One of the hottest trends in 2010 look to be video emails. Simon Grabowski, founder of GetResponse provides an exciting response, “We were pleasantly surprised at the major uptick in SMB marketers planning to use video email marketing and social media integration in 2010. According to our 2009 study, video emails delivered close to a 100 percent increase in click through rates, so we know it works and expected the increase in use. But the 480 percent increase in planned video email use surprised even us!”

According to the survey, over 80 percent of the marketers plan to integrate video emails into their campaign. An even higher percentage, 90 percent, plan to add some form of social medial to their emails. The survey results were drawn in January and February, with over 200 SMB email marketers used as a sample.

Diving deeper into the results surrounding video emails, 50 percent of those surveyed claimed an increase in CTR based on these types of emails. Money saving is another positive of video emails, with 20 percent of the respondents stating video emails reduce costs for support.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that marketers plan to drastically implement social media into their email campaigns. Over 90 percent of marketers surveyed will increase their social media presence in emails. Along with social media, marketers will continue to improve personalization tactics. 53 percent of the marketers surveyed will increase targeting practices, with an equal amount of respondents looking to improve title and subject line material.

Grabowski provides more insight into these numbers, “Today’s marketers are mindful of the importance of delivering relevant content and one-to-one messaging based on preferences and behaviors. It’s all about putting the “human element” back into marketing through the use of video and social media conversations. Combining these interactive techniques promises to be a very successful strategy for our SMB customers!”

With the benefits of video email, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the numbers surpass those of this survey. There’s too many benefits of running a video email campaign to ignore at least testing it. How many of you plan to implement the factors of this survey into your campaigns?

In Marriot’s ‘email newsletter death’ article he references ‘triggered emails’, which is a strategy that would send emails to certain users depending on something they triggered on your site. For example, if a potential client clicks on ‘Yachts for sale’, a triggered email might send them special deals regarding shipping classes. Expanding upon this thought even further, why not just institute triggered email newsletters?

Obviously, using triggered newsletters would require a special set of circumstances. First, you’d have to make sure there’s enough relevant content on your site or through your business to sustain multiple newsletters. Also, determining the increased workload and how much of your time and resources would be required to send multiple newsletters. After debating these various factors, you decide this could help your business, you can move onto the next step.

So, you’ve decided your site has enough content and your resources are organized to develop multiple, now it’s time to put your decision making to good use. First, a heavy amount of analytics is required to determine how you want to divide your triggered newsletters. If you discover your users are only visiting two places on your site, then having two specially designed newsletters is needed.

Once you’ve complete analytics, the fun part begins. Let’s say your business is in animal care. Your website has various pages where people can find tips for taking care of the different pets they have. You discover enough users who are interested in dog, cat, and rabbit care. Developing targeted newsletters would be as simple as shifting content around to showcase the animal each user was researching. You can still have all the design, and links your other newsletters have just with better targeted information.

Another issue presented by Marriot is speed of delivery. If you have a weekly newsletter and your content is continually being updated on a daily basis, then your newsletter’s relevancy is going to be extremely low. However, if you send your newsletters out on a daily basis, you run the risk of your users believing it to be spam.

Again, analytics should be your crutch when deciding on delivery frequency. Track how often users visit your site, and plan your deliveries accordingly. Perhaps you can have a daily newsletter for people extremely interested in your site, and then a weekly newsletter for those who are more casual.

Marriott’s article presents all kinds of thoughts we should be having for evolving the email newsletter market. Adaptation is the key to survival. Think about that as you go through the motions of your regular newsletter campaign.

David Geller, CEO and founder of WhatCounts, Inc speaks of the company’s platform, “WhatCounts’ platform is a perfect fit to work alongside OPMG’s line of operations, efficiently creating, delivering and monitoring effective email campaigns.” He continues, “We look forward to helping Options Media assist their agency partners and clients in achieving a higher-than-ever return on investment for their email marketing programs.”

The Broadcast app will allow for better constructed polls and surveys. Integrating blog and RSS options will be made easier with this platform. Along with the potential for Video Emails down the road.

Scott Frohman, CEO of Options Media Group said this about the recent partnership, “The acquisition of WhatCounts’ technology is a significant achievement for Options Media Group.” He continues, “The ability to scale to the volumes of opt-in emails coupled with the responsiveness and expertise of WhatCounts’ management team provides additional value to OPMG’s growing service offerings. We believe that this increase to our product offerings will allow us to expand our market footprint, increase earnings, and achieve our overall goal of improved shareholder value.”

I know not everyone reading this will be able to afford WhatCount’s platform. The lesson to take away from this story is that innovation is key when going forward with a campaign. You might not be able to integrate video directly into your emails. How about setting up a YouTube account, and linking to it through your email though?

Creativity can come in all sorts of ways, and many times you don’t even need to spend an exorbitant amount of money to be successful. It’s cliche, but try and get into the mind of your reader. If you’re not finding what you put in your email to be exciting, then chances are your readers won’t either.

Best practices include operating with a double opt-in, namely, offering the ability to a user to provide their email address to be contacted in future with offers, news or other information (single opt-in). Upon completion of this, the user is sent an email to confirm their address and that they intended to receive said emails (double opt-in). This is not only important to you because it ensures a clean list of people wanting your email, but also helps to keep you off of spam black lists and gets your messages delivered to those who want to hear what you have to say. Reaching your intended listeners is the first step in connecting with your audience.

Quick Tips for Email Success
Subject line
- Similar to page titles in SERPs, it gets your emails opened and it’s your first opportunity to connect.

Offer multiple versions of your email
- HTML is nice, but if your users have it turned off (i.e. mobile), you will need a text version that will connect.
- Like offering your content in RSS and XML, deliver your email in the format that your users want.

Include a call to action
- Let your contacts know what you want them to do.

Provide unique information that has value beyond your offer
- Give them a reason to open your emails in the future.

Connect with your audience
- Speak to your users.

Don’t offer too much
- If you give some people too many options, they might choose none.

Spell check

- Few things can turn off some users more quickly.

Manage expectations
- Fully detail the value of your offer.

Track your success
- Measure through your analytics and remember, your actual offer might not be the only conversion you make.

Test, test, test
- Try new concepts to maximize your impact.

Stay on top of current trends
- Find out what is working and not working from industry experts

- ClickZ, ExactTarget, MailChimp etc.

Not sure? When in doubt, hire an email marketing expert
- ExactTarget, Constant Contact, iContact, MailChimp etc.

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Silverpop was recognized with one of these awards for their proprietary Send Time Optimization (STO) feature. The service allows marketers to tackle a long standing problem in the world of email - deciding the best days and times to send email to recipients. The STO feature created by Silverpop analyzes behavior of these recipients and then comes up with an optimal solution for send times. Upon analyzation, STO then delivers the messages, showing up in prospective inboxes at the times they’re most likely to be opened.

A major problem that STO solves is having to setup multiple mailings for different time zones. Will Schnabel, vice president of international markets for Silverpop, had this to say, “We’re very proud to have been recognized for our efforts in the email marketing space, and to be the only email service provider to be honored in the prestigious Econsultancy Innovation Awards.”

He continues, “Such recognition underscores Silverpop’s commitment to bringing forward new solutions that help our clients better their email marketing practices in ways that are both innovative and easy to use. We will continue to focus on this in 2010 and beyond as we strive to help marketers nurture lasting relationships between companies and their customers, deliver a high ROI and generate measurable results.”

Atkins Nutrionals, the weight management program which has grown in popularity over the years, has just signed with Silverpop to expand their email database. They’re scaling back on print and TV ads until spring, and are focusing primarily on email advertising. To do so, they’ve taken their in-house monthly newsletter and put it in the hands of Silverpop who plans on turning it into a weekly one.

Congratulations to Silverpop for being recognized as innovators in the email marketing industry. Here’s hoping we continue to see advancements in the field going into 2010.

Hard bounce/Soft bounce - A hard bounce is the failed delivery of an e-mail due to a permanent reason like a non-existent address. A soft bounce is the failed delivery of an e-mail due to a temporary issue, like a full mailbox or an unavailable server.

Headers - The documentation that accompanies the body of an email message. Headers contain information on the email itself and the route it’s taken across the Internet. Recipients can normally see the “to” (identity of recipient), “from” (identity of sender) and “subject” (information in the subject line) headers in their inbox. You can modify these to influence their decision to open or delete an email.

Nth Sampling - When a subset of the list is constructed based on every Nth individual. For example, if one is doing Ninth-Testing, every ninth person on the list is sent an email.

Readability - The degree to which the copy is well-written as well as optimized for reading on the web. The readability of text is affected by many factors including, but not limited to: the color of the text in relation to the background color, the font, the spacing between words and between lines of text, the length of lines of text, how blocky and dense the paragraphs appear, text justification, the complexity of the grammar and the education level of your audience.

Scannable Text (also called Skimmable Text) - Highlighted, bolded, bulleted or otherwise visually-distinguished content that allows the reader to quickly scan block text and distill the overall point and essential features of the communication. More correctly, scannable text is “skimmable” text - text the reader can easily skim through to determine the essence of the communication.

Tracking - Collecting and evaluating the statistics from which one can measure the effectiveness of an email or an email campaign.

We We Test - Developed by Future Now, Inc., this metric provides a general measure of the degree to which your communication is customer-centered. It compares the number of customer-oriented words (you, your, etc.) in the communication to the number of self- or company-referential words (we, our, I, me, etc.).

KISS - “Keep it Simple, Stupid” - a directive to keep the communication clear, concise and intuitive to improve the likelihood the prospect will take action.

There are of course more terms than the ones listed. However, the terms listed here could help you in creating a successful email marketing campaign. I believe the most overlooked term on the list is ‘KISS’. So many times a marketer forgets that when people are reading content in emails, they favor speed over grandiose elements.

The small businesses which were surveyed, provided reasons as to why they rely so heavily on email marketing:

– Inexpensive/effective way to reach out to new prospects and customers
– Generates a fast response so I can tell if a campaign is working
– Effective way to build customer loyalty

The reasons provided by these businesses really drive home the significance of how relevant email marketing currently is. The direct contact one has with a customer is so much closer with email than social media. When a person opens up an email, you know they’re interested right off the bat. With social media, it can be tricky to really grab a person’s attention as there’s less direct involvement. Which is why loyalty is such a key ingredient to running a successful email marketing campaign.

Although email marketing is still growing strong, many businesses have concerns with the practice. They listed these concerns in the survey:

– Concerns that my customers will view email marketing as spamming
– Too many email campaigns are filtered out by spam filters
– Poor response rates

Steve Adams, Vice President of Marketing for Campaigner, had this to say about the study, “The survey results show that email marketing is now a mainstream tool for small businesses to stay connected to customers with informational e-newsletters as well as sales and promotional offers to drive sales.” he continues, “We also hear the concerns and challenges small businesses have voiced in their responses. Campaigner addresses these challenges by offering free advice and tips that help small businesses get started and follow email marketing best practices that lead to success.”

Small businesses definitely look to be the driving force of email marketing. The spam problem has become large enough that there are services specifically tailored to help businesses get past the problem. I’m just wondering how many studies it’s going to take before some people realize email marketing is here to stay.

1. Valid Content = Interest in Social Media: It’s funny that what should already be a concern for your newsletter is what will help bring success to your social media campaign. When engaging with users on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter the same rules are constant. Post information that people want to click on. This sounds simple enough, but there are a couple of points to remember when devising your content.

First, think of how your content will catch on virally. There’s tons of white noise out there in the social media world. So much is just repeated information and the same ideas are coming from an assortment of places. Therefore, you should be on the look out for content that’s unique and is easily defined as your own. Finding an audience who embraces your content could lead to a higher volume of subscribers.

Finally, your content should have a focus. Newsletters have always been about providing information to people who relate to them. Animal rights activists don’t want a newsletter concerning hunting, as an example. So remember, the content you’re focusing on with your newsletter is exactly what you want to bring to your social media campaign.

2. Engage, Engage, Engage: So many social media campaigns I’ve seen are just complete wastes of time. You’ll receive a newsletter, or even visit a site, and it will state “Follow Us on Twitter” or whatever site you like to use. You follow these sites and there’s little to no engagement at all. Sure, there might be some content but social media is about personal experiences. Simply posting content from your newsletter and a link will do nothing for you in the long run.

Get out there, search for users and actively bring them to you. Having an attitude of involvement is the key for linking your social media success to your newsletter. If you’re niche is the automotive industry, then find all the interested parties you can muster. Before you know it, your audience will be waiting to see what content you can provide.

3. Seek Subscriber Opportunities Anywhere and Everywhere: Every person that is involved in your social media campaign is a potential subscriber to your newsletter. Treat them like so. Anytime you can provide a means to sign up to your newsletter do so - without it coming off like spam of course. Finding that balance between actively recruiting potential subscribers and spamming is a fine line. It all starts with trust though.

Social Media is a patient man’s game. When you first start, you’re more than likely going to feel overwhelmed. Just stay patient and develop a trust with your users. The difference between an open email newsletter and a delete/’This is Spam’ button push is trust. This is where social media can be to your greatest benefit. Developing a trustful relationship with a newsletter can be a hard thing to do. However, if you put yourself out there and really show your users what you and your newsletter is about, you have the potential to see your open rates go through the roof.

I do believe that bounce rate is a great starting metrics when you are trying to optimize your site but be careful and make sure that you are measuring the true bounce rate. Below are the three factors that lead to the misreporting of the bounce rates

1. Links to external sites - Many sites have links to the external sites such as sponsors, micro sites etc. Considering those external links as exits will count visits as bounces even though the visitors are doing exactly what you want them to do (e.g. click on those links that you provided them). See below a screen shot from First Tech Credit Union, there are few external link s contributing to the bounces.

   

2. Online Ads – If you serve ads on your site you are providing links to external sites. Visitors who land on your site, see an ad that grabs their attention are going to click on it (isn’t that what you want so that you can command higher rates for the ads?). It is not really a bounce because visitors are taking the action that you want them to take. See the screenshot from Techcruch which is full of ads and I bet this page (and other article pages) has a very high bounce rate.



3. Destination Pages – Pages that provide the information that the visitors are looking for is what I call destination pages. Usually you will see the visitors arriving from bookmark or search to the internal pages on your site that provide the visitors with the information that the visitors are looking for. Since those pages serve the visitors’ need you are likely to see high bounce rates on those pages. Those bounce are not bad. Some might argue that you should try to drive visitors into the other sections of the site but I can bet that in most of the cases you won’t see significant drop in bounce rate no matter how hard you try. Below is an example of a page on First Tech Credit Union that could have a very high bounce rate. I arrived at this page by searching for the “Phone number for First Tech in Redmond”. When I arrived on this page I got what I was looking for and I bounced.

   

Are you considering these factors when analyzing the bounce rates on your site? Questions? Comments?

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Tameka Kee recently reported, “The company has raised about $1 million worth of funding from Mandalay Corporate Enterprises (an investment arm of Mandalay Entertainment), Japanese media/entertainment biggie Kyoraku Yoshimoto Holdings, and private investor Ken Wegner.”

That’s not an insignificant amount.  Those aren’t unimportant entities and individuals, either.  Considering that GeekChicDaily will focus on well-covered subjects like games, toys, and movies/television, it really says a lot that they’re taking the plunge.

Hopefully GeekChicDaily will do well and reward its investors.  Perhaps we’ll see people take an even greater interest in newsletters if that’s the case.

Here’s a bit of evidence that supports the idea of a positive outcome: Kee wrote that GeekChicDaily was “[f]ounded this year by Wizard Magazine founder Gareb Shamus, Mandalay Entertainment CEO and former CEO of Sony Pictures Peter Guber, and early GameSpy investor and digital media entrepreneur Peter Levin.”

The emails were sent from “Sebastian Bowler.” In his emails, he told subscribers that he knew them personally, the suit alleges:

Mr. Bowler’s digital missives to Ms. Duick indicated he knew her, knew her address and was coming with his pit bull, Trigger, to stay with her to avoid the cops. In his second e-mail to her, Mr. Bowler listed his MySpace page, which is still up (although it says he last logged in June 2008). His video and pictures on MySpace “depict Mr. Bowler as a fanatical English soccer fan who enjoyed drinking alcohol to excess,” the suit says. His MySpace page also shows a photo with an arrow pointing to “me” and the caption “my mate took this photo which shows me right before the riot.”

One of the nine e-mails to Ms. Duick, the suit alleges, was a bill for $78.92 from a motel for Mr. Bowler’s one-night stay there, plus damage to a TV set and picture frame. He had listed her as a reference and told the motel to send her the bill, the complaint says. . . .

The final e-mail had a link to a video that showed Mr. Bowler driving into a drive-in movie where the film “Imbecile” was playing. The out-of-focus film shows an old man laughing continuously, revealing to Ms. Duick that “she had been punked” and all the e-mails were part of an ad campaign for the Matrix, the suit claims.

Specifically, the plaintiff is suing because she was convinced “a disturbed and aggressive” stranger was coming to her house. She was “terrified” and “slept with a machete next to her bed and she slept with mace. She could barely sleep or eat normally.”

While becoming physically ill with fear is a strong reaction, and while the case will most likely be settled out of court, the victims’ reactions seem like something Saatchi and Toyota might have at least passingly considered as they planned this campaign. What did they think they would accomplish by trying to convince people that someone involved in riots and riotous living (and some of the other “maniacs” look even scarier) had their address and expected to evade arrest at her house?

Yeah, maybe the friend got a good laugh (if s/he even got to see what was happening—I’m hoping s/he was far enough away that s/he had no idea the kind of stress she caused the plaintiff). But the recipients of the pranks obviously didn’t all agree. Even if the emails didn’t terrify most of their recipients, I can’t imagine how pretending to stick us with a bill for a wrecked hotel room would somehow associate the Toyota Matrix with a positive message in our minds.

Yeah, pranks are fun (when you’re the one pulling them, and when you get to see the reaction, not terrorize your friends for a week). And they can even sometimes be an effective marketing tool. But somehow, this doesn’t seem like the association Toyota needs to move cars.

What do you think? Should Saatchi and Toyota have thought twice about this? Or is this a good way to increase buzz and awareness around their product?

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