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.

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.

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.

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.

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.