Sep
03
By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services
Having recently experienced some health issues that caused a variety of challenges in my daily life, I've come to abruptly realize the importance of minor body parts. For example, when your entire foot is numb, attempting to wear a shoe with a heel strap is more challenging than you would imagine. Since you cannot feel whether or not the strap is secure around your heel, you are left feeling terribly insecure and checking to be sure your shoe is still on your foot rather frequently. This unfortunate (although sometimes amusing) experience lead me to think of the important, often neglected, minor parts of an email. Naturally, we marketers focus on optimizing subject lines, headlines, creative design, and content - - these areas typically return the most for our investment. However, there are some rather "important minor body parts" that we should examine more regularly ...
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Aug
20
By Margaret Farmakis
Director, Strategic Services
A few weeks ago I wrote a posting titled, "Is It Time to Retire the Open Rate" and asked you to respond with your comments and feedback on this often debated and somewhat controversial topic. I included a few specific questions to get you inspired, such as whether or not you track open rates, what makes a "good" open rate and what metrics are most important to you. I received a number of interesting and insightful comments.
A handful of readers felt that the open rate continues to serve an important function in tracking program success. Trevor Hunter wrote that the open rate was the easiest metric to use when gauging the overall effectiveness of a list over time, while Karl Kleinbach still found the open rate useful for testing subject lines and commented that "accuracy is less important than relative performance," especially in the context of A/B split testing results.
Speaking of accuracy, our own Neil Schwartzman, director of standards and security for Sender Score Certified, questioned whether or not the factors that can skew email open rates (e.g., the preview pane, email clients defaulting to "images off" for message viewing) are as prevalent as marketers suspect ...
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Aug
14
What: Getting Into the Inbox with Customized Whitelisting Instructions
Who: Travelocity
Why we love it: Travelocity takes whitelisting to the next level. It's a best practice for marketers to have whitelisting instructions in every email message they send. Typically, these instructions are included above the header of the email message so that subscribers can add the marketer's "from" address to their email client's address book, thereby making them an approved sender. This helps to increase the marketer's deliverability into the inbox and overrides the default "images off" setting (standard for most email clients) so that the marketer's images will automatically render. Travelocity goes one step further by ...
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Aug
13
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
File this under "how to really treat your subscribers with respect." This week, Senator Barack Obama's camp invited subscribers to sign up to be "among the first to know" his selection of a running mate. What a smart email marketing (and campaign building) idea! This is well executed on a number of levels:
Categories: Response
Aug
05
What: Weekly Activity Report
Who: Realty Tracker
Why we love it: Realty Tracker was a site that collected leads on behalf of real estate agents around the country. They sent teasers for those leads by email several times per week. They also sent this weekly Activity Report with a summary of available leads. To make this email as valuable as possible, they included great content that is aimed at making the agents more successful. For example, in the issue shown here they used research on what repeat buyers want from real estate agents. Past issues have included information about home sales trends, how to set goals and real estate marketing tactics. Of course, many of these tidbits speak directly to the service that Realty Tracker provided in the form of online lead generation.
What would make it better: They could ...
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Jul
31
We are always shocked how many marketers miss the boat with their Welcome messages. Some don't even bother to send them, which is just a huge missed opportunity. Others send them, but...
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Jul
28
By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services
The culture of most multi-channel retailers is one of great suspicion and possessiveness, created through silos within every function of the company. Whether it's marketing and merchandising at odds with each other, or IT operating in their own world, or even accounting -- seemingly lost somewhere in the abyss -- these silos make working together extremely difficult. Factor in the business need to implement a major initiative (like holiday sales), and the divide becomes a chasm. What is the root cause of this discord? And, does it really have to be that way?
The answer here is two-fold ...
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Jul
24
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
Greetings from the Online Marketing Summit Summer Roadshow! (You can register here. Enter the code ReturnPath10 and save $200.) Return Path is in Milwaukee, Northern New Jersey and Chicago this week speaking and meeting hundreds of very smart online marketers. It's a wonderful event for everyone in online marketing - not just email marketing. The show continues across the country and I encourage you to sign up.
Our presentation is around lifecycle marketing in email - why and how it's so important to make sure that email is relevant. This is not just because your deliverability depends on it. Although your deliverability DOES depend on it. Want a response? You first have to consistently reach the inbox. That is directly tied to how relevant your subscribers think your messages are. Relevant messages have low complaint scores, the key factor in sender reputation and good deliverability. Irrelevant or too frequent messages have a lot of complaints - subscribers clicking the "this is spam button."
Relevancy may be a buzz word that is overused, but it's still ...
Categories: Response
Jul
16
By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services
When you were a teenager, how often did you ask good-ole Dad for money? You'd borrow $20, go out with friends to see a movie or go shopping, spend every last dime and look forward to doing it all again the next week.... Those were the days, right? Well, it seems that some marketers loved it so much that they are managing their email programs with the same mentality. While living in the present and begging for money to fund each and every need was generally the accepted behavior of a teenager, corporate executives don't enjoy playing the role of "good-ole Dad." Nowadays, it literally pays to do a bit of planning before you ask for more funding. Consider these alternate tactics to get incremental monies for your program ...
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Jul
15
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
A very interesting study of subject lines was released last week by our friends at Alchemy Worx. The headlines focus mostly on length - is longer better than shorter? Is 40 characters better than 50 or 70? Let the debate rage, but I recommend ignoring it.
Focus instead on the key question this study helps answer: Whether subject lines of any length can predictably impact response rates.
Most of us think that subject lines only impact open rates - if the subject line is compelling, then the message breaks through. This is certainly true, but the Alchemy Worx report rightly also focused on broader engagement.
According to the study, open rates are optimized when the subject line is shorter - probably because shorter subject lines focus on a very specific offer. For example, "10% Off Until Thursday" is short, and compelling and easy for the subscriber to immediately understand the offer. If that message resonates, the subscriber opens. Certainly all the research we do here at Return Path supports this - clarity and simplicity in a subject line is always better than cleverness or complexity.
What I found more compelling is ...
Categories: Response
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