The From Line

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.  

This is the time of year for resolution and improvement.  It includes more than just losing weight or sticking to a budget (two of the most common resolutions).  For e-marketers, it means vowing to check their messages for SPAM before sending them or adding action-based messaging to their marketing plans.

1. Check all messages with the SPAM analysis tool before sending them to my recipients.
2. Join Dot Email, post questions and brainstorm ideas with other marketing professionals.
3. Add a survey to my messages to help me gather more information about my readers.
4. Add dynamic content to my marketing messages to increase personalization.
5. Brand landing pages to increase connection with my readers.
6. Segment my lists and create targeted messages to increase response rates.
7. Make sure my IP is not blacklisted by checking the black list status in eLoop.
8. Keep up-to-date on industry news by registering with Dot Email.
9. Check my message with multiple email providers (such as Yahoo and AOL) to make sure my message is getting through and delivered correctly.
10. Stay on the white lists of my readers.

On my way home from a restful Caribbean vacation I picked up a copy of the New York Times during a stopover at Charlotte Douglas International.  On the front page in the Inside feature section read a headline "Do Not Call, Write or..."  Since I'm an email marketer, naturally my curiosity piqued and I read the article.  Needless to say I have never read such an ill researched piece of crap from the mainstream media then what I read in the New York Times that day.  The premise of the article was to give advice to consumers about how to remove their names from marketing lists.... snail mail, email, etc.  In the article Damon Darlin suggests to readers that "Whatever you do, do not respond to an unsolicited e-mail message when it gives you the option to opt out of receiving more e-mail. That is a trick used by spammers to confirm they hit a live address. Once that happens, your address goes to a prime list and is sold to other spammers. You may even find legitimate businesses eventually using addresses on that list." 

Where is the research behind this claim?  All the spam that I have received for Viagra, fake Rolex watches and winning lottery tickets never have an opt-out link.  Granted, I'm sure the practice by spammers of using an opt-out link to trick unsuspecting consumers to verify their email address may happen on rare occasion.  However if a spammer wanted to use that opt-out link methodology  to really confirm email addresses they would simply measure the open rate... a spammer would a  better net result and the process would be much more efficient.  Therefore Darlin's claim is total bogus.  Yes, spam is an issue however sending unsolicited commercial email in the United Stats is not illegal and legitimate companies practicing this do include an opt-out link if they have half a brain cell.   Therefore not using an opt-out link to such email would simply have the opposite effect stated by Darlin.  The bottom line is that Darlin and the New York Times have done a disservice to consumers and have contributed to the undermining of legitimate marketer's efforts to educate consumers to use the opt-out link. 

Read the New York Times article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/business/20money.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Recently Gold Lasso has been receiving a large influx of sales leads from the not so usual suspects in email marketing.  The diversity of leads range from the local flower shop to an oil and gas driller.  One major thing these atypical email marketers share is that they are completely clueless about where to begin.  They are baffled by the efforts involved with list building and maintenance, legal compliance and content development.  Many of them just want to cut corners and "blast" their way to success.  It's the old mentality that most experienced email marketers went through in the late 90's.   There is one very interesting trend that can be decifered from the surge of newbies entering the industry.  Commercial email has become so mainstream that consumers are starting to expect it from businesses they interact with on an daily basis.

What scares me is that legitimate commercial email has become so commonplace, the value is driven down by shear clutter.  Just as you know it's time to sell your stocks when your mailman told you he bought into the market, is it time to shift away from email?  Nah!  It's too addicting.

Another year in email marketing is almost gone and the good guys' battle against spam has barely made a dent.  Black lists, content filters and challenge response are all a joke to spammers.  Ninety-nine percent of spammers are never identified because of their uncanny ability to hide behind hijacked pc's and servers.  As an email marketer, the only real silver bullet to combat spam is the unified use of SPF or Sender Policy Framework.  SPF is a simple string of code attached to a domain that forces an email sender to be identified hence there is no place for spammers to hide.  The biggest issue to using SPF in the battle against spam is getting network administrators to implement it on their DNS (Domain Name Service) in addition to them not allowing email to enter their network from a sender who has not implemented SPF.  Two very simple things that need to be done in concert. 

However there is a dirty little secret among domain registrars and DNS providers.  This dirty secret is the simple fact that many of them do not support SPF. 

2007 is going to be a lull for deliverability and email marketing in general is going to suffer.  I think that network admins will be so fed up dealing with spam that there will be a quiet revolution to push DNS providers to support SPF.  Once this happens these revolutionary network admins will be able to implement it causing a chain reaction down the network admin pyramid forcing broad-base implementation.