Friends and clients of Silverpop know that we love to do studies. One of our recent projects was to review a random and anonymous sample of our clients' subject lines to find which characteristics drove the highest open rates.

We did some initial research to understand the trends behind open rates. What did we find? Only one thing seemed to drive a statistically significant difference in open rates. It wasn't subject line length. It wasn't the use or avoidance of certain words. It wasn't even the use of promotions or sales.

In fact, the only thing that materially affected open rates was the sender: the name of the company or person in the "from" line.

I've long been an advocate of Email Brand Value (EBV). I even dedicated a chapter to it in my book. But it was still a pleasant surprise to learn that EBV completely overshadowed everything other element of the subject line when it came to getting recipients to open a message.

I feel obliged to mention that these findings came from an initial review of the data. It's quite possible that the full study might have uncovered some additional drivers of open rates. However, the initial review was so clear that we didn't think it was worth completing the study. Also, to address some of the other studies I've seen on subject line attributes and open rates, I suspect the bigger impact of length and key words comes from email campaigns that are more about prospecting, and where there is no real brand relationship in place. Silverpop clients rarely do email prospecting / list rental, so we don't have data on how subject line attributes affect open rates.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Email Experience Council has come out with an interesting new report assessing the state of email metrics and bounce management. In a nutshell, the study reveals that senders vary widely in how they calculate key metrics such as open, click and delivery rates. The EEC says this lack of consistency hampers marketers' efforts to properly execute, measure and compare results across programs, providers or channels.

The report, “The State of Email Metrics & Bounce Management,” calls for a standardized set of metrics as well as common definitions and uniform practices, and says the next step is for industry groups, analysts and influencers to come together and establish them. You can read more about it in this article from DM News and this announcement from the EEC.

While I certainly advocate transparency of metrics, I would caution marketers not to go overboard trying to choose an email service provider based largely around its deliverability. I believe that most top-tier ESPs employ similar technology and have fairly consistent skills and services in areas like working with Internet service providers. In the quest for better comparative metrics, marketers shouldn’t forget that improved list-building tactics and more relevant content will go much further at improving deliverability than ferreting out the small differences in deliverability services between ESPs.

P.S. Silverpop makes all of its metrics calculations readily available for those customers that do want to dig into the specific calculations.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David Baker, of Avenue A/Razorfish, did his usual smash-up job at the Email Insider Summit. Along with his co-presenter, Gareth Morgan from Intercontinental Hotel Group, David raised the question of incremental value. To put it another way, if you do X, Y or Z to your existing campaign approach, what is the incremental value?

It seems like a simple question at first, but it really got me thinking.

Incremental value is a very simple yardstick you can use to determine which projects to undertake and which are not worthwhile. Presumably, the simplest metric for incremental value would be conversion revenue, but that doesn't apply to every email marketer. Open or click rates would work well in most situations if you don't have another key performance indicator already in place.

If each of the possible initiatives raises conversions by some amount, then you simply rank them by the incremental revenue relative to their cost. It's business 101. What I liked about the presentation is the way he applied this simple yardstick to some of our cherished notions of "better email."

• If you use an assured delivery service, do the increased conversions pay for the cost of the "stamps" or the annual license you purchased? As obvious as this question is, I'm surprised how rarely it's brought up.

• If you add RSS (my favorite Email 2.0 topic) to your outbound mix, will the increased audience and number of opt-ins pay for the incremental cost of the service?

• If you use behavior-based targeting, will the increased response add enough value to cover the costs and hours of using this advanced approach? Again, this seems to be an obvious yardstick. Most of the data suggests this technique offers tremendous incremental value, yet most marketers still don't apply it. (Note that 75 percent of the audience raised its hand when asked if it was using behavior-based targeting.)

Posted by Bill Nussey at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my previous entry, I shared one of my favorite case studies from my book. The online retailer eBags experimented with sending messages at a unique time targeted to each recipient. The results were amazing: the company was able to increase some of its metrics by almost 200 percent.

The technical complexity of timing messages individually required the eBags team to pick just one method for determining each recipient's timing. Team members ended up choosing opt-in date. So, for example, if a customer opted-in at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, they used the same time of day and day of week to send their campaigns. They reasoned that if someone had a specific time available to opt-in, they would have that same time available later to respond. Their results certainly confirmed this method.

eBags only got to try one method, but it hasn't stopped a lot of discussion in the years since. For example, would the timing of the last click-through or last open be more appropriate? And, how do you get around the problem of a static time? It's almost inevitable that someone's best timing in the summer will change in the fall. Schedules are going to shift. Obviously, the ideal approach would be constantly tune the correct time of day based on recent response data.

It's exciting to think about the response rate improvements marketers could drive if they had access to the open-minded technical team that eBags did. It's even more exciting to think about all of this operating at the press of a button -- no more work than scheduling a traditional mailing, except that the email system takes care of each recipient's individual time and constantly fine tunes it.

It would be nice...

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

I am in London this week visiting our office here and presenting at our first ever Advanced Strategies conference. We held an all-day conference for a wide variety of email marketers yesterday which covered everything from best practices to case studies to an email 'State of the Union' here in the UK. I walked away with a bunch of great insights which I will be blogging on over the next few weeks.

To kick things off, I wanted to share some of the great statistics presented by JupiterResearch's senior emarketing analyst based here, Julian Smith. Julian presented some of their recent research including:

- 25% of European users have opted in to some form of email program. This is lower than I would have thought but represents a big opportunity for the emerging email marketing community here to meet the growing demand. More interesting is that the opt-in rate varies widely by country with Sweden having the highest at 40% and Italy having the lowest at around 15%

- broadband continues to be adopted in Europe just recently rising above half of all internet households

- mobile phones are a huge force here. As the latest 3G systems are being deployed, JupiterResearch expects their penetration to increase 10X in the next 5 years. The 3G systems provide cutting edge data and multi-media delivery and are ideal platforms for marketers to use in communicating with consumers.

It was great to see Julian again and I heard several great comments from the audience about his presentation. Thanks for coming out Julian.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 03:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

DoubleClick recently released its Q1-2005 email metrics report (http://www.doubleclick.com/us/knowledge_central/). Its quarterly reports are often cited as good overviews for the overall state of the email marketing industry. Most of the numbers move in small increments over each quarter, but this quarter's report highlights some clear trends.

First, click-rates were fairly stable, dropping only a few basis points from 8.4% to 7.9%. These rates have remained fairly consistent over the years, ranging from 7.5% to 9.2%. Second, bounce rates have improved over the last quarter, 90.6% to 91.7%. This improving trend has been consistent for three years and most likely reflects the dual impact of improving spam filters (fewer false positives) and increased focus on deliverability by emailers. Third, and most notably, open rates continue their decline, dropping from 32.6% in Q4 to 30.2% in Q1. This drop has been pretty consistent since open rates peaked in 2003. While this last statistic might imply that people are reading less email, the consistent click-rates suggest otherwise. The most likely reason behind the drop is the increased used of image blocking in popular desktop and web email clients. (Opens are tracked by using small, invisible images. Blocking all images means open events can't be measured.)

Overall, the market continues to be in good shape, and some of the positive trends continue to support the efficacy of email as a marketing channel.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The folks at MarketingSherpa and AD:TECH published some very interesting survey results the other day. They polled the attendees of the AD:TECH conference on their preferred methods of interactive marketing. It turns out that, going in to 2005, email is their top choice. Despite all the challenges we email marketers face (filters, legislation, overflowing inboxes), email is the top choice for cost effective online marketing. This is a switch from 2004 when search engine advertising was #1. Like most everything from MarketingSherpa, this is worth a read.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:01 PM | Permalink