We were working with a client to help identify inactive subscribers – those who hadn’t opened or clicked on an email in many months.  The assumption was that these people no longer wanted to receive the email but just hadn’t taken the time to unsubscribe.  We were looking at various changes to the newsletter, and we were interested to see if we could learn anything from this group (e.g. why were they no longer interested in the content and what information might they find more useful) so we decided to send a small segment an online survey as a test.  The first question asked them to rate the value of the newsletter with the expectation that the newsletter would receive low scores.

The survey actually received a good response rate, especially given to whom we sent it, and the respondents gave the newsletter a surprisingly high rating (4 out of 5).  Also, interestingly, a number of people indicated that they hadn’t received an email from the company in long time. 

So, while there were certainly subscribers who were no longer interested in receiving the email newsletter, there were many that still wanted it but a deliverability problem may have been preventing the emails from getting to the inbox.  The overall deliverability to the inbox was very good for this email (as measured by a 3rd party monitoring service), but this information will allow us to work with the email service provider to identify whether there are deliverability issues that our 3rd-party monitoring isn’t discovering.

Therefore, unlike the situations where a friend was listing all of the reasons why a girl didn’t call him back and you had to have that difficult conversation informing him that she just wasn’t that into him, this was a situation in which she was (at least some of them were).

Businesses are always searching for ways to increase revenue, especially in difficult economic times like these.  Often, the suggestion is simiply do more of what is already generating profits.  Email marketing is especially susceptible to this rationale because it is relatively easy and inexpensive to implement compared to other options (e.g. direct mail).  For example, if one email campaign per month generates $50,000 then two campaigns will net $100,000.

However, not only can increasing the frequency of your email campaigns not deliver the expected revenue, but it can result in an increase in unsubsriptions and abuse complaints and a decrease in engagement, especially if you can’t provide relevant content or offers.

In one of his takeways from the 2009 Email Evolution Conference, Chad White recounted the experience of REI who performed a test in which they suppressed emails to non-clickers for 4 weeks, after which they sent them an email promoting REI’s anniversary sale. While the control group was sent several more emails over that 4-week period, the suppressed group (who only received the anniversary sale email) outperformed the control group by 4%.

Does that mean that everyone should reduce the frequency of their email marketing campaigns?  Of course not.  However, it is a reminder that the days of taking a ‘one-size-fits-all’ and one email blast approach to the entire house list should be behind us.  In REI’s case, the company may have identified a group of subscribers who had begun ignoring their emails because they received too many and sending fewer emails (at a lower cost) could achieve as good or better results.

Less can really be more – all it takes is a test (or a few of them) to find out.

When I was in high school, our teacher gave us an assignment to write a speech on a single 3×5 note card.  Even writing real small, it forced us to focus on the most important content and think about each and every word.  A recent study by Epsilon on subject lines reminds us to do the same with email copy.

Epsilon recently released the results of a study on subject line length which supports the generally held notion that shorter subject lines perform better (although the correlation may not be as strong as believed).  Shorter subject lines often do better for technical reasons as many email clients show fewer than 50 characters.  According to Epsilon, 57% of U.S. email recipients see only the first 38 to 47 characters of a subject line when making the decision to open an email.

However, as the Epsilon report notes, the focus on the subject line length itself can camouflage two critical factors for success:  word choice and word placement.  Given the variety of email clients and continued growth of people reading email on mobile devices, the number of characters of a subject line that is visible could be 25 characters or 65.  That is why it is key to place the most important part of your message at the beginning of the subject line and carefully consider each and every word.

Now that doesn’t mean you should never use longer subject lines.  There are many situations in which a longer subject line is warranted and will perform better (the report provides an example).  As such, it is important to continually test elements like placement  (e.g. Ends Today: 10% Off vs. 10% Off Through Friday), word selection (e.g. Ends Today vs. Last Chance), inclusion of your brand, and mentioning specific savings instead of a more general reference (10% off vs. Sale).

At the most recent Email Insider Summit, a panel of moms talked about how likely they are to just delete unwanted emails instead of reporting them as spam. This is relevant to email marketers because we can often look at statistics like unsubscribe rates and conclude that a low unsubscribe percentage indicates that there aren’t any issues with unwanted email.  However, as the panel indicated and others find, unsubscribing may not be the most likely action for someone who doesn’t want to receive emails anymore.  For example, JupiterResearch reports that 26% of consumers unsubscribe using the spam button.

While the more immediate danger is someone reporting your email as spam, which will negatively impact your ability to reach the inbox (many email providers make it the number one factoring in determining whether an email goes to the junk folder), having a subscriber continually deleting your emails isn’t good either.  At the point that someone starts blindly deleting your emails, the subscriber has become detached from your brand and you are not only wasting money sending to those subscribers, but still considering those type of subscribers as part of your core list could skew results and impact your ability to optimize your emails.

As a reminder, here are some of the best practices to avoid subscribers hitting the spam button or just deleting your emails without even reading them:

1. Use and adhere to a good opt-in process.  Sending to subscribers who really don’t want your email is an invitation to be reported as a spammer.
2. Ensure your content is relevant.  For each email sent, you should be able clearly identify what value it provides to the recipient.  Look at alternatives to the mass-blast approach.  Sending the same email to every one of your subscribers makes it more difficult to be relevant.  If you are doing it already, looking at using dynamic content, segmenting, triggered emails, multiple lists, etc.
3. Practice good list hygiene.  Don’t continue to send to subscribers who have disengaged.  If someone hasn’t opened or clicked on one of your emails in a long time (the actual period depends on a number of factors), remove them from your active list and consider some type of re-engagement program to see if you can recover them.
4. Make it easy to unsubscribe.  I know the tendency for some marketers is to make it difficult for someone to remove themselves from a list, but that type of approach will only cause problems as at some point, subscribers will start tagging your email as spam.
5. Don’t look at unsubscribes as the only measure of disengagement.  Realize that a decrease in opens and clicks could be the result of people simply just deleting your emails or marking your emails as spam.  Constantly be assessing whether you are providing something of value that will allow you to continue to keep your audience engaged.

While metrics are an invaluable marketing tool, they also can provide a false sense of comfort.  As an example, your email marketing delivery rate may not be telling you exactly what you need to know.

Email deliverability is obviously critical – if someone doesn’t get your email marketing message, they can’t read it and act upon it.  However, the standard ‘deliverability rate’ provided by many email service providers doesn’t tell you the full story. Often, the number of emails delivered that is reported only reflects those messages not rejected by an ISP.  The deliverability rate may only be reflecting issues such an inbox being full or an email address no longer being valid; it doesn’t tell you how many emails actually make it to your subscribers’ inbox. 

After the ISP (or corporate email server) accepts the email, it may still determine that the message is spam and place it in a junk or spam folder.  In a recent ISP email deliverability study (pdf), Lyris found that Yahoo sends about 26% of messages to the junk folder and Gmail and Hotmail send about 18% each.

You need to make sure you understand whether your email service provider reports on deliverability to the inbox.  If not, you have a couple of options.  One approach is to sign-up for email accounts with major providers (e.g. Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, GMail, etc.) or using existing personal accounts and then send your campaigns to those ‘seed email addresses’ in addition to your regular subscription list and monitor whether the email sent to the seed addresses are blocked, sent to the junk folder or make it to the inbox.  Another approach, which I recommend, is to use a service like DeliveryMonitor.com, Return Path, or Habeas to track deliverability to the inbox.  These services, which vary in cost and functionality, track and report deliverability to the inbox.  DeliveryMonitor, for example, is very inexpensive but still provides results across a large number of ISPs.

If you haven’t checked your inbox deliverability recently, now is the time.

First of all, in case you don’t recall the famous internal mantra of the Bill Clinton 1992 presidential campaign (It’s the economy, stupid), I am not calling anyone bad names. But like James Carville (a Clinton campaign manager), I think this issue is so important and still overlooked, that it doesn’t hurt to use a ‘hit you over the head with it’ type of phrase to emphasize the point.

While content still plays a role in spam determination, your reputation as an email marketer is, in most cases, now more important.  Furthermore, marketers need to realize that establishing and maintaining a good email reputation is as critical as preserving a good credit score.

If you don’t pay your bills for several months, your credit rating will take a hit and you could see credit card companies change your terms, have trouble getting new credit, etc.  You would be in danger of being labeled a credit risk.  Send a lot emails that bounce or have a significant percentage of your recipients report your email as SPAM and your reputation will suffer and you risk being seen as a spammer.  If you are pegged as a spammer, your emails, even if they are legitimate, will likely go into a spam or bulk folder instead of the inbox.  Needless to say, conversions from a spam folder aren’t good.

So, if you aren’t already focusing on your email reputation, what should you do?  More on that in the next post.

The FTC has approved four new rule provisions to the CAN-SPAM act, which created standards for sending commercial email in 2003.  From the FTC press release, the four issues addressed are:

1. an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;
2. the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;
3. a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”; and
4. a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

The full text (PDF, 312KB) provides a more detailed explanation of each of the new rules and some additional information including clarification on how ‘Forward To a Friend’ emails should be classified. 

For most marketers, these new provisions won’t have a practical impact on their email programs. 

The one exception might be the first item, which addresses the opt-out process.  An important best practice has been to make the unsubscribe process simple and straightforward, so I don’t except that a lot of marketers will need to change anything.  However, given the continuing importance of the CAN-SPAM act, everyone should review the new provisions to determine what, if any, effect it has on your email marketing programs.

Let’s say you have a subscriber who has decided that she no longer wants to receive your newsletter.  Do you want her to:

1. Do nothing in the hope that she will find one of your future email campaigns of interest, or
2. Click on the unsubscribe link

Because the cost of emailing to that subscriber is pennies (or less), many marketers automatically think that #1 is the best answer.  It’s not.   Subscribers who no longer want your email can be much more expensive than the actual incremental cost of sending her an email.  

Obviously, you want to do whatever you can to provide truly engaging, useful content to your subscribers.  However, once a subscriber has decided that she doesn’t want to receive your emails anymore, you really do want her to click on that unsubscribe link.  Why?

Today, people are increasingly clicking on a report spam button or link instead of the unsubscribing when they want to stop receiving your emails.  There are doing this because many email clients (especially ones like Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail) make it very easy – the spam button is usually more prominent than the unsubscribe link. 

Those spam reports hurt sender reputation (whether ISPs or spam filters think you are a legitimate email marketer or spammer) , which is one of the most important, if not the most important, factor that determines whether your email will go to the inbox, be caught in a corporate spam filter, or go directly to the junk folder. 

So, don’t just review unsubscribe activity but also look at how people on your list are interacting with your emails.  If someone hasn’t clicked-through on one of your newsletters in six months, they aren’t providing much value and they could be costing you.  It doesn’t mean that you should just remove those email addresses from your list.  There are actions that you can take to try to ‘recover’ those subscribers and that will be covered in an upcoming post.

Recently, Mailer Mailer released their 1st Half of 2007 Email Metrics Report.  While we need to continually test what works best in our particular situation and not rely solely on industry averages, the report did contain some interesting information that help serve as best practices. For example,

• Subject lines with 35 or few characters outperformed longer subject lines by about 25%.  While there are merits to longer copy on web pages or even in email messages themselves, the consensus continues to be that shorter subject lines improve results.  Given the way that virtually all email programs display messages, people generally use the ‘From’ address and the subject line to evaluate which emails to delete, read next, etc.  Using 35 characters as a limit forces us to communicate why the email is relevant in a very concise manner.
• While the vast majority of opens occur within the first 24 hours of a camping being launched, emails continue to be opened months after they were originally sent.  Beyond making sure that you don’t delete pages or images relating to older campaigns, you should also consider updating pages that have expired offers with updated specials or content that is no longer relevant with new information.

A tremendous amount of time and energy is spent trying to uncover the secrets of the Google search ranking algorithm.   Google occasionally will provide some nuggets of information and insights, but the advice I hear most constantly from Google is to offer content that people value and a website that is easy to use.  Google maintains that if we do, other sites will link to us, people will gravitate to our site, and Google will reward us with high rankings and all will be good.  Now, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to do things like optimize our website for particular keywords and try to increase the number of inbound links, but it does remind us to not forget about the importance of the content and the overall experience.

That same advice should be applied to email marketing.  We spend countless hours, rightfully so, thinking about issues like the length of subject lines, trying to improve deliverabilty to the inbox, and what time and date are best to send our campaigns.  However, sometimes we forget about the content and the communication of our offer:  is what what we present compelling, are we giving the subscriber something of value, are we clear about how the product, content, or service that we provide can help the consumer, etc. 

If I only provide something of value in one of the first ten emails that I send to a subscriber, I have lost that consumer and tweaking a subject line or changing the time of day that I send the email won’t have any significant impact.  Home Depot is  much more successful with me when they can provide ideas on how to complete projects around my house (buying products at there store) than when they just send me a list of everything that is on sale that week.

So, as we are reading the latest report on open rates and length of subject lines (hopefully in this blog), let’s take Google’s advice and remember to continually give equal consideration to the content and making sure we are providing something of value to our subscribers.  Oh, and by the way, if anyone does crack the Google search algorithm, please let me know.