Email Marketing: Terms to Know

The following is a short glossary of email marketing buzzwords that you might come across, and what they mean to you and your business.

Email Authentication: These are various bits of information that identify the sender to the Internet Service Providers (ISP's). It's an accountability for the messages that you're sending out. The latest technologies in this field include Doman Keys, DKIM and SPF records. A good email marketing software provider will take care of these technologies on your business' behalf, so you don't have to worry about it. If you speak to an account executive, ask if they're taking care of email authentication for you, and inquire about which technologies they're using.

Domain Keys (DK) or Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM): Are signatures added to your messages to verify the sender (or domain) and the content within the message. This helps get your messages into your subscribers' inbox, since it's information that spam bots/filters can identify. The best email marketing organizations have this in place, so your messages have the best possible chance of landing in your subscribers inboxes.

Spam: The common term for unsolicited bulk email. When an email is sent to an address that didn't opt-in (or give direct permission) to receive the email, or is sent multiple times to the same address, it's considered Spam. The most respected email marketing companies won't take on customers who are planning to send Spam messages. In fact, the top companies will catch Spam messages, and prevent them from being sent.

Social Media Sharing Trends - Email Still Rules

The popular social bookmarking service, Tell-a-Friend,  analyzed the 10 million referrals that happened via Tell-a-Friend and compiled a report of the findings.
Key findings include:

• The top channels of sharing include, email (59%), instant messenger (25%), social networking sites (14%).
• Email and IM continue to be the most popular mediums of sharing
• Facebook with a 79% share dominates the sharing in the social networking channel
• Twitter is growing in popularity but is still just 5% among social networks.
• Only 2% of shares happen over Bookmarking sites but digg rules this method.
• In the Email channel, Yahoo Mail is the most preferred, followed by MSN.
• Google’s services like Google Bookmarking, Google Talk, and Gmail, are lagging in their respective channels when it comes to shared content
• LinkedIn, as a networking site, ranks the lowest when it comes to social media sharing.

Read the complete report at Tell-a-Friend.

And The Winner Is... Marketing Excellence Awards

Clickz has announced the winners of their Marketing Excellence Awards for six categories; Ad Management, Analytics, E-mail Marketing Tool, Mobile Marketing Tool, Search Ad Management and Social Media Marketing Platform or Tool.

And the winners of the 2009 Marketing Excellence Awards are...

Winners were judged on four criteria:
1. Ability to help marketers innovate and execute
2. Ability to help marketers measure and achieve goals
3. Ability to integrate with other digital marketing tools
4. Overall approach and category relevance

The solutions that were considered were limited to those who paid for the privilege to be judged so some of the top solution providers are not even mentioned i.e. Google Analytics. While I wouldn't rely on this list for deciding on a vendor, you should at least consider these vendors in your selection process. You may also want to consider last years Marketing Excellence Award winners.

Social Email Initiatives On The Rise

According to new research from Ball State University, the Email Marketer’s Club and ExactTarget, the number of social email initiatives is expected to grow 367% in 2009. In 2008 only 13% of marketers leveraged social networks in their email marketing strategy. In 2009, that number is expected to grow to 46%.

One example of this cross media integration is the tactic of letting email subscribers share messages with their social networks in hopes of driving increased email program registrations.

Insights from the Social Media Pioneers

Several social media pioneers have shared what they’d learned in the past year and offered several tips for those who are considering integrating social media within their email marketing programs.

1. Currently, there are very few established best practices, so trying new things is the key to learning what works and what doesn’t.
   
2. Consumers are sensitive to “marketing speak”; therefore, stay away from traditional marketing lingo and focus on relevance and authenticity.
   
3. Social networks represent a distinct audience and mindset. As a result, organizations should think about this medium differently than traditional marketing channels. Develop unique strategies specifically for social networks, keeping in mind that users engage in each network differently.
   
4. Consider broadening your definition of success. Traditional direct marketing metrics are not necessarily a good measure of success in social media.
   

Read more details of this research by requesting the whitepaper, Expanding the Reach of Email Through Social Networks,” from ExactTarget.

Top 10 Triggered E-mail Programs

Ed Henrich has a great article in ClickZ on how to reach out to your most engaged e-mail subscribers in a relevant way. "Segmentation works, but often a faster, easier way is to develop a set of triggered marketing programs. These "lights-out" automated programs work while you sleep. You can reach out to your customers when they most want to hear from you -- when they're actively engaged."

His examples of trigger-based e-mail programs include:

1. Welcome E-mail Program
2. Cart-Abandonment Program
3. Transactional Messages
4. Referral Program from Net Promoters
5. Win-Back Campaign
6. Pre-Trip Countdown/Post-Trip Relationship
7. Browse Program
8. Special-Occasion Reminder Program
9. In-Stock Notifications
10. Automated Refill-Reminder Service

In this article Ed provides the purpose and benefits for each of these e-mail strategies.

Email Marketing Is The Most Effective

Datran's third annual survey of over 3,000 top marketers reveals that 80.4% still feel that email marketing is the most effective for their company, followed by search (56.8%) and online display (42.1%).

Many executives plan to increase spending in 2009 on these tactics in 2009 while decreasing spending in direct mail and offline media.

FTC updates CAN-SPAM rules

By Karen J. Bannan - BtoBonline.com

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday updated CAN-SPAM Act regulations in a move that will make it easier for e-mail recipients to opt out of unwanted e-mails. The new regulations also more clearly define what’s expected of marketers.

Full article -
http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080515/FREE/101312375/1116/FREE