ATTN Retailers: Please Geotarget

Now I enjoy watching Hockey, maybe not as much as other Canadians, but still if I can get to a game at least one a year I'll always enjoy myself, and if the games on at home then I'm likely to watch at least for a while.

So this immediately looks like a great deal, right? I meen who wouldn't be excited about $14 tickets available for the Vancouver Canucks... but there is only one problem Vancouver is 4,370 km away from Toronto, where I live.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for relevance this gets about a 2 - who know maybe I'll end up visiting BC this year (no plans yet) and get to a game because of this email... but the chances are not likely. Now send this same offer for Toronto, or even Buffalo or Detroit and the relevance becomes more like an 8 or 9.

Please let this be a reminder - Geotargeting your subscribers will get you better results and a more engaged audience.

REMEMBER: One of the leading reasons people report email as spam is that it is irrelevant - 53% of consumers say email is irrelevant - David Daniels, Vice President, Jupiter Research (Dec. 2007) EmailStatCenter

Recognizing the sender

Recently I subscribed to a email newsletter from a consulting group that offers best practices to blogger... This organization was actually started by a well known email marketer, bonus in my eyes from a content perspective... However you'll notice from the messages below that the most important of the five R's is being broken; Recognition.

All of these messages are being delivered from an individual, someone I don't actually know, and not the company i have a relationship with... Only after I open the message to see the content do I realize which company it is actually from.

The big problem with that is according to the ESPC - 79% of the respondents said they hit the "report spam" button when they don't know who the sender is.

Last item to note; each of these messages is address; "Dear Valued Subscriber" The lack of personalization is somewhat disturbing, considering I have provided my name at least once during the registration process, either for the newsletter directly of a webinar hosted by this company.

Lesson: Value your subscribers, Personalize the messages you send to them and "BE RECOGNIZABLE".

Click for larger Image:

The more I write about this the more I realize I should just unsubscribe.

ps. sorry for the small image :S

Project Gmail Grimace: The Gmail Appeal video

The Email Standards Project has moved into the next phase of "Project Gmail Grimace". A Project aimed at getting the attention of Gmail's Developmet staff by having email designers send in photos of themselves feeling the pain of designing email that is properly rendered in the Gmail interface.

This week the Email Standard Project launches the first Gmail Appeal video.

Here is a description of Project Gmail Grimace:

The 2008 Gmail Appeal
Here at the Email Standards Project, we've heard from designers all over the world how frustrating it is that Gmail, the otherwise excellent webmail client, does such a disappointing job rendering HTML email.

The results of the Gmail Acid Test, a control message sent to all of the tested webmail clients, can be found here. Don't forget to share your Gmail Story.

The Five Rs of Email (day 2)

Yesterday I talked about Reputation and how this is used to determine if your email is going to be successfully delivered to your intended recipient. Additionally here are a few other articles that you should review; Monitoring Your Reputation and The best way to build reputation on new IPs?

I also mentioned that today I'd talk about 'Recognition'. Getting a subscriber to recognize your mail and it will get opened. Easy enough? Wrong. Many marketers are still failing at this and it causing a number of issues... like opt-outs and spam complaints.

So how do you increase recognition of your messages?

Start by selecting the proper email 'Alias' for your messages (left side of @ sign), it should be something that instantly recognizable to a user, something that relates directly to your brand. It also needs to be something that is not going to be easily confused with the average spam message many people receive (avoid generic names like; offers@, support@ and news@). This should also build awareness and heightens recognition with users as they interact with your brand (try Brand@, BrandOffers@ or BrandNews@). This is key for mailings to AOL where only the email address is shown and the display name is hidden in the inbox view.

Consistency should also be a key aspect of your messaging and branding. This way a user can add one from address to their address book and it will safe list (images/links enabled) for all of your publications.

Past studies have shown that upwards of 73% of people surveyed reported spam simply based on the “FROM” address, showing a strong indication that recognition in the email address is key.

Tomorrow I'll talk about 'Read-ability', and how this should be incorporated into your messages.

The Five Rs of Email (day 1)

There are a number of factors that effect your delivery on a daily basis, and I'm going to talk about five of them, surprisingly they all start with R. Over the next week I'll be talking about each and how these can effect and enhance your programs.

Reputation - What is reputation and how does it effect email?

Reputation is described in the dictionary as 'A specific characteristic or trait ascribed to a person or thing'.

Many ISPs are building complex data reputation models based on your past email behaviour to predict future trends and response rates of their users. ISPs are tracking things like; Bounce rates, complaint rates and third party opinions (IP and URL Block lists) when building these indexes of mail. Over time many of these systems accuracy and predictions will be able to take formulated actions on your past behaviour and deliver mail to the inbox/bulk folder or block future communications from each IP.

Keeping an eye on these key indicators (bounces, complaints, unsubscribe, opens, clicks) of your program will help you monitor and avoid issues from occurring within your program. Watching for changes in any of these metrics can be an early warning sign of problems to come. Taking corrective actions early will lead to a strong and successful program.

Start by building a Positive First Impression when communicating with your users, by building Recognition, Relevance and a strong foundation for the Relationship your building with your subscribers.

Tomorrow I'll be discussing 'Recognition', so don't forget to check back.

DEMO | Email Data Source

Are you monitoring your competitors?

No, while the Email Data Source team is, and your competitors might just be watching you. Yesterday I was lucky enough to get a live demo of the Email Analyst product from Bill McCloskey, President and CEO.

What is Email Data Source you ask?

Email Data Source is a marketing intelligence company focused on monitoring the email campaigns of ten’s of thousands of companies and providing email competitive intelligence.

What do they do?

Bill explained that Email Analyst is currently monitoring over; 36,000 companies, 400 thousand email lists and is receiving a whopping 150 thousand messages each month, with a growth rate that is doubling year over year.

What does the tool do?

The Email Analyst tool is being used by online marketers to track:

• The number of messages being sent by specific mailers each day per day and the sites Alexa trending data changes in correlation to these messages
• The original graphics and links still enabled allowing you to review messages and data from years past.
• Search past mailings based on keyword in the content or the messages Subject for your own brand or that of your competitors, allowing patterns and trends to be identified
• Compare your offers year over year
• Monitor and track you affiliates and how there mail effects your own program
• Monitoring links and content for errors or dead links in your messages

Early data exists from as far back as 2003 for some mailers and the list continues to grow each month. This is something to look into for your future projects and as a tool to monitor your creative and the direct web impact directed from each of your campaigns.

Click here to view the interactive demo of Email Analyst.

CSS Hover in HTML Email

Mike Kleiman has been experimenting with the Hover CSS tags and presented his results over on his blog. This allows for a mouse over on a link or image where you can you expand the area and show additional text beneath it.

Mike's test results also show some very promising results, although he does caution for Gmail recipients:

I know right away this won't work in Gmail, since hover cannot be applied
inline and Gmail cuts out the style block. But it's still worth an
experimentation anyways since I found Gmail simply defaulted to show the entire
content and so even when it breaks the user is still getting essentially the
full experience.

Please share your results if you test this.