Email messages mistaken for spam by filtering software -- known as 'false positives' in the anti-spam business -- have caused four in 10 workers to miss a deadline, according to a survey released this week at a London security conference.

Spam filtering makes workers miss deadlines Posted by: DTB at 12:31 PM  |  Permalink

Why e-retailers are expanding their e-mail marketing

On the surface, e-mail marketing has a lot of strikes against it. There`s the controversy over spam and the new regulations against it. There`s the widely held belief that legitimate e-mail promotions are lost in a blizzard of illegitimate e-blasting and are therefore less effective than they once were. And a new Internet Retailer survey of e-retailers shows that the overwhelming majority online merchants--71% to be exact--attribute less than 10% of their retail web sales to the e-mail marketing they do.Nonetheless, that same survey shows that 68% of e-retailers are doing more e-mail marketing this year than the year before and the majority of those surveyed believe e-mail marketing is as or more effective than other forms of web site marketing. The explanation for this dichotomy appears to be found in the fact that e-mail is seen as an extremely effective way of communicating with online shoppers, even if that communication does not result in a sale that can be attributed to an online sale. Furthermore, the low cost of e-mail marketing makes it an extremely 'effective' sales"


Why e-retailers are expanding their e-mail marketing Posted by: DTB at 3:07 PM  |  Permalink

If you're lucky enough to have a robust house list that grows significantly each month, good for you. If you're looking to build a list from scratch or would like better list growth, here are a few tips gleaned from recent client work.

Start by developing an acquisition marketing plan, basically, a blueprint for how you'll find, approach, and sell your target audience on giving you their e-mail addresses. As with any marketing plan, you want the quantitative, such as the number of new e-mail addresses to add each month, as well as the qualitative, including where you'll find these people.

Building an Opt-In E-Mail List Posted by: DTB at 10:31 AM  |  Permalink

As with so many aspects of e-mail marketing, there's much confusion over the meaning of 'opt-in.' Different camps use the same terms to mean different things. Today, an overview of the nomenclature, and who uses which terms and why.

The Nomenclature of Opt-In Posted by: DTB at 10:49 PM  |  Permalink

Over the past two weeks, we received an influx of insightful, intriguing questions for OgilvyOne's e-mail marketing director, Jeanniey Mullen. The questions proved Mullen's theory business-to-business (B2B) marketing is a whole different ballgame. Today, she takes a swing at answering some of the toughest queries.
What key elements relating to design, mailing frequency, list size, and so forth should be considered with B2B mailings?

Questions for OgilvyOne's E-Mail Marketing Director Posted by: DTB at 10:48 PM  |  Permalink

Greater relevancy equally more campaign success, says Bigfoot Interactive’s Della Penna. Toward that end, four trends are emerging in how retailers approach their e-mail strategy today.

E-mail campaigns reaching for greater relevancy with more personalization Posted by: DTB at 10:47 PM  |  Permalink

Pier 1 Imports has boosted the open rate on its consent-based customer e-mail by about one quarter, from 20% to about 26% on average since it replaced its existing e-mail solution with DoubleClick�s DARTmail last year. Click-throughs as percentage of opened messages have climbed from 30% to 35% and higher, for a total of an additional 50,000-plus click-throughs per mailing, according to DoubleClick.

More than a million e-mails, but nearly half didn’t reach customers Posted by: DTB at 10:45 PM  |  Permalink

Yesterday's e-mail tactics, strategies make way for today's

CAN-SPAM, overflowing inboxes and higher customer expectations have dealt a death blow to a number of e-mail practices that once worked. The companies that can boast the most effective e-mail programs today have been successful because they've completely overhauled their way of thinking, says Bill Nussey, CEO of e-mail services provider Silverpop." Posted by: DTB at 10:44 PM  |  Permalink

Using an e-mail marketing application that combines web site analytics and personalization techniques, Macys.com increased revenue from e-mail marketing during the 2004 holiday shopping season by 50% over 2003, president Kent Anderson says.

Macy’s implemented an e-mail management application from Yesmail last year that lets it build e-mail marketing campaigns with multiple versions of e-mail promotions targeting separate segments of customers based on records of shopping behavior, Anderson says. “It allows us to do targeting and segment of e-mails with the same staff at no incremental cost,” he tells InternetRetailer.com.

Macys.com increases e-mail holiday program revenue 50% Posted by: DTB at 10:43 PM  |  Permalink

Online photography represents the only version of e-commerce offered by Wal-Mart Canada Corp., but an e-mail campaign is helping the retailer broaden sales of the products and services offered through WalmartPhotoCentre.ca.

“We offer things that we think won’t sell, like photo blankets for $139, but e-mails on them get a great response rate,” says Joe Parkinson, director of marketing for PhotoChannel Networks Inc., which operates WalmartPhotoCentre for Wal-Mart Canada, a unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc


E-mail helps Wal-Mart Canada broaden sales in online photo service Posted by: DTB at 10:42 PM  |  Permalink

Commercial emailers are finding the vast brunt of their messages actually getting through, according to Internet Retailer, with retail and catalog emails seeing deliverability rates hovering around record levels in the last quarter of 2004. The figures, provided by Bigfoot Interactive, show Q4's deliverability at 94 percent, down just a tad from Q3's 94.6 percent. Response rates climbed to 4.8 percent in Q4, up from 3.8 percent.

Email Deliverability Maintaining Record Levels Posted by: DTB at 9:58 PM  |  Permalink

As ISPs and hosted e-mail vendors try to protect their users from spam, they also block and filter legitimate commercial e-mail messages. A pair of recent studies, one from Lyris and the other from Return Path, measured deliverability rates for legitimate e-mail among different ISP and hosted e-mail providers.

According to Q1 2005 Lyris EmailAdvisor data, the average rate of legitimate commercial e-mail deliverability to user inboxes was 88.5 percent. That climbs a bit to 92.5 percent for average 'gross deliverability' of legitimate commercial e-mail. Lyris defines 'gross deliverability' as the total amount of e-mail delivered to both regular user inboxes and 'bulk' folders; 'inbox deliverability' refers to messages that make it directly to the inbox.

Commercial E-Mail Deliverability Rates Posted by: DTB at 9:51 PM  |  Permalink

'Best' day shifted Email firm ExactTarget released a study on the effectiveness of email campaigns relative to the days of the week emails are sent. Several earlier studies suggested that Monday and Tuesday have been the most effective days of the week. But the new study suggests that the best day for opening emails aren't necessarily the best days for conversions.

Now just who could have such an impact with thier deliverablility studies that so may people responded to to try it out on Mondays and Tuesdays? Hmmmm.

How about eROI?

Read our studies and how marketers listen to our quarterly reports here >>

Or find the most recent one from 4th Quarter 2004 here >>

Email Send Day Studies Prove Self-Influencing Posted by: DTB at 10:13 PM  |  Permalink

Google's Gmail free email service, formerly the bane of email marketer's production efforts, will now support rich HTML emails, according to a brief report at the end of a DM News article. Since Gmail's launch a year ago, email marketers and newsletter producers have been frustrated by the fact that Gmail-addressed recipients could not view content correctly, and sometimes couldn't view content at all.

Gmail Now Supports HTML Messages Posted by: DTB at 10:11 PM  |  Permalink

CAN-SPAM calls for e-mail opt-out mechanisms to be 'clear and conspicuous.' Last time, I wrote about the customer service and CAN-SPAM implications for unsubscribe wording in e-mail but only briefly touched on the actual opt-out process.

Today, I'll discuss opt-out processes by sharing my top subscription system gripes -- the most annoying unsubscribe issues I've encountered.

Clear and Conspicuous Opt Outs Posted by: DTB at 10:08 PM  |  Permalink

Whenever I speak on e-mail marketing, there's always at least one question about frequency. People want to know how often they should mail to their house lists. Simple enough.

Often, there's another issue they're trying to solve: control of the house list. You know what I'm talking about: everyone in the organization wants to use the e-mail list to get her own message out, without considering how much e-mail list members are receiving.

Here are some quick tips to determine the right e-mail frequency for your organization, and to create a situation whereby you control the list and protect recipients from being bombarded.

E-Mail Frequency and List Control Posted by: DTB at 10:07 PM  |  Permalink

A common e-mail marketing misconception is e-mail is filtered because it contains words such as 'free' in the subject line or body. By itself, that won't get your e-mail filtered. Though certain content combinations may get a message filtered, ISPs may be trapping your legitimate e-mail for infractions you rarely pay attention to.

How HTML Code Affects E-Mail Deliverability Posted by: DTB at 9:54 PM  |  Permalink