Despite their best efforts, there are three things working against them.

You see, most email subscribers are naive, lazy and misinformed.  Of course I mean that in the nicest way possible ;-).

Email Subscribers are Naive

When Joe consumer buys a burgundy, cashmere, crewneck sweater from Bluefly.com and checks the “please send me offers” box, he thinks he’ll get an occasional message about a sale, or perhaps a recommendation for a snazzy vest that would go just right with his new sweater. He trusts them.  He gave them his money and expects that they will be his friend.

Poor unsuspecting Joe.  He never in his wildest dreams imagined that he’d be getting two messages a day from them (on top of all the other spam email he already gets).

But, who’s at fault?  Joe, or the marketers that just abused his trust?  Like the man said “Can’t we all just get along?”.  There has to be a happy medium somewhere, and it’s up to the marketers to search for it, and it’s up to the “Joes” of the world to let them know how much is too much.  If we work towards that balance we’ll all be happier.  Consumers will have great products to buy and marketers will have a nice bump in their conversion rates.

Email Subscribers are Lazy

Despite his keen fashion sense, Joe is lazy.  Even if he is one of the few non-marketers that knows all those emails are required to have a way to unsubscribe, he doesn’t have time to waste looking for a link buried at the bottom, in a typically smaller sized font and a color that often makes it hard to distinguish from the background.

It’s so much easier for Joe to just click “mark as spam.”

But is that really Joe’s fault? Or, are the marketers that think they have to make it as difficult as possible for someone to unsubscribe, while still following the letter of the law the ones to blame?  Many email marketers have been told over and over – “grow that list”, for some it’s even an annual performance goal that has to be met.  Over the years we have actually trained our subscribers to use the “easy” button.  I’d love to blame Joe, can’t.  Sorry.

Rather than judge a list by its size, how about we evaluate how effective it is.  What is your click rate, what is your conversion rate?

If someone decides what you are selling is not for them, make it easy for them to leave.  However – wouldn’t it be better to have figured out what they want from you before it got to that point?  The only way to do that is more testing, and monitoring what works and what doesn’t.

Email Subscribers are Misinformed

Joe doesn’t know (or doesn’t care) that there is a legal definition for “spam”.  Joe thinks any email he does not want is spam.  Joe believes that “mark as spam” is the same thing as “I just don’t want this anymore”.  From Joe’s perspective, it is the same.  He clicks the button, the mail stops showing up in his mailbox.  Problem solved.

Joe doesn’t realize that a lot of those “mark as spam” buttons all over the world are connected to mysterious back-end systems that monitor and track the companies that send the emails people like Joe call spam.  He also doesn’t know that when enough people click those buttons the companys sending out those emails are flagged as spammers, not just for him – but potentially for millions of people.

No matter how great you think your content is or how closely you follow the can-spam rules, if consumers don’t want it – IT IS SPAM.

Now that the company has been flagged, good luck getting people to buy the matching belt and fedora to go with their new sweater.

Joe didn’t intend to cripple that company’s email campaign, he was just sick of getting email from them.  Joe is lazy, remember?

So what can you as email marketers do to help this? Figure out what Joe expects and wants from you, and give it to him.  Format your messages in a way that when the time comes that Joe no longer wants to hear from you, he knows what to do and despite his laziness, resists the urge to click the spam button.

Email Marketers are Naive, Lazy and Misinformed

It seems that perhaps Joe is not the only one at fault.  The email marketers of the world need to not be so naive about what our subscribers actually expect from us, we need to not be so lazy about determining what we send and to who, and we need to help educate our subscribers about how to unsubscribe when they want to.

What would you do to  improve email marketing?  Let me know in the comments.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

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It’s not the size of the boat; it’s the motion of the ocean.

The crew at returnpath.net recently concluded a 19 month study into how email marketers handle non-responsive addresses.  I don’t know what the researchers expected to uncover, but the results were shocking, at least to me anyway.

I’ve told you before, it’s a good idea to purge addresses from your mailing lists if you know that those people have never, ever opened or clicked on your messages.  I mean, why make your math more complicated and lower your results because a few people don’t want (or never see) what you send them?

I think I’m safe in saying that if left up to the people that actually push the “send” button, mailing lists would be as lean and clean as possible.  Unfortunately, many are stuck with bosses that believe when it comes to mailing lists (and probably other things), size matters – and bigger is better.

Which brings us to the first finding of the study; 73% of the 40 companies studied continued to send email to completely non-responsive email addresses for the full 19 months of the study. SEVENTY-THREE PERCENT! Come on – are you serious?  I can almost understand not wanting to mess with your math during a current campaign year, but why not start the year with a nice clean, fresh, VALID mailing list?  Let’s get those lists cleaned up, you can do it, just call it spring cleaning – or maybe fib a little and tell your boss it’s a can-spam requirement and you have to do it, I promise I won’t tell.

OK, so 73% is surprising, but in the big picture not terribly harmful to anything in the long run, right?  Wrong.  There is a better than average chance that the reason the emails are not being opened is because they’ve been tagged as spam. If that’s the case, each additional message you send is another nail in the coffin of your email marketing program as your reputation gets worse and worse and you get added to more and more of the spam blacklists.

Opt-in means I want you to be my friend, not my stalker.

What I found most shocking in the Return Path research was the sheer volume of email that these companies were sending.  On average these companies sent 10 emails a month.  That means an email every three days.  Think that’s bad?  It’s almost tolerable compared to the two top offenders.

Neiman Marcus sent an average of one email a day over the 19 months.  Every day? Really?

However, the worst offender was a company named “BlueFly” which from looking at their website you might be fooled into thinking they “get it”.  You’d be wrong – at least as far as email marketing is concerned.  BlueFly started the test with an average of 30 emails a month and ended it with 54 a month. Yep, two messages a day.  Can you imagine if other retailers did this?  You might have that that pimple-faced kid from McDonalds at your door a couple times a day … “What do you mean you’re not hungry? You bought a Big-Mac from us two months ago, how can you not want an apple pie – or a delicious shake?”

I wonder if the e-marketers and executives at BlueFly tolerate that behavior as consumers.  I suspect not. So why do they do it as a company?  Do unto others but not unto me?  Do as I say, not as I do?

How many of the “real” people that get all those messages from BlueFly get so frustrated they drop out, or worse – tag them as spam?

NOTE: I reached out to BlueFly via twitter to see if they would mind answering some questions about their techniques, if I get anything from them I’ll post an update.

What’s the right way to do email marketing?

If you’re an e-marketer, how do you handle non-responsive addresses, let me know in the comments.

If you’re a consumer, what do you consider the right frequency for companies to send you email, let me know in the comments.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

FACT: Email Marketers Are Even Dumber Than Previously Thought

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More affectionately known to the public as “spam”, unsolicited commercial email (UCE) is one of the most infuriating things facing mankind today.  Worldwide, it is estimated that there are approximately 183 BILLION spam messages sent DAILY.  Yes, BILLION and yes, DAILY.  Even though we may only spend a few seconds on each piece of spam, all those seconds add up to some staggering amounts of lost time, productivity and money.  Google has a nifty tool to help you find out what spam might be costing you.

In 2003, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enacted the “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act” in an attempt to curb the rapidly growing spam problem. Who thinks it worked?  Since then it has been revised a few times, but as far as controlling spam goes, it remains just as ineffective.  We’ll get to why I think that in a bit.

There are sections of the can-spam act that deal with email harvesting, header spoofing, adult content, deceptive practices and overall scummieness. However,  I am going to assume that you are an honest email marketer wanting to stay out of trouble; as such I won’t be covering those sections in this post.

Also, since this post is attempting to decipher a fairly complicated government document, it’s going to be long-winded.  If you just want to know what you have to do to stay “legal”, jump to the “how to be an honest email marketer” section.

What does the can-spam act do?

What the can-spam act did was to establish what a “commercial” email is and what is not.  Non-commercial email, according to the act cannot (legally) be considered spam.  Unfortunately, if the rules are followed, commercial email also is not “legally” spam.  Huh?  We’ll get to that.

Let’s get to the specifics of the act, maybe then you’ll understand why it’s so ineffective at curtailing spam.

First, as with all government and legal documents, a few definitions:

Person:

The Definition:
The term “person” is not limited to a natural person, but may refer to any of the following: An individual, a group, unincorporated association, limited or general partnership, corporation or other business entity.

What it really means:
It’s mostly mumbo-jumbo, but essentially this means that email can be sent and received by “non-humans”.  This is pretty common, most marketing email is sent as being from a generic address and not from a real person.

Why does it matter:
What if a “person” could only be a human?  It would make the definition of “sender” much more difficult, but it would also mean the rules would have to include every possible variation and pseudonym a company might use to skirt the rules.

Sender:

The Definition:

1. A person who initiates a commercial electronic mail message and whose product, service, or Internet Web site is advertised or promoted by the message. Or,
2. If more than one person’s product or service are advertised or promoted in a single email, each person shall be considered a “sender”. Unless, one of those persons meets one or more of the following criteria, in which case they will be considered the only sender:
   1. The person controls the content of the message
   2. The person controls/determines the list of email addresses used to deliver the messages
   3. The person is identified in the “from” line of the message.
3. Under certain conditions, where there appears to be more than one sender, the group of marketers may select one among them to be designated as “the sender”.  That sender shall be obligated to uphold all remaining rules.

What it really means:
Again, a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but let’s break it down for you:

The first case applies if *I* as a human send you (or your company) an email promoting my products or services – then *I* am the sender.  Easy, right?

The second case would apply if for example you received and email from a travel site and it promoted a hotel chain, a rental car chain, and perhaps even an airline all in the same message – then who is responsible? Possibly each company could be considered a “sender”, unless certain conditions are met that identify one “sender”, and if rule 3 does not apply.

The last case is a more recent addition to the rules – this lets groups who are working together designate who the “sender” is.  In my travel example, it’s logical to assume that the travel site would be the sender, not the various companies being promoted.

Why does it matter:
There is a good reason the FTC was so specific in determining who the sender is – they are the one responsible for following the rules.  They are the one that must complete any opt-outs, and they are the one that’s gets in trouble if the rules are not followed.

The can-spam act

Now for the meat of the can-spam act (sorry couldn’t resist the play on words)

The can-spam rules tell us first that there are two types of email; Transactional (also called Relationship) and Commercial.  Further, it tells us that as long as you are honest, you can send (almost) as many transactional messages as you want without risk of breaking the law. Seriously, it does.  Additionally, it tells us that as long as you are honest and follow the rules you can send as much commercial as you want.  Wait, what?  Seriously, it does that too.

Let’s first take a look at how the FTC defines a transactional message.

Transactional or Relationship Messages

In general, the term “Transactional or Relationship Messages” are emails in which the primary purpose is:

1. to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender;
2. to provide warranty information, product recall information, or safety or security information with respect to a commercial product or service used or purchased by the recipient;
3. to provide–
   1. notification concerning a change in the terms or features of;
   2. notification of a change in the recipient’s standing or status with respect to; or
   3. at regular periodic intervals, account balance information or other type of account statement with respect to, a subscription, membership, account, loan, or comparable ongoing commercial relationship involving the ongoing purchase or use by the recipient of products or services offered by the sender;
   4. to provide information directly related to an employment relationship or related benefit plan in which the recipient is currently involved, participating, or enrolled; or
   5. to deliver goods or services, including product updates or upgrades, that the recipient is entitled to receive under the terms of a transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender.

What that all means is that if somebody buys something from you, you are allowed to send them email that relates to that purchase.  You can send them a “thank you” message, a “your order will ship soon” message, a “your order has shipped” message, a” how do you like your product” message….etc, etc, etc.  There is no real limit imposed on how many messages you can send, the guidelines simply say to “be reasonable”.

Further examples would be if you sold a product and then had to notify the buyer of updates or repairs, or perhaps you need to periodically notify people how many credits they have in their account, or you need to notify your employees about updates to your benefits plan – all of these are transactional messages and except that the “from” and the “subject” must be truthful, none of the can-spam requirements apply.

Even though I used the words “sold” and “buyer” in my examples, the exchange of money or tangible items is not a requirement of transactional messages.  You also have a relationship when someone subscribes to your newsletters or joins your newsgroup.  However, only the emails that relate to that specific activity or the maintenance of the account are considered transactional.  The actual newsletter you send them is commercial.

Commercial Messages – the specifications

The can-spam act defines commercial e-mail messages as

1. Messages the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service (including content on an Internet Web site operated for a commercial purpose).
2. If an electronic mail message contains both the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service as well as transactional or relationship, then the primary purpose of the message shall be deemed to be commercial if:
   1. A recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line of the electronic mail message would likely conclude that the message contains the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service; or
   2. The email message’s transactional or relationship content does not appear, in whole or in substantial part, at the beginning of the body of the message; or
   3. A recipient reasonably interpreting the body of the message would likely conclude that the primary purpose of the message is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service. Factors illustrative of those relevant to this interpretation include the placement of content that is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service, in whole or in substantial part, at the beginning of the body of the message; the proportion of the message dedicated to such content; and how color, graphics, type size, and style are used to highlight commercial content.

Commercial email messages are subject to the requirements that the sender or initiator include the following in the message:

1. A clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation,
2. if the message is sent without the ‘‘affirmative consent’’ of the recipient; clear and conspicuous notice of the recipient’s right to opt out of subsequent commercial messages from the same sender; and
3. a valid physical postal address of the sender.

The Act further prohibits false or misleading information In the message body, deceptive from addresses and subject headings, and requires that a sender provide a way that opt-out requests can be made online (requests can be either via email reply or a website), and that the sender honor a recipient’s opt-out request.  The link to opt-out may also display options for the recipient to select which type of commercial email they would like to receive, however it must also display an option to discontinue all email from the sender.

Once a person opts-out, you have 10 working days to complete the request and may not send them any commercial email ever again, unless they specifically provide affirmative consent.  Additionally, once the request is received you may not sell, rent or otherwise transfer their email address to another person.

Commercial Messages – the realities

If you are trying to sell or promote something, or even just want people to link back to your website for a visit – that is a commercial email.  If you send a message that says something like; ”hey, thanks for buying that sleeping bag…you may also enjoy this tent, this stove, this ground pad, this canteen…” then it’s a commercial email.  If you are sending commercial email, don’t try and be sneaky about it, if people don’t opt in, you MUST give them a way to opt out, and yes – you must include a valid postal address.

A recent revision to the act added that you cannot charge a fee to opt-out (were people doing that?), you cannot require any additional information beyond an email address and their opt-out preferences, and you cannot require any activity beyond a single email reply or a single visit to a single page of a website.

How to be an honest email marketer

Transactional email

If you are sending transactional or relationship emails – do THAT.  It’s fine to slip in a small amount of up-sell, but don’t go all ronco-matic on your customers.  Remember, you want them to like you.  You are not required to provide an opt-out, that would just be silly.  Also, you are not REQUIRED to give a postal  address, but why wouldn’t you want to?  Make sure your “from” and “subject” are clear and honest.

Commercial email

If you are sending commercial email you have a few things you must do:

1. Your message must either say it is promotional, or be obvious to a reasonable person that it is.
2. You must provide a valid postal address.  This can be your physical address, a PO Box, or a private mail box.
3. If your recipients did not opt-in, you must provide a way for them to opt-out, and tell them what it is. That opt-out method must be simple – a single email or a single web page.  In my opinion, even if they did opt-in, you should still provide a way to opt-out.
4. If a person opts-out, you must complete the request within 10 business days.

If you are sending commercial email you have a few things you must NOT do:

1. Don’t be scummy about how you collect email addresses.
2. Don’t use a “from” address that confuses the receiver.
3. Don’t use a subject line is unclear or misleading.
4. Don’t take more than 10 business days to process any opt-out s.
5. Don’t sell, share or otherwise transfer an email address after you get an opt-out request.

What are the penalties?

There are penalties for a variety of items you might do wrong and they can add up pretty quickly too.  If you do something dumb like forget to include an opt-out in a message you can be fined $250 per recipient, per message. Some quick math tells us that a 1,000 address mailing could cost you $250,000 if convicted. Is it worth it?

Why is there still so much spam?

I mentioned in the beginning that the can-spam act was pretty ineffective at controlling spam. After reading this do you know why?  It’s because the rules say nothing about who can send what to whom, or what they can send.  Even though the can-spam act is lengthy and full of mumbo-jumbo, it really just boils down to following a few pretty simple rules, and as long as those rules are followed no email is “legally” spam.

Another reason the act doesn’t control spam is that despite its name, it does not actually have anything to do with “spam”.  You’ve no doubt heard the expression “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Well, spam is in the eye of the receiver.  You can follow every rule, but if what you send is of no interest to the receiver – IT IS SPAM.

When developing your email marketing campaigns, keep that phrase in mind “spam is in the eye of the beholder”.  Think about what you are sending and who you are sending to.  Just that little bit of fore-thought can increase your effectiveness and help keep your list from shrinking.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

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Without at least a basic understanding of the language of email marketing, it can be difficult to know what you need to track and what the measurements can tell you about the success or failure of your campaign.

What follows is a list of ten terms that are commonly used with email marketing campaigns, what they mean, how they are normally calculated and why it’s important to you.

1) Email List Size

This a pretty obvious one, it’s simply the number of unique email addresses in your list.  If you are segmenting your email lists (and you should be segmenting) you’ll also want to track how many addresses you have in each segment as well.  This number is a part of almost every calculation you’ll do, so don’t lose it.  For my campaigns, I use what I call the “Net Sent” amount.  This is the total sent minus both hard bounces and opt-outs.  More on those later.

2) New Email List Subscribers

The number of people that have signed up since your last mailing.  As your popularity grows, so should this number.  However, we live in precarious times when it comes to internet marketing. More and more people everyday prefer to receive messages from brands via “on demand” sources such as Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube (thanks old spice guy).  Don’t be too surprised when these numbers start to decline, just be ready to adapt.

3) Unsubscribes

These are also called “opt-outs”. Nobody wants to have people drop off their mailing list, but it happens.  Keep an eye on WHO is unsubscribing though, if people are signing up and then quickly dropping off, you may need to adjust how you are attracting people because they are probably not getting what they thought they would.  If you start seeing long-time subscribers leaving, it’s possible that your content has become stale and no longer is of interest to them.

4) Bounce Rate

Unfortunately, not every email you send will arrive at it’s intended destination.   Bounces are either “hard” or “soft”. A hard bounce is the result of of bad addresses or technical failure and those messages will never be delivered.  A soft bounce can be caused if the recipients mailbox is full, or even if somebody has an automatic vacation message turned on.  There’s a good chance these messages will eventually be seen, but you can’t be 100 percent certain.

Hard bounces should be treated like unsubscribes and removed from your list.  Some anti-spam tools will consider you a spammer if you continue sending mail to bad addresses – keep your list clean.  If your system allows it, track your soft bounces as well, a consistently full mail box is a good indicator of an abandoned account and those should be deleted from your list.

Whether or not you include soft bounces in bounce rate calculation really depends on how quickly your company wants to calculate other measures.  If they want a snap-shop of data after just 24 hours, then you should probably consider counting soft bounces.  In any case, your bounce rate number should be SMALL and always shrinking as you remove the bad addresses.

I generally calculate both a long-term and a 24-hour bounce rate, but I have some fun with the math.

24-hour bounce rate =  Hard bounces / (List size – Soft bounces). So, if I sent 1,000 emails, 5 bounced as bad and 30 bounced as “vacation”, our formula would be; 5/(1000-30) or 5/970 or 0.52%.

Long-term bounce rate = Hard bounces /List size.  Using the same numbers, our formula would be 5/1000 or 0.50%.

Remember earlier I mentioned “Net sent?”  Well, now that you know what hard bounces and opt-outs are, you should be more comfortable with what Net Sent is.  For example, if you send 1,000 emails, have 10 hard bounces and 3 opt-outs, your Net Sent is 1,000-10-3, or 987.  I use this value most often in other formulas because I don’t want my rates to be penalized for messages that have no chance of being impactful.  However, to keep the math a little easier for this post, I’ll just be using the value for “Total Sent” in my examples.

5) Growth Rate

This is a measure of how quickly your list is growing (or shrinking, but hopefully that’s not the case).  To calculate, simply find the number of new subscribers, subtract the number of unsubscribes along with the number of hard bounces and divide by the former total number of subscribers.

Growth Rate = (New Subscribers – Opt Outs – Hard bounces)/List size.  For example;  if your subscriber list was 1,000 names and you gained 20, lost two and had 5 hard bounces, your growth rate is: (20-2-5)/1000 or 13/1000 or +1.3%.

6) Open Rate

At last! Some “real” measurements!  Open Rate measures how many times an email message was opened – sort of.  More on that later.  Open rates can be calculated two different ways, both are acceptable but whichever way you decide to do it, be consistent.

The first method is a measurement of how many of the people you sent an email to actually opened it at least one time.  The second is a measurement of how many times the messages were opened.  The difference is subtle, but very important. Consider the following example;

If you send a message to 1,000 people and 250 of them open it, using the first method, your open rate is 250/1000 or 25%.  That’s pretty good.

However, if some of those 250 people opened it once at work, then again at home, your message might actually have been opened 350 times, using the second method would give you an open rate of 350/1000 or 35%.  That’s better.

So which method is better?  That’s for you and your company to decide, but like I said before, pick one and stick to it.

To determine when a message is opened, email marketers will use what’s called a “tracking pixel” or “web beacon”.  A web beacon is usually a small transparent image that gets called from a web server. Each time the image gets called, that means a message was opened.  There are two gotchas for tracking opens – it only works with HTML formatted messages and only if the recipient has images turned on.  If images are not turned on, the receiver could open the message 1,000 times and you might never know (unless they click).

7) Click Rate

Click rate is a measure of how many times the link(s) in your  marketing email or newsletter were clicked. Like with open rates, you have some decisions to make about what numbers you use and how. There are three ways (possibly more, but these are the common ones) to determine what your click rate is.  Again, as with open rates, the difference in the formulas can seem subtle, but the results vary quite a bit with each.  Consider the following examples;

You send a message to 1,000 people.  That message has three links in it.  If you only count the number of people that click links and 100 of them do, then your click rate is 100/1000 or 10%.  Not bad.

What if some of those 100 people click more than one of those links?  You might actually have 150 clicks.  That means your click rate is 150/1000 or 15%.  That’s better.

OK, so now what if some of those 100 people clicked a couple links at work, then at home clicked them a couple more times?  You might now have 300 clicks.  That means your click rate is 300/1000 or 30%.  Wow!  Big difference, right?

Which is the best?  That’s for you and your company to decide, but you should probably use the same method for both open and click rates, and of course – pick one and stick with it.

Now for some good news – clicks are clicks are clicks.  Huh?  Unlike “opens” that rely on the email client to reach back to a web server and say “hey, I opened a message”, there is no way to mask a click.  If somebody clicks a link in your message, whether it be an HTML message or not, they MUST end up on your server…and a click gets counted.  Hooray!

Now for some more good news – if your delivery system allows you to track opens and clicks for each specific email address, you can track down people who click your links, but because they don’t allow images to show their emails, you think they never opened a message.  Sweet!

8) Open to Click Ratio

This is a measure that is useful for estimating the effectiveness of message content and your “call to action”.  It compares the number of opens to the number of clicks.  For example, if you have an open rate of 50% and a click rate of 10% you’d be pretty happy, right?  Lets do some more math – if those rates were based on a list size of 1,000 people, that would mean that 500 people opened your message and 100 clicked.  Taking that a step further, that means that only 20% of the people who opened your message were compelled to click through.  100/500 = 20%.

9) Cost per Click

This one can take a little bit of work, you need to figure out what each of your campaigns costs you to send.

Start by determining the amount of time it takes an editor to write the message, a designer to lay it out and finally the web person to convert it to a properly formatted HTML message. Now, take that time and multiply it by an average salary for each of those people.  That is your “human cost”. How you do this will probably vary some, but you get the idea.

Next, you need to determine your “technology cost”.  If you use a 3rd party/outsourced solution, it will probably be easy to calculate since most vendors will charge you based on how many messages you send.  If you use an internal tool to send your mail, work with your IT people to figure out what a good estimate to use is.  They should consider the cost of the software, hardware and possibly even a maintenance person.  My IT group arrived at a value of 1.2 cents per email for marketing messages I send.

Now add your human and technology costs to determine the campaign cost.  For example, when sending a 1,000 email marketing message, the following applies;

Editor – 2 hours at $20/hour = $40
Designer – 2.5 hours at $25/hour = $62.50
Web Person – 3 hours at $35/hour = $105

Total Human cost = $207.50

Technology cost = 1,000 * $0.012 = $12

Campaign cost = $207.50 + $12 = $219.50

Whew!  Hopefully your brain is not bleeding yet.

OK, now if your 1,000 emails received 200 clicks, your cost per click is $219.50/200, or $1.10.  The lower this number is, the better.

10) Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate tells you how many of the people you sent a message to actually clicked all the way through your buying process and completed a successful check out (or completed whatever else your desired conversion is).  This one is pretty cool – if you can do it.  This is understandably difficult to measure for a lot of companies since it requires tight integration between your mass email tools and your e-commerce package.  Thankfully, since the numbers are difficult to gather, the formula is simple.  If you sent 1,000 emails and 3 people bought something, then your conversion rate is 3/1000 or 0.3%.  Not great, if your profit is six cents per sale,but if you have a higher profit margin – happy dance!

Still with me? Good.  Hopefully now you have a better understanding of the must-have metrics for an effective email marketing campaign.

If your systems allow it you should also watch to see if messages are being opened and/or clicked on more than one machine.  You can use cookies or even IP Addresses for this.  If you see this happening it could simply mean somebody opened mail at work and again at home, but it could also mean your message is being forwarded to others, and that is a very good thing.  Watching the time stamp of the opens & clicks can help you decide what’s actually going on.

Is there something you track that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Ten Must-Know Email Marketing Metrics

Related Posts

1. Email Marketing – Do your homework!
2. Email Marketing – how NOT to do it (again)
3. Email Marketing – update

As a professional email marketer, it really irks me when I see companies, both small and large doing it badly.  I’ve ranted in the past about other failed e-marketing I’ve been subjected to,  and unfortunately, I suspect this won’t be the last time I do it either.  I blame the surveys.  It seems barely a week goes by when yet another survey comes out showing how fast, easy and cheap e-marketing is; that anyone wanting to survive the economy better be doing it soon.  Please, somebody stop them.

All images in email = e-marketing fail

Because of the wide variety of computer systems, email client software and human languages on the Internet; it is a practical impossibility to ensure that what you send will look the same to the reader as it does to you (even when sending plain text).  One of the most abused methods bad lazy uninformed email marketers attempt, is to create the message entirely from an image, or group of images.  Seems like a simple solution,  right?  WRONG!  While sending your email as just embedded images could make it look the same to the reader as it does to you, it does not guarantee they will ever even see it, or understand it.  In fact, it actually lessens the likelihood of it being seen.  Many spam filters consider email made up of just images to be junk and as such will block them.  Those that don’t block the message, will usually block the images themselves so that all your reader will see is red X’s where your image(s) should have been.  The image shown here is a small piece of an email I recently received from an e-marketer who clearly does not understand how email systems work.  The thing is HUGE!  I had to patch three screen shots together for you to see the entire email at once – it’s more than a foot wide and two feet long.  The only part of the email NOT made of images is the link at the bottom advertising for the company they used to send it.  All I (and probably most of the recipients) saw was a lot of red Xs alerting me that outlook had blocked the images.  What about that mess could possibly entice anyone to allow Outlook to download the pictures that it had blocked – nothing.  The sender didn’t even include alt tag descriptions to give me a hint at what I might see if I downloaded them.  Other than professional curiosity, this message gives me no reason at all to not just delete it.

Follow the rules

At first glance it appears that the sender of this gargantuan message neglected to follow any of the <sarcasm>rather clear</sarcasm> can-spam requirements – such as providing a valid postal address and a method to opt out of future mailings.  However, when we view the offending email with images turned on, we can see that they did at least try to comply, they just put all of that information within the images – where no one would ever see it.

Speak the language of your readers

Looking at this email with images turned on also reveals that the message was clearly intended for people that can read Turkish, of which I am not one.  There is one line of the message written in English “Winner of the Best International Tour Operator WTF China 2008″.  Why did they bother?  Does the fact they won an award in China make anyone want to get this message translated?  I seriously doubt it.  That also reminds me, be careful how you use abbreviations.  I don’t know what “WTF” means in Turkey or China, but I’m guessing it’s not the same thing as it means in the U.S.A.

Don’t buy generic email lists

Would you buy the New York City phone book hoping that half of one percent of everyone in it might be interested in what you have to say if you called them?  Of course not.  So why do businesses continue to pay money for lists that have addresses like “webmaster” & “info” in them?  I’ll tell you why – because they are short sighted.  They can buy a generic list of 10 million names for $50 or a targeted list of 20,000 names for $1,000. And, they know that it takes the same work up-front to send mail to all 10 million addresses as it does to send to just 20 thousand, so why not save the money and just do it?  Let me ask you this; How much is it worth to have your brand image not be that of a clueless spammer?  How much is it worth to not have your I.T. staff deal with 8 million bounced back messages? How much is it worth for your company to be able to send email every day?    I’d wager that each is worth more than $950.

Sadly, I don’t think many e-marketers realize that having email flagged as spam has a greater potential impact than just one pair of lost eyes.  Many email systems now report spam upstream to larger, shared lists of spammers – blacklists from which no mail will be accepted.  Many of these lists feed from each other, get your company on one and soon it’ll be on several.  Blacklists are one of the easiest thing to get on, but some of the hardest to get off.  Get your company on one of these blacklists and it’s not just your marketing emails that are block, it’s ALL e-mails.  Do you want to explain to your CEO that he can’t email pictures of his precious miniature yorkie’s puppies to his sister in Phoenix because you wanted to save the company $950?  I didn’t think so.

Read, read, read – then send

It seems like such obvious thing, but make sure you and someone else proofs your message (more than once) before you click “send”.  Our friends at Ragan Communications were recently reminded of this the hard way;  They sent a daily e-newsletter out twice on the same day, about 30 minutes apart.  Why?  Because the first one had “ExxonMobil”  spelled as “ExxonMobile” in the subject and in the body.  A subtle, but important difference.

You get what you pay for

It’s true, email marketing does have a lower upfront cost than many traditional forms of marketing, it does have a much shorter production time and is the only form of marketing to give such rapid and accurate results.  However, just like with Saturday night dates you really have to do things the right way.  Cheap and easy may sound like a good way to get what you want – but after the test results are in, you’ll probably wish you had taken a different approach.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Email Marketing – how NOT to do it (again)

Related Posts

1. Email Marketing – Do your homework!
2. Ten Must-Know Email Marketing Metrics
3. Email Marketing – update

Now I’ve decided to name names.  Hopefully they have the sense to at least have a “Google alert” set up and will read this.  If you are one of THEM, congratulations for getting here.  The messages listed below were all received within one week, Sunday midnight to Sunday midnight and arrived outside of regular business hours (CST).

• Dell Direct
  The good folks at Dell sent me two messages.  One arrived on Tuesday at 6:19 AM (not so bad) and another on Friday at 4:31 AM.  I like Dell.  I have and will use their products.  However, I am not a fan of these emails.  In my opinion, they lack focus.  I am overwhelmed by offers in multiple product lines and categories in the same e-mail.  My print preview showed them as being six pages long, that’s a lot of stuff for one email.  Try some segmentation.
• Ebay
  They sent me a message on Friday at 12:40 AM encouraging me to list my car at ebay Motors.  I use ebay pretty often, but the only car related purchase I’ve made was a new keyless remote.  So, I’m not sure why they think I should sell my car, or why they think it’s on my mind at midnight – on a Friday.
• JC Whitney
  The e-marketers at JC Whitney sent me email on both Tuesday and Friday, each at around 7:30 AM.  This is not nearly as bad as midnight, but for me – still ineffective.  The interesting thing is that while I did request a catalog nearly two years ago, I have never purchased anything from JC Whitney.  Further, I have never (to my recollection) clicked through from one of their messages.  Perhaps it’s time to clean up that list a bit.  I can guarantee your boss will not be so upset with a reduction in list size when your click-through-rate (CTR) climbs substantially after you trim the dead wood (that would be me) from your low-hanging fruit tree.
• Photobucket.com
  Just one email from Photobucket, unfortunately it was a 5:30 am wake-up call.  Even if I was interested in having a photo site do my collages for me, I’m not thinking about it at that time of the morning.
• Proflowers.com
  I really like Proflowers.  I like the products, I like the web site, love the customer service.  I have bought a lot of flowers from them.  I have even clicked through from emails to make purchases.  However, both of the messages they sent me during this particular week arrived around 6 AM.  At 6 AM, the only thing on my mind is “why did I stay up so late tweeting?” and “why is that alarm so loud?” Please keep your emails to the time of day when I am awake and within easy reach of my credit card.
• Reunion.com
  I *think* I may have some info on this site, but can not recall the last time I visited.  I have certainly never clicked-through from an email.  These marketing geniuses sent me mail on Tuesday and again Wednesday at 1:30 AM and 2:30 AM.  I can assure you that mail coming in at at 2:30 in the morning, alerting me that somebody searched for my profile, will never be clicked on by me.
• Southwest Airlines
  I have flown on your planes just once – and vowed to never do it again.  Sending me email at 5 AM telling me how great you you think are won’t change that.  Try sending me email at 10 AM telling me you realize that you have horrible customer service and that your customers are not cattle….AND that you are working to correct these problems.
• University of Phoenix
  Just one email from them, but it was at 3:38 in the morning.  Granted, there may be some people up late worrying about getting that extra $20,000/year that your TV ads tell us we’ll earn by having a higher education degree, but I’m not one of them.  I’m a busy, employed, office worker – one that needs a good six hours of sleep and you just ruined that for me.  Thanks.
• Walmart
  You keep hearing about people who actually pay for the music they download – I’ll admit it , I am one of those people.  Apparently the marketing team at Walmart thinks that because I am crazy enough to pay for music, I must also be crazy enough to be up at 2 AM on Tuesday morning to read a lengthy, ad packed email telling me all about what’s new in Walmart entertainment.  I’m not that crazy.  Message deleted.
  

In addition to the email marketing (loose use of the term) listed above, I did get a few that made a little more sense to me.

• Thompson Cigar
  I am a customer – not an aficionado.  I buy perhaps, one medium sized box approximately every six months.  Two emails a week is serious overkill for me.  I am happy that emails arrive at 9 PM, it seems to be a reasonable expectation that someone who buys cigars online might be online at that time of the day.  I definitely recommend segmenting the mailing list into groups based perhaps on frequency and dollar amount of purchase.
• TaxAct Online.
  I used this site to submit my 2007 taxes.  It was a fast, simple process.  I’ll probably use them again this year when the time rolls around.  They sent me just one email, which arrived just after 11 PM on Wednesday.  That’s not too late in the evening, but for me it is pushing the envelope of rational thinking.  I would prefer these arrived earlier in the day.

I feel compelled to give a special shout out to the people charged with sending the email newsletters at Ragan Communications.  This company earns it’s bread and butter teaching others how to communicate efficiently and effectively.  During the same one week time frame, I received 14 emails from them.  Admittedly, one of the mailings is titled “Daily Headlines” and I did subscribe to it.  Further I will admit that I did subscribe to the other mailings as well.  However, having made that disclaimer I have to say this: FOURTEEN EMAILS IN ONE WEEK!   Sorry, lost it there for a moment.  Ragan communicators – seriously, let me take a breath in between emails. When they first started to arrive, I eagerly read each one.  Now, I have a rule that moves your hard work to a folder to be skimmed when I have time to spare.  Today is Tuesday and the oldest one in the folder is from last Wednesday, there are 12 of them – 12.  Your message is being lost in the fray of a 100 other things – convince me that your weekly barrage is worth my time.  Good luck.

I have to ask; why do you continue to buy mailing lists?  E-marketers, please be more aware of where the lists you buy come from.  I wish I had kept some of the so unrelated-it’s-funny emails that I have gotten over the last few months so I could share them with you.  Alas, I have but the one that arrived this morning. The “Government Health IT Selection Committee” was kind enough to contact me today with this message: “Your position within the government IT community qualifies you to receive a complimentary subscription to Government Health IT Magazine – an exclusive publication from the publishers of Federal Computer Week.”  Yes, in my former life I owned a web design, hosting, ISP company and as such could have been called an “IT person.”  but I have never had anything to do with government or health related IT.  Additionally, for the last 18 months I have been (and hopefully will continue to be) employed as a marketing professional.  I would say this qualifies as lead generation failure.  This is why you can buy huge lists of email addresses for so little money.

As I prepared to write this, I discussed my “problem” of being woken up at all hours of the night by my smart phone going off when new email arrives with a few of my friends & co-workers.  Believe it or not, they suggested I get another email address and just not worry about it, or even worse – to tag it as spam.  I have used a fake address myself when I anticpate the company will be sending me spam.  But these are messages are not junk.  They just need some TLC, better timing and in some cases, better list management.  Just because I don’t want this stuff, does not make it universally spam.  There is a lesson here emarketers, if you don’t give your readers what they want, when they want it – you are a spammer in their eyes.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Email Marketing – update

Related Posts

1. Email Marketing – Do your homework!
2. Email Marketing – how NOT to do it (again)
3. Ten Must-Know Email Marketing Metrics

I’ve been getting more and more Email marketing from large companies lately.  I won’t call it spam since I have done business with each of them at some point, even though it has been a while with some of them.

I’m a bit perplexed at the delivery schedule of a few of them as they seem to be following suggestions from the pre-spam era and are sending in the middle of the night.  I have two problems with this.  First, like a lot of people,  I get my mail on a Smart Phone when not at my desk. In my case a Palm Treo 750.  Why is that a problem you ask…because whenever I get new Email, my phone it lights up and announces in a rather loud voice “You have new mail in your in box.”  Of course I could just turn it off, but being the paranoid parent of two daughters that do not live with me, I’d rather leave the phone turned on.  Besides, you never know when Terry Francona might call seeking advice for an upcoming game.  The second problem is that most mornings I have so much junk in my mailbox I really don’t have either the time or the desire to even skim their Email to see if it is of interest to me or not.

Read the Email Marketing Studies.

There are countless resources on the web to teach you everything you need to know about Email marketing.  Studies have shown that consumers are getting an average of 35 Emails a day and business recipients an average of 100.  With that much Email for your subscribers to wade through, you need to make sure yours gets to them at the best possible time.  Opinions vary regarding what day of the week or hour of the day is best.  However, in general most agree that if you are sending B2B Email, send marketing pieces so they arrive around 11 A.M. or 4 P.M., and on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.  If you are sending B2C marketing Email, then weekends are your best bet for higher open rates and Email should arrive around 9 P.M. or 11 P.M.

If you have the ability to do so, recent studies have shown a much higher engagement rate can be achieved if you get mail to your subscribers on the same day of the week and time of the day that they subscribed.

Is Your Email Message Readable?

After your recipient gets the message, can they read it?  The Email Experience Council reported that 21% of Emails they reviewed appeared completely blank when images were turned off.  Guess what?  That also means that people like me that get mail on a Smart Phone, will not see your much labored over, beautiful marketing piece either.  If your system allows, create a message that sends both a text and HTML formatted version at the same time.  This allows the readers device and software to decide.  Otherwise, create two separate lists and allow your subscribers an option to choose one or the other.  When using HTML, keep code to a minimum as spam filters tend to choke on it.

Personalized Email Campaigns.

If your process allows, you should definitely consider personalizing some aspect of your Email marketing.  However, the statistics show that personalizing the subject line and nothing else will actually decrease your open and click-through rates by about a percent.  One study showed that by just including the company name in the subject line increased the open rate 30-60%.

Test, Test and Test Again.

No matter what I say, or any of the stats studies say, this should only be used as a starting point.  You MUST do extensive A/B testing.  Test everything.  Then, test it again.  Carve out two groups from your mailing list, around 5% for each should be sufficient.  Send each a different variation of your marketing message to each and measure the results.

CAN-SPAM

All I can say here, become very familiar with the rules, and follow them.

[UPDATE:  Is it revenge, or just a GIGANTIC coincidence?  The night I posted this I had eight pieces of marketing Email arive in my mailbox.]

UPDATE:  This wasn’t the end of it, please read part two: Email Marketing Update

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Email Marketing – Do your homework!

Related Posts

1. Email Marketing – how NOT to do it (again)
2. Email Marketing – update
3. Ten Must-Know Email Marketing Metrics