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The 2010 Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season includes a lot of predictions based on activity in previous years, but those predictions are all relatively safe. Here are Chad White’s top five predictions:

1. Social and rich-media campaigns won’t get much traction after mid-November. Once we get into late November and December, folks are just too busy running around and fighting traffic and the weather to spend much time with social campaigns. Same goes for rich media like video. A couple of years ago when video was all the rage, email campaigns anchored by video content evaporated once we got into the core of the holiday season. Not only are folks too busy, but during the holidays consumers turn to email for discounts and gift ideas more than anything else. Play to the channel’s strength. 

2. Discount codes will become more prominent in preheader messages and subject lines. Discount codes are highly relevant to shoppers during the holiday season. Activity last year certainly proved that. So if you’re promoting a discount code, make it super-easy to find. Instead of burying it at the bottom of the primary message, elevate it up into a preview pane banner, into your preheader message, or into your subject line. I’ve been seeing a fair number of retailers promoting discount codes in their preheaders this year — and the next step up is the subject line. Especially during the Black Friday to Cyber Monday time span when inboxes are deluged, discount codes in your subject line could attract subscribers to your email over a competitor’s. 

3. “Share with your network” (SWYN) functionality will be used more strategically. Right now SWYN links are found in the headers, share bars and footers of many emails, which is fine in general. But during the holiday season — and especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when you’re likely promoting your best deals of the year — consider giving your deal a viral boost by adding another SWYN call-to-action right next to the “Buy Now” button. Make SWYN a strong secondary call-to-action, not an afterthought relegated to the margins of your email design. 

4. Designing mobile-friendly emails is more important than ever. With the rapid adoption of Android-powered phones and the continued adoption of iPhones — both of which render HTML email pretty well — the distinction between email and mobile email is falling away. Soon mobile email will just be email. Couple that with the fact that email is the No. 1 activity on smartphones, according to a recent study, and this market segment is becoming impossible to ignore. Make your emails more mobile-friendly by (1) using an informative preheader message and putting it ahead of “view with images” links and other preheader elements, (2) narrowing the width of your email template to 650 pixels or less, and (3) using larger font sizes to counteract the effect of your emails being scaled down for mobile’s small screens. 

5. At least 50% of retailers will send an email on Thanksgiving Day and at least 70% will on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With email volume per subscriber continuing to rise, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are pretty much at the saturation point. Last year, many retailers began their Cyber Monday campaigns on the afternoon of the day before, giving rise to Cyber Sunday. I expect that phenomenon to repeat this year, plus I expect Black Friday emails to spill over into what I’ll call Black Thursday (a.k.a. Thanksgiving Day). Similar to activity on Cyber Sunday, retailers will increasingly make their Black Friday offers valid on Thursday afternoon, looking to lock in sales before the crush of email on Black Friday. 

Courtesy of Media Post 

 http://bit.ly/bnsQBV

The new service is being rolled out to current users of Google’s Gmail system this week. It creates a two-tier inbox: one for ‘priority mail’; and another for the remainder of a person’s emails. Google will also retain its spam filtering system.

The internet search giant has come up with the priority system to help users cope with the amount of emails they receive in a day.

Users can switch on the feature in a click, instead of setting filters and creating multiple folders as they had to with previous services. Gmail will then adapt the way it treats incoming emails based on the account owner’s pattern of usage.

This will mean that email marketers will have to alter their approach to current marketing by following best practice to ensure their email reaches the priority inbox. Sending email based on data such as previous purchases will increase their relevance, meaning better inbox positioning with less competition.

So how do you ensure that you are a ‘priority’?

Well Google will prioritize emails according to whether the account holder will reply to a message. Marketing emails – especially those sent from “do not reply” email accounts – will be at a disadvantage. It will also deprioritise emails that are routinely deleted without being read.

This means that emails should be as engaging as possible i.e. segregating your lists, following design and HTML best practice and cutting out irrelevant ‘blanket blasts’ to everyone. It might mean emailing less. Make the content interesting and avoid spam words to ensure that your email hits the ‘pinbox’.

So preparing for Gmail’s priority inbox is actually an exercise in being a better email marketer. Smarter inboxes like this are becoming more common, and most of the major webmail players have made noises about this recently, so you need to ensure that you adapt your marketing strategy accordingly.

Even though Apple has refused to support Flash on their iphones and ipads, the opportunities are still endless. Sky have recently launched their ipad app, meaning users can watch Sky Sports live.

Below is just an outline of what an ipad could mean for your business and how it will change the face of email marketing forever.

Although the ipad is meant for personal rather than business use, it still has its relevance in today’s corporate world.  The benefit of sending emails to customers who have ipads (not that you would be able to get hold of this information) is that they are more likely to read the email. When at work consumers are busy working and replying to the more important emails, meaning your email often gets overlooked or seen as spam. However, this changes when the email is read on a device like an ipad as consumers often spend time browsing through their emails at a leisurely pace. 

The next issue is visibility. The preview pane in Outlook is small and people can only see the top of the email, which contains a header with the company logo and no real information, which doesn’t  convey your message well. Some webmail clients, such as Google Mail, Yahoo etc also disable images within emails. This helps to destroy your brand image and appears unprofessional. The best ones to test to ensure that the majority of your audience don’t experience any issues or irregularities in rendering are Yahoo!, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail/Google Mail and AOL. Test these periodically to ensure that email client changes and upgrades don’t affect your emails.Contrast all of this to the iPad. Images are displayed by default. The preview pane is much larger. This means that recipients be able to preview most of your email. There are also fewer distractions on the email client itself; Outlook has tons of sidebars, folders and options that not only take up valuable space but compete for attention with emails.

Another advantage from a technical point of view is that the iPad email client uses the same rendering engine as the Safari web browser. This means that if something displays fine in Safari, it will appear almost exactly the same in an iPad email. And Safari will display things almost exactly the same as Firefox, Chrome and, if you’re careful, the later versions of Internet Explorer. Since Safari supports HTML 5, so does the iPad email client. One of the main features of HTML 5 is the ability to embed images directly in the page. If the iPad takes off this could lead to a boom in video email marketing.

I would encourage all email marketers to get hold of an iPad and start testing. You need to see how your emails look on this new device and make sure that they are rendering correctly. This is just the beginning of how email marketing will change over the next few years so make sure you keep abreast of the latest technological advances and social revolutions.

Email marketing is relatively new to the marketing field. Keep this useful glossary to hand and your email campaigns will go with ease! 

Above-the-fold
The part of an email or web page that is visible without scrolling down.  Typically represented by the Preview Pane.

Bounce – Hard/Soft Bounce
A hard bounce is the failed delivery of an email due to a permanent reason like a non-existent address. A soft bounce is the failed delivery of an email due to a temporary issue, like a full mailbox or an unavailable server.

CPA (or Cost Per Acquisition)
A payment model in which payment is based solely on sales or registrations.

CPC (Cost per Click)
Rather than paying a cost per 1000 emails delivered, or a cost per response, some suppliers charge a sum for all the recipients that click through the email.

CPM (or Cost Per Thousand)
CPM commonly refers to the cost per 1,000 emails for distribution.

CPR (or Cost Per Response)
This term is used to track responses, where the desired result is not purchase, click-through or cost per number of emails for the campaign).

Click Through Rate (CTR)
The number of people per 100 (expressed in percentage terms) who click through to a URL in an email, banner ad, text or graphic, to view a specific web page.

Conversion Rate
This reflects the percentage of people converted into buyers (or whatever action is desired) out of the total population exposed to the conversion effort i.e. email.

Distribution (Gross)
The total number of emails sent as part of a single campaign/distribution to all (SMTP) addresses on the distribution list.

Distribution (Net)
The total number of emails sent and successfully delivered as part of a single campaign/distribution to all (SMTP) addresses on the distribution list.

HTML Email
An HTML email is perhaps the standard form for email marketing. They are rich with colour and images and contain embedded links, banner ads etc. Marketers have to keep in mind that some recipients do not want to receive their emails in HTML. However, HTML messages often pull a higher response than plain text messages.

Landing Page
The page on a website where the visitor arrives. With an email campaign, it can be the page to which the email directs user via a link.

Links
Text links, hyperlinks, graphics or images which, when clicked direct the user to another online location.

Open Rate
The percentage of emails opened in an email marketing campaign.
Opt-in (or Subscribe)
Where an individual has positively indicated that he or she wants to receive email marketing from your company.
Opt-Out (or Unsubscribe)
Where an individual requests not to be included on an email list i.e. unsubscribe.

Personalisation
The practice of writing the email to make the recipient feel that it is more personal and was sent with him or her in mind. This includes using the recipient’s name in the salutation or subject line, referring to previous purchases or offering recommendations based on previous buying patterns (like Amazon).
Preview Pane
Here you can see a snapshot of your message without fully opening the it.  It is important that you are aware of this and do not include images within the first 5-7 lines.

Privacy Policy
A clear description of a website or Data User’s policy on the use of information collected from visitors and including what they intent to do with the data.

Segmentation
This is where you separate your email list so that recipients get different content/offers based on their demographics, buying patterns etc.

Soft Opt-in
Where an individual is considered to have opted-in, on the basis that they have provided their email address during a sale or during the negotiation of a sale and other conditions are met, including that the individual was informed of how the information they provided would be used and were provided with an opportunity to opt out.

Solicited email or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email)
Where an individual has actively invited the Data User to send the individual commercial email.

Spam
Spam is random, untargeted bulk email where recipients did not request communications from that company.

Split Testing
When the list is divided into a number of discrete cells to allow for a robust test across multiple variables such as subject line or email design. To determine optimum response, response rates are measured for each cell.

Targeting
Selecting a target audience or group of individuals likely to be interested in a certain product or service. Targeted campaigns tend to yield greater responses and fewer unsubscribers.

Tracking
Collecting and evaluating the statistics allowing you to measure the effectiveness of an email or an email campaign.
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL i.e. web address) is a sequence of characters conforming to a standardized format, used for referring to resources by their location, shown in the address bar of a browser.
Viral Marketing
A type of marketing that is carried out voluntarily by a company’s customers i.e. word-of-mouth advertising. Tools such as send this page, article or website to a friend encourage people to refer or recommend your newsletter, company, product, or specific offer to others

Hi everyone

Just thought i would drop in and let you know that Nourish is now featured in the Email Guide’s directory so please post your reviews here http://bit.ly/csrusl

We’d love to hear what you think!

Don’t forget we are also on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter so don’t forget to follow us online for the latest news and reviews.

Thanks

Andrea

andrea@nouri.sh

Ensuring email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle especially with developments in spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Not all email is equally important to a recipient and so there is often a gap between email a recipient is happy receiving and email a recipient both wants and is expecting enough to complain about not receiving.

To ensure that your email deliverability is the best it can be follow these 7 steps

1. Verification

The number one step in the battle for deliverability is confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list. You can do this by using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the subscriber. They must click that unique link verifying that they own the email address and did actually request to subscribe.

2. Email Addresses

When asking visitors to subscribe, you should be asking for their “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Google or Hotmail. Free email accounts tend to be used far less.

3. Bounce Backs

Always remove undeliverable addresses as soon as possible. An address that consistently  bounces should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

4. Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and the difference between the two can be hard to distinguish. Always consider plain text emails too as deliverability failure is around 1.2% compare to 2.5% with HTML.

5. Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

• Advertising

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

• Language

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography.

• Images

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

• Attachments

Avoid attachments where possible by including a web link instead- where complete avoidance is not feasible. Many people are still afraid of the spread of viruses through opening of attachments.

6. Relationships

Where possible contact the ISP and let them know about your email service. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

7. Legal Practice

There are a number of laws relating to email deliverability. It’s important to keep up to date with current legal practice and you must make sure you periodically review your current practice to ensure legal compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link to remove the subscriber from future messages (which must be swiftly tasked).

While the recession is still in full blow online sales have gone up 15% to £50bn. Yet to really  secure  those sales retailers have found that they just have to go one step further and this time it’s personal!

Echo E-Business Management’s managing director Deborah Collier says “Personalisation gives any etailer the competitive edge. Branding is important but the ability to engage customers and understand them is crucial in tough times.”

Personalisation has been a hot topic for some time, helping brands improve one-to-one marketing, customer segmentation, up and cross-selling. But today, it’s all about predicting what the customer wants before they even know they want it and then making them think it was their decision in the first place.

One etailer springs to mind as a brilliant example of personalised shopping: Amazon. Each time you log in they suggest new books, CD’s or DVD’s according to your previous purchases. But personalisation is more complex than this.

Guy Westlake, senior product marketing manager EMEA at ecommerce provider Vignette, suggests: “The most cutting-edge technologies track customers’ actions on your site and build a profile of their wants and behaviours from there. Within one or two clicks on the site, you can build up a picture of the consumer.”

Three-step process

However, in what may be seen as personalisation heresy, Westlake explains that, as a rule, our behaviour is never that individual and even if it were, you could never give every single person exactly what they wanted. Instead, he advocates a three-step process:

• Use technology to harness the wisdom of crowds and understand your consumer to personalise the product offering. “It’s low cost, high return and has a short lead time to implement,” Westlake says.
• Personalise the online experience taking the lead from social networking. “Retailers underestimate that customers love talking to each other. They like to have ownership of brands and it creates advocates further along the loyalty ladder,” he reveals.
• Allow users to add their own further levels of personalisation. Westlake explains: “Sites such as the BBC’s draw users into the experience, create ownership of the online environment and make it a port of call rather than a sales channel.”

The biggest problem etailers face is people abandoning their baskets moments before checking out. One suggestion is to introduce a ‘Click to Call’ button allowing customers to talk through their purchase with an assistant. Customers feel reassured that they are getting the same level of service online as in store. Also, another problem is people spending a lot of time clicking through pages and abandoning the site leaving it inactive. One way to combat this is to include pop ups to remind the customer that they have un-purchased items in their basket.

Another problem is the log in procedure made simple by using Facebook connect- one click allows the site to use the data on Facebook to automatically create an online account- this speeds up the purchase process as this is where many people abandon their baskets.

Personalisation is now the new differentiating factor as retailers boost their websites and niche etailers pop up out of the blue. You want to stand out from the crowd- then make it personal.