The From Line

Gold Lasso recently sponsored the Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study produced by the Email Experience Council and written and edited by Chad White.  There are a lot of exciting new things that online retailers are doing with their opt-in subscription process.  Below are some interesting findings in the study:

• Only 3% of major online retailers use a double opt-in subscription process.
• Only 92% of retailers have an email sign-up form or link on their homepage.
• More than 43% of retailers allow customers to sign up for email with one click from their homepage.
• The subscriber's name (31%) and zip code (18%) were the two most often required pieces of information.

Of these stats I find the first the most interesting and kind of disturbing.  Since savvy email marketers know that double opt-in ensures the cleanest list, which leads to a quality reputation and high deliverability, why do only 3% of the largest online retailers engage in the practice?  Has there been a study that proves consumers are too ignorant for a double opt-in process?  This isn't 1999 and I'm fairly confident that consumers can handle this process.

Get a copy of the full report from the EEC
The full 37-page study presents a range of best practices and emerging best practices for your consideration, as well as a formerly popular practice that appears to be falling out of favor. It also includes numerous examples of creatives to help illustrate each point.

Visit the Whitepaper Room to download the full report, which is free for EEC platinum members, available at a discount to EEC gold and silver members, and available for $179 for non-members. Not a member? Learn more about becoming a member of the Email Experience Council.

Measuring your email marketing campaign is easier with reliable industry statistics to compare it to. How do your delivery rates compare with the industry average? What types of subject lines are most effective? A new, online resource from EEC has made it easier to find industry statistics that will help you evaluate your messages. 

Nearly 39 categories ranging from Email Usage and Branding to Response Metrics and Spam comprise the online repository available at www.emailstatcenter.com.  The Email Stat Center also allows visitors to search the site using Google Search.

Here is a sampling of statistics we found helpful and relevant: 

• More than 8 out of 10 email users have used the "report spam" button in their email clients' interfaces. - Email Sender and Provider Coalition (2007)
• The Spam epidemic is costing U.S. businesses $712 for each employee in lost worker productivity. - Nucleus Research (2007)
• 24.2% of web merchants have an email open rate greater than 25%
• 73% said they'd made an online purchase as a result of receiving an email offer. - Epsilon (2007)
• 45% of small businesses execs want to receive the (email) newsletter weekly, 34% said monthly. - Bredin Business Information (2007)
• 40.2% of marketers report deliverability rates between 90.1% to 100%
• 73% make the decision to click on the "report spam" or "junk" button using the from line. - Email Sender and Provider Coalition, 2007

Marketing Sherpa, a business research company that just happens to focus on the marketing profession, presented the results of its recent study, Email Marketing Lists, Design, Tests & Deliverability for 2007. The report highlights information from four areas: (1) survey of 3,687 e-mail marketers; (2) lab tests and partner research; (3) “best of” research from expert sources; and (4) approximately 600 interviews.

Highlights of the study for your reference are included below:

• 42% of business-to-business (B-to-B) respondent said the impact of email is increasing slowly.
• 40% of business-to-consumer (B-to-C) respondents said the impact of email is increasing significantly.
• B-to-B respondents saw a 22% annual growth rate in their email list.
• B-to-C respondents saw a 37% annual growth rate in their email list.
• “Landing Page Copy” had the highest return on investment (ROI) at 43.2%.  Text only messages as the lowest ROI
• In 2006, 80% of B-to-B respondents indicated that they had commercial filtering applications or appliances. Only 9% reported no filtering applications. Companies typically use filtering applications to decrease the amount of SPAM sent to their employees’ inboxes.
• “From Line Accuracy” had the highest CAN SPAM failure rate at approximately 57.4%. This means that inaccurate or false information in the from line caused the highest number of SPAM blocks.
• 83% of respondents indicated that consumers, “at least occasionally activate” images (or click through on images) when they appear in statements and order updates. 35% occasionally activate from unrecognized senders when contents are of interest.
• Nearly 52% said that they don’t see mobile marketing applying to them in the near future. An example of mobile marketing is asking consumers to send a text message in response to a message.  

The full report is available from Marketing Sherpa by visiting www.marketingsherpa.com.  

If your email marketing system transmits email in MIME format how do you know what format (HTML or Text) your recipients are reading?  Most systems will calculate open rates however this is only regulated for HTML formats.  In addition most systems will calculate clicks however they do not distinguish between a text click or HTML click.

If you're fortunate enough to have an email service provider like Gold Lasso that calculates unique opens and unique clicks that distinguishes between HTML and text formats you can easily calculate a rough distribution between the two.

Here are the formulas:

HTML format = Number of recipients who requested HTML formats + (Unique Opens - Number of recipients who requested HTML formats)

Text format = Number of recipients who requested text formats + (Unique Text Clicks - Number of recipients who requested text formats)

MIME Format = Number of transmissions - (HTML format + Text format)

The reason why you need to subtract the number of recipients who requested a specific format from the Unique stat is because you do not want to count them twice.

Hint:  Over time if you see your text versions start to increase it is probably because your recipients are reading your email from a mobile device.  Many of our B2B clients are observing the text stat increase.