Return Path has come out with a new study that suggests that almost half of marketeers don’t know how many mobile subscribers they have. Why is this important? About 40% of mobile email viewers will delete a messages not optimized for mobile viewing. By the end of 2012 more people will open their email messages on mobile devices than on desktops.

The growing popularity of mobile devices is creating a real demand for advertisers and marketeers to rethink their email marketing strategies and make all their efforts mobile-friendly. This infographic is an eye-opening collection of stats that lets us all see the need for immediate action.

Take a look:
(click to enlarge)

Comments

The actual social significance of email is interesting in itself. Another recent study found that the contents of your email inbox reflect your real life ties to the people in your life, as Drew Bowling reported.

Facebook introduced its own email addresses and its social inbox in 2010. Now, the company is again putting email in the spotlight as it has linked users’ timeline names to their Facebook email addresses. The company writes:

Starting today, we’re updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site. Now, the address people use to get to your timeline and send you email on Facebook will be the same.

Updated addresses will be rolled out over the next few weeks. Note: Anyone who already selected an email address will not be affected.

Despite comments about email “probably going away” once made by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, it’s clear that Facebook recognizes its continued importance. Hell, even Mark Zuckerberg’s dog uses it:

While Google considers Google+ its “social spine,” it has integrated it into Gmail, and will probably continue to do so in more ways. From a competitive standpoint, it makes sense for Facebook to merge social network connections with email as well. The two companies already compete in numerous areas, and will probably end up competing in even more (possibly even search).

In a previous article, I asked the question: Can Google+ rival Facebook? I’ve been hoping people would read the article before answering that. In summary, it’s about Google+ as CEO Larry Page described it during the company’s earnings call this week. He described it as consisting of two parts: the “social spine” and the “social destination”. Most people probably think about the social destination part when they think about Google+, and for that reason, would most likely respond with a quick “no” to my question. However, it’s the “social spine” part, which makes the question more intriguing in my opinion. Google already has Facebook-like user numbers. YouTube alone has 800 million monthly active users. When you consider Google+ as the “social spine” of Google itself, the whole thing becomes framed as Google vs. Facebook rather than Google+ vs. Facebook, and that sounds like a much more interesting match-up.

Back in Google’s pre-IPO days, Google was known as a search engine. These days it’s known as a tech giant with its hands in just about everything tech/Internet related. Facebook is only getting ready for its own IPO. It makes you wonder what Facebook will be like ten years from now. These days, Google has its own mobile operating system (actually two), futuristic glasses and cars that drive themselves, just to name a few things. What might we see from Facebook down the road?

The point is, these two companies (certainly with others in the mix as well) are already competing in an increasing number of areas, and you have to wonder if that number of areas will continue to grow.

At the heart of many of these areas will be users’ social connections. That’s where Facebook began, and that’s where that “social spine” comes in for Google. Email, however, is a major, and still more popular element of social connection. Facebook may have started in social, but Google’s been doing email for much longer. In fact, many of you probably use your Gmail address to log into Facebook on a daily basis.

We’ve really only seen the beginning of what Google is going to do with Google+. Larry Page made that clear during the earnings call too. There are already 120 integrations, but Google is focused on making more. Google+ may be the “social spine” of Google, but email is still part of the Internet’s backbone.

Google will continue to look for innovations with Gmail too. I’d be very surprised if we don’t see Facebook looking at what it can do with email even more too, especially now, with the direct timeline link. Of course, others will continue to look for ways to innovate as well. In fact, some former Googlers are doing this right now with Fluent, which brings a social media-like format to email.

Email led to social media in the first place. It’s quite interesting that it still plays such a large role, and may even be a significant part of where social media is headed.

Comments

A strong majority (85%) of online-connected global citizens in 24 countries use the internet for emails while six in ten (62%) use it for social networking, finds a new poll by global research company Ipsos for Reuters News. One in ten use the internet for connecting with people through voice-over IP (14%).

Most (85%) global respondents who are connected online report they use the internet for sending and receiving emails, including a majority of those in each country surveyed except for Saudi Arabia where only half (46%) say so. Those in Hungary (94%) are most likely to say they use the internet for emailing, followed by nine in ten of those in Sweden (92%), Belgium (91%), Indonesia (91%), Argentina (90%) and Poland (90%).

Social media popularity is high among global citizens using the internet. A majority of them (62%) say they visit social networking sites, forums or blogs including eight in ten of those in Indonesia (83%), Argentina (76%) and Russia (75%) and seven in ten of those in South Africa (73%), Sweden (72%), Spain (71%) and Hungary (70%). Even in countries where social media surfing is less popular, a sizable minority of those connected online still report using the internet in this way: 35% in Japan, 42% in Saudi Arabia and 50% in France.

Voice-over IP (VOIP) – audio conversations conducted via internet connection – is used by 14% of online-connected global citizens. The relatively new technology has taken hold of three in ten net surfers from Russia (36%), Turkey (32%) and a quarter of those in India (25%). Only a handful from Brazil (4%), France (5%), the United States (6%) and Belgium (6%) are using VOIP.

Comments

After six years of creating countless newsletters and other e-mail campaigns, I have come to the conclusion that, apart from the “basic e-mail marketing stuff”, it is really hard if not impossible to predict what makes your e-mail message perform better. With “basic e-mail marketing stuff”, I mean the rather obvious advice one usually reads about in the abundant guides that teach you how to improve your marketing e-mails: a clear call-to-action, a content-related subject line instead of just “Newsletter 7/2012”, personalizing content according to your recipient’s profile, and so on.

Is a short subject line better than a long one? Well…
With the other “stuff”, it is difficult to generalize. Is a short subject line really better than a long one? Depends. Is it better to send the campaign out at 6am or 6pm? Depends. Is a subject line with an imperative (“Apply for this Web Analytics event now!”) better than a more descriptive one (“The latest Web Analytics trends: Google is doomed”)? Depends. Is a subject line informing of a limited offer better than one that leaves this out? Probably in most cases, but if you overdo it, your users might get tired of it. So yes: It depends!

Tendencies yes, but hardly general recipes
Christian, a colleague of mine, recently did some larger-scale e-mail campaign testing, using some typical testing variables (imperative vs. descriptive subject, morning vs. evening roll-out etc.). There were some tendencies. For example, a roll-out in the morning seemed to be better in most cases, but far from all cases. So it was hard to distill any company-wide guidelines out of the test results. The problem seems to be that there are so many intervening variables that it is hard to control for each of them.

To name some examples for these intervening variables, let’s look at some obvious examples from the recipient list. Here, we (a recruiting company) usually deal with very different demographics, eg. the recipients’ life phase (working, student, high school graduate), the recipients’ university majors, or their e-mail history (some recipient lists may contain a large portion of users that have already received a couple of mails this week, other lists may contain more users that haven’t received a mail in a week), and so on…

So yes, there are some general guidelines on what triggers user action in 60-plus percent of all cases, but every campaign is different: That is why the best way to make sure you are actually sending an effective e-mail campaign is to test at least two versions with a small sample before sending it out to the winner.

Some e-mail marketing tools do a woeful job facilitating tests
Of course, saying that testing leads to success has become trivial these days. But if you look at the testing tools that e-mail marketing providers offer, you get the impression that split testing is still reserved for some rare kind of overly ambitious marketing geek. Lamentably, it probably is that way.

So the following recommendations all hail from my daily frustrations with the overly tedious e-mail marketing tools I work with. I will shun “naming and shaming” here because I only know two larger e-mail marketing tools in depth, and it would be unfair to single them out while the other companies’ products might be just as poor. I would love to read your comments though on how your e-mail marketing tool deals with these things. I should note that the software I have worked with are enterprise solutions hosted by two of the many e-mail marketing service providers that call themselves “market leader in e-mail marketing” (I always wonder how there can be so many “market leaders”). To their benefit, both solutions are really great in other areas like segmenting or their API.

So which testing features should your ideal e-mail marketing tool offer?

A: Top priority features

1. A QUICK and EASY way to compare two or more versions of a message (ideally, with a separate, even quicker feature to test only subject lines)

Ok, probably every single e-mail marketing software provider will tell you their tool offers this, i.e. a split testing tool to test different versions of a message. The real question though is how! Ideally, it should take no more than three minutes to set up and roll out a simple A/B subject line test. If it is not quick and easy, people won’t use it – that’s what has happened in my company because our current tool is nerve-wreckingly tedious when it comes to split tests.

So check for the following usability issues:
a) In order to send out an e-mail campaign, most e-mail marketing tools require you to set up three things: the e-mail message, the recipient list, and the campaign that ties the first two together and sets the roll-out time etc.

Now, for a single A/B subject line test, could it be that you have to set up two entire campaigns and two entire messages, including the message body even though you only want to test the subject line? In that case, you are dealing with what is depicted in the graphic below as a “Tedious Split Test Campaign”.

b) And while you are setting up the second message and campaign, could it be that you have to fill in almost all the fields again (for campaign A and B and message A and B) even though only one of them differs (the subject line)?

c) Is it easy to jump back and forth between the settings of the split run and its associated campaigns and messages – i.e. one click?

Our current tool doesn’t match any of these criteria.

So how would the ideal tool manage this?
The ideal tool would offer an option in the split campaign menu that allows you to add one or more messages to be tested, thus sparing you of creating additional campaigns for every version. The super-ideal tool focussed on facilitating quick insights would even distinguish between a more complex test of entire messages (where it is ok to create two messages) and a simple subject line test (where creating one message should do). In the latter case, you would determine the different versions of the subject in the message or campaign settings.

2. Determine a sample size for each variation.
If you want to try out something more outlandish, you’d prefer to throw it at just a tiny fraction of your recipients first instead of having to go into 50/50 mode.

So your tool should allow you to:

• set the general sample size of your test run (say, ten percent of your recipients)
• set the sample size of each of the variations you are testing (e.g. 80 percent of the 10 percent sample get version A, 20 percent get version B)

3. Assign different campaign tracking parameters to your links depending on the version
A successful e-mail campaign does not end with a click, it ends with a conversion. Some messages might draw a lot of clicks, but few conversions (e.g. because the e-mail copy promises too much), others draw fewer clicks, but more conversions. If you want to take that into account, your e-mail marketing tool needs to allow you to

• automatically add campaign tracking parameters to your links (utm_source and the like for Google Analytics)
• vary those parameters for each version to be tested (in Google Analytics, I usually use the utm_content variable for this purpose)

4. Automatic roll-out
So you have spent all day writing your wonderful newsletter, and your mailing schedule says it has to go out today. It’s 6.30pm. And naturally, you really want to stay at work for another two hours to see the results of your split test before being able to roll out the winner. What? You really don’t? Ok, so what does that lead to? Right, zero split tests! Zero improvement! The solution: Some tools (not ours!) offer an automatic roll-out of the winning variation (usually measured by the click rate) after a time you can specify.

B: Medium priority features

5. Multivariate tests
I have headlines H1 and H2 and images I1 and I2. With automated multivariate tests, I can find out whether H1 and I1 is a better combination than H1 + I2, H2 + I1 or H2 + I2. With a usable multivariate testing tool, I can do this all in one single message with some markup intelligible to non-programmers, and I don’t have to set up four campaigns and four messages. Once again, the URL parameters in each variation should reflect the respective combination of “variables” (in this case, the headline and image used). That way, you can tie them to conversions (see 3.).

6. Test the best time for roll-out
Is it better to send my newsletter at 7pm in the evening or the next morning at 7am? Especially for recurring campaigns like weekly newsletters, it is important to know the time your recipients are most responsive to your mails. That is why a great split testing tool allows you to mail samples of your campaign at different times. Again, you should be able to specify these times up front and not have to go back to your tool for each roll-out.

Don’t forget to check the reports
That being said, all these features should of course come with some sensible reporting. So make sure to check the split testing reports: Do you understand them right away? Are the necessary metrics included (at least open and click rates for each tested version)? Are they visually presented in a way that makes comparing results easy (eg. right next to each other)?

Discuss: How is your tool doing?
Are there any features that you think are missing on this list? Are you happy with your e-mail marketing solution’s testing features? I would be glad if you shared your experiences.

Originally published at WebAnalyticsWorld

And, for InfoGrow’s take on how to use email marketing to increase your sales and marketing effectiveness, I encourage you to spend some time reviewing our previous articles:

Email Content – Functions of Email Content

Combine CRM and Email Marketing to Grow Your Business

E-Mail Marketing is Still a Powerful B-to-B Tool

I wish you success in your email sales and marketing efforts. Actually, I wish you success in all of your sales and marketing efforts, despite the channels used.

Comments

Spam has long been the bane of legitimate email marketing firms, confusing users and making them less receptive to email newsletters they have intentionally signed up to receive. Email marketing is a fast, low-cost way for small businesses to target specific demographic groups and maintain contact with previous customers. By sending out regular, personalized company updates and helpful content, businesses can build a relationship of trust with consumers.

The sharp decline in spam over previous years has many benefits for various digital marketing companies, giving them some breathing room in their campaigns and making it easier to reach consumers with their messages.

Origins of Spam

In the context of the Internet, spam refers specifically to the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. This is an important distinction that keeps things like email marketing newsletters and unwanted private emails from being considered spam.

The first Internet spam message was sent by Gary Thuerk to 393 people on ARPANET in 1978. From there it spread across the Internet, though the most prevalent form of spam is email spam. In the beginning, spam was mainly used as a way to advertise legitimate products but now it’s being used to scam recipients and infect their computers with viruses in order to add more power to the spammer’s arsenal.

Spam Distribution

In the early days, spam was spread from single computers, though once ISPs began cracking down on the practice, spammers had to find new ways to spread their unwanted messages. As the volume increased it became increasingly difficult for one centralized system to send out spam messages, so more nefarious means began to emerge.

Spammers began employing viruses to infect recipients’ computers, giving them control over the computer’s email programs. This allowed them to send billions of emails from a decentralized network of computers, ensuring that their spam networks could not easily be stopped. One of the largest spam organizations, SpamIt, was recently shut down after one of the central operators of the company, Igor A. Gusev, fled the company due to an investigation by the company’s home government of Russia. SpamIt runs a massive botnet for sending out its unwanted messages and its shutdown dropped email spam messages by about 20% worldwide.

Email Strategies

The definition of spam is narrow, though many people still call legitimate mass emails spam. Due to the prevalence of spam messages, many recipients assume that any form messages or advertisements they receive are unsolicited and report them as such, even if they sign up for the service.

Marketers can overcome this confusion with a few simple strategies. First, they should employ unified branding across their social network accounts, websites, print ads and emails to ensure a strong connection with consumers. If a consumer recognizes the brand immediately, they’re less likely to delete the message.

They should also be made aware that they’re signing up for a newsletter. Sign-ups should not be automatic but the option should be prominently presented so the user knows what to expect.

The “from” field of each email should be instantly recognizable to recipients and the subject line shouldn’t contain any flag words like “deal”, “sale” or “discount” as these words scream spam.

Lastly, personalizing the content of each message will go a long way towards keeping the recipient’s attention and staying out of the SPAM folder. Include the person’s name and indicate that the message is a follow-up to a recent purchase or base the marketing message on their shopping history.

Spam has been steeply declining lately, which makes it easier to stand out as a legitimate marketer, but that doesn’t mean anyone should get lazy and employ shady tactics.

Comments

Now, done correctly, what this really means is effectively using email communication in conjunction with efforts to produce educational content, amplify content throughout social media channels and turn Twitter followers into email subscribers.

It’s integration as much as anything that makes email work, but there are a handful of things that you need to do to get the most out of the email component of the mix.

Grab Attention

It’s not enough to have an email subscribe form tucked into the sidebar of your home page. If you’ve got a great offer to put in front of your visitors you need to make it impossible to ignore, without being obnoxious.

A new breed of popups makes grabbing visitor attention and turning it into email list subscribing almost pleasing. I’ve been experimenting with a rather new WordPress plugin called Pippity.

Once installed and configured this tool will note when you have a visitor that has not been offered your email subscription and briefly take over the screen to make them an offer. The visitor still has lots of control over the screen, but this tool positions your list in a way that’s hard to ignore.

I know there are some that don’t like this tactic, but Pippity gives you so much control, including A/B testing, that you can fine tune the tool’s use to make it work for you. Like it or not, with the right offer, most people see 300-400% jumps in subscribers using this kind of approach. (One tip: Turn it off for mobile browsers, as there’s no way to make it a pleasant experience on a mobile.)

Exchange Value

Giving people a reason to subscribe is even more important than simply grabbing their attention. In order to get willing subscribers these days you must sell the value of what you have to offer and most likely exchange something like a free ebook or report that sounds too good to miss right at the point of subscription.

The act of giving an email address comes with a price these days because all of our email inboxes are jammed. Your free stuff better sound as good as most people’s paid stuff if you want to get subscribers.

Of course, this also means that you need to keep the value exchange high if you expect to keep subscribers. Turning email subscribers into paying customers is not a one-time event; it’s accomplished through a process of building trust over time.

No matter what time frame you choose to offer your email newsletter, once a week or once a month, each issue should be something that people look forward to. It’s great to have a large list, but if less than 10% actually open your emails then you won’t get much return on your efforts.

Serve Snacks

I’ve been producing a weekly email newsletter just about every week since some time in 2002 and I’ve played with different formats, different content, and different ways to present information.

A great deal of what I’ve always tried to do is evolve with overall communication trends and my best advice is that you subscribe to lots of newsletters and pay attention to how others present information and how they change their presentation over time.

Currently, my newsletter format is designed to offer several compelling article abstracts grouped into a set of topics that I believe my readers expect from me. I author about 50% of the content and then hand select a couple blog posts from blogs I read that related.

When I switched to this snack sized, scannable format, I immediately noted that my response and engagement increased dramatically.

Be Sharable

Smart marketers have always employed tools that made it easier for people to share their email newsletter with friends, but these days that means making your content easy to share in social media as well.

Most email service providers have added social media sharing options that you can embed in your content so that a reader could tweet that they just read your article.

The content itself must exist online in order to use this most effectively. Most service providers also allow you to create an online archive version of your newsletter and I recommend you use this approach to socialize your content sent via email.

Go Solo

Once your readers come to appreciate your valuable newsletter content you may earn the right to send them offers. This is something that takes a little bit of experimentation and you can certainly erode trust by sending too many offers or sending offers that just don’t make sense.

While you can mix an offer or two into your regular email newsletter format, I’ve found that sending the occasional offer for a product, program or even joint venture with a product or service you truly believe in, using what is called a solo email is the best approach.

A solo email is designed to do only one thing, deliver the story and make a case for your offer. This can be a straight out offer to buy something or even an announcement for a free online seminar where you intend to make an offer, but it must be about one thing and one thing only.

Let me repeat, sending offers is something you earn, just like earning the subscriber in the first place. You must take care that you treat this trust with respect or you will lose it. Keep the value of your offers as high as the value of your content and your readers will appreciate getting both.

My recommended list of email service providers. (Each allows you to accomplish the things mentioned in this article)

• Constant Contact
• Vertical Response
• Mail Chimp
• AWeber
• InfusionSoft

Comments

Killer integration of Facebook and Email

2 Sides of the Same Coin

The notion that Facebook is a tool to create new customers is massively flawed. Research from DDB shows that 84% of fans of company Facebook pages are current customers. Of course they are. Think about how you use Facebook. You don’t randomly surf around, clicking the “Like” button for companies of which you’ve never, ever heard. Why would you want their info in your news feed?

Consequently, Facebook is primarily a tool for keeping your brand top-of-mind among customers who have given you permission to do so. Through this messaging, you hope to solicit repeat business and customer advocacy. And email marketing sets out to do the exact same thing.

Thus, the people in charge of Facebook and the people in charge of email marketing in your company should be the SAME PEOPLE.

3 Types of Integration

There are three main areas where Facebook and email marketing can and should be integrated:

• Strategic Integration
• Channel and Audience Integration
• Message Integration

Strategic Integration of Facebook and Email Marketing

There are several areas of overlap here, but perhaps the most illustrative is the fact that the metrics used to measure both tactics are mathematically quite similar, even if we call them different names:

• Email subscribes = Facebook “Likes”
• Email unsubscribes = Facebook “UnLikes”
• Email opens = Facebook impressions
• Email clicks = Facebook feedback
• Email forwards = Facebook shares

You can even derive the value of your overall Facebook marketing effort by examining it through the prism of your existing email marketing investment. I wrote a post about this new way to calculate what Facebook is worth to your business a while ago. It includes a link to a free Facebook valuation worksheet.

Channel and Audience Integration of Facebook and Email Marketing

The goal is not to get an email opt-in or a Facebook “Like”. The goal is to get both. Consequently, whenever you are asking for you, you should be asking for the other, as well.

• Email thank you messages.
• Email unsubscribe preference centers.
• Facebook landing tabs.
• Social log-ins using software like JanRain.

Message Integration of Facebook and Email Marketing

Tons of options here for using (and re-using) your Facebook and email content.

• Use email subject line testing to optimize Facebook ad headlines. And vice-versa.
• Test image effectiveness via email, incorporate into status updates or Facebook ads. And vice-versa.
• Just like Sponsored Stories, incorporate fan expressions of advocacy into your email content.
• Incorporate most popular email content into status updates. And vice-versa.
• Tease upcoming emails via status update.

Do Not Eat This Entire Sandwich

The presentation has 17 ways to tie Facebook and email together. Do not try to tackle all of those at once. Pick the two to four that make the most sense for your company, and try them. Them, add two more. And two more. Until you’ve integrated your programs in many ways. Remember, however, that your Facebook and email marketing will NEVER be optimally integrated if different groups (or even different agencies) are handling them.

You know how you can tell social media is a truly big deal? It’s become too important to stand on its own.

This is a presentation I originally put together for the Facebook Success Summit. Many thanks to two geniuses and good guys Christopher S. Penn and Chad White for their help and inspiration.
Comments

Authenticity is a great way for small businesses to stand apart in an email. A human, personable voice can really resonate with readers. Talk to them as if they were a friend, not just a name on a list. This is something that larger companies lose in a sea of brand communication guidelines.

According to Michael Katz of Blue Penguin Development, “the key is to sound like a human being in your communications…one of the biggest built-in weaknesses of large companies is that so much is written/approved by committee.

What you may lack in “marketing polish” is “more than made up for by the credibility and likability” of your tone (Justin Premick, Education Marketing Manager at AWeber).

FOCUS ON SUBSTANCE

In large, branded companies, most advertising focuses more on image than on actual ad content. Make your emails different by doing the opposite, emphasizing “substance over style” and “content over image.” In the long run, what you say is what really counts, especially when you’re delivering information that is valuable to consumers.

GET GENUINELY PERSONAL

Sell yourself, not your product. Let your readers know that they’re hearing from real people.

EXPLOIT YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Use your closeness to customers to make your emails personalized. Send highly targeted emails to your best customers. Unlike large retailers, you may have even met your consumers face-to-face. Use what you’ve learned to let readers know you care about their personal interests.

BUILT TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION

A smaller client base means it’s easier to talk with individual clients. Start a dialogue with consumers and use what you learn from them to build stronger communications in future emails.

Raj Khera, CEO of MailerMailer, states “Our email marketing metrics reports consistently show that smaller lists have higher response rates. This is usually due to the fact that owners of smaller lists have stronger, tighter relationships with their recipients.”

Base all email promotions on customer feedback.

GET THE BASICS RIGHT AND LEARN FROM OTHERS

Just because large corporations have more resources doesn’t mean they’re following the necessary basic steps to completing a successful email marketing campaign. However, you can still learn from what they are doing right. Subscribe to competitor newsletters to see how well they handle certain issues, such as welcome messaging, and see how you can do it better.