WhiteNoise

Think Globally, Plan Locally and Panic Internally

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:32:08 GMT

Not Insightful, Just Practical
by David Baker , Monday, June 9, 2008

I get continually caught up in the complicated world of online marketing, looking for all the hooks and ties to a customer experience and what really drives what. In many respects this can be a meaningful exercise, but in the world of most email marketers it's a daunting challenge. The phrase, "Think globally, plan locally and panic internally" comes to mind when I think about the email marketing teams out there.

After spending the last few months at most every email marketing trade show, I'd say one thing is consistent: there are many more people that know about and have worked in email marketing -- and yet, most of us can implement so little of what we have in mind.

The very first column I wrote for MediaPost years ago was "Making the Complex Simple." Life in marketing is exactly that, distilling the complex into a manageable plan.

In email marketing that doesn't mean you think only about testing subject lines or what opt-in is, it means go to the core of why your customers want to receive email. The original value proposition your company provides is the key to simplicity. We tend to get carried away with messaging strategies and triggered email and forget about the simple art of communication.

Where to start is a difficult question these days. Most everyone reading this has or has had an email marketing program for years. The varying needs are so disparate that it's virtually impossible to give 101% on all you need to do. The cookie-cutter approach is fine. As evidenced by the "Marketing for Dummies" series, everyone wants a simply stated approach to work from. Very few can begin with a blank piece of paper and create from scratch, including me.

The funny thing about our practice is that there are so many areas to improve. It just starts with generating motion. I think some of the key principles of my first column still work today.

Here are five key guidelines to help you (and your e-mail program) keep it simple:

1. Be clear about your goals. Keep objectives to a maximum of two to three per campaign. Any more and your program will become muddled.

2. If there isn't a measurable value on an action, question it. Every step is measurable, including what your vendors are doing.

3. Only test what you are able to act upon. Why measure today what you can't change tomorrow? Stick with what you can measure and adjust to achieve greater results.

4. Quantify response -- both in cost to attain and cost to manage.

5. Stick to a six-word return on investment. If you can't state the return on your program in six words, it's too complex.

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

Doing Email the Small Business Way

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:32:04 GMT

Doing Email The Small Business Way
by David Baker , Monday, June 16, 2008

I LOVE TO SPEAK ABOUT and solve complex business problems, love multichannel marketing, love analytics, and find it fascinating to dig into the operations of email programs in large corporations. At times, I lose sight of how simple email marketing is, how inexpensive it can be--and have to rationalize how email can really support a small business. Going back to the core helps keep you honest and realistic. It's easy to slip into a world of higher budgets, resources and issues, and forget about how to truly drive value in the digital world.

I was reminded of this after watching a small business focus group last week. Their business issues are the same; how do I talk to customers; how do I speak to them en masse and not seem too impersonal; do I merchandise online, and how efficiently can I do it? The tools they have at their disposal are not that different, but I guarantee you they won't spend 3% of their marketing budget on email marketing as a first priority.

A few things are important to the small business:

The List: Have patience; it doesn't grow overnight. Think "Drip Irrigation"--this is even more important for small business owners. But do think about what you want to do with your customer and prospect information, and if email is one of the answers, be respectful of the source of the information. In today's world, you can ask them whether it's okay to send them information about your business if you get a business card. Do add a "sign up" for your email list on your blog and/or site. While it may not get traction initially, it is the foundation, and you'll thank me in a year. Just as you do with prospect lists, don't keep everyone on your list forever. Do an "interest" check once a year, and try to keep this list as real as possible. Bigger doesn't mean better.

The Plan: Everyone needs a vision. The small business owner should start with the most obvious reasons to communicate and commit to one or two a year, and the rest of your communications can be 1:1. My personal belief is that the most contextual time of year to infuse a marketing message through email is consumer holidays or local activities. Pick a holiday that is celebrated with local events, and craft an email that highlights your business and how you are involved in this event. Do this several times a year, and you'll find these types of promotional/announcement programs have amazing loyalty and readership values for your business. Just remember--there are only four justifiable reasons to use email in marketing:

To Notify about your business or an event
To Educate or provide information about consumer interests or requests
To Promote your business, specials, public relations
To Foster your community, or build advocacy for your business activities.
Outside of this we are just arguing semantics.

The Tools: There really isn't much of an excuse to not use a third-party email tool these days. I can do email for less than $50 a month for a small list, and I can look about as professional as most. There are a multitude of tools, templates and guides on the Net that make this really simple. But don't believe you are automatically a creative artist when you aren't. Use templates, and use what's already created and then customize it... There is no sense in trying to recreate the wheel. If you are like me, a blank piece of paper is exactly that--I don't have the creative vision to create from scratch, so why try?

The Message: While I listed reasons to communicate, Rule #1 is to keep the message simple. You may have a lot to say and have a hard time getting it all out, but don't let your first email to your consumers (regardless of how much editorial value you think you have) be a 700-word essay. Be brief, and try to reflect the voice that represents your business. It's okay to use a little humor, a little personalization; email has become such a natural conversant channel for us that you don't need to be as formal in marketing communications. Think about your favorite email programs today and look closely at the tone that is trending.

The key for a small business is to use email as a bridge to your business, events and staying connected. Email is the only channel that enables social networks so much that as your social network grows, your frequency of communication increases. No other channel fosters this type of communication value. It's not meant to replace your phone or grassroots approach to your business, but it is a vital tool for virtually any business.

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

7 Habits of Highly Effective Email Marketers

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:32:00 GMT

7 Habits Of Highly Effective Email Marketers
by David Baker , Monday, July 7, 2008

WHAT A GREAT METAPHOR TO discuss email. Stephen Covey has long reigned as one of the core pioneers of self development and time management principles. As such, I'm a firm believer that the email space can benefit from the core principles of the "7 Habits" series. You must first realize that your paradigm (the way each person sees the world, essentially your "lens"), may be diametrically different from that of many of your counterparts and customers you are trying to reach. So, take these metaphoric analogies with a grain of salt.

Habit 1: Be Proactive. The premise is simple. It's more than taking initiative, it's about accepting responsibility and making choices based on principles rather than moods or circumstances. In online marketing it's really easy to take the easy road without putting much thought into email marketing planning. Target a list, send an email and you're done. But to evolve, you must not skip the planning stages and the opportunity to try new things.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind. My favorite phrase translated for email marketers. If you don't develop a mission statement -- where you want your program to be -- how on earth will you ever get there? It can be simple as list growth, it can be centered on "reach," or you can draw from "engagement" and look to find transitional points in the customer engagement cycle that you can track to. For each, you should develop a finite end point toward which you can build and communicate broadly.

Habit 3: Put First Things First. Arguably, the first and most important element of your program is your "list." It all lives and thrives from there. It grows and evolves and is the core asset of your practice. Growth should outpace attrition. You'll have a constant battle reaching everyone every time, but protect each consumer that comes in and respect this asset as if your business depends on it, because it does. Think of how you attained this permission, how you'll respect it and how you'll build value in it over time.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win. Think of the people on your team who do SEO and SEM, who buy media, work with affiliates, who keep evolving your Web site. You have an impact on them all, but you have to find reasons to build value in what you do and translate that into a win-win scenario for these other parts of your business. You are part of a family of interchangeable parts, and attribution is non-exclusive.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Most don't understand what's involved with email, but if you try to tell people who have never managed a list, staged a campaign or tried to run analysis on 25 domains, that email is hard and valuable, it falls on deaf ears. You should find a common understanding of results and attribution, but understand it means something different to each person. If you don't understand what drives your business and your dependent groups, you will never be understood and never be heard.

Habit 6: Synergize. This isn't about compromise; it's about growing out of compromise. In our world of online marketing, we can call this optimization -- the trade-offs of time, budget and ideas. The consummate marketer has to find creative ways to manage with today's budget, but build and grow for tomorrow. This is only done through the development of many ideas, the irreplaceable desire to try new things and take risks. If I had an idea for every excuse I've heard for not achieving results, I'd be a very wealthy man.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw. I continually challenge my team to learn and grow. The only way you'll increase your value to your organization is through self-growth and development. You must continually challenge yourself to learn. Email is only one small element of the marketing mix, with some of the most essential principles you'll need -- but it's up to you to develop yourself. Try reading new books outside email marketing (we all say the same things in those books anyway). A good one you should pick up is "Chasing Cool" -- you'll love the ideas and case studies, and it does a soul good to think "ideas," not execution.

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

Loyalty Marketing

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:31:54 GMT

Loyalty Marketing
by David Baker , Monday, July 14, 2008

WHAT IS LOYALTY MARKETING TODAY? Over 75% of the consumers we know and love participate in one or more programs (Source: Jupiter). Our parents' loyalty programs were simple programs with simple rewards: you buy something, and there was a degree of personalization in the product buying experience. Today virtually everyone has a credit card they are building points on, an airline, hotel, rental car, book club, coffee shop, but most of the larger loyalty programs were driven from service-based businesses with perishable products or services. Today, it is confusing to define a loyalty program.

There are loyalty programs that have no redeemable value (Source: Yahoo Answers). But there is no denying the value of a loyalty program. One study, "Exploiting the Installed Base Using Merchandising and Category Destination Programs," showed that loyalty in a "baby club" increased the sales of products by 25% (both average order value and store traffic).

I asked my team a few really broad questions, not only to see what they knew about loyalty programs and their personal experiences, but how they'd frame their arguments when creating such a program. In the marketing world, one size does not fit all, yet how you justify your hypothesis is almost as important as your idea. Here are the questions I asked and some answers from the team:

What are the keys to a great loyalty program?

Good customer service
Create a value exchange between the business and the consumer -- the only way perceived value and loyalty make the connection
Does not deflate the value of the brand through arbitrary discounting and rewards
Keeps users informed of their "status" and how this translates into experiences (rewards)
Creates buzz within social circles
Provides lots of opportunities to redeem (quick wins and long term)
Provide unique services and/or experiences
All great loyalty programs should appeal to the identity of the participant
Should create some form of exclusivity

While the list can go on for days, there is a fine line between what is a reward, and what is a loyalty program.

We can all associate with some form of a loyalty program today, be it an airline, shopping, dry cleaner, coffee club, book club or running/biking club. Do they create long-term value and keep us coming back? As we evolve Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 (whatever that is), has the traditional sense of a loyalty program changed -- or will it? Will it become more expensive to administer a program that rewards your best customers and prompts them to buy more often, or are you simply giving away margin?

The next question I asked the team was to project all the trends that are happening in the interactive marketing space and tell me what they felt the future of loyalty programs would be.

Making the customer feel they're still getting personal attention when we get increasingly digital.
They will be very niche and appeal to smaller groups rather than broad appeal.
They will be time-sensitive and have a more concrete evolution as customers dive in and out of your business/consumer lifecycle.
Loyalty will not be measured not purely by satisfaction or volume of spend; it will be measured by profitability and reach. The cost to acquire, maintain and channel preference will be a stronger prediction of loyalty than spend patterns and customer satisfaction scores.
They will need to be more differentiated based on past spend and behavioral patterns.

While there is no denying that loyalty programs have value, do they have long-term value -- or are you simply bidding for the highest spender? There is no denying that members of loyalty programs spend more than traditional customers, but it the spending pattern due to this loyalty program -- or are big spenders traditionally migrating to programs that have rewards so they can reward their own spending patterns?

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

When to Send Email

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:23:42 GMT

The Right Moment To Send An Email
by David Baker , Monday, July 21, 2008

TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY? WHEN is the right time to send an email? That may be the right question, but is the answer what you are really looking for? This is probably the most widely asked question that email marketers will face. People used to be fascinated with time of day and day of the week; now that we are well over 15 years into email marketing, I see less credence in these industry surveys of 1,200 respondents that try to help you answer this broadly.

There are several ways to help answer this question.

Leveraging behavioral insight and customer segmentation is a must. When consumers opened the email, the delay between view, and some form of response (site visit, click-through, registration, order) are all valuable data sources -- but if you can't get such factors as site visit depth, duration on site, how many visits to site from first email to last, and isolate them to a subset of high-value and high-invest segments, it's meaningless in mass.

Over the years, we've tried about every tandem of cadence and timing, and I've found one thing that has remained constant: consumers are easily conditioned to good things. I've always been a big proponent of keeping newsworthy or community-centric content to a consistent cadence and timing. The email inbox is not like the mailbox. We know when the electric bill or People magazine will arrive. Consumers do expect certain types of email to be there at certain times, but the best day of the week is an amazingly dynamic thing that continually changes, and optimizing it can be elusive.

I have a scenario for you; see if your opinion of this question changes.

You send an email promotion on a Wednesday at 7 a.m. EST, and 95% of your respondents interact within 24 hours. This day has historically trended higher than any other day of the week (in terms of response and number of orders). After testing the difference between a Wednesday and Saturday, you find that while you have a 20% difference in performance between the two days, 30% of two of the highest value customer segments buy on Saturday rather than mid-week. You also see a consistent trend in AOL that trends higher on Saturday -- and within that segment, you have a higher average order value and a larger concentration of high-value customer segments. While the aggregate campaign performance proves you are generating more business results by sending on Wednesday, you may have more traction with high-value segments on the weekend. So, what do you do?

-You could personalize the delivery of this weekly promotion to the purchasing trend of the consumer. - You could send a promotion on both Wednesday and Saturday and hope to maximize both worlds ideally.

What if this changes by time of season or nature of promotion or some influence from your retail front (increased media promotion, new keyword buys, television promotion, POS promotion)? Do you factor these influences into your story?

The point of this column is not to tell you when to send email. It's to point you in the right direction toward applying a more accurate view of measurement, what influences can impact this behavior and the results of your email program.

Ideally, email should do several key things with every program:

1.Drive increased performance, which can be defined many ways financially (increased sales, increased profitability). 2.Influence a condition (increase purchase frequency, increase average order value which can translate to increased customer loyalty). 3.Build a credible story behind your results that is translated by key customer segments behavioral changes (customer segment A has this trend, and these factors influence purchase, and customer segment B relies more heavily on the site to support purchase decisions).

There are a million stories we can tell with each campaign, but only a few that stick. Build your hypothesis and results to last.

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

It's that time of Year (Media Post- Post)

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:10:22 GMT

I RECALL NOT LONG AGO when people in the email marketing business complained there were not enough focused events that highlighted email. I was at a conference just recently and there were a total of 12 people in the email marketing session track, but if you went to the room next door on Facebook it was standing room only. We just finished up our client summit, and we hosted a Performance Lab that highlighted all the great innovations in the space. My Email Solutions group was one of those highlighted groups. I felt like a vitamin salesman at a candy shop. It's really hard to extol the values of a channel that doesn't demo well in a three-minute conversation.

To be really honest, there really isn't anything cool or particularly innovative about email today. In the company of surface display technology, mobile marketing, and social media, email marketing or generally eCRM is pretty low on the "cool" meter.

With that said, we are at that time of the year when MediaPost hosts its Email Insider Summit, and a few hundred marketers, agencies and service/technology companies will come together on a resort island to talk about what's happening with email marketing. I like where the industry and activism is going these days. There are a lot more people talking, writing and speaking about email's place in the marketing mix, yet I'd like to see those discussions reach a little deeper.

Every time we program these insider events, it makes you reflect on what we do well, what we don't and what do we need to address as an industry. The email industry is somewhat like the search industry; it's pretty exclusive. Everyone can buy keywords, that's not that hard to understand, nor is understanding the basics of setting up your site for search optimization -- but the few and proud who consider themselves search professionals know there's a lot more to it than what meets the eye.

Advocacy/Thought Leadership: While there are more people talking about email, and certainly a lot more people who know email marketing and the technical sides of delivery, these are pretty isolated discussions on many levels. I'd like to see the conversations go broader. I belong to many email lists and some are good technically, some industry wise, but I have yet to find one that looks at email's place in an organization and tries to bridge those discussions to search, display advertising, offline marketing, site optimization. Who's open for a broader marketer's discussion of email's place in an organization? I fear it's too intimate a discussion for many to participate, but ut would certainly drive my interest.

Innovation: There just hasn't been a lot of cool innovation in email. If you want to fill up your room at the next conference, don't title your program "Best Practices in email marketing." You'd better get creative and find better containers for your story, with titles like "Email's influence on social media" or "Using Email to enable your social influencers."

I think all the perceived innovation will be in this area, and there are so few people in our space talking about it. Today it's about direct marketing, tomorrow it will be about enabling social influencers through email. It's the new viral that many of us for years tried to incorporate into all our email programs with little success.

I'm also beginning to change my view of mobile email; I just don't see where innovation will affect what we do today. While the mobile consumer is a hot subject for many businesses, I struggle to see the next generation of this and what impact email will really have on a three-inch viewing device. I don't think everyone will own an iPhone, so I believe mobile email is simply a tool of convenience, not persuasion and commerce. Your level of permission will have a new dimension that will change how to assess value and performance to your business.

Look forward to seeing you at the conference this week. If you don't attend, we'll certainly blog about it. Stay tuned!

Shop.Org Study Shows Healthy E-Mail Metrics

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:53:47 GMT

Shop.org Study Shows Healthy E-mail Metrics

Apr 8, 2008 11:59 AM , By Ken Magill

E-mail to house files is the No. 1 marketing tactic used by online retailers with 92% saying they use it and 93% saying they plan to give it higher priority in 2008, according to Shop.org’s State of Retailing Online 2008: Marketing Report.

And it’s no wonder. The metrics speak for themselves.

According to the study of online retailers with average house files of 2.8 million names, an average of 50% of address holders on these lists have made at least one purchase from the retailers’ Web sites.

Also, retailers in the study said an average of 52% of their customers have opted to receive marketing e-mail from them, just 6% opt out annually, their average click-through rate is 11%, and their average conversion rate defined as percentage of total click throughs is 4%, the study conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of Shop.org said.

Not surprisingly, e-mail to house files is also one of the least expensive tactics in terms of cost per order, with an average CPO of $6.85 at an average dollar value of $120.27 per order.

The only online marketing tactic driving lower costs per order was “new portal deals,” with an average cost per order of $5.41 and an average order value of $42.50, the study said.

Comparatively, paid search delivered sales at an average $19.33 cost per order with an average dollar value of $109.17 per order, the study said. Also, affiliate programs average cost per order was $12.24 and average order size was $122.51, according to Shop.org.

Meanwhile, the most popular e-mails retailers use are transactional, with 95% of online retailers saying they send e-mail to confirm product shipments and 94% saying they send purchase confirmations via e-mail.

Meanwhile, though marketers have long given targeted e-mail high marks, relatively few have yet to do it.

Though 73% of those who said they use the tactic rated sending customized e-mails based on customer behavior or purchase data as “very effective,” just 42% said they do it, according to Shop.org.

A somewhat higher 58% said they segment e-mail files based on stated preferences and purchase data. Of those, 67% rated the tactic as very effective.

In the same report, Shop.org predicted online sales excluding travel will hit $204 billion in 2008, an increase of 17% over last year.

The top three categories will be apparel at $26.6 billion, computers at $23.9 billion and autos at $19.3 billion, according to The State of Retailing 2008 Marketing Report.

Online commerce is expected to account for 7% of all retail sales in 2008, and will top $300 billion in five years, the report said.

The survey was conducted in February and March by Forrester Research. The effort resulted in 125 complete and partial responses across a variety of industries, according to Shop.org. Thirty seven of the respondents had been operating online for nine or more years, 24 said their online sales were more than $100 million a year, and 50 said the Internet was the primary channel of interaction with customers, Shop.org reported.

Merkle: View from the Inbox

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:47:53 GMT

Interesting study produced by Merkle on the behaviors and opinions of consumers on permission based email. While I love these types of studies, I caution this as a market view of behaviors with such a small sample size (2,000), so take it with a grain of salt.

You can view a copy by following the link:

http://www.merkleinc.com/user-assets/Documents/WhitePapers/ViewFromThe%20Inbox2008.pdf

How to reach Mobile Audiences

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:43:20 GMT

Chapell & Associates' president explains how to reach mobile audiences.

One of the most cited features of mobile phones is just how personal they are. Mobile devices are frequently used, rarely shared, and often carried with consumers wherever they go-- a recipe unmatched by most other forms of media. But just how adept are mobile marketers at using personalization?

Marketers are interested in leveraging the personal attachment consumers have to their phones in order to serve more relevant and personalized messaging. And mobile users in turn seem open to personalization-- whether it's personalizing ring tones, wallpaper or other features. Mobile marketers are betting that given enough targeting this desire can be extended to marketing campaigns as well.

For this to work, though, mobile marketers will have to know something about mobile users. And collecting user data -- as we all well know -- can carry with it important logistical, legal, and privacy challenges. I recently spoke to a number of mobile marketers about these issues, in order to obtain perspective on where mobile marketing is today-- and where it's headed in the not to distant future.

Collecting mobile data
Most experts envision three different categories of mobile data. The operative word here is envision-- it doesn't appear that anyone in the space is currently leveraging all three forms of mobile data.

First there is demographic data-- the same information that fuels most traditional direct marketing programs. For example, Mike Baker, CEO of Enpocket, described how his company has developed an ad server whereby Enpocket's clients can "take any info" they may have already collected about their customers -- demographic or otherwise -- and "use it for targeting."

Secondly, there is transactional data-- information about the products customers have bought from a particular retailer. Mobile technology provider MobileLime has recently partnered with retailers, including an upscale grocer, in order to provide their customers with targeted discounts and special offers via SMS. This loyalty program was based on transactional data already collected by the grocer, with MobileLime simply providing the technology to reach consumers on their mobile devices. And the program has enjoyed some success: 64 percent of opted-in customers have used the program in the past year. This doesn't surprise Baker, who says Enpocket has found that "transactional data is much better for targeting than behavioral or demographic data."

And what about behavioral? Online media types have been actively using behavioral targeting for several years now-- but in the mobile world it remains somewhat theoretical. Even so, mobile marketers have interesting ideas about how behavioral data could be used in mobile marketing.

For example, explained Andrew Stollman, president of mxFocus, behavioral data collected on (non-mobile) internet sites can be used to target those same consumers on their mobile devices. For example, he says, mxFocus runs on an online portal where they collect the online activity of opted-in internet users. When these same users are on their mobile devices, the information collected on the portal can be used to "determine which ads to show and when to show them."

Other mobile marketers agreed that using data from multiple marketing channels is an effective way to target mobile advertising. Alfredo Narez, VP of marketing for Air2Web, described a similar program his company designed for a major credit card company. But collecting data on one channel and using it in another can present some additional challenges, including some issues around consumer acceptance. Although optimistic about mxFocus' portal, Stollman noted that only 10-12 percent of the portal's users have opted into receiving mobile advertising.

Tom Burgess, CEO of Third Screen Media, thinks that the issues related to using data from multiple channels are going to become increasingly pertinent. Part of reason, he says, is that mobile marketing actually encompasses four different channels-- messaging, mobile browsing, mobile applications, and mobile video. This makes data collection all the more complex. And effectively collecting behavioral data, Burgess argues, would mean that "you'd probably need to be working in all four channels."

Can't forget about the carriers
No discussion of mobile data would be complete without a word about the mobile carriers, such as T-mobile, Verizon, and Cingular. There's something of a consensus that the mobile carriers are the ones that will be able to drive the market. First, they hold what amounts to a mountain of subscriber data. Second, the carriers currently have enough influence over the mobile space that pretty much any new mobile marketing technique or technology will have to meet with their approval in order to succeed.

Mobile carriers, however, have often been reluctant to use the data they have-- even for their customers' benefit. The carriers know all too well that customers tend to blame them for -- well -- just about anything that negatively impacts their mobile experience. Ruby Pan, VP of business development for adhoc mobile, a CPC based ad solution for mobile applications, notes that mobile carriers are "very concerned about doing the wrong thing and alienating their customers."

Moreover, there are limitations placed upon how carriers can use customer data. The section of the FCC's rules related to Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) governs how carriers can use customer information for marketing purposes. In general the CPNI rules don't allow data collected for non-marketing purposes to be used for marketing-- unless the carriers obtain consent. Since much of the data held by the mobile carriers wasn't originally collected for marketing purposes, the carriers would have to proactively opt-in each of their subscribers prior to such use. Not doing so would put a carrier at risk of significant fines from the FCC.

Lastly, the carriers are still trying to decide what their role should be in all of this. Are they going to remain service providers, or will they ultimately take a more active role in content and advertising? If the carriers do choose to move away from the service provider role, the amount of control they will ultimately be able to maintain is just about anyone's guess at this point.

The bottom line
Part of the reason that mobile marketing was able to take off in Europe was ease of integration with the carriers. Things have been a little more complicated in the U.S., and significant logistical challenges remain-- but the mobile industry is well on their way to addressing these issues. As mobile marketers continue to do so, they may begin to make good on the promise of personalized marketing.

Of course, many different marketing techniques -- from email to behavioral targeting to CRM -- have promised advertisers that elusive one-to-one relationship with their customers. Why should mobile fare any better? First, mobile marketers are showing a real willingness to focus on "doing the right thing." By emphasizing user opt-in, being aware of legal requirements (such as CPNI), and learning from past examples of where things went wrong, mobile may have a better shot at success. And second, armed with the right data, mobile marketers seem ready to make ads relevant to individual consumers. If you're not already working in the mobile space, this may be as good a time as any to take a look.

Alan Chapell, CIPP, is president of Chapell & Associates. Read full bio.

What's wrong with Email Today

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:40:21 GMT

What's Wrong With Email As A Marketing Tool?
by David Baker , Monday, April 21, 2008

THIS TITLE SPURRED EITHER ONE of two thoughts: "Oh my gosh, there may be some cool tips buried in this column" or "About time someone got on the bandwagon and beat this shameless channel down". Either way, there are some fundamental things wrong with email as a tool today.

I previously used Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a metaphor to illustrate that email is so pervasive in our lives it is used to satisfy some of the most basic needs a human has. No, we won't reach out for email if we are poor and starving on the streets. What stuck with me from last week's comments was that I received such varying responses about where email fits in marketing and its value to people in general. The rest of the arguments about whether email can actually help facilitate a plan to fulfill a primary need are irrelevant.

What makes it so cool to work in email, is the fundamental acceptance of the channel by the masses. It wasn't long ago that I wrote, "We know email has arrived when my mom asks to opt out of my viral jokes." It's become so ingrained in our work culture, personal management and intrudes on even the most personal events in our lives. How many of you are reading this on the way to work? Have you answered email in bed last night, in church, in a restroom -- or have you complained about the small screens and type pads on the smart phone because it's hard to control when you're driving a car.

So, let's not argue about the value of email in simply managing our lives day to day. We can argue about tactics, about how much budget should be spent -- and we can even argue about whether we think email promotes a purchase or is simply a nuisance to your customer. But let's move past this and focus on what's wrong with our channel.

The root cause of our problems evangelizing the values of the email channel is YOU -- yes, YOU, the marketer, the person who makes an excuse for not improving what you do today. I often say this tongue-in-cheek, but it's true. Most people that I meet who ask for help do so apologetically when referencing their own email programs. Email has a disconnect from the mainstream business and can get so buried into a tactical run that it's difficult to make the connection to the rest of the world of marketing that surrounds it. Its voice is small, its impact is sometimes not believable, yet we all embrace it as the No. 1 marketing and communication channel.

Key to gaining share of voice in an organization is spin and attribution. Attribution is hard to sell internally and externally. It's hard to enforce with your partners and marketers, unless you find a common ground to communicate, and have common measurement frameworks that end at a common point. I still have the hardest time getting very analytically driven media strategists to understand email's value to a business, or even its value to front-end acquisition channels. They know attribution, they know ROI, but they don't make the connection between their media channels, search and Web and email. Vice versa, email marketers don't make the connection to the front-end and back-end of how the other online groups work. So spin is critical to gain a platform for building momentum in an organization.

Next is learning to spin what you have to gain in influence and momentum. My greatest challenge in an interactive agency is building momentum, knowing full well that 99% of the people I influence probably won't ever have the desire to understand the email or even eCRM to the extent my team will. Yet that doesn't mean I can't get them to start or include the email discussion earlier in the planning process. Doesn't mean I can't get involved in measurement and program design earlier, and show how results can be amortized cross-channel, cross lifecycle and extend into an infinite number of potential value attributes.

What's wrong with our channel today is not what we write about in these columns week in and week out; instead, it's the lack of movement in one of the most stable, consumer behavioral phenomenons that we will ever see if our lifetimes. To me movement is striving to stretch what we do today, looking for innovation amidst the chaos, trying to make the connection with our other channel brothers and sisters in a collective effort and forming actionable opinions. Life and profession is about hit and miss, and if you aren't taking shots every day, you aren't living.

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

Maslow and Email Marketing

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:39:17 GMT

Maslow And EMail Marketing
by David Baker , Monday, April 14, 2008

WE ALL LIKELY KNOW MASLOW'S hierarchy of needs theory -- usually reserved for sales training to understand the state of consumer needs and how they apply to consumer decisions.

I used to teach sales training early in my career. It was a hard pill to swallow, to have a 25-year-old teach a 45-year-old sales veteran about Maslow and how to read customers through a sales process. Not sure that many get that deep when contemplating consumer communication strategies. We usually think we understand the consumer state and what drives "reasons to believe." Yet if email is a notification agent, an influencer to purchase and change, an educational and motivation outlet and a promotional tool, shouldn't you consider the customer state and how email can influence drives to satisfy needs?

I'll use Maslow's hierarchy to talk about email programs and where they fit in helping consumers fulfill needs.

Self -actualization: This is the desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming. People who have everything can maximize their potential. They seek knowledge, peace, aesthetic experiences, self-fulfillment, and oneness with God etc... The email programs that come to mind when I read this are: Sports and Fitness, Nutrition and Diet, Cooking, Religious... I tend to think the string of emails we get with motivational stories of religion are motivated by this need to share.

Self-esteem: There are two types of esteem needs, self-esteem and esteem from others. The gaming and fantasy leagues pop out when I think of this. They play off of competition, the need for recognition and the need to belong.

Love and belongingness: The need to belong to groups, communities, religious groups, gangs, etc. -- I haven't yet seen a gang-related newsletter, but with email the consummate social networking vehicle, the niche newsletter market is littered with community-centric new-related email. Today you have your children's schools sending out newsletters, your churches, not-for-profits, and companies are on the verge of numbing their workforce with too many e-newsletters.

Safety and security: This is tied to the need to establish some norm, control or consistency in a chaotic world. We need the sense of security in home and family -- and much of what motivates us is protecting these things we cherish. Think utilitarian now and recognize that a bulk of email we get appeals to this level of need. Life insurance, home mortgage, financial planning and every product or service related to death, disability and natural disasters are all targeted at this level of awareness.

Physiological Needs: These are very basic needs such as air, water, food, sleep, etc. When these are not met, we can feel sick, irritation, pain, discomfort. These feelings motivate us to satisfy these needs as soon as possible to establish homeostasis. I can't seem to find a connection to email that helps people satisfy this. If we are sick, hungry or uncomfortable, it's highly unlikely we'll open up that inbox. But if I had to reach, I'd say the fast food industry keys on this need with coupon-driven promotions.

With Maslow's model, needs feed off of each other. The theory is one cannot move from one level of need to the next without satisfying the prior levels. If you are hungry, you won't worry as much about home and safety, and if either of these needs aren't fulfilled, you will likely not worry too much about a sense of community or belongingness. Self-fulfillment and self-actualization are advanced states that we play off of as marketers. The new car, the new house, the great clothes, and the need to live in a great community are both needs tied to recognition and the sense of "I've achieved."

What makes this so fascinating from a behavior side is, there are thousands of email programs that we belong to that play into each stage. The million-dollar question is, are we truly helping people satisfy these needs, supporting the migration between needs -- or are we thinking so internally that we don't even consider the consumer state and what change we can make? Even better yet, are we looking to response and changes in our consumers as these needs are met?

Great communication strategy begins with needs and translates them to value and channel.

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

YourSpace may be your inbox too

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:16:49 GMT

When people think of social networking sites they usually don't consider e-mail as part of the equation. However this will soon change, especially in light of recent announcements for upgraded social networking sites by Yahoo and Google.

To meet the needs of investors who don't want to miss out on the "next Google or Yahoo" but are cautious of being overconfident about a Web phenomenon that is not yet proven, MySpace, FaceBook and the others will be forced to become inbox providers in an effort to increase revenue.

Based on this information, it is ironic when pundits declare that social networking will bring the death of e-mail. Social networking relies on e-mail for viral marketing and alerts. Based on the wide adoption of social networking sites over the past few years, coupled with the fact that the average user is increasing the amount of time spent on these sites, it is only natural for social networking sites to include inter-network e-mail as part of their service offerings. Get ready for MySpace, FaceBook and Linked-In to compete with Google, Yahoo and MSN for the inbox.

A recent study from Datamonitor reports that social-networking sites will enlist 230 million active members by the end of the year and will keep attracting new users until at least 2009 and plateau by 2012. Datamonitor predicts Asia Pacific will account for 35% of global social networking users by the end of this year, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa (28%); North America (25%); and the Caribbean and Latin America (12%).

Anyone who thinks the messaging systems in social networking sites will completely replace general consumer e-mail is simply not being realistic. Analysts, pseudo-journalists and bloggers have recently predicted consumers will dump their inboxes in favor of communicating through the likes of Facebook and MySpace, precluding e-mail marketers from reaching their customers. This is simply not so, based on the fact that if a user wants to open a Facebook account they need an e-mail address.

In 2008, I predict social networking sites will open their networks to become the new inbox providers of choice for ages 25 and younger. Instead of e-mail marketers trying to fight their way into the inboxes of Yahoo and Hotmail users, MySpace and Facebook will become the new gatekeepers of younger generations. E-mail is a daily time consuming ritual that can't be ignored by online advertisers. And as social networking sites gain a larger share of advertising budgets, they will need to guarantee visitor time. Therefore e-mail must be included in social networking's repertoire of services that are cannibalizing market share from AOL, Yahoo and the rest of the old guard.

As with all communication platforms, there is evolution and a natural progression for advertising revenue. MySpace and Facebook already have the infrastructure and these sites will need to become open for people to stay on the site. This will create a challenge as e-mail marketers look for ways to reach the under 25 set, a differ demographic in any marketing medium.

The argument to counter my prediction is that younger—and even some older—generations are spending less time in their inbox and are using social networking sites and SMS to communicate with friends and family. Social networking message systems and general email will become synonymous as MySpace and Facebook race to increase ad revenue. Don't get me wrong—eventually e-mail marketers will have to contend with sharing some of their budget with similar mediums such as SMS. However, budgets will stay relatively intact as the demand for the ability to send messages directly to anyone in the world won't go away anytime soon.

We often have short memories when it comes to Internet media and how it evolved into today's landscape. We forget that the first widely adopted online social network was AOL. In 1996 you could share pictures with friends, post on message boards and hang out in chat rooms all within the confines of AOL's proprietary borders. It too started with a closed network messaging system but demand to communicate with people outside its network forced it to become an inbox provider. Once AOL tore down its virtual wall the unthinkable happened. People actually spent more time engaged with e-mail giving them the opportunity to sell more ads. If the commercial Internet's short history has any bearing on today's "Web 2.0" revolution, history will recycle itself through social networking's lifespan.

Elie Ashery is president of Gold Lasso.

Link to the original article at CHief Marketer: http://chiefmarketer.com/Channels/online/yourspace_yourinbox_0319/

Email , Build, Buy or Rent an email delivery system

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:11:53 GMT

TODAY'S COLUMN IS THEMED with the Webinar that Datran Media and Avenue A|Razorfish are hosting tomorrow, March 18, entitled "Email Delivery Systems: Build, Buy or Rent?"**

I've written several articles on this subject since 2005. One article was entitled "How to Select an Email Service Provider"; another, "Email Isn't Free." Each spoke to pieces of the decisions marketers are facing today in choosing the optimal technology for their consumer-facing email. I am in the process of writing an article for OMMA magazine that goes into more detail than this column allows, but it speaks to the types of messaging systems available:

Enterprise Messaging Systems - tied to Content Management and Campaign Management Systems.

Point Solutions - tied to specialized business messaging needs (call center, market segments -- i.e., not for profit).

Specialized Email Marketing Systems - tied to the core ESPs that Jupiter, Forrester and Marketing Sherpa classify for the marketing space.

A drive to improve capabilities has emerged as more and more businesses try to embrace the emerging social networking space, as well as needing to consolidate the view of the customer and the specialized purposes for which their business uses email -- ecommerce, support, information, marketing, compliance, lead management, channel management.

Will an impending recession curb the RFP craze that hit the industry in the last three years? I don't think so. The exercise of an RFP is valid for a business, if done for the right reasons. Taking an organizational view of your business needs, prioritizing your requirements, evaluating your present vendors or technologies and looking at new capabilities and how they are used by competitors -- or like marketers -- is a fantastic exercise. Where this falls short is when companies tax the vendors with unrealistic expectations for response or don't communicate their intentions well. Many companies will NOT switch partners unless there is a compelling reason to, and most don't communicate this clearly in the RFPs, thus leading vendors on. This misleading approach only makes it harder and more expensive for everyone else.

Additionally, marketers typically don't run these RFPs at a high enough level, taking into all considerations. I've seen several otherwise well-done RFPs run into the executive chopping block because the execs couldn't see a compelling reason to invest in a switch. That, or the person administering it couldn't create a compelling enough story to take on the risk.

There are considerable risks to switching platforms today, related to disruption in operations, issuance and whitelisting of new IP addresses (no, you don't get to keep your old IP address, it must be registered by your new hosted provider), and the general unknowns.

I will confess, the No. 1 reason most of my clients and colleagues in the space have considered new providers comes down to one simple term: support! Most do not feel their ESP is supporting them well enough to meet their needs, or don't feel their IT team is responsive enough.

In the Webinar, we'll take a close look at how The Weather Channel leverages internal delivery systems to enable its most critical consumer email, notifications, and product-related email, but utilize a hosted service for their marketing promotions. We'll also look at Live Nation and talk about how it leverages internal systems for ticket and commerce-related email, as well as a hosted ESP for its marketing efforts. I will also talk about several RFPs that we ran this year -- and some of the factors you should consider during this process in order to get the most out of the vendors you ask to respond.

It should be a good panel. If you're at OMMA Hollywood, as we do this panel from the floor, stop on by and say hello. Our session is at 5:00 p.m. and Dave Hendrix of Datran Media, Bob Frady and I will happily answer any questions you have about this process.

Good hunting!

Things you shouldn't do with email

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:52:42 GMT

The E-mail To-Don't List Before you hit send, check for violations

By: Gil Schwartz, Illustrations by: Raymond Biesinger

0 Comments | 9 Recommended

1. Don't thank me. If you're my boss and appreciate something I've done, that's cool. Otherwise, bag it. I hate being thanked, particularly with a “thx.” And don't copy me when you thank someone else, either, unless they saved a little girl from a well or something. I'm busy dealing with the other 150 e-mails I got today.

2. Don't involve me in a CC circle jerk. Some people think out loud on issues of moderate import for 300 e-mails. And I'm in on all of them, because some doofus copied me on e-mail number one. E-mail should be used to inform, to resolve an issue, to end a conversation, to pass along a job, or to get out of something minor, without the need for personal interaction. But don't use a toothpick to dig a hole.

3. In fact, don't copy me on something that's just going to annoy me. If something is going wrong and you need to unload, be a man: Call me. Otherwise, you're using the electronic bypass to avoid my 18-wheeler as we trundle down the information superhighway.

4. But don't forget to copy me if I should know about it. That's right. I'm inconsistent. Figure it out. Knowing when to get people involved and when to leave them out is a basic management skill.

5. Don't make me think about anything for more than 15 seconds. Send me 12 long single-spaced paragraphs and I'll send you the bill for a bump up on my bifocal prescription.

6. Don't expect a response to every e-mail. I don't expect you to answer me all the time, either. I put the letters NRN—no reply necessary—at the end of most of my e-mails. It cuts down on “Thx” and “Will do” and “No problem” replies from people who think I want them.

7. E-mail is perhaps the least congenial forum for anything funny, dire, or personal. Unless you're an Oscar-winning screenwriter, play it straight. No sarcasm. No emotions. Anything really worth saying should be said on the phone. Or in person.

8. If there's an article with my name in it or a picture of my dog humping a fire hydrant, send it along. But sucking up with pointless "thought you might like this" e-mails is crying wolf: Next time you send one that really matters, I'll be that much more likely to ignore it.

9. Go easy on the CC field, especially when you're venting or playing politics. The jokers you copy won't always read to the bottom of an e-mail chain, and if a circle jerk gets started (see rule 2), you could be looking for a new job.

10. No dirty pictures. Except, you know, really good ones. Even then, make them safe for work. Hot women spotted on a business trip? Okay. Jpegs from sluttynurses.com? Not okay.

11. Unless you're indispensable, don't get too personal. Sure, the EVP of Human Resources is e-mailing his wine broker 20 times a day, but selective enforcement of laws is what totalitarian states are all about.

12. Business language is English. Weird gizmotic lingo is for MySpace or AIM. We're at the office, man.Write like a smart person, not a vowel-challenged moron.

13. Don't be too boring, though. With close business associates, you may toss in a random "Dude," even. People like to be called dude, especially stone square pegs in Accounting and Finance. It makes them feel like hipsters.

14. Don't become a zombie. It is now possible to conduct virtually your entire career like a boneless homunculus, basking in the glow of a computer screen. But come on. It's nice outside. Give it a try. Oh yeah, and . . .

15. Leave your BlackBerry at home when you go to the beach. And turn it off at night, too. You have other hardware that needs attention after hours, don't you, Dude?

Webinar Invitation: Build, Buy or Rent and Email Delivery System

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:16:15 GMT

You should definately try to attend this webinar as we'll discuss the decisions involved with replacing, licensing, installing or building your own email delivery system.. . A couple of solid marketers will give their opinions of their world's today and how they use a multitude of systems to deliver critical email for their business.

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=105763&sessionid=1&key=1020621563F14E761B725456E8AB01E5&sourcepage=register

Avenue A|Razorfish Digital Media Outlook Report 2008

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:37:09 GMT

Another great production by AARF... Download it and see for yourself.

http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/reports/RegOutlook2008.html

Trigger Messaging (Media Post)

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:35:44 GMT

How To Develop Good Triggered Email Programs
by David Baker , Monday, March 3, 2008

THE PERFECT EMAIL IS ONE that is relevant to the consumer. Right? It's timely, in context, well-rendered and provides some sort of value. We don't often think of mass mailings as the perfect email. Even with dynamic content and segmentation, this relevance is hard to achieve.

For 10 years-plus, most resort to what we love to call triggered messaging. You get a response from the Web site when you sign up, purchase something, change your status, refer content to another. Today, with the rise of social networks, trigger messaging takes on a new breed. You are deluged with email from your social-networking site "in times of need." That can be in the form of notices from friends looking for jobs, new business opportunities, updated profiles, new content, new music, new events -- the list is endless.

The basis for it is flawless behaviorally driven communications. If you are like most professionals, belong to many feeds, several personal and professional social networking sites and have been reading the bloglines about digital marketing, you hear it and see it first hand and feel it everyday. Effective communications is a challenge. We've abused the phone and email. For marketers, it's a challenge to have less control over syndication. It wasn't too long ago that most organizations challenged the concept of viral content, since they would lose control of the "message," "frequency" and potentially relevance. Today, it's about syndication rather than control, and it's getting a bit out of hand.

Still, there are things marketers can control in this frenzy of communications: triggered email messages. Loren McDonald says I don't like to talk about email 101 very often, so let's take a step back into the basics of what and why a triggered message works.

1. The first step is to identify the potential behavioral events that you'd like to trigger. If you have a lead generation process, a commerce site or simply a functional content site, you have site, sales and customer events. All have many opportunities to deliver a message to your customer.

2. Once you've identified the "events," develop the business rules. This includes audience, the rules that govern this communication, including content and potentially frequency rules.

3. Develop a measurement instrument and hypothesis for the value of each message. Do you want to measure it? If so, how will you measure the impact? There are many gaps in technologies in trying to roll up reporting for triggered messaging. It's not as simple to look at response metrics as it is traditional email campaigns if set up improperly. One company I know has 450 event triggers. Imagine trying to roll up that report on a regular basis.

4. Develop a design system that brings continuity to your message and builds on the experience, creatively. If you are an image rich company and rely on text only triggered messages, reconsider your approach. Should your design system match that of your site, brand, product, stage?

5. Put values on each trigger event in terms of value to the consumer and objective based requirements. There are some messages that have to go out, and some that are optional. So ranking the triggers by priority is critical.

6. Develop a touch-point map to visually see how many touch points you have through email today. This will help you decide which triggers take priority, which you can measure, which can be used to help you understand the positive interactions with your company.

7. Understand your technical limitations. Some systems won't allow you to do anything advanced with content, targeting etc. Some are managed through several systems, so the ranking is important. It lets you know which messages bring the most value and any limitations in delivering the type of message you want.

8. Implement a few and wait. Measure the impact of those new triggers before trying to take on the 30 of so you may have on your touch-point map.

The analysis can take on new life, but since triggered messaging affords the highest response rates for email, it's the best place to begin to do response modeling. And it doesn't take a fully staffed team of analysts to do it.

Post your response to the public Email Insider blog.

See what others are saying on the Email Insider blog.

David Baker is vice president of email solutions at Avenue A/Razorfish. Visit his blog at http://whitenoiseinc.com

Update on Baker Blog

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:17:52 GMT

I haven't blogged in a while and much of 2007 is simply a listing of my articles from Media Post and a few other pieces that I found interesting. I thought I'd add a few opinions of my own that you'll only get from Whitenoise.

= EEC event: I hated that I couldn't attend. Was a planned speaker and helped Jeanniey and group with the programming. Was alittle dissapointed in the organization of the from a speakers perspective. It was promoted fabulously and I had to give alot of credit to Jeanniey and her EEC team. While we can all criticize the event for little things like coordination or redundant tracks, it was put together with limited budget, staff and from what I hear it was a valuable contribution to the "circuit".. For those of us that spoke alot last year (3 Adtechs, DMA, 3 OMMAs etc..etc..), I was alittle burned out on hearing the same things over and over, but I heard from a few that there were a few sessions that reached out and pulled off some good dialog. So congrats for adding an email ONLY event and getting the attendance. Of course 1/2 were paying vendors, but that is what makes our industry, nothing is truely "client only" or "free" in this world.

= State of email marketing: I still see the same problems today that I've seen for years and not sure how we can help businesses climb out of the rut.. Email is managed by lower level people, attribution is not a clear cut picture, teams are limited and put on real-time schedules, so planning, monetization of the channel and budgeting are lacking all around. I live in a world of Interactive marketers where email is but a thumbnail in the basket of services. It's still the 74th slide in a presentation, often not thought about until after a site is built, but is the #2 or #3 thing that clients want to discuss when they bring us in. So, I still hold out hope that we can raise the attention, but we need more compelling stories about how it's been integrated with media, how acquisition blends to retention strategies, how we've added value to the other channels, how web analytics plays into targeting and optimization... it goes on.. the conversation needs to blend or we'll always have an isolated channel.

- Email Insider Event: I have been asked to be the programming chair for this event and hope we can raise the level for this event. It's been reserved for higher level executives and "big topics", as opposed to the DMA event that was designed for practioners.. Not sure it was really a practioners discussion as I sit on several lists that talk tactics that are soooo granular, I'm quite impressed sometimes.. But the EI event we hope will be even better this year with great topics, new speakers (new blood) answering real questions we need help with. Would love ANY ideas on topics that you think are topical for this event, we should begin planning in a few months. (send to david.baker@avenuea-razorfish.com)

More to come at another sessions...

Engagement

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:17:45 GMT

Four Different Ways Of Looking At Engagement
by David Baker , Monday, February 4, 2008

WHAT DOES ENGAGEMENT REALLY MEAN to an interactive marketer? This is the theme of our monthly newsletter (internal) from several of our thought leaders in search, business intelligence, advance optimization -- and, of course, email eolutions (my group).

SEO sees engagement as the balance of building a site that is SEO friendly yet with enough creativity and content that engages the consumer. The group talks about Web 2.0 and the use of blogs and forums as means of building keyword density or visibility to your site. They'll talk about SEO-friendly blogs like Google Blogger, Social Bookmarking: Digg Delicious, Reddit and Stumpleupon. They'll speak of microsites and the use of "unbranded" keywords and how important they can be in link building. Also, how content from RSS feeds can be picked up by search engines, allowing multiple URLs to be crawled at once. They'll talk about how companies are posting newsletters online these days as a means of adding indexable pages to their site. They'll talk about how Flash and Ajax are great content presenters, but how little value they bring to your sites ranking, since the rich pages aren't indexable.

The Advanced Optimization group sees engagement as the means of building an optimized "path" for the consumer to complete their task. Akin to user experience, but in a measurable way of testing landing pages, looking at path completion, form abandonment, and multivariate means of testing many elements along a single task.

The Business Intelligence group sees engagement as a method to behaviorally target a site experience and serve ads based on where you've been and what you've done. Engagement is not just about your site, it's about how people are exposed to your brand, business, and interactions on third-party sites as well. They'll speak about how you can measure site recency, frequency of visitation, pathing, visitation to key sections, purchases, downloads, session time and registrations and downloads. They'll talk about the art of understanding the customer state, test and control segmentation, creative optimization based on these interactions and how you should look at this past shear acquisition to the repeat site visitor in building onsite and on-network persistency to your brand and message through proper targeting.

The Email Solutions group, (my group) sees engagement as a means of building a connection between the consumer and your business. If I hear "send the right message at the right time to the right person" one more time, I'll take CRM out of my professional vocabulary. Engagement isn't just about message timing or targeting, it's about behaviorally understanding what connections your prospect, customer or business partner can possibly have with your brand through the email channel and the influence of each.

Your challenge, from a business perspective, is how to monetize this and understand how much stimuli and enticement is needed to create the most value for the consumer and your business. It's a value exchange. It includes all the elements listed by the other channels; building great sites, ensuring a consumer can find your site, enabling the social need to share content and experiences, fostering the conversion path so it's a seamless experience, while building marketing programs that optimize every interaction on and off site.

When collectively discussed, engagement seems so reasonable and attainable. If we all end with the same conclusion of what engagement means, then why do so many interactive strategies have so few connections between the channels? If you are confused as a marketer, imagine how confused your consumer will be, with disparate experiences that don't build on each other.

Testing 101

dbaker@whitenoiseinc.com (David Baker) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:17:34 GMT

Testing: What Do You Really Learn?
by David Baker , Monday, February 11, 2008

IN THE WORLD OF EMAIL marketing and marketing in general, everyone loves to discuss testing. It's usually the second thing out of a marketer's mouth when discussing email, outside of how often to send email. On the surface it seems quite straightforward: test a subject line here and there, maybe a different creative, maybe different offers to different segments. In actuality it is likely the most misunderstood practice in email marketing and the most poorly administered.

Here's my view of testing, how to break it down and how to develop a testing strategy.

Testing starts with developing a hypothesis and a log. Why? You can't optimize without a hypothesis of what you hope to achieve and a planned action behind it. Without storing a history of your tests or what worked and what didn't, you will likely recycle the same tests over and over again.

So, what are the things you can test, and why are they important?

-    Targeting - Which segments will perform best to existing promotions. Could be based on past purchase, customer state, value, product affinity, site behavior or simply cohorts that you've established.   This is the best area to test cadence, pull out a few customer segments and hold out a group; you'll see incremental effects of frequency on different customer segments.

-    Promotion - This can be reward or incentive, but testing variances in promotions is probably the most typical method of testing today. 20%, 30% off, free shipping, multiple purchase discounts. Many test this in simple fashion A/B style, primarily due to the complexity this can cause on different value segments and cadence.

-    Design - Obviously this is talked about a lot in the email world. Short versions, long versions, use of product images, text links, layout. This type of testing is best to do in a multivariate scenario, as it will save you a lot of time during the production crunch. The difficulty is isolating it to a few key elements that you can take forward into all your email communication streams. If you test a promotional email, will the learnings pass to your newsletter and triggered messaging? Depends on your hypothesis.

-    Subject Lines - As we all know, subject lines are the "context" for which the receiver decides to open the message (although the from address/name is important to "scanners" as much as "poll position" is). What do you test? There are essentially three main elements you can test: Brand-specific subject lines, action-oriented subject lines and benefit-driven subject lines, which can be combined to test infinite combinations. Add personalization to this and placement (front, middle, end) and you get an interesting testing matrix. It's critical that you log these types of tests, as they are often done very adhoc, which means that at the end of a year, no one can tell you the top winning subject lines, tests or approaches.

-    Landing Pages - Don't forget the destination!   Just because they clicked through doesn't mean they will do what you want. Landing page tests are best suited for multivariate testing as well. There are simply too many variables to test, frrm abandonment, form layout, sequencing of pages, and all the creative variables. Small changes can have dramatic impact on performance.

Testing isn't just about finding a winning solution, it's a process of trying to find the greatest variance in tactics and validating your hypothesis.

Most companies I know have tested A/B methods, some have tested multivariate, and very, very few even think about doing more sophisticated methods like Taguchi. Just remember, adding complexity to the test doesn't make it valuable, it just makes it a bit more efficient -- so if you have limited bandwidth, it may make sense to do less frequent, but more in-depth, testing a few times a year.

As I've preached for years, we don't test unless there is a prescribed action associated with the winning hypothesis; this includes even simple things like subject lines. Ask yourself, if "Your bonus offer is ready to view" performs better than "Get your bonus offer today" as a subject line test, what action will you take in response? Does it mean your audience is averse to directive statements, and you'll sequence the next few messages with more passive language?

Testing can be fun, it can be a lot of work, but your job as a marketer is to find the most efficient methods to build learnings about your customers and their behaviors with email.