Emailhead

Mini Hits Viral Jackpot

BMW's Mini division has hit on viral gold with a popular email campaign that lets users create personalized messages that can be emailed to their friends, MarketingVox reports.

Interactive agency Firstborn designed the campaign. Visitors to Mini's site can design their own Mini, which then drives across the screen and spells out a personalized message in its tire tracks. Visitors can email these messages to friends, DMNews reports. When creating the message, users can choose from four models of Minis and customize the color and the hood of the car. The user then types the message to be drawn out in tire tracks in the message's link.

"We wanted to get people to share the site with their friends, and then get them to actually visit the site," said Michael Ferdman, owner and president of Firstborn, New York. "As opposed to putting the message in the email, in which they may go to the site, or they may not."

The recipient will receive an email with a link to Mini's site, where they will be able to read the message.

Email Relevance More Than Creative Drives Sales

Marketers using email do not focus enough on relevance, although relevant email messages can lead to sales nearly as often as free, or discounted, shipping offers, according to Jupiter Research.

Roughly one in four marketers launch email campaigns without any targeting or differentiation, and 65 percent use limited personalization and limited segmentation, Jupiter Research VP and research director David Daniels told marketers at the ClickZ Specifics: Email Marketing conference in New York last week, writes ClickZ. Only 11 percent send targeted campaigns using a customer's purchase history, click-stream activity, or other data to send relevant, targeted offers, Daniels is quoted as saying.

The greater the degree of personalization or targeting, the greater the average open, click-through and conversion rates. At the low end of the spectrum, untargeted broadcast emails have, on average, open rates of 20 percent, click-through of 9.5 percent, and conversion of 1.1 percent - compared with, on the opposite end of the spectrum, email campaigns that integrate website click-stream data for targeting, with a 33 percent average open rate, 14 percent click-through rate, and 3.9 percent conversion rate.

Furthermore, a Jupiter survey found that 54 percent of respondents say they have clicked on a link in an email because the product or service interested them; 40 percent, because of the email copy; 35 percent, the subject line; 12 percent, a single large image; and 9 percent, because of several smaller images.

Email Addiction Growing

Email addiction is growing, with no cure in sight, according to eROI's September Email Addiction Survey.

Some 61 percent of survey respondents said they continue to check email even while on vacation, and 56 percent reported a high level of anxiety if they can't access email, Marketing VOX reports. Two out of three people surveyed said they read email every day of the week, 90 percent read email six days a week and 75 percent respond to emails six days a week.

Two-thirds of respondents expect to receive a response from their email the same day. More than 50 percent can't wake up or go to bed without once checking email.

Most resondents - 55 percent - admit that email takes up more time in their life than it should.

Lyris: Email False Positives Still High for Big ESPs

False-positive filtering (emails incorrectly identified as spam) remains high among leading email service providers (ESPs), including Hotmail and Gmail.

The false-positive filtering rate for Gmail nevertheless improved dramatically in the second quarter, with only 2.97 percent of emails falsely identified as spam, compared with the previous quarter's 44 percent, according to a study (pdf) by email marketing solutions provider Lyris Technologies, MarketingVox reports. However, Hotmail's false-positive filtering, though improving, remains high - 18.2 percent in Q2, compared with 23.4 percent in Q1.

Nevertheless, U.S. ESPs' rates overall improved approximately 4 percent for both gross and inbox deliverability compared with Q1 rates. "While false positives are increasing among some ESPs, the industry as a whole is winning the fight to reduce the amount of spam," says Dave Dabbah, Director of Sales and Marketing, Lyris Technologies.

Users with addresses with one of the top 10 U.S. ESPs were 27 percent more likely to receive opt-in email in their inbox than those who used one of the bottom 10 providers: 97.8 percent versus 70.6 percent. Still, that rate for the bottom 10 is an improvement of 11.2 percentage points in deliverability compared with Q1.

False-positive spam filtering among European ISPs remains lower, achieving an average rate of only 0.075 percent compared with the U.S. average of 3.29 percent. This disparity is again due in part to excessive false-positive filtering at two ISPs - cs.com (Compuserve.com) and iwon.com - and U.S. ISPs' and ESPs' more stringent filtering of unsolicited emails.

Starbuck's Folly, Caribou's Gold Mine

Starbucks made a major mistake last week when they emailed a coupon for a free ice coffee to employees and told them to share it with friends and family members. As you might expect (and starbucks should have), the email went viral and was quickly sent beyond the original employees. Starbucks was surprised, as if the idea of email actually being forwarded was a new concept. One can only hope that the marketing team wasn't involved.

After the email went super-viral, Starbuck canceled the promotion, saying the redistribution had resulted in the offer's being modified beyond its intent. I'd like to know how successful - although that's probably not the word Starbuck's would use - it was. In any case, the first mistake was sending the promo. The bigger mistake was yanking it.

Caribou Coffee, a smaller chain looking for market share, quickly took advantage of Starbuck's short-sightedness and said it would honor the coupon that Starbucks had pulled. They put a stipulation on it - which Starbucks didn't do - saying they'd accept the coupon this coming Friday only, between noon and closing. The company also said it would provide a free-drink offer to its email subscribers - never leave your base out of a good deal.

This is a major PR coup for Caribou. It was covered by major press outlets - as was Starbuck's mistake. The PR alone will pay for the free drinks that Caribou will serve. The question is, why didn't Starbucks imagine this would happen? Why didn't they eat the mistake instead of providing an opening for the competition?

Email marketers spend their days thinking about ways to turn a campaign into a viral success. Obviously, offerring a free product is a pretty good start. That might not have been Starbucks intent, but it should have been forseen and accepted once the deal was done.

E-Cards Bring Top Results for CPA Marketer

While e-cards - emails sent to consumers to commemorate a birthday or holiday, for example - don't have the best reputation in the business, they can be downright successful when done correctly.

According to Melissa Rothchild, senior director, marketing communications for CPA2Biz, an e-card her company sent which offered a discount to CPAs on their fifth anniversary as customers saw an open rate of 50 percent (compared to the industry benchmark of 30 percent) and a 24 percent clickthrough rate. The campaign resulted in $66,000 in sales, writes Multichannel Merchant.

Rothchild said the key to a successful campaign is that the cards be sent when customers aren't expecting them.

The campaign was discussed during a panel discussion titled 50 DM Ideas in 50 Minutes at last week's List Vision conference. Other tips from the 50 ideas included trying outer envelopes which include the phrase "Do Not Bend" (though the content must actually contain something that shouldn't be bent) and making sure all marketing programs and materials look the same and are sending the same message.

Saturday Delivers Highest Open Rate and Click-Throughs

Saturdays had the highest open and click-through rates of any day of the week during the second quarter.

eROI says Saturdays had an e-mail open rate of 38.3 percent, and click-through of 5.4 percent, MediaPost reports. Sundays also had a good open rate at 37.1 percent, while click-throughs reached 5.2 percent for three days - Sunday, Monday, and Thursday. Fridays performed the worst for both open-rates and click-throughs.

When asked which day they would like to receive e-mail, recipients of business messages chose Monday and Tuesday more than any other day of the week. For personal e-mail, the most popular day was Friday - even though Friday performed worst for open and click-throughs - followed by Wednesday.

Saturn Rolls Direct Mail, Email for New Models

Saturn is turning to direct mail and email to promote its 2007 Aura sedan, Vue Green Line Hybrid SUV and Outlook SUV.

The mailings, which will continue through the end of the year, use leads from Saturn events and dealer drop-ins, where interested consumers are asked to fill out cards, Brandweek reports. So far, 300,000 direct mail pieces have been sent and even more e-mails for the Sky, Aura, Outlook and Vue campaign, according to a rep from Carlson Marketing Group, the agency leading the campaign.

The direct mail pieces look like coffee table books in the form of large, colorful mailers.

The mailing is another phase of the broad campaign developed by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco.

Saturn spent $1,012 on advertising per vehicle sold last year, per TNS, over twice as much as Honda and Toyota.

Unsubscribe Link Only Universally Adopted Email Best Practice

Email marketers have yet to adopt widely accepted best practices -except those required by the CAN-SPAM Act, according to an EmailLabs study (PDF). Inclusion of a working unsubscribe link, required by the CAN-SPAM Act, was the only best practice to be universally adopted.

The company analyzed whether emails incorporated best practices, such as a design that takes into account the preview pane and blocked images, and whether or not they included a link to a profile update, a link to a privacy policy and a forward-to-a-friend button, among others. The top three most widely ignored practices involved including a subscription or administration center, providing a site-search function in the email itself, and including a forward-to-a-friend link.

By industry, travel companies - including airlines, hotels and booking agents - had the highest adoption rates of the 18 best practices considered in the audit, scoring six top ratings and none of the lowest ratings. Financial marketers like credit card companies, mortgage brokers and banks - who rely on trustworthy emails to be delivered to the recipient's inbox - performed the worst of all market segments.

Other adoption trends among the market segments:

-- Travel marketers are increasingly using the subscription link function, allowing customers to easily update their email and personal information.

-- Publishers increasingly optimize their messages for preview panes and blocked images, and incorporate a subscribe link in the email to make it easy for people who've received the original email from a friend to subscribe.

-- The financial services market adopted the least best practices of all the industry segments audited.

Lyris: U.S. Email Deliverability Rates Lag Europe's

Gross deliverability rates of permission-based email marketing messages for European internet and email service providers were better than for U.S. ISPs and ESPs in the first quarter of the year, according to J.L. Halsey subsidiary and email marketing solutions provider Lyris Technologies. European ISPs achieved an impressive 94 percent, while U.S. ISPs' average gross deliverability went down 6 percentage points from the previous quarter, to 86 percent.

U.S. ISPs and ESPs fared even worse in terms of inbox delivery - 82 percent, compared with European inbox delivery rates of 94 percent. The incidence of false-positive spam filtering is also higher in the U.S., with 7.7 percent of valid messages getting blocked, compared with 3.5 percent in Europe.

Lyris also found that users with email addresses with one of the top 10 U.S. providers were 38 percent more likely to receive their opt-in email in their inbox than those who used one of the bottom 10 providers: 97.4 versus 59.4 percent. At 97.1 percent, inbox deliverability for the top 10 European providers was comparable to that of U.S. providers.

False-positive filtering remains high at Gmail and Hotmail. Gmail had reduced its false-positive filtering over the course of 2005, but rates underwent a dramatic increase in Q1, with 44 percent of emails filtered. Hotmail's false positive filtering also increased, from 15.7 in Q4 to 23.4 in Q1.

The term "gross deliverability" refers to the total number of messages delivered to the email inbox and bulk folders, combined, divided by the total number of messages sent. The term "inbox deliverability" refers to the total number of messages delivered specifically to the inbox, divided by the total number of messages sent.