending 15-20 seconds on each email they open. Read more about this on MarketingSherpa (free access until Jan 23).

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

Revised Date to Comply with New CAN-SPAM Rule

Clickz reports that the Federal Trade Commission has revised it's date for emailers to comply with the CAN-SPAM rules it issued on December 16. The revised effective date is March 28, 2005.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm to Host Teleseminar

MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm will be hosting a free educational teleseminar on Thursday, January 13, 2005, at 4:00pm ET. This teleseminar will talk about what B2B marketers have revealed about their email marketing budgets, response rates, and lead generation tactics. You will also discover how your opt-in, open, click, and conversion rates compare to the norm and how to beat the averages. You can visit KnowledgeStorm for further information.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about emai marketing

Marketingsherpa Is Looking For Marketing Bloggers

Marketingsherpa is turning to marketing bloggers for their next marketing experiment. They are looking to sponsor your blog. They ask that you submit your blog to:
Henry Copeland at BlogAds
henry@blogads.com

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing