The From Line

Congratulations to Ari Jacoby, my old friend, confidant and former business partner on the sale of his company VoiceStar to Marchex.  Ari is a new media guru who started his career with me when we co-founded Newsletters.com.  The ideas behind the marketing at Newsletters.com were novel for the time and Ari spearheaded most of those efforts through co-branding relationships.  His success using the co-branding model at Newsletters.com was the impetus to the partnership model Ari implemented at VoiceStar.  This model helped VoiceStar to effectively compete in the pay per call marketplace against much better funded competitors.  I'm really proud of Ari and his major accomplishments.  Not only is he a great businessman, he's truly a gentleman with a good heart who deserves the fruits of his hard labor. 

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.

Email marketers have spent four years figuring out and complying with the CAN SPAM regulation of 2003 for their U.S. recipients.  But, international laws also apply and some may have more reach than domestic laws. For example, the EU Privacy Directive specifies that you have a required opt-in for campaigns. 

The best strategy is to understand the make up of your mailing database and educate your marketing team on the international laws.

Visit www.spamlaws.com for more information on international SPAM laws.

E-ssentials is brought to you by Gold Lasso Email Marketing

Gold Lasso has enhanced your eLoop account with a new feature, the A/B/Z split campaign. A/B/Z split campaigns allow you to randomly split your list between two or more messages. The benefit of this new feature is that you can test the success of different elements of the campaign, such as subject lines, from lines, or other content, to find out which work best.

eLoop reports on each message and its respective portion of the list as a separate campaign.  For example if you name your campaign Summer Vacation Specials and split your list between two messages; Warm Spots and Cool Spots, eLoop will report two separate campaigns.

Some other campaign elements that you might consider testing are:

• Layout, colors, or format - if your messages are usually text heavy, a message that is image heavy might inspire more click-throughs.  If they are image heavy, you can test to see if a text message works better with recipients. 
• The offer - if your email campaigns typically include a discount offer, A/B?Z split campaigns will allow you to change the offer to determine which draws the most response. 
• Call to action - do your recipients respond better to a "buy now" link or a link that says, ?click here to learn more.?  This new feature will allow you to find out. 
• Landing page - landing pages are a key element to a campaign.  Make the messages identical, but change the landing page for each recipient group to find out what content and design works best. 
• Scheduling - Send the same message on different days and different times to determine which draws the best response. 

To use A/B...Z Campaigns in eLoop mouse over Outbound Messaging, select Campaigns, and then select the tab titled, A/B/Z Campaigns.

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