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AOL to Retain Enhanced White List

Here is the latest from DM News on AOL's recent announcement that it will start charging companies and organizations to guarantee delivery of their emails:

"The Enhanced Whitelist is going to remain a useful tool. People who are on today will continue to use [its] privileges and benefits," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham told DM News on Friday.

It was originally reported that AOL's Enhanced Whitelist would be shut down in June.

Read the article: "AOL's About-Face Surprises E-Mailers."

Improve Your Email Program

EmailLab offers 10 email marketing "Must Dos." I agree with all of them.

New Fee Coming for Email Marketers

Both AOL and Yahoo plan to introduce fees for businesses and organizations that want to deliver email to AOL and Yahoo subscribers without first going through spam filters.  We can all thank spammers for helping us get to this point. No doubt, other providers will follow quickly.  (Of course, Hotmail already uses the "Bonded Sender," but that is not a cost per mail program.)

According to an article on ClickZ, AOL's current "Enhanced Whitelist program" will be phased out entirely by the end of June.

Steve Ruble at Micro Persuasion, has this to say:

"That's all folks. The door has officially closed on email marketing. Maybe this will drive more companies to start up opt-in RSS feeds and blogs that facilitate dialogue."

Here are a few stories on this:

"AOL to Implement E-mail Certification Program," from ClickZ.
"Postage is due for companies sending e-mail," from News.com/NYT
"AOL to charge fee as way to cut spam," from USA Today.
"Plan to charge businesses for e-mail triggers outcry," from CNN Money.

UPDATE: DM News is reporting that AOL will continue to offer its Enhanced Whitelist service.

The end of "Batch and Blast"

I am a little behind on my reading... it has been a busy year already. 

I stumbled onto this post from Stephanie Miller, VP of Strategic Services for Return Path:

"MASS email advertising is dead. Marketers mourn the early, heady days of email marketing when generic emails drove high response rates and consumers thought any email was good, as long as it was addressed to them. But alas, we must bid adieu to the old era--if not for the sake of our own careers, then on behalf of consumers everywhere who are tired of irrelevant and uninteresting e-mail messages. As we say good-bye to 2005, we can also say good-bye to this ineffective marketing method."

This is so true.

Read the column: "Obituary: Batch And Blast Is Dead! "

Size matters when you're sending email

A new study from eROI sheds some light on the question everyone keeps asking, "When should I send my emails?" The report shows that the highest number of "reads and clicks" are on Sunday and Friday.  However, a closer review of the data shows that the size of the list actually matters: Large lists -- 100,000 emails or more -- have the highest percentage of reads and clicks on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Lists of 200,000 or more have the best rate on Saturday.

So, lots of questions to ask about this study... Is there a relationship between message, messenger and list size in this study? For example, as the list size grows, do the typical messages send to those lists tend fall into a certain category?

As always, the best advice is to test and see if this is applicable to our particular list.

New report on delivery rate, open rate and click-thru rate

Kintera has released an informative study on email benchmarking. It is slow reading, but worth it. Most importantly, readers will walk away from this report with a new set of questions to ask when presented with data on delivery rate, open rate and click-thru rate. (If you are allergic to math, this report will be painful.)

The study includes a few hidden nuggets of advice that I plan on testing.  For example, email messages that include multiple distinct URLs will have a higher click-thru rate if there are somewhere between 8 and 19 links in the email message.  If the email only links to one URL (e.g. a fundraising email that links to a donation form), the click-thru rate tends to be better with more links rather than fewer.

One in five legit emails blocked or filtered

A new deliverability study by Return Path shows that about twenty percent of all legitimate e-mail marketing messages were either blocked or filtered in the first half of 2005, reports ClickZ.

Most deliverability problems can be traced to a handful of root causes, according to George Bilbrey, general manager of Return Path's delivery assurance program. He said list quality problems and the number of complaints against a sender are two big ones.

"Your practices determine your deliverability," Bilbrey told ClickZ. "The good news from the study is if you do work to improve your behavior, you can improve your deliverability rates. It's entirely in your control."

So, how do you improve your behavior? Lyris has a couple of good articles on improving email deliverablity:

• Boosting Email Deliverability: The Role of DNS
• Boosting Email Deliverability: Why Unsubs are Good
• Boosting Email Deliverability: Bounce Basics

Read more: "Blocking of Legit E-Mail Still High," from ClickZ.

Decline in open rate continues

The latest results from DoubleClick's E-Mail Trend Report are in... while "click-to-purchase" conversion rates and "orders per email" are improving, the overall open rate remains in decline.

Open rates declined for the fifth consecutive quarter, falling from 36.0 percent in Q2 2004 to 27.5 percent in Q2 2005.

...Click through rates declined slightly from 7.7 percent a year ago to 7.2 percent, remaining above historical low rate and showing relative stability given the consistent decline in open rates.

DoubleClick attributes some of this decline to user behavior:

With the ever increasing volume of e-mail messages that consumers receive, they appear to be increasingly selective about which e-mails to open. However, given the stable performance in clicks and conversions, the selectivity seems to reflect when a consumer is in market for a particular product or service.

The Report also notes that newer e-mail addresses tend to perform better than older addresses, so more established lists may be seeing a more pronounce decline.

See also: "DoubleClick Reports Decline in Open Rates," from Clickz

Communicating with Young People

A new study sponsored by the National Association of College Stores (NACS) gives us a peek into the buying habits of young people these days (Read, "Email Ads Don't Affect College Shoppers" in iMediaConnection). The conclusions are not earth-shattering: students are cost conscience and value recommendations from friends and family. Conversely, students put email ads and pop-ups pretty low on the list of items that influence their decisions. Anyone in the business of marketing to this segment should already know this... likely through trial and error. Amazing, however, that so many still try so hard to use old methods to communicate with this population.

I am a strong advocate for advertising. It has an important role to play in the marketing mix. In my opinion, it is most effective when used to reinforce relationships that are already established. (There are also many other factors: targeting, reach, frequency, timing, tone, look and feel, etc.)

Of course, the Internet is a great medium for advertising when it is done right. In many ways, you can distinguish between new and old visitors, purchasers and non-purchasers, etc. An email ad (or -- theoretically speaking -- a pop-up ad... yuck!) might work very well if it is used appropriately and sent to student with whom you have taken the time to developed a relationship. Certainly, I would not suggest blasting a message to a rented list of students. This would be the equivalent of throwing a water balloon at a brick wall.... it is not going to get through. (I know from experience.)

But, the important thing to draw from this new study is the role that friends and family play in the purchase process. This is where the great campaign is hidden. Provide something new, interesting, different and people will talk and recommend it to others. Figure out a way to pull people in, build a relationship and then reap the rewards of your efforts. During this process email will play a role as will email ads. And, don't forget the other emerging methods of communicating: RSS, blogs, podcasting and SMS. As I have said before, smart communicators should be investing in these alternatives. Email is not the only game in town.

In the end, both sides need to get something out of it. And, always be aware that the "friends and family" can punish you as well. The network distributes the information whether it is good or bad! For the latest example of this, you can read about Jeff Jarvis and his recent "customer service problem" with Dell. You never know who you are going to piss off.

For a little bit more on communicating with young people, see Adverblog's "Advertisers and the Generation Y." I read Adverblog a couple times a week (via my RSS Reader). Good stuff there.

New guide helps improve delivery rate

Lyris has published a new guide designed to help marketers improve the delivery rate of their permission-based emails.

In a recent three-month long study, deliverability experts at Lyris found that anywhere from 1 to 20 percent of opt-in emails from reputable organizations are inappropriately blocked or filtered as spam by ISPs. Messages monitored by the study included those from top universities, professional sports teams, high-profile non-profits, and major television networks. In all cases, recipients made an explicit opt-in request to receive the email messages.

“Email is still unrivaled among online direct marketing channels, but the ever-changing ISP filtering policies can sometimes affect results without businesses even realizing it” said Dabbah. “This guide is designed to help busy marketers maximize inbox delivery of their messages and realize the full potential of this incredibly powerful medium.”

Guidelines inlcude using a static IP address for email, verifying that that your DNS record is published completely and correctly and publishing an SPF record for your domain.  The best thing to do is to get on the phone and go over the questions raised in this guide with the provider of your email service.

To get the guide, you will need to fill out a short form.  This form will likely generate a sales call, so be sure you are OK with that before proceding,

Read more about the guide: "Leading-Edge Email Solutions Provider Lyris Publishes Inbox Delivery Guide," from Lyris.