Consumers More Engaged With Email

According to recent research published by Forrester Research, “Consumer Email Attitudes Improve.”, consumers are more engaged with email.  

Forrester compared research conducted since 2006 that showed these very important consumer shifts in email attitudes: 

• Consumers forward promotional email more often: In 2010, 12% of consumers say they sometimes forward promotional email to others, up from the 10% in 2008, and 9% in 2006.
• Fewer messages deleted without reading: In 2010, 59% of consumers said they delete most email messages without reading them, down from the 63% in 2008 and the 73% in 2006.
• Integrate email promotions and personal email: Only 10% of consumers say they have a separate email account they use just for receiving commercial email, down from the 15% in 2008. 

You can read more at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2011/4596/forrester-user-attitudes-toward-email-improving#ixzz1GFOLJOER

Consumers can make their email experience even better by using eMail ID, and senders can make sure their messages get noticed.  When the eMail ID app is installed, the undifferentiated text of the inbox is transformed into a highly informative visual presentation that makes quick work of finding the emails of interest.

 

Know Who.  No Doubt.  Email ID.

Iconix Whitepaper – Getting More From Email Authentication

Today Iconix released a whitepaper entitled, “Getting More From Email Authentication.”

As the whitepaper describes, Email authentication is a technical means of identifying the sender of email.  When a sender uses email authentication, a public record is created that that can be used by the recipient to verify the identity of the sender.  However, email authentication is a self-issued credential.  The owner of phishing.com can authenticate its email.  Email authentication alone does not solve the problem of bad guys pretending to be good guys.  Email authentication is used by email filtering systems as an important spam indicator.  Unauthenticated email is suspect and is less likely to be delivered.  Additionally, by combining the identity of the sending server (which is determined using email authentication) with email reputation data from vendors such as Return Path, spam filters can be fine-tuned to do a better job of delivering messages that users want.  

Email authentication can help senders get their email into the inbox, but the delivered message looks like all the other messages – lost in a sea of text that makes it hard to find.  Recipients want to find emails of interest that are lost sea of text.  And when they find it, they want to know it’s real!  That is where Iconix comes in.

 

Just as you distinguish your goods and services with your trademark, you can now distinguish email you send using the Truemark® service from Iconix.  Using patented and patent pending extensions of email authentication, Iconix marks your email so that your recipients can instantly recognize your messages in the inbox.

To learn more, visit us at http://iconix.com/business/.

01-01-11 “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” ~ Email.

In a widely distributed article entitled, “R.I.P. E-Mail, 1961 – 2010”, Edward Moltzen tells us, “E-MAIL IS DEAD.”   

Maybe Mr. Moltzen should read his email.  During December of 2010, at the time of its supposed death, two studies were released that demonstrated the continuing importance of email.

On December 16, 2010, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a study of internet usage.  They found that email was the most ubiquitous online activity across all ages. 

On December 29, 2010, ForeSee Results released a study of on-line holiday shopping.  ForeSee found that promotional email had a larger impact on on-line sales than search and social combined. 

Communication Method	% of Sales Influenced
Social Media	5%
Search Engines	8%
Promotional Email	19%

With its pervasive presence and strong resonance with consumers, email remains a robust means of communication for everyone.  Reports of the death of email can only call to mind the response of Mark Twain to reports of his demise.  “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Holiday Shopping Hits All Time High – Impact of Email

This holiday season online spending surged 15%, hitting an all time high estimated at $36.4 billion, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse.  

What influenced online sales?  ForeSee Results’ Top 40 Online Retailers studied the influence of social media, search engines and promotional email.   These are the results: 

Communication Method	% of Sales Influenced
Social Media	5%
Search Engines	8%
Promotional Email	19%

What?  Despite all the buzz, hype and spending, social media influenced only 5% of sales!  Promotional emails influenced almost 4 times more sales than social media. 

The ForeSee Results report also emphasized the importance of brand to consumers.  ForeSee Results found that highly satisfied customers are 60% more committed to the brand. 

 

The intersection of brand and email promotion is eMail ID.

When Is Spam Not Spam?

Spam filters do a pretty good job.  But we all know that sometimes good stuff ends up in the spam/bulk folder.  It is a good idea to check the spam folder to find good stuff that is there by mistake.  But how do you actually do that?  You are confronted with a screen full of stuff that you really don’t want to see.  The easiest thing to do is just not look at it.  But, what are you missing? 

eMail ID identifies stuff you want in the spam folder just like it identifies stuff in the inbox.  This is my spam folder.  I have 219 things to survey.  Do I really want to look at 219 spam emails?  How much time do I want to spend and will I even see anything I care about?  And if it looks interesting, can I trust an email that my email hosting service says is spam?  I don’t want to examine 219 messages – I need something that will highlight emails I want to find.

In this spam folder, two real emails stand out.  (You may also notice that this image uses checkmarks instead of our traditional Check-lock – I am using the seeME version of eMail ID, which marks emails from my friends.)  I like buying stuff from the Smithsonian and I am happy to have this email.  I like getting 70% off from JC Penney. 

Let’s focus on the JC Penney email.  Without eMail ID I would have surely passed on this supposed special offer – and I am sure you would, too.  This email is really suspicious: 

Strike 1.  It is in the spam folder. 
Strike 2.  It claims to be from a respected company. 
Strike 3.  It has a very strong call to action that seems too good to be true – 70% off!    

With eMail ID, I was able to overcome the three strikes and get a nice deal from a company that I like. 

When is spam not spam?  When the email is really something you want.  Now you can find emails from thousands of senders easily using eMail ID.

Sneak Peek Update

This week, through an article in DMNews titled “Inside the inbox: What are your customers really seeing?,” we revealed some preliminary results from a study we’re conducting with thousands of email users.

One of the areas we covered was the use of preview panes, which has always been a blind spot for email marketers. Yet it’s important to understand since it dramatically impacts the user’s email experience (do they see the message in a full window or just a snippet along the top or side?).

There are two ways to quantify use of preview panes – by % of users that utilize them or by % of messages read that way. The numbers in the DMNews article are based on % of messages read in the preview pane for each email client. It’s useful (and maybe more important) to understand the % of users that utilize the feature. So, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two –

		Use of preview pane
	Email client	% of users	% of messages
	AOL webmail	2%	2%
	Earthlink	0%	0%
	Gmail	0%	0%
	Outlook	81%	72%
	Outlook Express	78%	71%
	Windows Live Hotmail	32%	13%
	Yahoo! Mail	58%	56%
	Yahoo! Mail Classic	0%	0%

Note that Earthlink, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail Classic do not support a preview pane.

While some of the email clients (AOL, Yahoo! Mail) have similar preview ratios for both users and messages, note the moderate difference (1.1X) for Outlook and Outlook Express users and the huge difference (2.5X) for Windows Live Hotmail users. There is a common thread – for all clients, the % of users who read messages in the preview pane is higher than the % of messages read that way.

What’s the takeaway? Don’t waste effort and potential impact by ignoring one of the primary ways consumers interact with email – designing for digestion in the preview pane is critical.

A Rose By Any Other Name…

We mark thousands of domains in our Truemark service, representing more than 1700 companies. One of our biggest challenges (which is shared by companies themselves) is keeping up with all the domains used to send email. Most consumers would assume that email is sent from the main corporate domain (e.g., company.com), but that’s not the case.

In reality, while there may be one main front door for web visits, there are usually many side doors (and windows, and vents, and…) for sending email. It varies by company:

• Large multinationals usually have domains tied to specific countries (e.g., company.co.uk, company.ca, company.fr)
• Some use a different domain for each line of business (e.g., Dell  for large business vs. small business/home office vs. consumer products)
• Some use different domains for different types of messages (alerts, transactions, promotions, etc.), and
• Most create one or more separate domains that are managed by third parties who send marketing or informational email on their behalf (email.company.com and news.company.com are typical examples). 

When you calculate the possible permutations (countries, lines of business, types of message, third parties), it quickly gets out of control. It’s not uncommon for a company to send email from dozens of domains even within one country.

Why does this matter? The answer varies for each player in the email ecosystem:

• Companies who send email – They want their messages to get through, so the more consistent they can be in their naming conventions, sending process and authentication practices, the easier it is on the other players. Ideally there’s some central point of coordination where these items are tracked and managed, but practical reality dictates that implementation specifics are usually delegated to countries, departments or lines of business. 
• Receivers of email – Whether its an email service like Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, or a corporate email system, all mail servers these days are geared to block spam and phishing while delivering only the good stuff. When there’s consistency in use, naming and authentication of domains sending email from a company, their job is easier, the right mail gets through, and everybody’s happy. 
• Users of email – Though most consumers don’t really understand the innards of email, actual domain names are often seen as part of the address in today’s systems, so they carry brand value (yes, brand value!). Use of funky-looking or many different domain names can make consumers leery, preventing them from engaging with the message.

So what’s the right way to do it? There’s no one size fits all answer to this.  We’ve seen the entire spectrum. Amazon.com probably has the tightest use of domains, with just one primary domain per country. They use addresses to differentiate the type of message. Some of the banks are on the other end of the spectrum, with different domains for each line of business and type of service.

The happy medium that looks to be a manageable best practice is use of the main corporate domain for transactional email (orders, statements, confirmations, etc.), and a few additional domains (e.g., email., offers., updates., news.company.com) to use for specific purposes or outsourced services.  

Keeping a tight rein on domain names makes everyone’s life easier and helps them accomplish the ultimate goal – get the message seen by the person who wants it.