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Email Summit Wrap-up

Marketing Sherpa's Email Summit in Chicago just wrapped up and the company posted an interesting article on the latest trends marketers were discussing. "After three years of non-stop 'search marketing rocks' focus, seems like the marketing world is taking a second look at its old pal email. And in 2006 email response rates are looking darned good," according to the article.

Return Path Bows 'Sender Score,' Hopes to Improve Deliverability

Return Path has launched a reputation management product for email marketers that gives companies a "credit score" - based on data from email receivers that is then analyzed by the company's proprietary technology - for their email campaigns, in order to help in their deliverability efforts, writes DM News (via MediaBuyerPlanner.com).

"Delivery has long been about reputation. If you have a good one, your email gets delivered. If not, the inbox can be an extremely hard destination to reach. Trouble is, figuring out your email reputation has been hard to do - until now," writes George Bilbrey, vp and gm delivery assurance solutions for Return Path.

Sender Score looks at 60 data points including complaint rates, unknown user rates, security practices, identity stability and unsubscribe function from several major ISPs and filtering companies.

Deliverability remains a huge challenge, with 82 percent of marketers saying e-mail deliverability is a problem for them, according to a study released Thursday by EmailLabs, BtoB reports.

AOL Blocks CertifiedEmail Critics' Emails

AOL on Thursday apparently began bouncing emails containing the "Dearaol.com" URL - which is for a petition against AOL's controversial certified-email program - according to nonprofit MoveOn.org (as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation), CNET reports (via MarketingVox). Dearaol.com contains an open letter and a petition that calls on people to protest what it calls an "email tax" being imposed by AOL.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said late Thursday that AOL emails containing "Dearaol.com" would be delivered as normal. He said a software glitch had "affected dozens of web links in messages," including Dearaol.com.

That site was set up by a coalition against AOL's adoption of GoodMail's CertifiedEmail, which allows requires marketers to pay in order to circumvent spam filters and ensure delivery of their email messages.

Triple-Digit Growth for Blog, Podcast and RSS Advertising

Combined blog, podcast and RSS ad spend by the end of 2005 totaled $20.4 million, a 198.4 percent increase over the 2004 levels for user-generated online media - and is projected to climb 144.9 percent in 2006, reaching $49.8 million, according to a new report, "Blog, Podcast & RSS Advertising Outlook," from PQ Media,
arketingVOX reports (via MediaBuyerPlanner). Total spending on user-generated online media is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 106.1 percent from 2005 to 2010, reaching $757.0 million in 2010.

The blog ad market is the largest of the three, at $16.6 million accounting for 81.4 percent of total advertising in 2005, followed by podcast advertising at $3.1 million and RSS at $650,000.

The blog market is expected to remain the largest of the three user-generated media in 2006, climbing 117.8 percent to $36.2 million. By 2010, however, blog ad spend is projected to account for 39.7 percent (at $300.4 million), behind podcast ad spend, which is expected to total $327.0 million, or 43.2 percent; RSS ad spend is projected to reach $129.6 million in 2010.

Technology, automobile and media brands have spent the most in user-generated media ad spend, $11.1 million, accounting for a combined 54.5 percent in 2005; food & beverage and apparel round out the top five categories, with 19.0 percent. Tech was the largest category in ad spend in 2005, at $4.0 million; auto was second with $3.9 million; media was third with $3.2 million.

Ad insertions through advertising networks (e.g., Pajamas Media and Federated Media for blogs; PodShow and PodTrac for podcasts; and Pheedo and FeedBurner for RSS feeds) and cost-per-click ads (e.g., Google AdSense) are the top two advertising methods, having generated $8.0 million and $7.8 million, respectively, in 2005. Advertising networks are the largest ad insertion method, accounting for 39.2 percent, or $8.0 million, of user-generated media spending in 2005, followed closely by click-through insertions at $7.8 million, or a 38.2 percent share.

However, affinity programs (such as LinkShare and Shareasale), which offer website publishers payment when a consumer purchases an advertised product online, are expected to be the fastest growing method from 2005-2010, growing at a compound annual rate of 130.8 percent.

National advertising dominates user-generated online media, accounting for 98.1 percent of total spending in 2005 at $20.0 million, but as more local content is created and the importance of local search increases, its share of ad spend is projected to grow to 9.3 percent in 2010.

Email Disaster Recovery

Have you ever sent out an email that you wish you could pull back from your customers' inboxes? Unfortunately, you can't. But there are steps you can take to mitigate problems that arise from problems like misspellings or promotional errors in emails. Here are a few tips from a Mediapost article.

1. Assign a disaster team. Convene immediately to discuss the error and outline potential courses of action. Don't wait until your vice president, who is seeded on the list, sends a note down the chain.

2. Minimize impact. If you see that there is an error and all the e-mails have NOT been sent, many ESPs have the ability to cancel the e-mails in the queue.

3. Why did it happen? 99 percent of the errors we see are due to teams sacrificing good process for urgency. Was it a system error? A human error? Did you sacrifice what you know is right to get it out quickly?

4. An error doesn't always justify a response. Spare your customers from a slew of meaningless apology e-mails. Discuss what constitutes an apology and who should receive it, and if you should reward the consumer.

5. Develop a protocol for apology e-mails. Use them for marketing and loyalty purposes. You'll get a higher response, so use this as an opportunity to let them know how important they are to your business.

Of course, the first step is to always proof your emails by as many people on your in-house and outsourced teams possible. Most errors come about because people didn't look closely at the email before hitting send.

Kids' No-Email Bill Killed

The Georgia bill that would have established a kid's do-not-email registry died last week, writes Multichannel Merchant (via Mediabuyerplanner.com). Similar bills in Connecticut, Iowa, Wisconsin, Hawaii and Illinois have been killed as well.

Current bills in Michigan and Utah have established children's do-not-email list and threaten email that contains legal adult content. They let parents and guardians register minors' "contact points" and email addressed as off limits to adult material. The bills also allow parents to sue, scaring away marketers in those states from making pitches containing product references such as automobiles and airplane glue.

ISPs Block One In Five E-mails

About one in five marketing e-mails didn't get delivered in the second half of last year, according to a new report by Return Path, Mediapost reports.

Excite filtered our 42.9 percent of messages, while Gmail filtered 40.4 percent, Lycos didn't deliver 33.8 percent, and Adelphia failed to deliver 31 percent of messages. On the other end of the spectrum, EarthLink filtered out just 7.8 percent of e-mails, while Mac.com, Compuserve, and USA.net all filtered out less than 10 percent. AOL didn't deliver 12.4 percent of messages.

As for corporate filters, MessageLabs didn't deliver 30.5 percent of messages, Postini failed to send 24 percent, and Brightmail blocked 21.5 percent.

Why Winning Campaigns get the Shaft

Have you ever run great email campaign or promotion that just works time and time again until one day when someone - usually not a marketer - decides it's getting boring? The analytics don't back up this hunch, but all the same, the promotion gets the axe. Anne Holland from Marketing Sherpa has an interesting article on her blog about this phenomenon.

Holland sees three reasons why this happens:

#1. Boredom -- the marketing department is bored of the creative, the offer, whatever and figure newer is always better.

#2. Ego/Salary justification -- a new marketer, agency, or president has come on board and they want to put their personal stamp on the campaign.

#3. Politics -- power has changed hands somewhere internally and whoever now has it wants to make changes for pet projects/pet peeves.