For years, BtoB email marketing has lived in the shadow of its larger sibling, BtoC email marketing. The volumes traditionally have been smaller, and the sales process usually more complex, so it can be tough to measure an ROI directly from an email.

One of the best BtoB marketing companies out there is Texas Instruments. MarketingSherpa recently did a great case study of how TI consolidated its databases and centralized its global email marketing under the guidance of Email Marketing Manager Leona Green. We've had the privilege of working with Leona and her team for years, and MarketingSherpa did a great job capturing their challenges and successes.

With leaders like TI, I believe BtoB email marketing has the potential to become one of the "big new things" in online marketing in the coming years.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In a recent conversation with an anti-spam advocate over the best way to stop unwanted messages, he suggested to me that all the challenges in his industry and mine would go away if emailers would only double opt-in all their recipients.

It has been a while since I've heard this argument, but it's not surprising that it came up again. It's a very logical point of view, and it would seem almost foolproof. The problem is that it doesn't always work.

In my book, "The Quiet Revolution In Email Marketing," I cited a ClickZ article that suggested double opt-in failure rates upward of 50 percent. In other words, for every 10 people who sign up for a double opt-in based permission email newsletter (or promotion), only five will actually complete the process. This kind of drop-off can undermine even the most successful email programs and begs the question: Why do so many people fail to complete the process? Here are some possibilities:

• The actual confirmation email isn't sent out immediately. By the time someone receives a confirmation, the person has forgotten all about signing up or has decided he or she no longer wants to be on the newsletter list.

• The recipient doesn't recognize the "From" field. In the past especially, a lot of double opt-ins would come from auto-responder systems that didn't allow the brand of the actual marketer to be displayed. So recipients would get a strange message and be unsure of what to do with it.

• Recipients have been trained never to click on anything in a message. I've spoken to people who are so concerned about phishing and Internet security that they won't click on anything in an email--not even a link to verify their permission.

All these reasons may be valid, but I believe the largest driver of failed double opt-ins is spam filtering. A recent article by Ken Magill of Direct online magazine brought this home, and it's worth reading if you've ever considered using a double opt-in. To summarize, a very legitimate mailer found its opt-in confirmation messages being blocked by an ISP spam filter. This is more common than most ISPs want to admit, but this particular case was worse than most. It turns out that some malicious person was providing a spam trap as their opt-in address. And, of course, the confirmation was then sent to that spam trap address, completely convincing the ISP's spam filter that the marketer was spamming.

The bottom line is that double opt-in is a powerful approach, but it's not a cure-all. On the positive side, I recall one of our clients using double opt-in to reconfirm a list they'd inherited, and the overall response rates were very high. On the negative side, malicious users, aggressive spam filters and poor execution all can combine to make double opt-in a problem. And, in my view, the only way to make customers even angrier than sending them unsolicited email, is NOT to send them the critical email updates they went out of their way to request. There's no easy answer for these challenges, but I'd love to hear from folks out there who have had strong experiences either way with double opt-in.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In its usual great job of uncovering interesting facts and sharing them with marketers, MarketingSherpa has just released its latest information about how online consumers are viewing their email.

To find out whether BtoC email marketers should be designing for preview panes and image blocking like their BtoB counterparts, the research firm recently surveyed more than 1,300 email users age 18 and over. It discovered a couple interesting things.

One is that preview pane usage is on the rise. As the major ISPs and email clients upgrade to newer versions offering preview panes, nearly 40 percent of consumers have now been exposed to them, and nearly 27 percent say they have begun using them by default. I think this growing availability and adoption across demographics probably stems from the fact that active content, such as ActiveX, is always disabled, making preview panes much safer to use.

Somewhat surprising to me, MarketingSherpa also found that fewer than half of online consumers surveyed routinely block all images. Based on how many ISPs and email clients now block images by default, I would have guessed this number to be higher.

So what does this all mean? In a nutshell: Creative really does matter, particularly for BtoB marketers (where an estimated 70 percent of recipients use preview panes). Great design and layout are essential to the effectiveness of a message because it must be able to function whether seen in its entirety, or confined to a preview pane and/or with images disabled.

As Silverpop's 2006 "Email Creative That Works Study" revealed, response rates go clearly higher when message elements like logos and links are easily viewable and actionable by recipients.

MarketingSherpa's report is filled with interesting and actionable information, and I encourage you to check it out here. But hurry. Free access only lasts until Feb. 26.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Internet security site Dark Reading has a great article about seven common mistakes legitimate companies make when sending marketing email that can lead to their messages being falsely labeled as spam. Whether you’re a new or experienced sender, I encourage you to check it out. How is your company doing?

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you send email in the United Kingdom take note. In an effort to fight spam, the U.K. recently put new laws into effect that require companies to disclose sender information in their transactional and other commercial email messages.

Extending a law covering traditional business communications to include email, the UK Companies Act Amendments of 2006, which took effect January 1, require companies incorporated in Great Britain and overseas companies that operate in Great Britain to disclose the company name, where the company is registered, the registration number (if applicable) and registered address in their transactional emails. The amendments also require senders of non-transactional commercial messages, such as marketing messages or e-newsletters, to include the company name and a valid physical postal address in each message.

The new rules could prove challenging for the significant percentage of British companies still struggling to comply with the 2003 E.U. Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. While there is some ambiguity regarding exactly what's covered by the new regulations, the Email Sender and Provider Coalition is counseling in favor of including the required information for all email-based marketing and transactional material. You can read more in this BizReport article, and in this ESPC member briefing (PDF).

Posted by Bill Nussey at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)