Marketers Are Missing Out On the 1-to-1 Marketing Advantages

Study Finds Top-Brand Marketers Are Missing Out On the 1-to-1 Marketing Advantages Offered By E-mail Marketing

Eighty Five Percent of Marketers’ Initial E-mails Lacked Personalization
According To Return Path’s New Subscriber Experiences Study

New York, New York and Denver, CO – For Immediate Release:

Eighty five percent of companies failed to personalize the first e-mail message sent to new subscribers, Return Path discovered with its new Return Path Subscriber Experiences study. This lack of customization, combined with other missed opportunities, leaves marketers unable to leverage the true power of email marketing.

Return Path, the leading e-mail performance management company, conducted the study by subscribing and studying the e-mail programs of 61 companies from the retail, consumer goods, travel, and media/entertainment industries.

The problem is not lack of data. Marketers are collecting information at sign-up that could be used to personalize their initial and subsequent e-mails. In fact, seventy percent of the companies studied collected additional information beyond a subscribers’ e-mail at sign up. Yet, 75% of the companies that collected that additional information did not use it to personalize their e-mails.

“As marketers continue expanding their use of e-mail, they need to keep in mind the unique capabilities that e-mail offers. If you’re collecting information in addition to an e-mail address when a person signs up, you should be using that information to create a personalized message. Personalization keeps subscribers involved with your brand and more inclined to purchase,” said Bonnie Malone Fry, Director of Strategic Services.

In another surprising discovery, Return Path found that many e-mail marketers are not acknowledging a new e-mail subscriber with a welcome message. Sixty percent of the companies studied never sent a welcome message to new subscribers – missing out on an ideal opportunity to establish great rapport with new subscribers.

“Instead of putting out a welcome mat, marketers’ are telling their subscribers to go away,” said Fry. “This is not how you build a good relationship, either with customers or prospective customers.”

Marketers are also struggling with the immediacy of e-mail. In the age of instant messaging, Twitter, and constant updates from social networks, Return Path discovered that the companies studied sent their first regular e-mail an average of nine days after a subscriber joined. In addition, 65 percent of those first regular e-mail messages did not contain any special offer for the new subscriber.

“Combined with a lack of welcome message, this lag in sending email has implications for sender reputation and deliverability, too,” said Fry. “Many people sign up for email, but quickly forget about the company if they don’t get email quickly. When marketers finally do send something the risk is high that recipients will complain because they don’t remember they opted in for the message.”

While many marketers need to examine their e-mail campaigns for personalization and quick engagement, the Return Path Subscriber Experiences study did find that companies across the board are intent on capturing customers’ e-mails for future e-mail marketing. Seventy seven percent of the companies studied made it easy to find their e-mail registration box on their home page.

“The great news is that many companies are focused on growing their lists and ceding valuable website real estate to a subscribe function,” said Fry. “Now they just need to close the loop by making the actual inbox experience really great for subscribers.”
Return Path has recorded a webcast with Bonnie Malone Fry reviewing the study findings. Download that webcast here. Downloading the webcast will also trigger an email message with a link to the study.

About Return Path
Founded in 1999, Return Path is an e-mail performance management company dedicated to helping its clients build better relationships with their customers, generate higher response rates, and achieve significant returns on their investments from their e-mail programs. More than 1,500 companies currently use Return Path’s services to generate superior results from their e-mail programs, taking advantage of Return Path’s pioneering innovations in deliverability, e-mail list quality solutions, customer acquisition, online market research, and best practices strategy. For more information, please visit www.returnpath.net.

Return Path | Feedback loop updates

I'm not sure how I missed this one...

Last month while Return Path was announcing the addition of the Comcast feedback loop to their hosted solutions they slipped in a small announcement for the addition for Mailtrust's addition to their hosted FBL solutions as well (4th paragraph from the bottom).

Bringing the total for Return Path hosted FBLs to three; Comcast, USA.net, and Mailtrust.

Habeas responds to rumors of sale

Last night Des Cahill, Habeas' CEO, posted this article to the company blog; Exciting Times for Habeas. Des' comments are likely the result of an Article in Direct Mag regarding the possible sale of Habeas, although this is not directly mentioned in the posting.

Des writes that Habeas is working with an investment banker to evaluate the their options around different option for finance in order to deal with the continued growth of the business. Business that is up 50% year over year and getting ready for a record year, exceeding the 2008 Q1 goals and looking for a positive.

Habeas has partnered with William Blair to review and analyze the best course of action for the future of the company. This is an organization that has worked with the like of Constant Contact (during their recent IPO) as well Exact Target and Convio during the S-1 filing process.

* Disclaimer - I am a Habeas customer

ISP Update | Road Runner

I have received several notices today stating that the following domains have been disabled on the Road Runner network effective 1/7/2008, as part of their planed migration announced in 2007:

• jam.rr.com
• midsouth.rr.com
• mn.rr.com
• se.rr.com
• sport.rr.com
• swfla.rr.com
• ucwphilly.rr.com
• houston.rr.com

Mail that is being sent to these domain is bouncing as "User Unknown". For the last several months these domains have been forwarding to the users new Comcast address and the users have been reminded by their service provider to give senders their new Comcast address.

What does this mean for me?
You may notice an increase in bounces from these domains for the next couple of mailings while these domains are hygiene out of your email lists. There may also be an increase in calls to your customer service teams regarding missing email, these users should supply their new @comcast.net email address to begin receiving communications going forward. Many users will use this transition as a way to stop spam that is currently sent to their Road Runner Accounts by transitioning and only updating some of the subscription information.

What should/can you do?
Recapturing these users at the next interaction on their website should be a priority, as sending them an email notice is not an option as these addresses are already bouncing. These users have been given ample time by their ISP to update any relevant information regarding mail that they want to remain subscribed to. You should remove these users as part of your standard hygiene process before mailing any future campaigns.

Looking at an ECOA (Email Change of Address) program may also be an option, there are several services available to accomplish this (FreshAddress and Return Path both offer these types of services).

What should you NOT do?
Do not update all of these addresses from @domain.rr.com to @comcast.net as the existing user base may already be using the same alias but for a different individual.

Please Note: ExampleUser_at_houston.rr.com is not necessarily the same individual as ExampleUser_at_comcast.net. Also note that a large number of the Road Runner domains are still functioning as normal, so this is not a universal change for all Road Runner users.

SenderScore Blacklist Follow-up

Today I received a messages from George Bilbrey, VP and General Manager, for Return Path someone I have known personally for quite some time and who's opinion I respect. George has sent me some additional information and a number of points for clarification regarding the posting: SenderScore Whitelist or Blacklist? yesterday.

Here is what he has to say:

• The blacklist is based on more than the summary Sender Score on average, IPs on the blacklist have a score much, much less than 70.
• There is not a direct relationship between the blacklist and Sender Score Certified.
• You can’t buy yourself off the blacklist with Sender Score Certified and it is not possible to be on both the blacklist and qualify for SSC.
• We don’t pitch any of our services to folks who have contacted us because they have been blocked.

George also mentions that the data are used by both, the blacklist and SenderScore Certified, are pretty much the same (some additional data is supplied for the Sender Score Certified clients).

Please share your experiences, if you have any, with these services and the processes you encountered by leaving a comment or emailing to contact.

SenderScore Whitelist or Blacklist?

Well now its BOTH!

Reports are starting to appear about the new service being offered , as part of the SenderScore service package, to ISPs courtesy of Return Path... the SenderScore Blocklist.

Laura is reporting that Comcast is using this list to block email, along with the Cloudmark services. Talks also mention that Earthlink, and Charter have signed onto this service, along with many of their client hosted domains.

The list is monitoring the following items from their ISP partners:

• Complaint Rate
• Unsubscribe Issues
• Excessive Blacklisting
• Unknown Users
• Spam Trap Hits

Thus provided the providing the keys to which an ISPs can then filter or reject email, with the data supplied by the likes of; Hotmail, Earthlink and other choice partners.

So "What's the catch here?" you ask... Return Path also sells the answer - a Whitelisting service, known as SenderScore Certified, along with a whole suite of Delivery Assurance services. Hummmm...

Return Path product teams have yet to respond with any additonal product info after being asked earlier this week. If it is made available I'll make sure to share it here.

Habeas Launches ReputationWiki.org

Habeas Launches ReputationWiki.org to Serve as Industry’s Leading Collaboration and Education Resource

Thought Leaders to Address Topics Related to Reputation, Compliance, Deliverability and Policy through First-of-its-Kind Global Community

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Habeas, Inc. (http://www.habeas.com/), the world leader in email reputation services, today announced the launch of ReputationWiki.org which will serve as a focal point to define and advance the growing field of reputation management.

ReputationWiki.org is intended to be a primary resource on topics pertinent to the ever-growing online ecosystem, including reputation, compliance, deliverability and policy. Through industry support of this collaborative initiative, marketing, sales and brand professionals can expand their knowledge, contribute to relevant topics and interact with their peers on issues that are important to them.

Read the full press release here.

Return Path | How to Impress the ISPs

JD Falk, Return Path's new Director of Product Management, Receiver Products, and fellow CAUCE Board Member, give some insight into getting your email delivered and the common themes and tactics that are commonly tried to get mail delivered.

• Tactics that may improve your social reputation with the ISP staff, but won't have any effect on whether your mail gets into the inbox
• Tactics that annoy the ISP staff, but still won't affect your deliverability in any way
• Tactics that will hurt your reputation with the ISP staff, and will also hurt your deliverability
• Tactics that will actually improve your deliverability, yet have no bearing on what the ISP staff thinks about you

The key note as JD says: "If your email subscribers are thrilled with what you are sending, you'll get through – no meat baskets required. And if too many of your subscribers call you a spammer, then all the free beer in the world won't help you."

Monitoring Your Reputation

Many questions are currently being asked about monitoring your email reputation and how to go about this.

Here is a short list of way you can keep track on your own:

• Feedback loops - A service offered by a number of ISPs to notify a sender when users are reporting mail as spam or junk. Most ESPs have these already in place for their clients. Each ISP has threshold that they watch for in regards to excessive complaints from their users. Among the ISPs offering feedback loops are; AOL, Hotmail, Outblaze, Road Runner, United Online, USA.net and Yahoo!
• Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services - This service provides a summary of how each of your IP addresses looks to Hotmail. Providing details on; number of message attempted, number of message accepted for delivery, Filter Status, and spam traps/complaints.
• Filtering companies offering reputation sites; Ironport’s Senderbase, Ciphertrust’s Trusted Source service.
• Companies like Habeas, Lyris, Pivotal Veracity and Return Path offer services that rate reputation with a score and a services that measure how spam-like your messages looks to receivers.
• Legal compliance monitoring from Lashback helps track Third party affiliates and your own marketing messages for several different legal or contractual violations.
  

Many ESPs have partnered with one or more of these companies to monitor your mail streams. But if your not using an ESP or wish to monitor these on your own, these tools are available for your use and some are free to use.

The hard part is understanding how to understand all of the data your being shown and taking the proper actions to build or fix your reputation.

Q&A: with Email Karma

Q: EmailKarma,

I'm helping some folks who are launching a alternative lifestyles website (not porn) and I wanted to let them know what they're potentially up against regarding email delivery. Would the word "lesbian" trigger blocking or triggers with major ISPs?

A: Generally the use of individual keywords will not cause your message to be delivered to the junk folder or just end up missing, it really takes a number of these types of words to have an impact. Spamassassin doesn't even have the word lesbian in their current SARE adult spam rules. Also working with an eRSP and an ESP will help get past some of these hurdles and achieve a higher level of delivery as these services will already be participating in ISP Whitelists and Feed Back loops.

The Keys to email delivery are rapidly becoming; Authentication, Reputation and Accreditation. Building and maintain a clean list will also be a big factor in a successful campaign.

Got a question for EmailKarma? Email them to contact or leave a comment.

What's your reputation?

Email reputation is currently buzzing all over the eMarketing landscape, in fact it have been for over two years.

Mediapost talks about five factors, or tricks as they are referred to, that cause your reputation to suffer. The problem is that many corporation's use these techniques everyday and many believe that is an acceptable practise. Here are some ideas to prevent abusing these solutions yet still have the benefits:

~ Email is inexpensive and has huge returns (DMA $49 ROI for each 1$ spent) so it is abused by many, this has cause organizations like CAUCE and MAAWG to lead the initiative to end spam. Organic growth and proper ad placement will build a much more targeted and active subscriber base. For more ideas on list maintenance read "Keeping your lists clean".

~ Before subscribing and assuming that your current users are interested in your new newsletters promote them via your existing communication channels and ask users to subscribe to your new publication. This is especially important if your new newsletter has different branding then their current subscriptions. Nothing damages reputation faster then a could dozen spam complaints against a new newsletter.

~ Over punctuation is very common in email. Remember your email etiquette - ALL CAPS is like shouting - Small fonts are hard to read and extra punctuation can distort your message. Remember the proper uses for punctuation like the question mark, exclamation mark and other punctuation.

~ Burying phrases in your privacy policy or user agreements that state users give permission to use their email for communications is another good way to damage your reputation. Think about this from the subscriber point of view, or even better ask from your mom's point of view "Would mom realize that she is going to get email?"

Monitor your email with these services offered by Habeas or Return Path.

Image rich emails

Back in May the Email Experience Council wrote about Image suppression in the web clients for AOL.com and AIM.com and how you should expect to see a drop in open rates because of this.

Almost every web mail provider suppresses images for users by default now, and some email clients have been for years, and marketers need to understand how this will effect their communications to their clients. Your team should be coding each and every email with the idea that your images will not display. Use some of the tips provided in "Now you see them, now you don't" to help with image planning in email.

MarketingSherpa recently promoted a case study focusing on this exact issue. This study provided four key guide lines for using images in email resulted in a 41% increase in clickthroughs.

Email Marketing Reports also has a great resource for image related suppression.

Look to the tools provided by email Reputation Service Providers (eRSPs); Habeas, Return Path and Pivotal Veracity for content rendering test tools.

Switching Email Vendors

Carolyn Gardner over at Sitebrand posted a note today about the issues experienced when switching Email Service Providers and it's effect on your delivery. She points out that "with an increased rate of deliverability, you may also see an increase in the number of spam or abuse complaints".

This is very true and having worked with several different marketers in the past that have done just this here are some ideas to help with the pains you may experience;

• New IPs = New Reputation
• This is not always a good thing, having no IP reputation is in many cases just as bad as a poor IP reputation. To minimize the impact of this; keep the same mailing address, start with a ramp up program for your emails with your new provider, and consider some of the ideas discussed here for "keeping your list clean"
  
• New ESP = New Bounce Processing
  
• You may see your bounce rates changing as each ESP interprets inbound bounce messages received from an ISP differently. There are organizations working to correct this behaviour across the industry on both the sending and receiving sides.
  
• Different ESP reputation and contacts:
  
• Many of the large ESPs employ people to manage relationships with ISPs, Blocklists and mailers to ensure the continuing flow of email traffic from their mailing partners to the consumer.
• Different Reputation partners
• Many ESPs have partnered with one specific reputation provider, each of these providers has a different reach. Most ESPs will work with all reputations providers on request.
• Different campaign metrics:
• A click is a click right? Sure it should be, but some ESPs a click is also an open, find out how your new provider does this to help with your ongoing program metrics and measurements. Join EMACs to be part of the discussion around standardized reporting.

Switch providers recently and want to share some suggestions or pain points, Share them with us by email at contact or leave a comment.

Why is your ‘from’ Address so Important for Email Deliverability?

In response to the posting at trinity7 about the importance of your from address.

These are five great things to note about your campaign and your mailing address;

1) From name is not always displayed
Most email clients will show you the friendly from address used to send the email but AOL, among other, web browsers users will only see your email address.

2) Email client whitelists
Almost every email client available, be it Webmail readers (Hotmail) or client readers (Thunderbird) have built in personal whitelists for users. These personal level filters will overrule any potential filtering done by an ISP.

3) Domain Blacklisting
Domain Block listing is no longer limited to Email address, URLs are also commonly blocked by anti-spam filters check over at rules emporium to see if your listed on any of the most popular domain based blacklists. It is also very common to filter and messages containing any URL with an IP address in the message - using a Fully Qualified Domain Name is recommended for all links and images in your email messages.

4) Spam filter scoring
Many companies are now offering pre-deployment content testing for your email, even offering multiple views as to your messages appearance in the inbox. Look for Habeas, ReturnPath or Pivotal Veracity for these eRSPs.

5) Sender ID Records
We talked about The importance of Authentication last week. We also recommend that you look to use Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) as soon as your MTAs or ESP offer these solutions.

HABEAS | The Secret Behind Email Delivery Success

Des Cahill had a great article today published in Imedia; The Secret Behind Email Delivery Success. This covers a number the email world roles from a number of different touch points; the ISP, to the marketer and back to the consumer.

Quote: "Despite persistent problems -- more than 90 percent of email network traffic consists of spam and phishing for private information -- email still functions extremely well."

This is thankfully due to the ongoing collaboration and best practises being written all over the world. One such group is MAAWG's (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group), bringing the largest senders and the Largest ISPs around the world together to discuss the right way of doing things when it comes to sending email.

Read MAAWG's Sender Best practise.

Email Delivery Webinar today | WhatCounts

Email Deliverability and Reputation Management - July 26, 2007 - 10am PDT / 1pm EDT

The email marketing deliverability landscape seems to be an ever-changing challenge. Email marketers, Internet service providers and email service providers and other parties seem to have conflicting information about best practises for improving the inbox delivery of campaigns. So, we'll give the floor to deliverability expert Michelle Eichner from deliverability service provider Pivotal Veracity. Their expertise on the subject of inbox delivery and reputation management will help you ensure that all of your hard work is not sitting in somebody's junk folder.

Panel: Michelle Eichner, John Karpovich, Justin Foster

Habeas Appoints Ray Everett-Church as Director of Email Policy

Habeas, an email Reputation Services Provider, announced on July 17th, the appointment of Ray Everett-Church as their new director of Email Policy.

Ray's past ventures includes a number of high profile consulting jobs with companies like; Microsoft, AOL and Comcast. Ray also co-authored "Internet Privacy for Dummies" and sits on the Board of Directors for CAUCE North America, a group of volunteers working on behalf of consumers to put an end to unsolicited commercial email.

Permission is a great start!

Awebber, an ESP from Newtown, PA writes about the effect that proper permission works wonders for your email delivery, but remind you that there are other factors are also effecting your message delivery a major one being Relevancy.

How do you stay relevant, Stephanie Miller from Return Path discusses this.