Ten years ago in December of 2001, I coordinated an initiative with many of the leading email service and data providers to agree upon “Best Practices for Email Append” under the auspices of the Association for Interactive Marketing (a former subsidiary of the DMA).   At the time, my thought was that since few offline marketers had customer email addresses that the process of a marketer sending an opt-out request to receive their communications would give the email marketing industry the needed boost to build commercial viability.  It was also a time when permission-based marketing was still coming of age, and cross-channel permissioning was considered an acceptable means for communication as long as the recipient had opted-in to receive 3^rd party offers. 

Today, we’re closing the book on that chapter by stating that Experian CheetahMail believes that opt-out email appending is no longer an acceptable practice, and that marketers should no longer use this practice to acquire customer email addresses. 

There are four main reasons for this change;

1. Even in 2001, most of us viewed email appending as a stop-gap measure until offline marketers achieved critical mass online and no longer needed this acquisition method to bolster their email programs.  Today’s offline marketers collect customer emails at every point of sale, and even through new mobile and social media channels.  There is no doubt that if a customer wants to subscribe to a marketers’ email list, they have ample opportunities to do so.
2. As one of the first email service providers to become a full member of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), Experian CheetahMail is committed to supporting their best practices and recent policy position against email appending, found online here.  We believe our position is in-line with that effort and is in the best interest of marketers who wish to maintain consistent Inbox deliverability. 
3. In a matter of months, the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) is going to come into force.    If you were not aware, the new law requires opt-in consent for email marketing, with limited exceptions where there is a prior business relationship.  Because the law does not require marketers to have knowledge of a recipient’s residency in Canada, it is probable that even some U.S. customers who are appended could now reside in Canada and fall under the jurisdictional requirements for Canadian compliance.  As a result, marketers who conduct opt-out email append would run afoul of CASL and be subject to a private right of action in a Canadian court. 
4. Email address turnover continues to increase, as well as the use of formerly active email addresses as ‘spamtraps’ by mailbox providers and filtering companies.  The increasing deliverability risk of mailing to potentially inaccurate or invalid recipients now exceeds the value they provided in the past. 

We believe eliminating this practice is in the marketers and consumers best interests.  I can appreciate that many marketers have had success with email appending efforts, however, the opt-out appending process should be discontinued for the betterment of the entire email marketing community.  I appreciate your consideration and support of this change, and welcome any comments, questions, concerns or suggestions on this topic by reaching me at privacyATcheetahmail.com.

Ten years ago in December of 2001, I coordinated an initiative with many of the leading email service and data providers to agree upon “Best Practices for Email Append” under the auspices of the Association for Interactive Marketing (a former subsidiary of the DMA).   At the time, my thought was that since few offline marketers had customer email addresses that the process of a marketer sending an opt-out request to receive their communications would give the email marketing industry the needed boost to build commercial viability.  It was also a time when permission-based marketing was still coming of age, and cross-channel permissioning was considered an acceptable means for communication as long as the recipient had opted-in to receive 3^rd party offers. 

Today, we’re closing the book on that chapter by stating that Experian CheetahMail believes that opt-out email appending is no longer an acceptable practice, and that marketers should no longer use this practice to acquire customer email addresses. 

There are four main reasons for this change;

1. Even in 2001, most of us viewed email appending as a stop-gap measure until offline marketers achieved critical mass online and no longer needed this acquisition method to bolster their email programs.  Today’s offline marketers collect customer emails at every point of sale, and even through new mobile and social media channels.  There is no doubt that if a customer wants to subscribe to a marketers’ email list, they have ample opportunities to do so.
2. As one of the first email service providers to become a full member of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), Experian CheetahMail is committed to supporting their best practices and recent policy position against email appending, found online here.  We believe our position is in-line with that effort and is in the best interest of marketers who wish to maintain consistent Inbox deliverability. 
3. In a matter of months, the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) is going to come into force.    If you were not aware, the new law requires opt-in consent for email marketing, with limited exceptions where there is a prior business relationship.  Because the law does not require marketers to have knowledge of a recipient’s residency in Canada, it is probable that even some U.S. customers who are appended could now reside in Canada and fall under the jurisdictional requirements for Canadian compliance.  As a result, marketers who conduct opt-out email append would run afoul of CASL and be subject to a private right of action in a Canadian court. 
4. Email address turnover continues to increase, as well as the use of formerly active email addresses as ‘spamtraps’ by mailbox providers and filtering companies.  The increasing deliverability risk of mailing to potentially inaccurate or invalid recipients now exceeds the value they provided in the past. 

We believe eliminating this practice is in the marketers and consumers best interests.  I can appreciate that many marketers have had success with email appending efforts, however, the opt-out appending process should be discontinued for the betterment of the entire email marketing community.  I appreciate your consideration and support of this change, and welcome any comments, questions, concerns or suggestions on this topic by reaching me at privacyATcheetahmail.com.

Tags:
anti-spam, CASL, email best practices, MAAWG, Opt-Out

As we wave goodbye to another holiday season, email marketers can be optimistic that 2012 will be another year of email-generated revenue and digital marketing cheer. Analysts at Experian CheetahMail took a snapshot of the season to put the very busy (yet very rewarding) term into perspective, comparing it to the 2010 holidays.

Findings include:

- There was a 4.4% increase in average order values
- Email volume rose by 19% (as we predicted)
- Unique open rates remained quite positive for most verticals (which may be a result of more marketers optimizing subject lines).
- As in 2010, 26% of subject lines featured an offer this Holiday Season. 
- Dollar ($) offers were the most popular this season (seen in 29% of subject lines), sneaking past last year’s leader of percent (%) off campaigns (seen in 28% of subject lines). 
- Personalization in subject lines increased (31% overall), particularly in the last half of the season. 

Happy mailing in 2012!

Experian CheetahMail tracks the holiday mailing activity of 385 brands that also mailed in the 2010 Holiday Season. All metrics are based on results 3 days from send.

Tags:
holiday

Hotmail has recently been in the news for improving their users’ Inbox experience, enhancing tools and improving their filters. More specifically, Hotmail is trying to combat “Graymail”  or all of the newsletters, offers, social network website emails, and other email communications many sign up for and are no longer relevant to you but keep getting delivered. These are emails that users legitimately receive but no longer want – roughly 75% of email identified as spam by Hotmail customers according to Windows Live Hotmail.

At Experian CheetahMail, this Graymail announcement has left many of our clients asking how this change will affect their messages and more importantly their deliverability/Inbox performance. These enhancements go along with what CheetahMail Deliverability has always advised about mailing to your actives. Basically any mail that is sitting in a users’ Hotmail inbox untouched (not opened or clicked) after a while is considered Graymail. Hotmail is trying to reduce the burden of all sorts of offers, newsletters etc for the user and their own system.

We don’t have much insight into their filter algorithms but we can assume if too many people are allowing the clients emails to sit in their inboxes and end up as graymail, Hotmail’s filter will pick this up and can possibly start sending the emails to bulk. We have often seen a decrease in user engagement as a reason for Hotmail bulking. By mailing to your active and engaged Hotmail users this Graymail issue should become a non-issue. Additionally, consider asking users to add the client to their address book to ensure inbox delivery and avoid spam/junk foldering. Instructions can be found here: http://www.cheetahmail.com/deliverability/reach-the-inbox/

The two main features of Graymail that we DO know are:

One-click Unsubscribe

Hotmail has had an unsubscribe link in the user interface already, but how they handle these requests are changing and not complying could result in your email being sent to the spam folder. If a subscriber clicks on the unsubscribe link in the Hotmail interface now, and either the list-unsubscribe header isn’t present or doesn’t work, email from that sender will be permanently delivered to the spam folder. CheetahMail complies with this unsubscribe request.

Schedule Cleanup

Hotmail users can now decide how long they want messages from a particular sender, or all senders, in their inbox before they are deleted permanently or moved to a specified folder. This could be the best time to reach out to your subscribers and give them a choice to the frequency of emails they want to receive. This cleanup could also prove to be beneficial for senders as subscribers may not mark old, unwanted email as spam which can adversely drive up spam complaints.

Tags:
email deliverabiltiy, graymail, hotmail, spam

Similar to the 2010 holiday season, 78% of holiday email campaigns are being sent between midnight and noon (compared to 77% in 2010).  Is this the best time to send? A recent Experian CheetahMail analysis indicates that it is probably not.

Lunchtime and afternoon hours present good opportunities to remind customers of deadlines and key offers.  Looking at the performance of mailings with ‘urgency’ in their subject lines (including the words ‘limited’, ‘last’, ‘ends’, final’, ‘hours’, ‘left’, ‘today only’, ‘hurry’, or ‘urgent’), a recent Experian CheetahMail analysis finds that that campaigns sent between noon and 4:00pm make up 11% of the volume, but generate 15% of the revenue.  A similar result is seen for campaigns sent between 4:00 and 8:00pm, which have 6% of the volume and 9% of the revenue.

What time are you sending? 

What time are you sending?  Consider running time-of-day testing, it’s not too late!  Who knows what new revenue opportunity you may be able to find.

Experian CheetahMail tracks the holiday mailing activity of 385 brands that also mailed in the 2010 Holiday Season. All metrics are based on results 3 days from send.

Tags:
cheetahmail, email campaign metrics, holiday email campaigns, subject lines, time-of-day testing

It’s not too late to include video in your email campaigns this holiday season. Video in email gives marketers a chance to express their creativity while providing relevant and highly engaging content, but do you know how to optimize, or even execute on, this powerful tactic? Experian CheetahMail and Liveclicker, a comprehensive video commerce solution that video-enables your most important marketing channels, held a webinar earlier this week to share best practices and case studies on the topic.

To highlight some of the learnings, our very own Erin Geoghegan interviews Justin Foster – Co-Founder & Vice President of Market Development, Liveclicker, on the topic:

Erin: Why should marketers be using video in email this holiday season?

Justin: Video helps marketers stand out from the crowd. Right now, most B2C/e-commerce merchants are executing a ramped email sending schedule to better compete for limited consumer shopping dollars. Video offers a way for these email marketers to grab the attention of shoppers, show their products in a new light, and differentiate from the competition – all right in the inbox.

Erin: I would think we might be too deep into holiday crunch time to implement this tactic, is this not the case?

Justin: If a marketer has ready access to video content that’s ‘on message’ for a planned campaign, then it’s probably not too late. If the content isn’t there, or if there’s not a natural alignment with the current holiday calendar, then it’s probably too late at this point. If the content is there, and the marketer has never before launched a video email campaign, then I’d advise devoting at least an additional four hours of planning to the video email campaign launch.

Erin: If you could give me, as an email marketer, a three-step process for implementation, what would it be?

Justin: At risk of oversimplifying, the three steps are:

1. Get the video
2. Use the right technique to add the video to the email
3. Send the email as normal

Each of these three steps has sub-step components that will vary based on a marketer’s goals and needs. Companies that have built processes around shooting or acquiring video content will greatly simplify the job of the email marketer for part 1. Systems like Liveclicker will completely automate the “use the right technique” part, although there are still creative considerations involved. When the right techniques are used, video can be added to email today just like images, so the last step is really old hat for email marketers. I always would advocate email marketers to seek education prior to embarking on any new initiative, including video email. It pays to spend the time up front to do the research by attending webinars like the one CheetahMail hosted this week. These sessions can be an excellent source of information for even experienced email marketers.

Click here to download the webinar.

Tags:
holiday, holiday campaigns, video emails

The likelihood of consumers viewing, printing and redeeming a digital coupon at a brick-and-mortar store rises 19.6% if the coupons become accessible at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, according to a recent study by RevTrax, a partner of Experian CheetahMail that offers couponing features in CheetahMail client email programs.

The study finds that consumers print the most digital coupons on Wednesday and Thursday

The study finds that consumers print the most digital coupons on Wednesday and Thursday, which suggests consumers access online discounts mid-to-late week to redeem them during the weekend. Conversion rates constantly exceed 60% between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. (key work hours), and conversions peak between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., as well as noon and 5 p.m.

So what can email marketers do to capitalize on the e-coupon-obsessed this holiday season?  Here are a few tips from Experian CheetahMail:

• Use testing to keep response high and costs low: Often times, emails providing coupons to high-value or existing buyers do not have to be as aggressive or frequent as those sent to new customers.
• Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity: Despite the ease of use/redemption that many online coupons offer today, customers can take a long time to buy. Use words such as “exclusive” or “limited time only” in your subject lines.
• Use coupons to drive word of mouth: Ensure that you prominently display “Share with your network” or “Forward-to-a-friend” buttons in emails containing shareable coupons. The impact can be huge!

RevTrax ran statistical analysis between December 2008 and August 2011 to determine the best time to present coupon offers. The data represents millions of views and prints broken down and analyzed by volume per day and hour, conversion rate, percentage of coupons viewed and printed, per day and hour. It also tallied the odds or likelihood that a consumer will print a coupon based on any given day and hour.

Tags:
digital coupon, email programs, holiday, response rates, statistical analysis