Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

Do You Need A Full Service Email Service Provider vs. A Marketing Service Provider?

Speaking before thinking is something that drives our PR firm Clarus crazy.   

A great case is the interpretation of some comments I made about the consolidation brought on by list companies buying email service providers.   Here is an example:

....As expected, the responses came quickly concerning e-mail software concern ExactTarget's co-founder and chief marketing officer, Chris Baggot's contention in last week's Magilla Marketing that e-mail service bureaus have too much employee overhead to survive. Al DiGuido, president of e-mail service provider Epsilon Interactive said Baggot's idea was an example of "very old thinking" and that software can't replace expertise when it comes to interpreting raw data....

My comments were construed to say that I was an advocate of eliminating people and letting software do all the work.   This is absolutely not my position at all.   

My contention in the case above was that I don't need my email service provider to be the sole source of those services, and those revenues are vulnerable to more nimble software solutions that can put powerful tools into marketers hands.

The strength of software (ESP's, CRM, Web Analytics...not to mention Multi-variant testing and dynamic web sites) is to provide ton's of data back to marketers that help in the decision making.  With great insight available through this data, coupled with easy to use software tools that allow execution of that data;   what happens is a much more level playing field for all marketers.  It makes for better marketing generally and lowers costs significatly.

The reality is that there are tons of great, creative and skilled marketers out there.  ExactTarget alone has over 350 licensed agency partners that provide fantastic services for their clients.

The availability of easy to use software is what enables many of these firms to become experts in email marketing.   What I'm saying in this story is that you don't need to source (necessarily) email marketing professional services from your email software vendor.   

I guess the closest example might be with Google.  They create great software and around them there are literally thousands of agency's that have become experts on the medium of search.  It's a data driven practice that mixes some art with a lot of science.   Although there may be some special cases, for the most part, there are plenty of people who can provide really expert services and deliver fantastic results for their clients.  The same is true for Web Analytic's.  None of the main Web Analytic's players drive much revenue from professional services.

The ExactTarget model is to provide the best software in the world that is sophisticated yet easy to use.  By opening our software platform up to literally thousands of users, our clients can choose the best way to execute as part of their overall strategy: through agency partners, by themselves or leveraging our internal resources. 

Usually, this results in a lot more effective marketing and at a lot lower cost.

My brush with Celebrity: Jonathan Schwartz

My fantastic trip to Mashup Camp last week was topped in the last 2 hours when I was able to (over) hear an interview with Jonathan Schwartz, President of Sun and one of the great thinkers on the whole utility computing movement and get myself invited to Google headquarters for some meatballs & non-alcholic beverages.   The tour was a lot of fun.  Thanks to Shannon Bauman, Associate Product Manager @ Google for showing us around.

Hello From Mashup Camp

I'm spending the first part of this week in Mt. View as a sponsor of Mashup Camp. 
This is the first iteration of and organizing movement around the concepts, applications and business plans associated with one of the most important movements in software...the Mashup (definition).

Why am I here?

Because ExactTarget is a critical component to this environment.   With over 800 clients using our API's and more than 50,000,000 API calls last year (and growing) nearly half of the emails that come from our system are utilizing some aspect of integration (now called Mashups).

The key to successful email is leveraging data and content to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.   I'm really excited that this has become such a visible movement and proud to be a part of it.

I'll keep posting on this for the rest of the week.

Insource vs. Outsourced Email or any software for that matter

u In my business I've heard a lot of great arguments in favor of outsourcing software (SaaS) vs the inhouse solution...but never one this good:

Time to bring your money in-house
Posted by Phil Wainewright @ 3:45 pm

I see there's an argument raging about where to host email, with a vocal minority vehemently in favor of keeping it in-house. Having carefully examined the arguments, I'm wondering why these people are still outsourcing their banking.

What could be more mission critical to the commercial lifeblood of a business than money? And yet enterprises the world over are entrusting this vital aspect of their operations to money hosting providers — otherwise known as banks — despite a track record of repeated fraud, deception and failure running throughout the history of the banking industry.

Click here to see entire post.....

Ever wonder about AOL and their inbox process

Deirdre Baird,President & CEO of Pivotal Veracity made this post yesterday that I wanted to share.  For eveyone that ever wondered about AOL and their inbox process...here is a great overview.   www.pivotalveracity.com

Inbox Delivery

- AOL has some of the best filtering around to include the ability to distinguish both legitimate and spam mail and place it accordingly. Across our clients INBOX delivery is 91.7% over the last 60 days. This includes both whitelisted and non-whitelisted mailers, and both acquisition and retention mailings (albeit primarily the latter).  The percent in the Spam folder during the same period was a mere 0.1%.  When AOL thinks you're a spammer, they first feed you temperrors (soft bounces intended to tax your system), followed by outright blocking.    Most our retention-based AOL whitelisted mailers routinely get 98%-100% inbox delivery.

- A tiny tiny fraction of mailers qualified for the Enhanced Whitelist and since its not going away (although the spam complaint threshold is going to 0.1%) its still an option.

- Most whitelisted mailers emails - whether on the EWL or Standard Whitelist do go into the inbox. The Standard Whitelist is still extremely important as it allows you to avoid AOL's volume filters which begin when mail exceeds 100/emails per day.

-- Bottom line... a mailers EXISTING inbox Delivery at AOL is NOT going to get worse just because Goodmail Certified Email is around and for legitimate mailers using top-notch ESPs, their delivery is already darn good. 

Image Rendering

- AOL has had the same exact treatment of images and links for the last 3 years. In 2002, AOL 8.0 was introduced. AOL 8.0, AOL 9.0 and AOL.com all have images and links OFF by default.  This is not changing. The default has been off for years and will remain off.

- There are still 3 NO-cost ways to change the default to ON at AOL. 1) Your address is in the customers address book, 2) you're on the enhanced whitelist, and 3) your customer uses AOL anywhere to imap their message into a desktop client like Outlook 2002 where images are on (and AOL's treatment is not applicable).

- ISPs/Email Clients like GMAIL, MSN (software), Outlook 2003, Thunderbird, etc. all have images OFF as well and there is nothing you can do about it. This is not to imply mailers may not be well served by investing in Goodmail to get them on ...but it isn't ever going to be a universal solution to this challenge.

Labeling

- AOL's existing labeling convention is not changing but they are adding a new icon for Certified Email.  Non-whitelisted mailers and Standard Whitelisted Mailers will continue to be designated "unknown senders" whereas 1) those with addresses in the recipient's address book and 2) those on the enhanced whitelist will continue to be labeled "known senders".

- For those who believe that the Certified Email icon/labeling will make a difference ...consider 1) It is based on a proprietary NOT open-source authentication standard ... and thus, it is NOT going to be universally deployed (.."ever" is my guess when you consider it must be deployed at all ISPs and enterprises worldwide) and 2) you would have to teach your customers to rely-upon/only respond to emails with the Certified Email labeling to be fully effective and, having done so, must consider that a) prices may increase, b) those customers may move to an ISP/email client that does not use Goodmail, and c) the industry and/or other ISPs may rally around an open-source authentication and labeling methodology that makes all of this moot.

Stamps for email: Goodmail, AOL and Email

My take on email stamps.

I have always had a problem with the misuse of email.   With email we have the greatest database marketing tool in the history of mankind and yet many marketers choose to abuse it as simply “cheap paper”.

In old fashioned marketing you focused on Reach & Frequency for success.   We all know this doesn’t work any more…and as we all know the marketers who are not being successful are using email as a cheap way to shout louder and shout more frequently.

The industry is in an uproar over the concept of having to pay for premium (guaranteed) delivery.   Why?  Probably because most have no way to determine the value of their email….or their ROI thresholds are so low that they can’t make any money on their Campaigns (you know I hate that word…and the concept behind it)

Remember that Jerry Maguire memo….fewer clients?  More personal relationships?   It got him fired, but he was right. 

The same is true for email…the success of our industry depends on less email and more investment in the relationship.   

I’m not endorsing anything specific here with Goodmail or the AOL program.   I can’t say if this will drive more success for our mailers that choose to participate and experiment with it.  But I’m not going to dismiss it out of had like so many have.   

The great thing about internet marketing is that it’s all transparent…it’s all measurable.   The goal of our clients is higher lifetime value…better relationships.   I’m willing to support experiments to see if having an email stamp helps this cause.

ExactTarget launches the first Developer Community in the industry

We are really excited to announce today that we have launched the email industry's first online developer community.

With over 900 clients utilizing our API, this portal is an online gathering place focused on connecting the members of our integration community with one another. The community is an excellent resource to help each of you in completing and enhancing your ExactTarget integrations.  If you are an integrated ExactTarget customer or a developer working for one, you can sign up here.

ExactTarget was the first Email Service Provider to offer an open API.  As you know, the best use of email is for data driven communications.  This is only possible when systems talk to each other.  There is a trendy term for this: Mashup.  Well, ExactTarget is the leader in Mashups with over 900 clients accessing our system via the API and over 20,000,000 API calls made in 2005.  We're currently on track to double that volume in 2006!

I'm sorry if this seems like a blatent promotion which you know I don't normally tolorate from myself...but this is exciting and potentially game changing for our industry.