Emailhead

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.

15 Golden Rules for Blogging

Jennifer Nastu, a partner at Fast Trike, was one of the offical bloggers at the Word of Mouth Marketing Associations conference in San Fran this week - we handle their blogs/newsletters. Here's one of her posts from the conference on the 15 golden rules for blogging:

The companies that are going to be the most successful are the ones who are able to "unlock content" and the blog is the best way to do that.

It's important to understand that there are a lot of flavors of blogs. There are event blogs, CEO blogs, blogs about the news, crisis management blogs.

Marc Schiller of Electric Artists offered 15 Golden Rules for blogging:
#1. Recognize that every client has a different set of business objectives
An A&E blog he launched around tattooing to reach a specific niche, while a blog for Starwood Hotels was launched to increase loyalty and drive ecommerce.
#2. Don't focus on the results.
Document the process. The best blogs let you peek behind the curtain of the company.
#3. Don't try to force someone to be a blogger.
#4. Copywriters can't be bloggers. The worst blogs are over-written.
#5. Center editorial around advice and recommendations.
#6. It's okay to enter a crowded marketplace, but you must be best in class.
#7. No stealth blogs, no character blogs.
#8. Get the lawyers and PR team invovled early.
#9. Don't let your branding and advertising compete with the content.
#10. Let bloggers publish early.
#11. Update every day or you won't hit critical mass.
#12. Develop themes and obsessions that will get people coming back for next session.
#13. Keep content eclectic.
#14. Make sure bloggers can respond to legal side.
#15. Be benevolent.

VerticalResponse: Small Email Lists Have High Open Rates

When it comes to email marketing, smaller is better. Retailers' email campaigns using lists of 100 addresses had the highest open rate (38.78 percent) but the third-highest click-through rate (10.67 percent), according to the VerticalResponse Q1 2006 Email Trends Report, Internet Retailer writes (via MarketingVOX). Campaigns using 100,000 addresses had the lowest open rate (14.41 percent) and the second-lowest click-through rate (4.05 percent). Retailers using lists of 250 email addresses had the highest click-through rate (14.7 percent); lists of 1 million produced the lowest rate (3.09 percent).

Don't Piss Off the Customer

Good Email Insider article today that discusses the shift from simple systems centered on the "authentication" of email marketers' IP addresses to an email marketer's "reputation" now being the chief determinant of whether their emails will get through.

My favorite common sense opinion in the article comes from George Bilbrey, general manager of deliverability services for Return Path: "In the end, if you treat your customer right, you'll have a good reputation." And the requirements are pretty simple, he went on: "If you're using authentication and sender ID, and you keep your complaints low and you're not getting spam traffic queries... you'll be okay... Anyone who is using authentication and has developed a good reputation will have their mail delivered."

That about sums it up. We can complicate the issue with other declarations: ask for permission, authenticate, don’t send too many emails, give customers something of value, etc. But here’s the Business 101 point of view: don’t piss off your customers.

Email Comes of Age, Officially

If you're a parent, you're probably familiar with the Nick Jr. show Blue's Clues. One of the main songs in the show happens at mail time when the host goes to the mailbox and gets a letter from a child. Having two young children who've watched the show for years, I know it by heart: "We just got a letter, we just got a letter, we just got a letter, I wonder who it's from!"

I haven't seen the show in a while, but today I walked in the room where they were watching and noticed that the words have changed: "We just got an email, we just got an email, we just got an email, I wonder who it's from!"

The show targets young kids, maybe three or four years old. Why the switch? I'm sure helping kids understand technology had something to do with it, but it also creates a pretty cool advertising tie-in for Nick Jr. When you visit the main page for Blue's Clues, there's a nifty little place to send an email card, just like in the show, to a friend. When you receive the email card, it has an advertisement : For great Games and Activities go to NickJr.

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.

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.