Video Poll Results

The results are in... with a limited number of respondents I'm not sure how scientific this is, but the results did show a number of very strong trends.

1. Embedded video in email, Does it work?

89% of respondents selected a No response, with the leading result being attributed to Poor support in email clients (50%) and rendering issues (27%). Of the yes answers (11%) the trend showed only "OK" results. No one responded with having "great" results from Videos in email.

2. How do you get around video in email issues?

Another overwhelming result showing the 85.7% of respondents choose to sent static images with the look and feel of a video screen, the remainder indicated no issues related to sending videos.

3. Optimal Video format

73% of responders answered by indicating the choice to not send video in email. MPEGs (17%), AVI and Wav files were the next most popular with 5.6% each. Write in answered included Flash, QuickTime, SWF and YouTube embedded options.

4. Tips for sending video in email, reasons not to send video in email

User comments seems to indicate a strong distrust of the Marketing Sherpa tests and results. Recommendations to Avoid Flash and other scripting were also popular due to the high probability that an ISP will pop us warnings or disable these out right in the users inbox. Providing images (or animated gifs) and links to hosted video, on your site or even YouTube, seem to be the most popular recommendations occurring several times.

We even had comments from a couple of recipients that indicated a significant dislike of the idea and application of Videos in email.

Key findings:

1. Use images that point to hosted video
2. Understanding your recipients view of your services is important
3. ISPs and email clients do not support many of the formats used to manage video
   

Thank you all for answering.

Only a Few days left

Don't forget to take the survey "Video in email", Poll closes in three days.

Click Here to take survey

Thanks to everyone that has already answered.

Video in Email?

Based on the recent MarketingSherpa Article on Video in Email I thought I'd take a short survey (four questions) on how and if you use video in email.

Click Here to take survey

Please pass this along to your colleges, or clients - the more responses the better the results.

Thanks for participating.

Habeas Study Confirms Strong, Ongoing Demand for Email

Yesterday Habeas and Ipsos, announced the finding of their 2008 email study which finds that there is still a very strong preference for email and the expectation that this will continue to be the case for several more years.

Some very interesting findings include that the majority of people trust companies that use opt-in email, have the ability to customize communications and can reliably get messages delivered. While having a strong privacy practice gets you bonus points, many people still believe that two-thirds of companies are still sharing their data with third parties.

Report Highlights include:

Email's Vitality

• 67% of respondents prefer email over other online vehicles
• Consumer opinion of the future importance of email registered far above future expectations for other online channels.
  

Consumer Concerns Regarding Online Threats Increasing

• 96% expressed concern about being victimized by email fraud, up from the 62 percent finding in the 2007 report.
• 43% of respondents voiced concern over mobile spam and virus threats.
  

Online Reputation Management Best Practices to Build Trust

• 88% of respondents said they would like organizations to give them more choices over the content and frequency of the emails they receive.
• 80% of participants favour doing business with organizations that use opt-in permission to send them email.
• 75% of participants prefer engaging with organizations that exhibit strong privacy practices.
  

Online Business Practices to Avoid

• 25% of respondents lose faith in an organization that is unable to deliver email reliably.
• Daily email messages ranked with pop-up advertisements as the most damaging online tactics to a company's online reputation.
• 80% of respondents are not comfortable with businesses sharing their email address.
• 80% feel that a business' reputation is negatively affected if it shares customer email addresses with third parties.
• Internet users believe that about two thirds of companies are likely to share their email addresses with third parties.

CMA | E-mail marketing not sophisticated despite popularity

Source: The CMA Weekly Watching Brief

A report released on Tuesday by Alterian finds that nearly two-thirds of marketers are only operating at a basic-to-immediate e-mail marketing level.

• More specifically, 32% were found to be operating at an advanced user level, putting them in a position to expand e-mail beyond traditional marketing use and fully leverage the channel as a strategic business application.
• Most participants (59%), fell into the intermediate user category; although their e-mail marketing programs are more advanced than most, these marketers can make many improvements to increase ROI and improve the customer experience.
• Four percent have not surpassed the basic user level, where they have just begun experiencing the power of e-mail marketing.

On a side note - Dave Fowler (a good friend) joins Alterian as Vice President of Deliverability and Privacy. Congrats Dave!

Upcoming Webinars

Reputation-Based Email and Web Operations Create Results (Recorded)
Joint Presentation: Habeas, LashBack and Publishers Clearing House
How being compliant and reputable online is a competitive advantage in any economy -- especially in a downturn, How to analyze, improve and manage email and Web operations with online reputation management strategies and tools, Case studies, best practices and tips you can leverage immediately for your business or clients

Are You in the Loop? (Register)
By DMNews
Date: Thursday, May 1, 2008
Time: 1:00 p.m. EST/10:00 a.m. PST
To learn how to effectively use customer data and behavior to refine marketing strategy and campaigns, join us for this complimentary webcast, moderated by DMNews editor-in-chief Elly Trickett. All registrants will receive a copy of the Aberdeen Group research paper, "The CMO Strategic Agenda: Automating Closed-Loop Marketing."


“Garbage In, Garbage Out: Catch Email Errors Before They Hit Your Database” (Register)
By Freshaddress
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
As a smart marketer, you’re already working hard to get email addresses for each one of your customers. But did you know that up to 20% of email registrations contain syntax, typo, formatting, and other errors?

Q&A | Help with RBL

Q: Hello EmailKarma.net

I am currently trying to contact someone at the FiveTenOptin block list. They are carrying this message for all of the IP addresses that we own:

Reports CNAME of [removed].com.bulk.blackholes.five-ten-sg.com.
TXT= "added 2007-05-30; unconfirmed mailing lists"

Do you know where I can find information on contacting them to get this message removed?

A:
Are you using a reputation monitoring service that is flagging this as an issue? In all honestly don't waste your time or energy on this list... Here is a graph showing the false positive stats on FiveTen, as tracked by DNSBL Resource. You'll see that they consistently block more ham then spam, and that only a few domains use them. It appears your being listed under the "bulk" flag for this list.

Description: Bulk mailers that don't require closed loop confirmed opt-in from all their customers.

The list is full of issues and for most people it is truly a non-issue (affecting only a tiny portion of your list) when it comes to delivery. Asking the domains that are using this to white list your mail or showing them the inaccuracies (DNSBL report) with this list are probably the best way to go forward with this. If your determined to try the contact page to reach them.

Good luck.

BeRelevant interviews MarketingSherpa

Tamara over at BeRelevant interviews Stefan Tournquist from Marketing Sherpa on their latest metrics report that were recently published.

Listen to the interview here.

Several relevant Items are discussed; mailing frequency, removing inactive users and what are the largest concerns by marketers that responded to Sherpa's surveys.

Experimental Authentication Survey #3

Month three regarding the measurement and progression of email authentication.

Spam is running at 7031 (96% of inbound*) messages in the last 30 days comparing to 229 ham messages.

The percent of spam passing authentication tests is now at 1.5%, with 16.7% failing. Leaving 81.9 % as a neutral source.

Comparing the ham ratio of 38% neutral and 62% passing (50% in August, 57% in Sep/Oct) authentication tests.

Remember the holidays are coming - and you still have time to ensure that all of your email is authenticated. Don't forget your corporate email should also be authenticated. This will help your inbox placement and to protect your brand.

See the previous results: Month 1 and Month 2

Green flag = Passing authentication response
Yellow flag = Neutral authentication response
Red flag = Failing authentication response

* One complete month of spam used as a sample, prior tests used only 2 weeks of data. Complete monthly data will be used going forward.

Split decission on list rental

The EEC recently completed a two-click survey on weather the "Benefits of List Rental Outweigh the Risks?"

The results were mixed at best with 51% saying that the benefits do outweigh the risks, with 49% of the respondents saying that the risks are not worth the benefits.

This is actually surprising, as many of the common delivery issues that mailers expereince can be related to the list building best practices that they follow.

For other list building tips refer to these resources:

OneDegree: Using Email to Build Trust

ClickZ: Four Quick-Fix Options to Supplement a Small E-mail List

Word to the Wise: Permission, Part 1 and Permission, Part 2

SpamResource: Purchased Lists Are Still Lame (example of what not to do)

Do you have any other tips? Email them to contact or leave us a comment.

Defining Spam - four ways

Mickey, ran this article today on the definitions of spam (as used by various anti-spammers), prompted by an ongoing discussion around the quality of several differnt blacklists being measured by DNSBL.com.

The four clasifications fall into these categories (identified by MickC);

Definition 1: “Mail that comes to my spamtrap addresses which was unasked for”. a.k.a. "unsolicited bulk email”

Definition 2: “mail which violates some legal standard”

Definition 3: “a source most blacklist users would identify as spam-source under the ‘Boulder Pledge’ or a similar notion.”

Definition 4: “mail my users (as a group) do not want.” or “mail that I do not want”.

For the full story and understanding of why these definitions are important to your email campaign read "Multiplying Goalposts", Posted on November 8th, 2007 by MickC

Gearing up for the 2007 holiday season

The holidays are rapidly approaching, email campaigns are gearing up. Are you ready for the season?

If not here are some helpful links to get you thinking about the next six to eight weeks of your email program:

• Email Marketing Reports Holiday email marketing advice - Offers practical advice on the holiday marketing season and links to other valuable resources
• The EEC's 2007 Guide to Gearing Up for the Holiday Email Season - Offers a helpful road map to the email holiday season and a downloadable holiday white paper
• Return Path's 3 Ideas to Boost Holiday Email Response - Gives three helpful tips on increasing response and user interaction with your program
• WhatCounts: Get the Most out of the Holiday Frenzy: The Best Holiday Loyalty Marketing Practices for 2007 - Provides ten ideas for your program this holiday season.

Do you have any other tips for the 2007 holiday season? Email them to contact or leave a comment.

Experimental Authentication Survey #2

Back in August we conducted a quick and Experimental Authentication Survey of the EmailKarma inbox, what we found was that 50% of messages received in the month of August were not being authenticated correctly.

Comparing this to the messages received in the first two weeks of October we are now seeing that 57% of solicited messages are now authenticating. We also saw that the messages that failed authentication (no red flags), but were solicited, from August have been corrected and are now passing authentication tests.

The other item of note is our spam folder has 2% (up from 1.5%) of email passing authentication, with the majority of these messages (79%) having no records at all, meaning these domains are venerable to attack and forgery.

October's Ham to Spam ratio is running at a solid 89.1% which is slightly better then August's 91% spam percentage.



The holidays are coming - make sure all of your email is authenticated to help your inbox placement and to protect your brand.

Experimental Authentication Servery

A quick and experimental survey of the solicited messages in the EmailKarma inbox shows that ~50% of messages received in the month of August are not authenticating (total neutral = 59) or are not passing (total fail = 12) one of the four main authentication technologies (SPF, Sender ID, Domain Keys or DKIM).



Inversely the last 8 days worth of spam received (1547 messages) shows that only 24 messages (1.5 %) have been authenticated in a positive manor. The largest set of spam messages are sent from domains that are not supporting authentication off any kind thus becoming an easy target for spoofing or forgery.

Based on these numbers our spam to email ratio is 91%.

If your looking to get noticed and your looking for help getting your campaigns to your users make sure your authenticating. ISPs and businesses are already beginning to evaluate the presence of these solutions and make delivery decisions based on their accuracy, and results.

Q&A: Dropping opens with consistent clicks?

Q: Dear EmailKarma,

I'm working with a client that is concerned that they are starting to see delivery issues with their regular email messages. They’re seeing a decrease in open rates of the course of the year – they didn’t see a decrease during the summer last year so they’re looking for some insight into why this trend might be occurring. My initial thoughts are increased number of email clients that default to disabling images. I believe this might be the case because the Click Through Rates are consistent. Any thoughts?

********

A: Your right in thinking that open rates are down due to the image blocking software that many ISPs, especially webmail providers, have been employing. Hotmail has released Live mail and has been rolling this out to their users around the world (Microsoft also released Outlook 2007 with images blocking features), Yahoo mail is in Beta and is rolling out to members, and AOL has disabled images in their latest web client.

All of these factors are leading to lower open rates, but this is not a bad thing and here is why:

1. Realistic view of readers as these individuals are actively calling/asking for your images
2. Provides insights into subject lines, relevance and targeting effectiveness
   

Here are a number of things you can do to help with your opens:

1. Remember "Add to Address book" language during the; opt-in, the first welcome message and every message afterwards.
2. Treat consistent openers differently then your infrequent/never openers. These are your loyal viewers and should be treated as such.
3. Test subject lines on your subscribers. Try a minimum of 3 different subject lines against ~10% of list to each one [total 30% of list], send the winner to the remainder of your list [remaining 70%]
4. Read the Email Open Rates Guide from Email Marketing Reports.

Do you have a question for EmailKarma? Email them to contact.

Damn Spam - The New Yorker

Damn Spam
The losing war on junk e-mail.
by Michael Specter

This article talks about the origins or spam, the first being sent across the ARPANET by DEC in 1978, and moves on to modern spam related issues like the Robert Soloway case. Other topics covered include Bayesian filter origins and their effectiveness, the Spamhaus Project and the growing threat of Image spam and professional virus writers.

This articles features quotes and facts from; John Scarrow - the general manager of anti-spam technologies at Microsoft, Matt Sergeant - the chief anti-spam technologist at MessageLabs and Brad Templeton -The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s chairman.

Defiantly worth the read

Keeping your lists clean

Falling open rates, click and purchase? Hitting spam traps and finding increased issues while trying to get in the inbox? Here are a few ideas to kick start your program again.

1 - Sunset inactive users:
Over time people lose interest in the same old email. Sunset people that have not clicked or opened an email in over 12 months (may vary by frequency of communications). Send a note to these users:

"Thanks for being a subscriber, we noticed you have not been very active lately and we do not want to bug you so we are giving you one last chance (expect 2 more of these messages) to stay on our list.... Click here to stay on the list and [Insert promotion here]. Please note you can subscriber again at a later time if you would like to hear from us again".

This will trim any dead weight from your list and save you some money for future campaigns. It also has a very prominent call to action for users that just have not interacted with you for some time, it acts as a reminder.

2 - Different messaging streams to different users
Over time your messaging may become irrelevant to an individual, these irrelevant messages generally lead to spam complaints (as a lazy unsubscribe).

Try the following:

• Predict the Lazy unsub - analize the data your provided by an ISPs Feedback loop and predict when complaints begin to rise due to irritated users receiving your messages. These events tend to vary by program, but a good measurement is # of broadcasts before the average users reports you to their ISP or time on file (# of months since subscription).
• Treat your power users differently. Users can be lumped into a number of different categories; 1- New users (on list less then 3 months), regular users (infrequent interaction with email program), and power users (interact with a high number of messages). These three groups (more groups can be defined but for example purposes this was limited to three) should be treated differently, Try new creative, subject lines, offerers (free shipping pr discounts). Your goal is to turn regular users into power users.

3 - Consider using a double opt-in on your email lists.
Rates as high as a 97% opened can be achieved by using these highly targeted and relevant messages.

4 - Small highly targeted lists
Targeting and relevancy are key triggers for a highly successful campaign... Did subscriber respond to a particular offer before, is their a complementary product you can upsell to this user, is there a replacement part that is needed every (30, 60, 90, 365 days). These users have already got your product - servicing them is an easy way to increasing your bottom line.

Got any additional ideas on keeping your list clean... Share them with us by email at contact or leave a comment.

Need Stats?

Need some stats on email marketing or do you just want to see how you compare to everyone else?

EmailStatCenter.com has become the Leading Authority on Email Marketing Metrics. The site features hundreds of metrics from over 40 categories including deliverability, response rates and ROI. For more information, please visit www.EmailStatCenter.com.

Looks for stats in the following categories:

Authentication, Budgeting, Co-Registration, Deliverability, Email Usage, Frequency and From Line management