One of my absolute favorite things to do is to spend a day with a bunch of email fanatics. I'm pleased to report that the U.K. has more than its fair share of email fanatics (and visionaries). We put together a great agenda, and the audience seemed to be engaged throughout the day. We had some great speakers -- too many to mention them all. But I thought I'd highlight a few who stood out in my notes.

Analyst Nate Elliott of JupiterResearch kicked off the day with some great research and observations on the E.U. and U.K. email marketing landscape.

One of my favorite Brits, Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx, did his usual smashing job talking about email analytics and best practices (he's also spoken at our U.S. customer conference). A few of his more notable ideas:

• Measuring "clicks per clicker" (total clicks / unique clicks) will tell you how relevant your content really is. If you're getting fewer than 1.5, Dela says you need to do some work.
• If you are struggling to come up with creative newsletter content, consider lists. Dela says recipients love "The Top 5" type lists.
• His research shows that the more you can stuff into an email subject line, the better your results will be -- even if some email programs cut part of it off.

P.S. I also had the privilege of previewing the results from our recently completed study on email creative. I believe this is the first study of its kind to use such a rigorous analytic method. Keep alert for a formal announcement coming soon.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just returned from a great trip to Europe. My primary reason for going was our London-based annual customer conference (more to come on that later), but I also used the opportunity to talk with marketers from a variety of countries.

A few quick observations:

• SMS is still an active discussion but, from a purely anecdotal observation, its momentum into the marketing world doesn't seem quite as furious as it was last year. It's clearly way ahead of the U.S., but most of the billboards and ads I saw featured Web URLs and relatively few SMS calls-to-action.
• It's popular to say Europe is X years behind or ahead of the U.S. in email marketing, but the more time I spend there, the less I think this comparison is appropriate. I saw some brilliant, sophisticated campaigns as well as some very basic stuff. I'm beginning to think that the sheer volume of companies in the U.S. may account for a larger number of emerging cutting-edge case studies, but that the actual percentage of sophisticated marketing within the two markets is probably about the same.
• We surveyed a few hundred marketers in the U.K. in connection with our conference, and I was pleasantly surprised at how large many of their lists are. Given the relatively smaller population of the U.K. compared to the U.S., many have amassed some impressive lists.
• Just as in the U.S., the conversations were largely the same wherever I went: deliverability, life-cycle marketing, Web analytics, integration, etc.
• The competitors are largely the same, but those who are perceived to be leaders and followers varies a lot between the U.S. and the European Union. I won't flatter any of my competitors by naming specific companies here <grin>.
• There are a surprising number of regional competitors in the E.U. -- both country-specific as well as pan-European. It will be interesting to see if they are able to penetrate the U.S. as successfully as the U.S. ESPs appear to have penetrated Europe.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Reader Dean Collins posted a comment on my recent entry about why email marketers love the "unsubscribe button." He wonders if perhaps too much is being made of the unsubscribe button, and asks why marketers view it as an improvement over an unsubscribe link in a message. Thanks for your comment, Dean. A few thoughts:

• The unsub button is always visible and is the same for every mailing, regardless of sender -- no more searching around to find the link at the bottom of the message.
• The unsub action will be a single click -- much easier than the clicking to open a Web page, confirming you really want to unsubscribe and then hitting submit. Some opt-outs are even more complex than this.
• The unsub button will only appear if the sender has a good reputation. ISPs will not endorse the old spammer trick of using an opt-out request to confirm the existence of a "live body" on the other end -- only authenticated senders with good reputations will be able to have this link activated. For end users, this means that the link will always work.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Try wrapping your brain around this: short-term permission.

As marketers, we are so anxious to build our lists that we grab every opt-in we can and hold onto it forever. But what if we tried something new? Some products clearly have short-term buying cycles. Think about mortgages, car buying, or insurance. You usually only buy these once every few years. Why do marketers force opt-ins that last forever?

What would happen if the car site's opt-in clearly stated that it would only last for three months? I would love to see whether the opt-in rate would rise -- I'm betting it would. First, prospects wouldn't have to endure mailings long after they've made a purchase. Second, the mere fact of saying that it's short term is likely to add a huge degree of credibility and show customer-centric thinking. I suspect many people would opt-in just to see what would happen.

Some well-designed control group testing should show whether this would work. If any of you have ever tried this, or decide to give this a try, please let me know how it works out.

P.S. For good measure, add in the opportunity for a permanent opt-in on your last few messages to see if you can capture those buyers who have a longer-term interest.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wanted to take a quick pulse on the world of RSS and marketing. How is it doing? What's its future?

eMarketer recently published an article that suggested that RSS is much-ado-about-nothing: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004127

It's surprising to me how often the low consumer awareness of RSS is used to suggest that RSS isn't being used. Most consumers have no idea what SMTP, HTTP and SSL are but that doesn't stop them from using email, surfing the web or buying things online. The fact is awareness does not equal adoption. We've all read last October's Yahoo!/Ipsos study (PDF) . Even though it's a bit out date now, it highlights the fact that consumers' adoption of RSS is well beyond their awareness.

A more upbeat view of RSS comes from Rebecca Lieb's recent Sept. 8 column in ClickZ. She cites a wide range of innovative uses of RSS. Her list blew me away in terms of the diversity and innovation of some of these applications. Without a doubt, RSS is a key component of a lot of innovation that is going on across the country. As consumers adopt RSS (even if they don't know they are doing so because they use Yahoo! or Google or Outlook) to get at these innovative feeds, their ability to be marketed to through those feeds and others will only increase.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A colleague recently forwarded me the interesting results of a new email marketing survey conducted by Internet Retailer. Not surprisingly, the survey reveals that retail email continues to represent a great value proposition for marketers.

The survey was mailed in early August to subscribers of Internet Retailer magazine's e-newsletter, IRNewsLink. Of the more than 400 online retailers that responded, 73 percent said they spend 5 percent or less of their marketing budget on email marketing. Yet more than half said 6 percent or more of their sales come from email marketing, and more than 25 percent said they get more than 11 percent of their sales from email marketing.

Retail email marketers appear to be doing a good job with relevance as well, reporting strong overall open and click-through rates, and significantly higher conversion rates compared to a year ago. While nearly a third reported no change in email sales conversion rates this year compared to last, 20 percent said sales had improved by 5 percent, and 7 percent said sales had increased by more than 10 percent as a result of better email marketing.

Most respondents (57 percent) have opt-in lists of fewer than 50,000 names, although 10 percent have lists of more than 1 million names. Nearly all (92 percent) said they expected to increase the size of their opt-in lists within the next year. And nearly half of those said they planned to grow their lists by as much as 50 percent or more. They also anticipate conducting more frequent, but segmented, email campaigns. Judging by these results, online retailers have a lot to look forward to as they move their email marketing programs forward in the coming year.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)