Email Marketing Voodoo

Gmail Unveils New Design Themes

2008-11-19T17:39:00.002-05:00

It looks like GMAIL is breaking the mold again; this time with allowing their users to add themes to their interfaces. The "themes" tab still hasn't been added to my account, but I'm sure it'll only be a few days until I see it pop up. Some of the themes are obviously tacky and for the youngin's, but most are designed quite nicely.

The tab will be under the settings section when available which, again, will be within a few days. I can't wait to see when they roll out the "upload your own theme" function.

Check out some screenshots below:

Thanks to albert via lifehacker via the official gmail blog for pointing this out.

Restaurant Brands Have it Made When it Comes to Email

2008-11-19T14:43:00.004-05:00

I can't say Ive met anyone that doesnt enjoy food or love it for that matter. With that, why arent more restaurant brand leveraging email to its full potential? Why don't more fast food or in and out restaurants send emails prior to the lunch hour to help persuade individuals or groups where to go for lunch? We all know how difficult it can be to make a decision on where to go for lunch where the restaurants options seem endless, so why shouldn't restaurant brands persuade us with their savory images of menu items. Inbox overload? - yes, but how some imagery can really start a craving.

Maybe Im in need of an afternoon snack or maybe food is to me what Apple is to Mac fans. Regardless I still think restaurant brands have a step up in the email world if they use their assets to their advantage. Now who can tell me where cookware company, William Sonama gets their dessert imagery from, that's what I want!

Shop.org Provides Insight into Retailers Holiday Marketing Plans

2008-11-19T14:17:00.004-05:00

From our previous post we were looking for insight into this years marketing trends as it relates to the holiday season and what marketers were doing to get consumers to spend with them. Low and behold just a day later MediaPost's Research Brief released information from a eHoliday study Shop.org did. I've provided the findings below for easy reference.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Retailers Make Online Shopping More Attractive For Christmas

According to results of the 2008 eHoliday Study from Shop.org, 56.1% of online retailers expect their holiday sales to increase at least fifteen percent over last year, compared to 77.5% of retailers surveyed last year who expected their sales to grow more than 15 percent.
Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org, says "...Retailers will be heavily promotional to attract shoppers on a budget, but have also invested in new site features to improve the online buying experience."

Despite an increase in transportation costs, retailers do not plan to cut back on popular free shipping promotions. This year:

• 78% of retailers plan to offer free shipping with conditions
• 40.4% of retailers are compensating for increased shipping costs by renegotiating terms with shipping providers
• 33.3% are closely managing company headcount
• 15.8% are reducing other promotions
• 21.3% of retailers say they will require a higher purchase amount for customers to be eligible for free shipping
• 10.6% will cut back on usage of free shipping with no conditions

In addition to free shipping promotions, many retailers have rolled out new website features to improve the customer experience.

• 42.9% of retailers added or improved site search to help customers navigate sites more easily
• 42.6% added product video
32.7% offered customer reviews
... to give shoppers more information to make buying decisions.

For price-focused shoppers:

• 27.1% of retailers have added and enhanced clearance sale pages
• 31.3% added featured sale pages
• 25.0% of online retailers added a Facebook page this year
• 58% of consumers acknowledge that 24-hour shopping convenience is one of the main reasons why they choose to buy online. Additionally, shoppers' other top reasons for buying online instead of in stores include:

• Not wanting to fight crowds (41.1%)
• Easy price comparisons (36.4%)
• Free shipping (33.3%) Also, nearly one in four shoppers says they are
• Online spending due to high gas prices (23.1%)

Helen Malani, Shopzilla's Online Shopping Expert, concludes "... budget-focused consumers... are starting on the web to look for gift ideas... whether they make those holiday purchases online or in stores, the Internet will have a tremendous influence... this year."

For more information about the study, please visit Shop.org here.

Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2008-11-17T16:45:00.003-05:00

Its not even Thanksgiving and I've already got the winter holidays top of mind. Perhaps its the cold front that has moved through Florida giving me hope that Im not going to have to use my A/C for a couple months, the fact that all the retail stores Ive been in have their holiday decorations up or the fact that my inbox is being filled with all sorts of deals enticing me to shop.

What I am interested in seeing based on state of our current economy and trends of consumers spending less, will the retailers do more this year in regards to sales and specials or will they just get smarter? I stumbled into a retail store yesterday to pick up a few purchases and along with my purchase I was given a giftcard that is worth $10, $50, $100 or $500. The catch? I have to go back to the store between December 1-24th to discover the value of the giftcard, meaning I have to purchase something to see what its worth. I have to admit, they've totally got me sold. Even though the likelihood that the gift card will be the lowest value of $10, Im still hopeful that maybe Ill be one of the lucky ones. If Im not, I still have a strategy of my own in place, we cant just let these marketers outsmart us ;-). My plan is to purchase something small and if they happen to reveal to me that its worth $500 then of course Ill gladly find a way to spend it so we are both winners unless of course they hide all the $10 valued items that day.

Is this strategy one to encourage consumers to spend more in a down economy or have I just blocked these strategies out in the past? Stayed tuned for more holiday email marketing favorites.

Email Design Showcase

2008-11-14T13:39:00.007-05:00

I thought I would take this post to present a few emails that I've been impressed with recently. The emails below have landed in my inbox within the past month and all have exceptional designs for their own unique reasons.

eROI: Sales / Marketing Blast

I love everything about this email, from the subject line, the content blocks & calls to action... Especially the overall design with the cutting board & bread. They really seem to nail the tone with this blast -- beckoning to join their team if you're currently unhappy with your online marketing efforts and general presence on the web. I'd really like to know the stats for this email, what the terms of success were and how many conversions they scored.

Jupiter Images: Special Deal / Promotion

I can honestly say that I've never seen an email designed this way. Although, it lacks any HTML supporting text (it's basically just 3 images in their own table row), the idea behind the design is a winner. The angles drew me in... I scanned the entire email and spent a lot of time below the fold once I got there, inspecting the smaller images carefully. Points off for not hot-linking the "EMAIL US AT" call to action to the email addresses, but all and all great job.

Blue Sky Factory: Sales / Marketing Blast

I can't remember ever receiving an email with a newspaper / traditional newsletter design. And for that reason, this email really made an impression on me. It may also be due to it's simplistic nature, the small call to action on the bottom right hand corner, its good balance of imagery and text, or how it makes the case that email marketing still works and still consistently provides the highest ROI out of any other form of marketing. Either way, it put a smile on my face.

If you have received any exceptionally designed emails recently, post them below!

Major SPAM Distributor Taken Down by Feds

2008-11-13T14:48:00.003-05:00

Have you noticed a drop in the amount spam being delivered to you recently? If so, this may be due to the fact that one of the largest SPAM firms was taken offline. McColo Corp, based out of San Jose, California was hosting servers by a relatively small firm that served (no pun intended) as a means to deliver a significant amount of the world's SPAM. McColo's client list doesn't hold up as far as integrity goes. Their 'clients' include companies that sell knock off pharmaceuticals & handbags as well as child porn -- all via email.

As soon as their site and servers were pulled, spam volumes dropped worldwide -- as much as 66 percent in some cases. Spamcop, the absolute authority on SPAM, saw 40 spam emails per second drop down to 10 per second. The graph can be found below:

McColo's fate is not ultimately sealed, but it seems as though they're S.O.L. Mark Rasch, a former cyber-crime prosecutor for the Justice Department claims that "It's a little bit like a landlord who owns a building and sees people coming in and out of the apartment complex constantly at all hours and not suspecting their may be drug activity going on." Sure, they can play dumb all they want, but they more than likely knew of the fishy behavior occurring through their servers.

This is a major score for all of us legit email senders as well as anyone who is inundated with irrelevant, spammy email.

You can read the entire story at msnbc.com. It's worth the read. Thanks to Greg Cangialosi for pointing this out.

Retail Friends and Family Programs

2008-11-12T20:29:00.007-05:00

I've seen more and more retail brands make great use out of their Friends and Family programs. Gap is running a promotion over the next 4 days for members of their Friends and Family to "Give & Get".

Friends and Family of the Gap are given the option to shop at the Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic or all three stores, saving 30% off their purchases and in return, Gap is giving 5% of what they spend to the non profit of their choosing from the list provided. Even better, if Gap's preferred customers pass the message along to their friends and family, they will receive the same discount and 5% of their purchase(s) will go to their choice of non profit. Non profits include: WWF, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, care, The Global Fund, Dress for Success and the GAP Foundation.

Gap is trying to raise $3 million for the non profits during this particular Give & Get event. During their August Give & Get event, Gap was able to donate $1.3 million dollars to the non profits. If you're interested in giving back, leave a comment and we'll the pass the message along to you.

What perfect timing to knock off some of that holiday shopping and why wouldn't you want to shop for a great cause?!

From Junk Folder to Inbox

2008-11-11T16:38:00.004-05:00

I was doing my random scanning of my inbox that I use for collecting emails that I dont read on a regular basis but like to see what marketers are up to and noticed well established brand's messages were landing in my spam/junk folder. One in particular stuck out to me, being 1-800-Flowers. Although its not Valentines day where I imagine it's 1-800-Flowers busiest time of year, with the holidays approaching where flowers, table settings or gifts may be purchased I wanted to provide some tips to help ensure not only 1-800-Flowers message lands in the inbox but other email marketers messages do as well.

From an initial overview of 1-800-Flowers emails, I noticed a few things instantly that could relate to the messages being sent to the junk folder. With that, to avoid your message from going unnoticed prior to sending out your message:

• Avoid the use of spammy keywords
• Avoid use of all CAPS in the subject line
• Avoid punctuation in the subject line such as exclamation points, question marks, etc.

• Test your subject lines and HTML against spam scoring tools, so if you want to use the word, 'free' for instance, you'll have a better idea of whether the email will be flagged or not
• Avoid sending to recipients who are not opening your messages
• Do not fill my inbox with your messages, especially if I'm not opening them
• Avoid using 1-800, 1-888 numbers in the body of the email

Things to avoid in an email all depend on how you use them of course and in reading, have come across a tip on avoiding the use of 1-800 or 1-888 numbers within the email content. Since 1-800 plays a large part in regards to 1-800-Flowers brand I wanted to determine if this was its route cause for its messages being delivered to my spam/junk folder. I ran the email through a spam rating tool and the email was in fact dinged for spam but it was noted under the reply to address as being spammy. Something interesting to test further would be to determine if it was marked as spam due to the reply to address including 1-800 or the fact that the email itself was marked as spam for over messaging to its audience since it shares the address with the 'From' address. I did not compare the spam score against another spam scoring tool so it would be interesting to see how it matches up.

Fortunately 1-800-Flowers has a well established brand name so people know where to go when they need flowers however subscribers may be missing out on the great deals and offers 1-800 Flowers has to offer. With that, to reinstate the main message of this post, testing is critical. Depending on the detail of your QA department or what spam scoring tools provide you, it never hurts to send a live message to yourself and multiple email clients especially when dealing with the BtoC audience to see where your message ends up (spam folder or inbox) and if its worthy of being read once found. Lastly upon your message being delivered, find out where it ends up and if it is in fact the junk folder, take the corrective measures to ensure it doesn't happen the next time round.

Obama & Email

2008-11-06T10:36:00.002-05:00

The dust from the fiery presidential election has settled. Obama will be our next commander-in-chief. Its no doubt that he ran a remarkable online campaign, embracing all social networks and communities. But most importantly, he utilized email and proved that it was one of the most powerful and significant facets of his campaign -- driving it ultimately to success.

Since August of this year, I was sent 110 emails. They came in at nearly a daily basis, holding my attention throughout the life-cycle of the campaign. He even announced Biden as his running mate with an email! But now that the campaign is over, what will be done with all of the email addresses collected? In the last message delivered, he stated "I'll be in touch soon about what comes next." Will Obama keep his momentum going and maintain the direct line of communication to his supporters? I sure hope so.

It would be such a shame if he only communicated to the American people via mass media outlets from here on out. I would love to continue to get updates and information directly from my president through twitter, myspace and especially email. I think he should continue to embrace the technologies he used to win the presidency.

What do you think? Comment below.

Thanks to Kirk Bentley's thread at the EMC for some insight on this.

Using Current Events as Part of Email Strategy

2008-11-04T16:11:00.003-05:00

Election day is here and marketers are taking advantage which started with offering free coffee or doughnuts to those that voted, which was short lived due to legal ramifications to email marketers tweaking their email messages to include election related key words such as the word "Vote" in subject lines to capture readers attention.

A few that made it to my inbox that included the keyword "vote" in the subject line were from:

From: Zazzle.com
Subject Line: Vote! Plus $3 off shirts at Zazzle - Ends today
(Just as the polls will close today, so does your chance at getting $3 off)

From: Ann Taylor LOFT
Subject Line: Vote for Great Style: 25% OFF Dresses, Skirts & Work Essentials - Online Only
(Targeting online shoppers, opposed to creating an sense of urgency as Zazzle is doing)

From: SportsAuthority.com
Subject Line: Sports Authority Election Sale The Winner Is You Tonight Only
(Emphasizing online shopping only, a discount and the time (9pm election night - tomorrow at 8am EST) so while we are all waiting for the polls to close and hear who our next President will be, why not kill some time by shopping online)

From: Lands' End
Subject Line: Free Shipping gets our vote - no minimum order
(Highlighting free shipping, election day only)

From: dELiA*s
Subject Line: You Voted! Shop Our Best Sellers + Free Shipping
(Not sure how they know I voted but since I did, they are giving me easy access to view their best selling items and take advantage of free shipping on orders over $25)

All of the above retail email campaigns leveraged something slightly different in their marketing messages yet all focused on the keyword "vote" in the subject line. If you had to vote for which campaign would perform the best in regards to sales conversions (assuming that is the overall goal for each message, which would you give your vote to?

Why Bigger Is Not Always Better

2008-10-30T14:25:00.004-04:00

It's been proven time and time again that smaller, segmented sends are not only ultimately more relevant to your subscribers, but always perform better. The knee-jerk reaction that I've faced in the past is to send every email to ALL of your subscribers... to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Segmenting is all based on collected information and user activity. Don't have a lot of information on your customers? Well then, this is the one and only case where I think it's OK to send them ALL the same email. It's always helps to check in with your subscribers to make sure you have current and relevant information. It's also an opportunity to see how active your users are. If they don't click through and give you additional info, then cut your losses... or at least throw them in a segment for inactivity that they can call their own. Your database of subscribers is only as strong as its weakest link. And if you collect anything at all, make sure it's their first and last name (aside from their email address, obviously).

Another way to optimize your subscriber base is to send an email to users that haven't opened an email in the last 12 months (like the inactivity group I mentioned above). Ask them to display images via ALT tags (how opens are tracked) or to click through to a landing page. Keep those who obey, and omit the rest. They're worthless and you're ultimately doing yourself a disservice by constantly sending to them.

Set aside a good chunk of time every six months to auditing your subscribers. Cut the fat and embrace the active users.

But if there's any one thing I want people to take away from this post is that it all starts from day one. Once a user signs up, set their expectations. Encourage them to give you as much information about themselves as possible. When they do opt in, send them a welcome message! All ESPs have this feature at their disposal... you might as well use it! Also, make sure there are options available for users to update their preferences in every email you send them.

Whats Wrong With This Picture?

2008-10-30T12:30:00.004-04:00

Like most others, you would have most likely dropped off the sign up process at some point whether it be at the first long page full of form fields, the amount of pages it took you through or the lack of information upfront. I could see from the initial email, something critical was missing so I went through the process up till the last page to see if I could find what I was looking for. No such luck. Can you tell me whats missing from this communication?

Email

Sign Up Form

More Sign Up Info

Pricing Options

Payment Information

So with five pages of information, you think they'd be able to tell you where the event is located/hosted right?

Credit is Owed to Industry Thought Leaders

2008-10-28T17:25:00.008-04:00

I just got back into the office today after visiting clients and had to face the overwhelming response of emails waiting for me in my inbox, which was a just two days worth in this case. So as many do I first scanned to check for any client emails that needed direct attention, followed by internal communications. To get through the rest, its mostly hitting the delete button because I know Im not going to go back and read through them all as there's just not enough time in the day. However in filtering through the journals and thought leaders blog posts which I have feed into my inbox, Im taking the time to read the blog posts yet hardly skimming the news journals article titles. My attention to these reiterated the importance of good content and what respected contributors in this space provide for free. Considering their busy schedules and how they still make time to post valuable information that's read worthy, email marketers should strive do the same in publishing consistent and relevant content. With that marketers can only expect to see their customers spending more time in their inboxes or better yet, clicking through.

Let's Go Rangers!

2008-09-23T11:24:00.005-04:00

Geotargeting is an excellent way to provide your subscribers with timely and relevant content. Its easy to implement by collecting either the users' zip code or state.

My favorite hockey team has always been the New York Rangers. My folks grew up in NY/NJ. My dad always watched their games. I was born into it. Recently I signed up for their mailing list and my first email by them was a doozy.

This is an extremely well-executed example of geotargeting-based messaging done right. They know I live near Tampa, so they sent me an email to buy to tickets to a Rangers /Lightning game on two separate occasions. All it entails is to segment your database by state or zip code. Elementary stuff, really.

If anyone reading this will be in Tampa on Wednesday, November 26th, come by the St Pete Times Forum... Say hello. I'll be in section 203, row K. Let's Go Rangers!

Style.com "Gets" Promotional Emails

2008-09-17T13:40:00.007-04:00

Take a look at this email:

I'll put it bluntly... Style Magazine pulled off an awesome promotional email. The iPod alone is a very strong call to action and I clicked immediately. Win an iPod touch? I'm there. Strong, straight-to-the-point subject line: "Win an iPod Touch from Style.com". My only criticism is that I would have liked to see the text to the left be embedded in the HTML rather than the image.

As a result of getting this email, I just may purchase a subscription for some friends near Christmas time. And if I win the iPod? Oh, you can guarantee my business.

I would love to know the click-through rate for this email. I imagine that it would be above 75%.

At any rate... job well done, Style.

Birthday Email Communications

2008-09-09T17:40:00.003-04:00

Considering all the spam that arrives in our inboxes today, birthday emails are almost as good as getting an unexpected letter in the mail from a friend or family member. Although most birthday emails I have seen are tied to some sort of sales offer, they act as a great added touch point between the brand and the customer outside of their regular communications. Additionally birthday email messages:

Become anticipated once you see one brand's birthday message land in your inbox
Can be used as a marketing/sales tool - $10 off product/service, just for you on your birthday....
Leverage personalization at its best
Show a good likelihood that they are going to get opened especially if the subject line contains "Happy Birthday"
Allows brands to measure a subscriber's response in regards to relevant and personalized messages vs mass communication
Allows brands to show their customers that they care, one of the reasons they ask for your birthday upon sign up or on your preferences page

My two favorite birthday emails based on my preferences and the brands I subscribe to are Cold Stone Creamery and Origins. Cold Stone Creamery gives their customers a free "Love It Creation" aka medium sized cup - come on now, who doesn't love ice cream while Origins is giving me $10 off my next purchase. As a repeat customer, I'll be sure to use it.

Don't you just want to sign up for your favorite brands email communications now to see what they send you on your birthday?!

Quiksilver: 3 Welcome Messages In A Row

2008-09-09T09:14:00.003-04:00

After reading this post at Email Wars, I was inclined to sign up for some Quiksilver emails. I always wore this brand as a kid... Whether it was some baggy boardshorts, stained t-shirts or a ripped pair of jeans; I sported Quiksilver quite often in my "quiet little beach community."

Now I'm older and I've ditched most -- if not all -- of my surf-wear. But that doesn't mean I'm not curious to see what one of my most cherished brands as a kid is up to nowadays... Especially in the email realm.

So I signed up, and after going through a pretty standard process (name, email, birthday, zip) I was looking forward to see how they would go about engaging me.

But instead of positive engagement, I was inundated with the same welcome message for three days in a row. The same message... Over and over and over. I was annoyed, sure, but after the third email, I was strangely compelled to click through and see what the preferences page looked like. As you can see below, it's not daunting at all. One thing I would have liked to see is my email and zip (already on file, mind you) auto-filled.

Another thing worth noting is that each welcome message was received between 8:02am and 8:04am. Auto generated? Me thinks so.

Quiksilver needs to understand that this is NOT the smartest way to initially engage a new subscriber. I'm sure if I wasn't in the email marketing industry, I would've unsubscribed after the second email. I hope they make up for this with relevant offers and announcements. You know, now that they have my preferences and all.

Snapfish: A/B Testing Fail

2008-09-02T10:40:00.009-04:00

I've been a subscriber of Snapfish's emails for a good year and a half now. Overall, I've been content with their emails (although they do have a tendency to over-send sometimes). And lately, it seems as though their content has become less and less relevant to me.

Smart email marketers always conduct some sort of A/B testing to determine how their subscriber base reacts to certain aspects of email. Whether it's a varying subject line or call to action; knowing what your customers like and how they react is crucial to a successful campaign.

But what happens when you send both the "A" test AND the "B" test to the same subscriber? Well, they tend to opt out or report you as SPAM... Which is what I had to do last Friday.

I first received an email at 9:47am with the subject line "Start school with 20% off a photo calendar" with a CTA that read "new school year, new calendar!". Not really interested or relevant since I'm not in school. I also need to mention that I had received this same exact email 5 days prior. Frustration was starting to set in.
Then 4 hours later I received yet another email which looked very similar. The subject line this time around read "Just 3 days left - 20% off photo calendars" and the call to action was "Get 20% off on Calendars". This email is more my speed, but by this time I had overlooked the offer since I was so annoyed.
This is sloppy email marketing, plain and simple. Always make sure you split your database down the middle and exclude any subscribers from the previously sent list. This prevents any duplicates and overlap in your subscriber base.

And I'm sorry to say that Snapfish has lost this subscriber. And if this issue was across the board, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who hovered over and clicked the "unsubscribe" link.

VSL Gets A Redesign

2008-08-21T13:47:00.008-04:00

My favorite daily editorial email, VERY SHORT LIST, has a new layout and design. It's more intelligently laid out, now with a pre-header and with more predominant calls to action, especially with the forward to a friend button. They're also incorporating social networking tools such as Digg and Facebook to spread the word about VSL.

Everything about this email is consistent, to-the-point and also encourages user sign up and database growth. There are 3 opportunities for a new user to sign up and 5 opportunities to forward the email or invite friends to sign up. Also with the new design, there's a call to action for the web-version of VSL, which has separate content independent of the email.

Kudos to the creators and editors of VSL. Excellent job on all fronts.

Planning Your Email Campaign

2008-08-21T11:08:00.004-04:00

Abercrombie is leveraging video within their email marketing messages. There most recent communication was different than the standard sales and marketing mesasges they typically send out.

Subject line for this message was: Have What It Takes To Be The Next A&F Model?

Body of Message:

Overall, I like the idea of the email communication. One because its different than their other messages, two because they are trying something new and three because they are asking their audience to interact. However they failed to follow through. The video never gave me a call to action. It was back to their standard marketing tactics, using good looking men and women to represent their brand. I was then redirected to a page on their website with a half naked man. Based on my preferences and previous emails I received from them, they know I'm a female so why wouldn't they direct me to the woman's fashion area of the site? Better yet, why didn't they redirect me to a landing page with the call to action from the video in regards to details on becoming the next A&F model? Lastly, why can't I watch the video again? I went back to my email to click through again to see if I had missed something but when I try to click through again I am just taken back to the half naked man.

Like I said, I like that A&F is trying something new, however planning an email marketing campaign is one of the most important parts prior to execution. The planning needs to be thought through before implementing to tee up a successful campaign.

Mark "Not Spam" = Positive IP Reputation?

2008-08-14T15:57:00.006-04:00

So I'm an avid user of Netflix. I usually go through about 6 DVDs every two weeks or so. Their email notifications are exceptional in their on-time delivery and are always accurate to the order of my queue. These message always land in my Yahoo! inbox without fail.

This past week, they've seemingly had some issues on their side as notifications were not released upon the return of a specific DVD and with which DVD you should expect to receive next. There's a message on their main page explaining the issue and they also emailed their entire database about the issue. But unlike their notification emails, this announcement landed in my spam folder. Now I have a theory as to why this happened: They sent one mass email to their entire database at once explaining the issue, thus making email clients think it was a spam message due to the large amount of recipients it was going to.

But from this debacle, it dawned on me that if a spammy message lands in your inbox, you usually mark it as spam and it consequently effects the IP address negatively. But what if you mark it as "not spam"? Don't you think it should inversely effect the IP in a positive manner?

After discussing this with a few co-workers, some interesting points were made. With this scenario, there's a strong possibility that spammers would just have to create multiple accounts across all major platforms to counteract the legit spam reports, thus increasing the deliverable spam email. But what if major email clients could track the "not-spam" marks on a person by person basis? I'm not sure how likely that is, but if someone figures it out, it's definitely something I'll support...

Being involved with email, deliverability is one of my biggest challenges. It's a constant struggle to combat spam filters. But if something like this is initiated, it would definitely help my cause and make my job a lot easier.

Does anyone know if something like this is feasible? Do you think it's a good idea? Bad idea? Neutral? Comment below!

Lotus Notes on Your iPhone

2008-08-13T14:40:00.005-04:00

As it has the reputation of being the WORST email client for rendering HTML, it is nothing less than shocking that reports are coming in that Lotus Notes will be releasing an application for the iPhone. The only question I have is WHY?

I'm a bit confused on why IBM would be putting any effort into a project such as this since the iPhone comes with Apple Mail by default. To their credit though, they will be using their Domino Web Access version affectionately called "Ultralite". Their old and nasty framework of POP/IMAP will be omitted (thank god).

Their site claims that "Lotus Notes data will combine with the flexibility and connectivity of the Apple iPhone. To be built on the time tested IBM Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure, users will be able to quickly access email, calendars, and contacts through the rich Apple iPhone user experience."

I'm interested in seeing how things pan out with this. Here are some screenshots of what the Lotus iPhone Mail App will look like:

I need to get an iPhone ASAP to start testing on this when it is released.

Allure Is Doing It Wrong

2008-08-07T13:32:00.003-04:00

Where do I begin...

First of all, I have no idea how I got on this list in the first place. I'm a dude, and I swear I have no interest in handbags and makeup. Seriously. I scanned the email, heading toward the footer for the opt out link when low and behold, their opt out procedure was to forward the email to a sketchy address beginning with "unsubscribe-ctg0aib62aacgk4qtkisrfejqyybag2a".

Then the next line reads: "You will no longer receive our special offers; however, you will continue to receive any newsletters to which you have subscribed."

Umm... no. I want to unsubscribe from ALL communications. But YOU'RE NOT LETTING ME!

At this point I was pretty annoyed... I hovered my mouse over the text of the email when I noticed that the whole email was click-able. So, I patronized them and clicked... low and behold the link was BROKEN. Invalid URL. Probably had something to do with the DOCTYPE being in the URL string. DOCTYPE? Really? It's not even necessary to include it in HTML emails. All you need are tables. No HTML tags, body tags, meta tags, etc.

Haven't marketers learned that it is absolutely essential to test emails nowadays? And furthermore, in today's day and age, you must include a means for the user to update their preferences.

Oh yeah... and they used a very spammy subject line. See below:

If anyone from Allure or Conde Nast Magazine is reading this and you need some help in the email department, give us a shout.

Conditional CSS Comments for Outlook 2007

2008-07-23T09:27:00.006-04:00

The team at SitePoint have recently implemented the use conditional CSS comments in email, targeting Outlook 2007 specifically.

Conditional comments first made their arrival to target specific versions of Internet Explorer. With these comments, you can write specific CSS rules for any internet browser. Check out some quick guidelines here.

The code to target Outlook 2007:

Now you wouldn't use this code all that often. Campaign Monitor gives us an example of using it with unordered lists. Apparently, ULs (with bullets) don't appear with bullets in Outlook 2007, so in this case, it would be a perfect time to incorporate a conditional comment.

If you start using this technique, comment below and tell us your thoughts. We'll start employing this technique as well so check back for any further developments.

Email as Digital Glue

2008-07-22T10:42:00.005-04:00

Earlier last week entrepreneur and overall media junkie Greg Cangialosi spoke in Boston about "Email Marketing's Role in New Media". At the core of this presentation, we're left with the central theme of email being the "digital glue" that ties all other emerging and established interactive media outlets together. Through this presentation he determines that even with all of these stimulating and exciting forms of media in today's market, email is still the most dominant and essential application used. Here is an overview of some of the highlights of his presentation:

92% of all internet users read and send email on a daily basis.
For ever dollar spent on email marketing in 2007, there is a return on investment of $48.29.
It is the only common medium that ties all avenues of social networking together.

Compelling stuff indeed.

This presentation was part one of a three-part series by Greg. Stay tuned for the impending installments. See the presentation slides here.

Oh, and thanks to Tamara for pointing this out!