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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.

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.

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.

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.

While marketers have historically used similar creative or targeting methodologies with email and display ad campaigns, few have truly integrated the two efforts in a seamless process. In-line with Experian’s Digital Advertising Services’ efforts to pioneer addressable advertising online, Experian CheetahMail has been rapidly developing integrated opportunities for clients to leverage their existing email subscriber intelligence with display advertising.

On Wednesday, December 7, I’ll be participating on a session at the Email Insider Summit about integrating email campaigns with display advertising. For those of you who cannot attend, or for those that plan to attend but want a sneak preview, here are a few key points I’ll be making about the future of these integrated campaigns:

1. Emailers have always used pixels and cookies to better analyze open or click-through activity, or more recently with transaction reporting and remarketing efforts. In addition, most emailers have tested or implemented third party tools using pixels for analytics or creative optimization. So adding a new third party pixel to email campaigns for display advertising can be easily understood and implemented.
2. Many online marketers have integrated website re-targeting into their suite of display advertising efforts, and leveraging email pixels to enable re-targeting is similar to using a web based pixel. This is bolstered by the fact that most email recipients are now using web-based programs, which can render this type of pixel (and associated cookie) for use with display ads. However, as with any re-targeting effort, this type of display advertising is considered to be ‘behavioral’ and falls under the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising . As a result, marketers must make sure their privacy policies reflect this practice, and provide advertising recipients with in-ad notice and choice through the ‘AdChoices’ icon.
3. The benefits of integrated campaigns are many, and include consistent messaging across channels, improved relevancy for online display ads, and increasing performance of re-targeting efforts by extending the reach to email recipients who may not be visiting your website. In addition, future integrated display ad campaigns will be able to leverage the same segmentation schema as with email, transactional data, and addressable demographic or psychographic data, all of which in a privacy-centric way.
4. The potential drawbacks of these campaigns includes making sure you are working with a large enough display ad partner to be able to reach these types of ad recipients , making the investment of time and resources to upgrade your privacy positioning, and avoiding over-personalization with display ad creative.

I look forward to sharing more with you in the future about this exciting topic, and welcome your comments or questions. Learn more about Experian Digital Advertising Services.

Not just yet. Experian CheetahMail’s latest holiday analysis indicates that consumers are browsing, but not yet purchasing for holiday 2011. As of this past weekend (November 5-6), open rates are higher than last holiday season, but clicks and transaction rates remain low – indicating that consumers are still browsing. If you are anxious to ring those conversions in well before Peak Week, here are a few tactics to consider:

• Flash Sales – Overall, Flash Sales generate a 35 percent lift in transaction rates over regular promotional mailings. This is noteworthy given the fact that all mailings with offers in subject lines have an average lift in transaction rates of 16 percent — less than half of the increase Flash Sale emails provide.
• Free shipping promotions – a tried and true holiday tactic that works. Made sure to advertise free shipping in the subject line, as well as prominently in the body of the email.
• Social sharing – Amplify any new product or promotion via social networks by enabling sharing anywhere and everywhere you can. In your emails – of course, but what about including sharing links in your online catalogs, or banner ad landing pages?

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.

Get em while they last! The number of Flash Sale and Daily Deal emails have more than doubled in the first two weeks of this season compared to the same time period last year, according to Experian CheetahMail.

Why is this? Well – they work! And, people still can’t get enough. While recent industry buzz does point to the slight erosion of the Flash Sale tactic as time goes on, they’re still giving retailers a bang for their buck. So, email marketers, here is one of my early gifts for you – Flash Sale a tip list, straight from a recent analysis by CheetahMail’s in-house experts:

• If you can’t test sending a Flash Sale later in the day, test sending a reminder to those that opened and clicked but did not convert. The lack of inbox competition for the customer’s attention later in the day offers email marketers an opportunity to optimize Flash Sale campaigns to improve ROI.
• Create a sense of urgency by clearly mentioning the discount, as well as the time limit of the discount, in the subject line.
• If your goal is purely engagement, or re-engagement, shorter Flash Sales can be more effective.
• The best Flash Sales have some combination of strong offers (50% to 70% off) and a selection of desirable products.

Regardless of your industry, Flash Sales can be a great tool — for retailers to push more holiday inventory, for hotels to drive holiday vacation bookings in specific regions, for restaurants to drive traffic on typically slow times of day, and so on.