MindComet

The EEC Spearhead Metric Standardization

Since the inception of email marketing, professionals have struggled to come together and agree upon a means of determining metrics. Believe it or not, there have yet to be any standards put in place.

The landscape of determining email metrics have largely consisted of rogue marketers and independent states, determining their own specific way of measuring the results for their emails.

But this is all about to change. The EEC (Email Experience Council) is stepping up and facing this problem head on by proposing industry-wide standards for metrics. The EEC has created a group of leaders in the email marketing industry, dubbed the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable. The group is focusing on ESPs (Email Service Providers) to join the movement, as they are the ones who will be implementing the reporting standards in the future.

For more information on the S.A.M.E. (Support Adoption of Metrics for Email) project, visit the EEC’s site. Once there, you should review the particularly interesting Project Guide PDF. Pay close attention to the ESP Reporting Matrix in that document… Out of 10 ESPs, each determined Delivery, Opens and Clicks differently—no wonder there’s such a huge need for standardization.

I can predict that if this gets momentum on the ESP side of things, there are going to be huge changes in email marketing. New terms and definitions popping up, completely transforming the ideas of success and failure. Hopefully for the whole, the growing pains won’t take too long to leapfrog.

MindComet will be in full support of this initiative, adopting the new standards by December 2010.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jul. 07, 2010

Testing and Segmentation to Avoid Full Email Boxes

Stefan Tornquist, Research Director of MarketingSherpa, has various presentations throughout the summit.  He addressed us this morning with an introduction to the day.  He addressed various challenges with email marketing that everyone has to face. 

The number one Challenge email marketers have to face:
All recipients email boxes are full. (36%) 

It was a great start which created a solid foundation for the various breakout sessions that are being offered today. 

He covered a hand full of email marketing lessons that I would like to share.  These may seem basic, but as we reported yesterday, we over complicated many pieces of marketing and overlook the fundamentals! 

• Newsletters still work!
  
• SPAM is in the eye of the beholder
  
• Reputation is also in the eye of the beholder
  
• Raising Opens and Clicks (High Segmentation is KEY)
  
• Vary your Templates
  
• Top Tests
  -Conversion rates 10-50% higher when removing navigation links!  Creative designers will fight this, but demand it
  -Repeat the main message on the landing page raised conversion rates up to 60%
  
• Testing is the Best Metric
  

Stefan’s Main Action Item was to “Invest in TECH.”  He noted that you need to update technology, it is imperative.  Success comes down to the segmentation of your database.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2008

Start of Day 2 in Miami

While MindComet was preparing for the MarketingSherpa Email Summit we were given the chance to speak to a presenter, Vicki Morris, Vice President of Marketing for NorthStar, a leading B-to-B wealth management software provider to financial services institutions.  Vicki will be presenting B2B segmentation strategies and sharing how her company doubled the number of client engagements in just one year with an aggressive email marketing program.  We are looking forward to her presentation and had some questions in order to prepare. 

The enticing piece of Vicki’s presentation will be seeing how they came to report that NorthStar doubled the number of client engagements in as fast as one year.  Their testing was based on the way they target for their email sends.  With each send, results increased and they were able to prove that the more targeted, the better.  This is a very easy tactic if you think about it in a marketing perspective however it is easily forgotten when we think we should message in terms of urgency instead. 

Vicki stressed to us that, “...metrics are an increasingly important part of every successful marketing project.  I strongly encourage all marketing executives to establish clear metrics and expectations with sales and executive teams before launching any e-marketing campaign.”  In most industries time is of the essence, however if we do not take the time to set metrics and give the campaign something to measure upon, there is no real value in the results we see for future planning and tactics. 

Vicki had so much to say so look for more posts on her interview about NorthStar’s Segmentation Strategies and Procedures presentation.  We look forward to seeing Vicki’s presentation today and all the great tips we will receive that we will convey to you.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2008