I wrote this post last week for Smartinsights and have received very positive feedback on the concept behind using search to personalise the email subscribers experience.

But before we begin, we also need to understand the difference between a pull and a push channel.

Websites and search are both pull channels, whilst email is a push channel.

The strength of search being a pull channel, is that people are on a mission – they have a purpose and are focused on completing that mission.

The strength of email as being a push channel is that it is able to push the valuable content and offers to the subscribers inbox.

What we ideally want to do here is harness the strengths of each of these channels to deliver a personalised and relevant subscriber experience. By doing this we are performing what I like to call Holistic Email Marketing.

We're all aware of being able to utilise implicit data such as click behaviour, browsing behaviour and transactional behaviour to personal the email subscribers experience - but there is also a 4th form of implicit data that we can leverage - that of search data.

Using this data, we can not only understand what products or services they're interested in, but we can speak to them where they're at within the buying cycle.

Read the full post to see how this can work for you

Over on MarketingProfs, Karen Talavera suggests this four-step course of action for dealing with inactives.

1. Conduct a reactivation email campaign

Identify inactives on your list according to agreed-upon criteria (Never purchased? No clicks in 12 weeks? Zero opens in six months?), and segment them for a reactivation email campaign containing a special incentive if they opt in to your list again, confirm permission, or provide expanded information.

2. Connect via social media

New (and dare I say it, way cool) low-cost applications such as Flowtown make it possible for you to identify which social-media networks your email-list members belong to on a person-by-person basis.

Reach out to them to friend, link to, or follow on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, and more.

If you can get an active connection going in a social-media environment, chances are the next time your email message arrives, that list member will pay more attention to it.

3. Attempt offline connections

If establishing contact online doesn't work, try connecting via direct mail or telephone to reconfirm and refresh email-list sign-up.

Outreach through offline channels adds variety to your marketing mix and stands out; those who might be ignoring their inboxes or those who simply might have changed email addresses and need to provide you with the newest, most-relevant one, might well appreciate the contact.

4. Reduce volume of email messages sent or suppress entirely

Less-active email-list members warrant less-frequent communication. Suppress inactives from all but your most-general email campaigns (such as your newsletter or quarterly updates), or suppress them entirely.

You don't need to wipe them off your list, simply don't email them as much , unless and until they show an increase in responsiveness.

Suppressing inactives that you have failed to re-engage via reactivation campaigns will boost your email-campaign performance metrics considerably. Remember, large list size is meaningless if a sizable percentage of list members aren't engaged.

via www.marketingprofs.com

Do you track your opt-in data?
"Surprisingly, I'm finding that many marketing managers aren't tracking this. This is sad, because sometimes this data is the last line of defense against you getting sanctioned over allegations of sending spam. When an ISP, ESP, or recipient asks for proof that a recipient opted-in to your email, they're asking for those exact details."

Four odd email ideas that (maybe) make sense
Mark Brownlow shares four email marketing concepts that seem wrong but might be right.

Three more odd email ideas that (maybe) make sense
And the list continues: poor open rates are a good thing, good responses don't indicate success, and delivering value is a bad idea.

You Need to Have a Privacy Policy 
When I reach out to ISP’s to resolve delivery issues, one of the items they almost always require is that email marketers have a clear and detailed privacy policy.

Let Your Subscribers Tell if the Email is Relevant 
Don't know if your subscribers find your emails relevant? Just ask them!

Link Tracking - Profiles Drive Greater E-mail Relevance
Stefan Pollard "The following two tactics will help you collect data at different points in the customer or subscriber relationship. There are more, of course, but these two work for me time and time again."

In this post, Stefan Pollard talks about why subscribers go inactive and how to respond to that. 

He lists 8 main reasons why subscribers stop responding:

1. List age. As e-mail ages as a marketing channel, mailing lists themselves get older. If addresses on your list are five to 10 years old, they could be abandoned but not invalid yet.
2. No welcome program to engage new subscribers immediately.
3. Messages that don't meet subscriber expectations or match preferences.
4. Weak inbox presence (unbranded sender line and/or generic or boilerplate subject line).
5. Unsubscribe process that's hard to find, complicated, or untrustworthy.
6. Large percentage of Web e-mail clients, like Yahoo or Gmail, with high mailbox storage capacity, allowing unopened e-mails to pile up.
7. Mailing frequency - either too frequently for subscriber comfort and expectations or too seldom.
8. Offer repetition, where you rotate through the same offers every week. Subscribers catch on and simply ignore your messages, waiting until they are finally in the mood to purchase.

Continue reading here

One question that often comes up when marketers are creating a campaign based on customer data is "what do we send if we don't have any data on a customer?" 

Some might default to a generic message, or not include those consumers in the mailing at all. Sephora takes a different approach. 

In this campaign, Sephora is promoting personalized product recommendations based on skin type, coloring and fragrance preferences. 

Continue reading here, I promise you you'll be amazed at how simple but clever they solved the issue of not having data for some people to personalize the message with.

Hat tip to Chat White for finding this.

Too often, when marketers start focusing on growth, they're not asking, "How can I polish up my acquisition practices so my list attracts more qualified, engaged subscribers?" They're really saying, "How can I grow my list 50 percent this year?" 

That second focus can lead to tactics like one retailer's recent e-mail, which greeted prospective customers with this message: "Check it out! We think you'll have a lot in common, so we added you to (our) e-mail list." This practice is so wrong! 

You don't build a good mailing list by assuming your recipients will be interested, and you can't cover your actions by including an opt-out link. As with recovery or reactivation programs, you need an explicit opt-in. "No response" does not equal consent. 

Prechecked boxes on opt-in forms with fuzzy language and rented lists with dicey permission are other ways marketers build lists fast but open themselves to spam complaints, unsubscribes, and inactivity in the bargain.

Continue reading here: How to Improve Your Process for Acquiring E-mail Subscribers - ClickZ.

This week Facebook will begin giving marketers the ability to collect email address from users of our Facebook applications. Currently, applications communicate with users through Facebook notifications - a constrained inbox with few opportunities for meaningful direct communications and limited opportunities for monetization. 

After Wednesday, marketers will have the ability to make email permission optional, or a mandatory requirement of an application, and may no longer post notifications from applications.  This development opens up an exciting new way for Facebook marketers to interact with and ultimately monetize social audiences.  

Continue reading here

Last week I received the below email in my inbox from a mystery sender called "do-not-reply". Hmmm... then I looked at the subject line that said:

Tamara, Regarding Your Subscription to Management for the Rest of Us

Okay, that gave me a clue as to who this email was coming from. This is what was inside:

Dear Tamara,

You subscribed to the above e-zine at the following Web site...

mftrou.com

We host that e-zine, handling all its mailings to you. We recently
received a bounce-back from your address, which means that
something was wrong at that address. It may be just a technical
glitch, so we are contacting you to ensure that all is well.
If you receive THIS e-mail, all is indeed well. :-)

However, if this e-mail bounces back to us, we will watch this
account closely. If the next e-mail bounces back to us, too, we
will delete your address as being inactive. In that case, you will
not receive any more issues of the e-zine...

Management for the Rest of Us

In either event, you have nothing to do. Today's message is to let
you know about this. Just to repeat... if you are reading this,
your account is likely fine and we should not receive another
bounce-back.

Please simply delete this message. Sorry for the bother --
we don't send many queries like this. However, a quick check keeps
our database current with bona-fide opt-in e-mail addresses and
reduces the number of e-mails we send out to inactive addresses,
helping to keep the load on the Internet down. It also ensures
that subscribers like you get their requested e-zine! :-)

All the best,

SiteSell E-zine Quality Team

I thought this was a very interesting approach and I wanted to share it with you because I'm not sure what the upside is of sending out a message like this... 

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Successful reactivation begins with creating relevant segments. Specifically, marketers should separate the never-responders from former responders and light responders. This segmentation approach allows the marketer to understand which tactics work best for each group. After all, these segments differ behaviorally.

Former responders once found the email interesting, but no longer do. Never-respondents never did; perhaps they only supplied an email to take advantage of a specific offer. As a result, these different segments may respond to different reactivation approaches.

Consider at least two different approaches for reactivation. We've seen significant differences in the success of offers, especially when comparing results between never-responders and former responders.

Some offers include:

• One-time discount or gift with purchase. Retailers have the option of bribing the living dead back to life. Those who employ this tactic should do so with the understanding that they may be training their customers to wait for better offers, but some revenue beats no revenue. Also, this option allows marketers to test the value of different kinds of incentives (10 percent off vs. free shipping, etc.).
  
• Survey. Give customers the ability to sound off about what they like and dislike about the email and to recommend content they may like. This approach works best if the marketer can use survey responses as preferences. For instance, if the customer merely wants less email, the marketer must have the ability to reduce frequency for this approach to work best.
• Reduced frequency. If a marketer has stuck to a single cadence for his or her emails, then the living dead may respond to a change in frequency. Even unengaged consumers notice when a regular email disappears from their inboxes and then reappears.
• Interest check. Very often, the simple approach of asking subscribers if they still want to receive the email works well. This approach may involve sending a simple postcard-style email with the single call to action of "click here to continue receiving these emails." A more subtle approach in this vein may involve changing only the subject line to remind users what they receive. For one retail bank client, we changed the subject line of a newsletter from the branded name for the newsletter to "your June newsletter from [bank name]."

After testing, the most successful tactics will emerge. Of course, the definition of success depends on the marketer. While a retailer may judge success on purchases, other marketers may consider any click or open a success. In general, we prefer the broader definition of any click or open because it shows signs of life, if not a return to constant engagement. Resurrecting the living dead has to start somewhere.

One last thought centers on expectations. Marketers should not expect to reactivate every member of the living dead. Far from it. The most successful reactivation campaigns might reactivate 50 percent of the file, but those efforts involve high-value incentives for a highly targeted group. More realistically, marketers can expect to reactivate 5 percent of the living dead with modest efforts and up to 10 percent with more aggressive efforts.

Source: iMedia Connection

Janine Popick lists 29 ways to collect email addresses on the Vertical Response blog. Here are the first 10:

1. Put an offer on the back of your business cards to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
2. Tradeshows - Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and ask for permission to send email to those who sign up.
3. Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
4. Send an opt-in email to your address book asking them to join your list.
5. Join your local chamber of commerce, email the member list (if it's opt-in) about your services with a link to sign up to your newsletter.
6. Host your own event - Art galleries, software companies (one here has a party every quarter and invites the neighboring businesses), retail shops, consultants (lunch & learn) can all host an event and request attendees to sign up.
7. Offer a birthday club where you give something special to people who sign up.
8. Incentivize your employees - Give them $ for collecting VALID email addresses.
9. Giving something for free like a PDF? Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you let them download it.
10. Referrals - Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you'll give them a discount.

You can find the other 19 on the Vertical Response blog.

There are so many bounce codes used by the various ISPs and receivers that it's hard to keep them all straight. Now there is a great resource for most of the known bounce codes to help simplify your tracking and processing.

Thanks primarily to Chris Wheeler of Bronto Software, Jack Sinclair or Return Path and Josh Baer of OtherInbox, the eec’s Deliverability Roundtable has put together a repository of common and available bounce strings senders might see from current ISPs (email receivers).

The forum is setup on Get Satisfaction as a dynamic and interactive site that allows users to request information and update bounce strings as they change. The ISP serving the bounce, the bounce string text and next steps for a sender are written out by bounce code here.

For more information, visit the eec blog.

Here are some guidelines to make your unsubscribe process as easy as possible for those that want out:

• Include the unsubscribe link at the top of the email – don’t bury it in the footer where it might be missed. If people can’t find the unsubscribe link, they’ll use the Report Spam button instead
• Implement a single click unsubscribe process instead of requiring subscribers to enter their email addresses
• Include a way for subscribers to opt-in to your lists again in case they accidently removed themselves from your list
• Set up a valid email address subscribers can reply to in order to unsubscribe from your list and monitor it closely.
• Remember that your opt-out mechanism must be able to process requests for at least 30 days after the message was deployed
• Always always always use a suppression list

Source: Listrak's white paper Increase ROI with List Management Tactics

In this article, Kath Pay shares these 11 tips to build a good mailing list:

1. Make the initial opt-in form simple and fast to fill out.

2. If you need more information, such as demographic data or buying behaviour to target emails, send follow-up emails asking for this a little later in the relationship.

3. You also can add a couple of fields after the required fields but mark them clearly as being optional fields.

4.Use a form script that can detect typing errors. Or, ask users to enter their email addresses twice to eliminate errors.

5. Tell subscribers up front what you plan to do with their data.

6. Clearly label whether a field is required or optional.

7. If you ask for more detailed information at opt-in, add a brief explanation.

8. Use blank tick boxes that the subscriber must tick to give permission both for the opt-in and to
share their information with your third-party or co-registration vendors.

9. Don't try to trick subscribers with confusing  opt-in instructions.

10. Don't mix blank and ticked boxes.

11. Tell subscribers up front if you require them to receive third-party messages or offers you send on your vendors' behalf, even if you don't share that information with the vendors.

Read the full article here.

In this article, Stefan Pollard lists a couple of ways to collect more information from your email subscribers that can be used to create segments and relevant messages:

1. Invite readers to fill out or update their profiles
2. Use the search engine optimization terms that drive the most traffic to your site
3. Target messages based on subscribers' past behavior
4. Interview the people who talk directly with your customers
5. See where people click in your email messages
6. Choice vs. behavior: which yields stronger segments?

Read this excellent article here.

Reconfirmation is an essential technique for list cleanup when there's trouble. High complaint rates, high bounce rates, spam-trap hits, uncertain list provenance, periods of inactivity, all point to a need for reconfirmation to clean a bad list. However it can also be used day to day as part of the routine maintenance of a list.

In this article, Derek Harding provides these 3 rules for reconfirming email lists:

1. Select the recipients. To maintain an effective reconfirmation exit strategy, it's vital to know when recipients last responded. This should include all potential activity, clicks, opens, profile maintenance, and non-e-mail activity such as purchase behavior. While I would not recommend stopping reconfirmation due to a lack of e-mail activity it may well be worth factoring in to a weighting system.

For example your strategy may be to put recipients into the reconfirmation phase when they have not purchased (off-line) for three months, not opened for six months, and not clicked for a year. This would mean that someone who has not responded for a year but who purchases will have another three months before entering the reconfirmation process, just in case they have renewed interest.

One might wonder why the purchase wouldn't have a longer time frame. The reason is that since it's an offline activity it tells us nothing about the current state of the e-mail address even though it tells us a lot about the owner of that address.

2. Keep options open. This is not an emergency reconfirmation where it is essential to remove problematic addresses immediately. It is a mechanism to gracefully retire addresses from the list once the owners are no longer interested. To this end offer both an opt-in and an opt-out button, a "Yes, I want to remain on the list" and a "No, I'm done". This gives the option to send a second message to non-respondents before retiring a recipient's address.

3. Ensure the creative is clear, simple, and has a strong call to action. If you're running two messages it's possible to have a relatively soft sell on the first and a much stronger one on the last chance message.

Source: ClickZ

In this post on the Email Experience blog, Lisa Harmon shares there 5 ways to make your communication preference center stand out:

(1) Let subscribers decide what information they want to offer.
Tommy Bahama asks only the most basic details upfront, then layers in the opportunity to identify optional detailed preferences. This allows subscribers to decide how much information they want to disclose—and how much time they want to invest in the sign-up process. Asking for too much upfront can result in a lost email address.

(2) Provide clear descriptions of your content options.
BabyCenter publishes a variety of personalized email newsletters. They make it easy for subscribers to choose which they’d like to recieve by posting descriptions and examples of each publication. Content selection happens at step three of their simple, three-step registration process. BabyCenter includes an explanation around each step to help subscribers understand how providing data is to their benefit.

(3) Allow subscribers to select their preferred message format.
As more subscribers view email on mobile devices, it becomes important to ask them how they prefer to receive their emails—in HTML or Text format. The New York Times follows a three-step registration process similar to BabyCenter’s; however, because they reach out to more business customers using mobile devices, they include a format preference option. I like that they include a “What’s this?” link to explain the difference between HTML and Text; it’s silly to assume that the general public understands the difference.

(4) Give subscribers control over frequency.
While your biggest fans might want to hear from you every day, your sunny-day subscribers might prefer to receive email from you only once a month. If you have the capability to deliver on the promise, offer frequency as an option on your communication preferences page… and, as a way to retain over-mailed subscribers, on your opt-down page, like in this Saks example.

(5) Make the experience pleasant and easy.
I like Louis Vuitton’s Communication Preferences Center for its transparency and conciseness. Options to subscibe, modify and unsubscribe appear within a left-land menu bar, and each page lives succinctly above the fold. As we’d hope for a luxury brand, the pages are well-produced and attractive; the newsletter sample screenshot is a nice touch.

Tommy Bahama also presents a well-branded experience, from the design to the copy. Rather than just picking up default verbiage, they make the text paradise-appropriate: “Tell us what inspires you, and we'll create an email experience that's as perfect as a well-planned vacation.”

Source: Email Experience blog

1. Make your sign-up form easy to find
Make sure you have forms (as opposed to buttons) published in hard-to-miss locations on your pages, and on as many pages where the form is relevant. Remember that nearly every page on your site has the potential to be a landing page, particularly in the case of visitors arriving from search engines.

2. Provide a convincing incentive for subscribers to sign up
This is a great place to split-test copy and design. Testing will tell you what works best for you and your visitors.

3. Don't ask for too much information
It's tempting to ask for more information that might teach you slightly more about your subscribers, but the more information you ask for, the more hesitant many people will be to give up private information and to invest time into filling out your form.

Keep it simple. Ask for what you need to email your subscribers with your goals for personalization and segmentation in mind. Usually, "Name" and "Email" are all you need.

4. Use a thank-you page that does its job
The job of a good thank-you page, usually, is to transition subscribers from a Web site experience to an inbox experience.

Set expectations with subscribers about what they should expect to receive, including what your emails will look like in their inbox, and what they should do with it. This is especially important when using a confirmed opt-in process.

5. Understand why subscribers are leaving
Many email marketing software products provide an option for subscribers to leave feedback on their way out. Take to heart the concerns of these people and learn from them. Maybe you're not targeting correctly, or maybe you send messages too frequently.

Source: MarketingProfs

In this article, Morgan Stewart shares some tips on how to use re-opt-in campaigns to verify email permission and reengage unengaged subscribers on your list.

Unengaged subscribers result in lower response rates and wasted marketing dollars. Re-opt-in campaigns are useful for cleaning old or unengaged subscribers off your list by confirming which subscribers want to continue receiving marketing emails. This results in a healthier list and increased return on investment.

Based on his experience with these kind of campaigns he lists 4 best practices:

1. Be clear in the subject line. These campaigns tend to be targeting subscribers who have not responded in a while, so breaking the mold with concise, straightforward, or even provocative subject lines help get people to open the email.
2. Restate your value proposition. A concise restatement of what your subscribers can expect reminds them of what you are all about — and what they will miss if they do not confirm their email subscription.
3. Use "yes" AND "no" options. By including that NO option, you will actually get more people to click YES.
4. Send a second request. In Morgan's experience second requests to non-responders consistently get nearly the same number of opt-ins as the first, so failing to do so could have a material impact on the success of your campaign.

Read the full article here and don't forget to read the comments as well!

Over on the EEC blog Dan Babb and Austin Bliss share some strategies to re-engage inactive subscribers:

Explore segmentation tactics.
One-to-one communication and segmentation are so easy to do with email. It’s highly recommended that you start categorizing your non-responders into various cells, and start testing different content and subject lines for each cell. When you identify a strategy that starts to show positive results (getting people engaged), use that strategy for the remainder of the cells.

Consider a survey.
Inviting subscribers to participate in a survey can be an effective tool for re-activation programs. Ask your subscribers for information that can be helpful in providing them content and offers they will find valuable.

Get a new email address.
Is the fact that the subscriber is not responding a sign that the email address is going to be invalid soon (abandoned email account)? Should you try to find a new email address for that subscriber? Over the last 6 to 8 months, there’s been an increase in the number of customers that are submitting their “chronic non-responders” for email change of address and email update services. One reason for this trend is because of slowing list growth. As a marketer’s growth rate of their opt-in house file slows down, the loss of emails due to bounces and non-responders start to really show their impact in terms of lost revenue. Therefore, finding a new email address for a non-responder has been a strategy that’s being adopted by more companies.

Is there a risk if you continue to email non-responders?
This question came up. The general consensus was that there probably is not a risk that the non-responder will press the automated complaint buttons or report you as spam. However, abandoned emails do sometimes get converted to “honeypots” or “spam traps” by the ISPs. The ISPs don’t tell us good guys which addresses may have triggered a spam trap, so you don’t know which ones to remove from your list. A suggestion: do a 1-year purge—anyone who hasn’t shown any action (as defined above) could be suppressed from future campaigns.

Source: Email Experience  Blog

A quick, easy and reliable unsubscribe process is an essential element of your email marketing program. However, not everyone who clicks the unsubscribe link actually wants to end the relationship with your company. But, if you don't give them options, or if you make the ones you have hard to find, you will certainly lose them.

According to Loren McDonald there are three keys to an effective unsubscribe process:

1. Make it Easy to Opt Out
Purists will argue for a one-click unsubscribe, but the reality is that many subscribers might simply want to change the nature of the relationship, not end it.

If someone truly wants to leave your list, however, make it quick and easy. Don't hide the unsubscribe link in your email, and don't use some euphemism on the link that the subscriber wouldn't recognize immediately. Making the opt-out process difficult will result only in more spam complaints and potential delivery problems.

2. Provide Alternatives to Opting Out
When users do click on the unsubscribe link, direct them to a combination preference center/unsubscribe page. Again, don't obfuscate the unsubscribe language or process, but do make it clear that they can choose to do something besides opt out.

Your subscribers' needs and interests change over time. Maybe they don't have time to read your daily emails and would be happier with a weekly digest. Perhaps they just need to change their email address, prefer RSS feeds or a text version they can read on their BlackBerry or cell phones. If you don't offer them some choice in how to make your emails more relevant and valuable to them, you could lose the ability to communicate with them forever.

Here are reasons why subscribers might click your unsubscribe link, with alternatives you can offer to retain the relationship:

• Email address change: Many subscribers simply want to change their email address. If you don't make this easy, they'll be forced to opt out and resubscribe. You could lose them entirely this way. For best practices on the email-address-change process, see last month's
  "Mistakes" column.
• Frequency: The average consumer receives roughly 300 email messages a week. That might not seem like a lot to people who work in email, but it's a lot for the consumer. If you are a retailer, for example, and send two or three emails per week, consider offering subscribers alternative frequencies such as once per week or month.
• Channel: Sure, we're all about email, but there are so many more channels available to marketers. As appropriate, offer alternatives to email communications such as an RSS feed or direct mail.
• Interests/Preferences: Subscribers change. They might switch from downhill skiing to snowboarding, change jobs or need to shop for school clothes now instead of baby toys. If possible, pre-populate their existing profile or preferences and make it simple to modify.
• Format: As more people adopt the BlackBerry and similar mobile devices, some of your subscribers might prefer to receive rich-text versions of your email rather than HTML. They'll get tired of looking at mangled HTML emails with lines of HTML code rather than text. Be sure to offer that option.
• Alternative Emails: If you publish multiple newsletters, allow subscribers to uncheck the box next to the newsletter they no longer want and check another that now fits their needs.

3. Leave on Good Terms/Solicit Feedback
It is vital to give your subscribers a good opt-out experience. While they might no longer receive your emails, they might continue to patronize your business now or in the future. Thank them as they unsubscribe and tell them you are sorry to see them go. Most of all, make the entire process simple and pleasant.

Lastly, use the opportunity to uncover why they are unsubscribing. This allows them to be heard, but also it gives you data points about why people are leaving your list. A simple comments field will work, but better yet is a drop-down or check box of the most common reasons plus a comments field. This way, you can more easily aggregate common reasons, yet still capture individual feedback.

The key then is to act on this feedback so you can improve your program and minimize list churn.

Source: Silverpop