Do Consumers Get Too Much Email? Join me at Internet World

By Tink Taylor

Internet World is very nearly upon us and I've just finished preparing for chairing the DMA Panel on the Tuesday afternoon at 4pm on 'Do consumers get too much email'.

It's certainly going to be an interesting debate and I'm looking forward to hearing your views on this. I'd also like to explore this topic within a B2B setting but that is most definitely another blog post following on from the debate.

For email, it's very important to cut through the clutter of busy inboxes.

There's increasing pressure on marketing budgets which is resulting in more marketing budget being made available for digital and email budgets - good news for marketers as more resource is available to execute email marketing properly.

What does that mean? - Segmentation, targeting, testing and relevancy

What will that give you? - Results, ROI impact, your recipients searching their inboxes for your email and therefore your email will cut through the clutter.

Join me and the rest of the panel, Dela Quist and Kath Pay in an exciting and practical debate 4pm Tuesday 28th April, Internet World

I'll be on the dotDigital Group stand (E6065) with the rest of the team so pop by and say hello. It's our 10th birthday so we've drinks, birthday bonanza offers and quick wins, exclusively at Internet World. See you there.

Internet businesses continue to defy the recession

By Cliff Guy

A recent report indicates that organisations who sell online are among the most confident about the immediate outlook, despite the gloomy economic climate.

More than 75% of those surveyed in eBay's Online Business Index plan to expand or diversify this year. The index monitors the mood of companies who sell online, and found that 64% of those trading on the internet were upbeat about their performance this year.

More than half the companies surveyed expect rising sales and an additional 30% expect sales at least to remain stable. Just one in 4 has revised down their revenue targets for the year.

The resilience of the online market as the channel of preference for consumers in harder times, and the cost-effective nature of online and email marketing are proving powerful drivers for businesses who invest their resources in the digital arena.

Source: Metro.co.uk

Picture your password

By Cliff Guy

At dotMailer, we recently asked all our users to resubmit new passwords, using strict criteria to make sure all dotMailer email marketing accounts are protected by very 'strong' passwords.

Of course, 'strong' passwords aren't always as easy to remember because by their nature they are less obvious and more complicated. So for anyone struggling to remember new passwords, here is some useful memory technique advice from the wonderful world of cognitive neuropsychology.

We know that memory is very, very visual, and that visual memories are stronger. So imaging can be a powerful way to help memorise a password.

A good example of the process is the "number shape system" of eight-time world champion Dominic O'Brien, now a trainer and author of several books on improving memory.

He translates numbers into images that resemble their shape, so 1 could become a candle or streetlamp and 8 a snowman or egg-timer.

To help remember a Pin of 1580, for example, he suggests imagining walking into the bank carrying a candle, standing in a queue behind a snake, and seeing a snowman bouncing a football behind the counter.

Here is a visual image list of the numbers 1 to 10:

0 - Football, ring, wheel
1 - Candle, streetlamp, stick
2 - Swan, snake
3 - Lips, handcuffs
4 - Sailboat, flag
5 - Snake, seahorse
6 - Elephant's trunk, monocle
7 - Boomerang, axe, cliff
8 - Snowman, egg timer, female model
9 - Balloon and string, lasso

Source: Dominic O'Brien's How To Develop A Brilliant Memory

Ready Steady Email comes back to London

By Cliff Guy

This May, the DMA's Ready Steady Email workshop comes back to London. Run jointly by the DMA, IAB and sponsors dotMailer, Ready Steady Email is a unique, seriously hands-on and highly enjoyable email marketing workshop.

It's a workshop with a difference, as participants compete in teams to develop a winning email marketing campaign pitch, and gain a great deal of practical insights and advice along the way - from their team members, competing teams and from the industry-expert facilitators and judges (including our own dotMailer Director - Tink Taylor).

May's Ready Steady Email workshop is on May 12th, at the IAB in central London.

Best behaviour

By Tink Taylor

An interesting article in NMA last week on the hot topic of 'behavioural targeting'.

A survey compared the fears amongst consumers towards behavioural targeting, with the fears amongst marketers of using this tool. The bottom line was that marketers overestimated consumers' fear and so are missing an opportunity to effectively target their messages.

'Behavioural targeting' is such a hot topic that just last month it was debated at a round table event in the House of Commons, with a particular focus on Phorm - the UK's most advanced ad-targeting player.

Privacy concerns and the specter of ISP's turning into big-brother snoops are at the centre of the buzz of discomfort that surrounds this topic. But is 'behavioural targeting' in danger of becoming a big, dark word - just like the word 'spam' - that damns or frightens off all those marketers who use customer data to target their messages?

The 'spam' word is too often used as a generic term to describe all marketing emails - including those that are sent to opted-in, fully engaged recipients. So let's not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to 'behavioural targeting'.

The use of behavioural targeting in email should not get mixed up with the privacy issues surrounding targeted ad serving. Email marketing is a permission-based industry, and the more relevant data that marketers can collect and use to target their email lists and content, the further removed from any concept of 'spam' the emails become.

Within our own dotMailer email marketing platform we have some very powerful and easy to use tools for enabling effective behavioural targeting, including behavioural reporting queries, segmentation queries, an integrated survey tool and dynamic content.

One segmentation query that all email marketers should consider using is segmenting your lists into those who open and click through from your campaigns, and those who don't open them. Sending different creative to these two behavioural groups can help boost metrics by recognising that non-openers may respond better to different subject lines or different text or imagery in the preview pane.

Of course there is a focus on privacy when words like 'big brother' start being banded about. It's a timely reminder for email marketers that they need to be clear in their privacy statements about how they intend to use the data they collect. But collect and use it they should.

Behavioural targeting in email is a question of sending the right message, to the right person at the right time. Now that's not Big Brother - that's Happy Customer and Successful Marketer.

A very sweet promotion

By Cliff Guy

Eating chocolate without guilt, is a good thing. This isn't a medical opinion, but it's my opinion, and a pretty good approach to the forthcoming Easter weekend and the chocolate indulgence it tends to entail.

The trouble with Easter eggs is they seem to all be made of the same 'Easter egg' tasting chocolate, that never quite lives up to expectations.

No such concerns for any email marketers who sign up to a dotMailer Professional or Enterprise email marketing licence between today and next Thursday April 9th.

Anyone who gets their signed order form back to us in the next week will be the proud recipient of a Hotel Chocolat, seriously chocolate-packed Easter egg - guaranteed to live up to egg-spectations (who can resist an egg-based pun?). Go on... find out more at www.dotmailer.co.uk/chocolate

'Hitting the Mark 2009' email marketing benchmark report

By Cliff Guy

Today we launched the brand new, 2009 edition of dotMailer's annual 'Hitting the Mark' benchmark report. This year, Marks & Spencer and H.Samuel jointly top the study of the email campaigns of over 40 top high street retailers. There's been a lot of jostling for position at the top and bottom ends of the league table. Somerfield and H&M jointly replace Lidl at the bottom of the 2009 email marketing index.

But it's not all about league tables and scoring. The beauty of this report is that it's a real 'under the bonnet' expose of how some of the UK's biggest name brands use email marketing. That means a rare opportunity for other email marketers to learn from both their successes and their mistakes, in very practical terms.

I counted, and the 2009 report has over 70 best practice guidelines and tips. Highly recommended reading. Download it here.