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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.

If you’ve been keeping a close eye on email offer and subject line trends over the last year, you may have noticed that ‘odd’ or unusual offers, such as 14 percent or 56 percent off, have started to appear more. The offers, such as ‘14% Off Limited Time Only!’, ‘Our weekly deal 71% off of today’s item‘, ’56% off Membership‘, and ’Famous February Artists + 22% off‘, are just a few of the examples we noticed at Experian CheetahMail.

These promotions may catch the eyes of subscribers, but return mixed results for mailers. Experian CheetahMail’s Strategic Services Team has proof – included in a recent benchmark analysis. Specific findings include:

• Subject lines with ‘odd’ or uncommon percent discounts (ex: 14%, 53%, 47%) were compared the email performance of traditional discounts (ex: 5%, 10%, 25%, etc)
• Subject lines with traditional discounts reported higher open, click and transaction rates for over 60% of the brands who also deployed odd discount offers.
• Not all of the campaigns with odd discount offers were unsuccessful.  The highest performing campaign in this study had open rates over 34 percent, click rates as high as 12 percent and transaction rates over 0.80 percent.

Tempted to try this tactic out? Go for it! But, test first. Testing is necessary before making these a standard part of your email marketing program. How can you test, you ask? Check back next week for my post entitled, ‘Dare to be different? Test first!’

Methodology: A selection of 23 clients that deployed odd discounts in Q1 2011 were analyzed, and the results were compared to promotional mailings with more traditional offers in the subject line from the same brands.

I’d like to share a short story about gmail, email, and deliverability success…

Allposters.com (one of three Art.com brands) recently realized that a percentage (56%) of their Gmail subscribers were not receiving emails in their inbox. Working with their Email Service Provider (Experian CheetahMail ) Account team, they identified and implemented a series of initiatives that significantly improved their deliverability success, resulting in 100 percent of Allposters.com Gmail emails arriving safely in subscribers’ inboxes.

Here’s how:

• Removed Gmail hard bounces from file
• Drilled down into email behavior to identify the subscribers Gmail considered to be active
• Mailed only to 3 month active Gmail population
• Moved unsubscribe link for Gmail subscribers to the top of mailing
• Used a slower flow rate (10k/hr) for Gmail segments

In addition to the 100% deliverability rate, AllPosters.com experienced a 22% open rate increase, a 15% click to open rate increase and a.03% increase in transaction rate resulting in incremental revenue from customers!

View screenshots and check out the full story here.

Pretty pictures can go a long way: How Boston Proper visually engages its email subscribers

Boston Proper, a leading cataloger and specialty retailer of stylish, contemporary women’s sportswear, aims to grow online sales and extend customer loyalty while driving traffic to its e-commerce site, www.bostonproper.com. Since Boston Proper has a highly loyal customer base, avoiding the overuse of promotional discounts and, instead, relying on strong visual merchandising and imagery to drive conversions was key.

By working with Experian CheetahMail (read the full case study here), Boston Proper was able to send brand conscious and highly relevant emails to build a remarkably loyal and profitable customer base. Some of the key creative tips used by the brand, that other companies may want to consider implementing into their own program include: 

Visual cohesion with your website: Boston Proper designed visually stimulating HTML email templates based on strategic or best practice recommendations from Experian Cheetahmail. The designs mirrored the imagery on www.bostonproper.com as well as in the Boston Proper catalog, creating a visual cohesiveness amongst channels and giving customers a familiar and engaging design to interact with. 

Let reporting drive design: Once creative was complete, Boston Proper began mailing to their subscriber list two times a week, simultaneously collecting data on each customer’s response rate and activity. After a few weeks of reporting they were able to determine which mailing frequencies, offers and message content garnered the greatest response from each customer type. 

Target imagery by segment: To leverage these findings, Boston Proper used the segmentation tools in the CheetahMail application to send the most appropriate messages, at the most optimal frequencies, to each group accordingly. For example, the entire file receives two general catalog announcements per month, and a second email per week promoting a top selling product classification. Customers who interacted with the emails in the last 90 days receive a third email that is more category, trend or product specific. 

Boston Proper’s email messages have outperformed those of their industry peers in nearly all areas, with significantly higher clickthru rates and revenue per email. Furthermore, unsubscribe rates have fallen below .15%, proving that customers are highly receptive to the messages Boston Proper sends.

Apparently, the value of email communications is not only increasing with marketers, but with criminals as well. Whether you’re a marketer trying to avoid your brand being abused, an employee trying to secure intellectual property or a consumer trying to avoid being phished, here are some tips and techniques to consider when evaluating the state of phishing today.

For the brands:  Understanding the anti-phishing ‘takedown’ process

A phishing ‘takedown’ is when a brand owner requests that a website hosting provider or ISP remove the website domain that is being used for phishing on their network. Akin to a good mixed martial artist’s takedown technique, the best phishing takedown advice is to do it as quickly and forcefully as possible because the main impact of a phishing campaign takes place within 24 hours of the email being sent. In most cases, a brand is better off using one of the professional service providers who specialize in these requests and have pre-existing relationships with global networks rather than trying to identify and reach out to the networks themselves. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has authored an excellent white paper on this topic which can be found online here. Contact the APWG directly for more information on a list of their members who provide these takedown services or refer to their membership directory online here.

For the corporate employee (or consumer):  don’t get ‘spear phished’

According to IBM research, while overall phishing attempts are down from past years, ‘spear phishing’,  or phishing emails that are personalized to specific users or to domain name recipients, have dramatically increased in the past year. The goal of these types of campaigns is not to collect the recipients’ personal or financial information as with most consumer phishing attempts, but rather to get a user to click on a link so a software program can be downloaded to the users’ machine. Afterwards, the criminals will use this software program to install what’s called a ‘keylogger’ program to collect user names and passwords to various types of accounts, which often times includes web-based access to corporate databases where the criminals can easily steal intellectual property or otherwise make use of the corporate network. InformationWeek describes these types of these attacks in detail online here. In some cases, these emails will appear to be sent from current or former colleagues whose names were harvested off business directory websites. Examples such as ecards are regularly abused due to their innocuous nature.  If you ever receive an unexpected e-card or odd link from a current or former colleague, whether by email or IM, then it is immediate grounds for suspicion.

For everyone: some easy tips to avoid getting phished

Identify the real ‘sender’: Most of the time, an email recipient simply looks at the friendly ‘from’ address to see the name or domain name of the sender. This is what the phishers rely upon – that users don’t check what the actual sending domain name is behind what’s visible by default in the message. Every email program, including Microsoft Outlook, enables users to easily see the real ‘transmission’ domain name the message is being sent from, which often times is completely unrelated to the domain name in the visible ‘from’ address.  To do this in Microsoft Outlook, users can simply open an email and click the  icon in the middle of the top-header of email message. This will open up a ‘Message Options’ box which will show the true message transmission information and include the transmission domain name that reveals who really is the sender. As you can see from the below example, the friendly ‘from’ address from this corporate email includes a shortened corporate domain name ‘chtah.com’ while the transmission information includes the full transparent corporate domain name of ‘cheetahmail.com’. In this case, a user may not easily recognize the visible ‘from’ domain, but would easily recognize the “Received:from” sending transmission domain name. With a phishing campaign, it’s the “Received:from” sending transmission domain name that will either be from an ISP (usually associated with a foreign top level domain name like ‘example.ru’ for Russia) or another domain name that is unrecognizable to the recipient.   In either case, it will not reflect the same brand or domain name used by the phisher because they do not have the technical rights to use this domain for email transmission purposes.

To be sure, check the ‘whois’ record: If you are ever unclear about the domain name that is listed in the ‘from’ or the ‘Received:from’ address, then the easiest way to validate its legitimacy is to check the public record ‘whois’ database listing the respective owners of the domain name. The most comprehensive whois database is hosted by Network Solutions and can be found online here. Other than a reference to the official corporation name and address, the main thing to look for is whether the domain name was registered within the prior days or week. Almost all phishing domains are registered within  a week of the phishing email being sent. Even if the corporation is not listed or it’s hidden by a ‘proxy’ registration, the date when the domain name was registered is always publicly referenced and is the most important factor to raise suspicion.

I recently received a subtle-yet-effective lifecycle series of emails from Delta Airlines after I had shown interest in booking a flight with them several weeks ago. What struck me about this campaign was how seamless and clever it was to trigger a loyalty-based lifecycle series based on a customer’s recent website activity.

This sequence of events all began with a regularly scheduled promotional email from Delta that I would assume they sent to all members of their SkyMiles program. This email by chance happened to remind me that I was interested in visiting Salt Lake City for a weekend in February, and I knew from previous emails that Salt Lake City happens to be one of Delta’s hub locations. From this initial email I went to the Delta website, where I browsed for flights and compared airfare. I did not make a purchase during this web session.

A mere two hours later I received my first email in the lifecycle campaign, featuring the subject line “Visit delta.com For All Your Travel Needs.” This message served the simple purpose of outlining the benefits of booking my flight through delta.com rather than another third-party site. I was particularly impressed by the promptness of this message — my interest in Delta was clearly reciprocated by them in a timely manner.

Interestingly, the correspondence did not stop there. Delta reached out to me the very next day to continue explaining the benefits of their website and to outwardly ask for me to return to their site. This second message featured the subject line “Come On Back To delta.com” and reminded me that I had an unfulfilled order waiting for further action.

Even though I did not make a purchase during this period, the email exchange I had with Delta was quite valuable in a number of other ways. These include:

• The entire decision to consider shopping for tickets was set in motion from a regularly scheduled loyalty program campaign. Newsletters can generate revenue and interest just by being in front of the customer!
• My website activity triggered almost instantaneous correspondence from Delta showing that they were valuing my business. Website analytics data integration with email programs can help businesses show appreciation for their customers when the brand is fresh in their minds.
• Web analytics data isn’t just for cart abandons — it can also be used to trigger entire loyalty and retention-based messages. Taking a long view of the customer sales cycle can impart positive brand affinity to your customers that will pay off in the long run.

The moral of the story is that even though I didn’t make the purchase this time around, chances are the next time I need to buy airline tickets I will be stopping by Delta’s website first.

A transactional email is an email that is sent in response to an action — things like order confirmations, ship confirmations, and order tracking emails. Transactional emails are generally high performers, on average having seven times the open rate and four times the click rates^* of standard promotional email. Also, transaction rates (i.e. purchases) can be four to eight times higher^* in transaction emails compared to bulk emails.

A few reasons why these types of emails perform so well:

• Transactional emails are sent to already engaged customers, including recent purchasers.
• The recipients in most cases are expecting an email after a transaction and then interact with it once it arrives.
• Since the recipients are already engaged with your brand, they have a higher chance of making another purchase from the transactional email.

10 Transactional Email Best Practices:

1. Say “Thank You” in the email
2. Send optimized transactional emails using HTML
3. Include your branding
4. Include dynamic product cross-sells using product recommendation engines, or seasonal offers
5. Provide a link to track order and shipping status
6. Include some site navigation in the email creative
7. Test the Inclusion of an offer ($ off, % off, free shipping, etc.)
8. Include links to all of your social media efforts
9. Promote email sign up
10. Do not include an offer in the subject line or as the main message

* These statistics come from our June 4, 2010 webinar, “The Key Event-driven Triggers in the Consumer Lifecycle“