Next week, I will be speaking at the edu Web Conference at the Sheraton in downtown Baltimore. I will be speaking with Sean Carton on a subject dubbed “Effective eMarketing for Higher Ed.”

Sean and I will be discussing the justification for higher education to use the online medium as a primary way to generate prospective student leads and nuture them through the decision making process. We will be talking for an hour with some Q&A at the end.

We are also a gold sponsor of the event. If you are attending stop by our table and say hello. Both Tim Barton and Jeremy Dempsey from our team will be manning the booth.

Here is a great article from the ClickZ network that goes over some of the best practices of formatting your HTML email. Great tips for consideration when developing your email campaigns.

• Code e-mail by hand. HTML design for e-mail is trickier than Web HTML. HTML design programs such as FrontPage aren’t ideal for designing HTML e-mail. They typically add extra code that wreaks havoc with certain e-mail clients. Also, don’t use Microsoft Word’s “Save as Web Page” functions. It looks easy, but trust us — you’ll commit an HTML abomination.
• Have an HTML programmer code your e-mail template by hand to keep it clean. Alternately, use programs such as HomeSite and Dreamweaver and remove any unnecessary code by hand.
• Be careful with tables. Avoid using nested tables. Some e-mail clients, Lotus Notes and Netscape Messenger in particular, may not render them correctly. Also, avoid 1 x 1 pixel spacer GIFs (to force widths in your table data cells). These are often found in spam and could get your e-mail blocked.
• Use care with background images. Background images for individual table cells are generally acceptable but may not appear in clients such as Lotus Notes.
• Host images on your Web site instead of embedding them in messages. Some ISPs filter e-mail with embedded images. File size can get quite large with multiple embedded images, which can also get the message blocked. Instead, host those images on your Web site and make sure all paths point to the full URL (e.g., http://www.mysite.com/images). Additionally, use absolute rather than relative links. We often see messages with broken images that pointing to “images\image.gif” rather than a full absolute link.
• Avoid CSS. CSS on a Web site can simplify the coding process and ensure a consistent style. In HTML e-mail, they can cause incorrect rendering in some e-mail clients, or get stripped out or overwritten. If you must use CSS, choose the embedded styles also known as inline. Embed the style within the two body tags, not within the header. Inline CSS can also be embedded directly in the message code.
• Keep HTML e-mail 500-650 pixels wide. Wider HTML messages often force the recipient to scroll horizontally to view the whole message. Messages that are too wide are problematic, especially in a preview pane.
• Use image alt tags. These show one or two words describing an image or an action when the image doesn’t display because of slow loading time or image blocking. (However, except for Gmail, most ISPs/e-mail clients that block images also block alt tags.) A sample alt tag looks like this: “E-mail marketing solutions”
• Add functionalities (e.g., send to a friend) carefully. Many e-mail clients won’t render forms correctly or pass data from an e-mail form to your Web site. Use links to your Web site for send-to-friend forms, surveys, search boxes, and so forth to ensure the greatest compatibility.
• Just say no to Flash. Host rich-media functions such as inline audio, video, or Flash on your Web site instead of embedding them in an e-mail. Post a link that connects directly to these functions on your site. Many recipients won’t have the compatible computer platform, e-mail software, or correct version they need to render those functions correctly.
• Avoid scripting (JavaScript, Visual Basic etc.) if you can. Usually the scripts will be stripped out, causing the intended function to break. Sometimes scripts are mistaken for malicious code and get the message rejected outright. Instead, move readers to your Web site, where you can more safely use dynamic components.

Wendy Roth writes a great piece for iMedia Connection on the core metrics every email marketer should measure. She states some of the clear and obvious ones, but also discusses some that are very important and often are overlooked. The top 7 metrics to watch on Wendy’s list are:

• Delivery
• Opens
• Clickthroughs
• Funnel navigation
• Conversions
• Unsubscribes
• Spam complaints

These are all key metrics in measuring the true performance of your campaigns and more imporantly giving you the data you need to accurately tweak and optimize your efforts. One of the metrics that stood out to me was “funnel navigation” which essentially is the path that your customers will hopefully take to the point of converting. As Wendy mentions, its important to keep an eye on where your users are going off the click and hopefully to the point of acting on whatever your conversion event is, a sale, an RSVP, a lead, etc.

Here is a graphic used in Wendy’s article that helps visually show the funnel navigation process:

Its very important to watch where your recipients are going once they click. We always advise on the path of least resistance, meaning make your funnel navigation path as short and as sweet as possible. Guide your customers to where you want them, clearly and concisely. Watch what works and change what doesn’t.

Check out the complete “In Focus” series by Wendy Roth “Email Marketing: What to Measure”

Jakob Neilson’s latest Alertbox dubbed “Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion” has been posted. I urge you to take a few minutes to read about the conclusions of this research, which studies the way people interact with newsletters and inbox clutter. Here is the good news, the study was originally conducted two years ago, and the new research shows that newsletter usability has gone up even in the challenging information overload cluttered inbox.

“Our main conclusion remains the same: Email newsletters are the best way to maintain customer relationships on the Internet.”

Here is a quick overview of the research conducted:

We conducted our new study using an eyetracker with 42 participants. Using eyetracking technology, we recorded where users looked on websites as they subscribed or unsubscribed to email newsletters. We also recorded how users looked at their inboxes and how they read individual newsletters.

We tested 117 email newsletters, as follows:

• We tested 12 newsletters systematically (using a controlled methodology to ensure that all newsletters were used evenly).
• We tested 40 newsletters in a less controlled manner (users picked newsletters that most interested them from an inbox, and some newsletters were read much more than others).
• We tracked users’ eye movements as they read a total of 65 newsletters from their personal inboxes. By definition, each of these newsletters was read by a single user.

Check out the complete article here.

I am featured in today’s iMedia Connection article “Using Behavioral Targeting with Email” by Robert Moskowitz. Robert talks about the use of various behavioral targeting tactics marketers are using and the effectiveness of such strategies.

Anytime you can mine more information, particularly user behavior, from your customer database, you increase your chances of successful conversions. Targeting and relevance play a huge roll in the way more sophisticated email marketers are using the channel.

One of the key advantages to email and online in general, as I point out in the article, is that marketers have the flexibility of testing various behavioral targeting strategies to small segments of their database. If a particular tactic is working then you can deploy it on a larger scale, and if not, you can easily drop it with very little risk.

This quote from Jupiter sums up the importance of taking behavioral targeting seriously in your email marketing efforts:

“…when marketers actively target their email campaigns to specific behavioral and demographic characteristics, they can produce more than 18 times the profits that broadcast messages produce, according to Jupiter Research.”

The Email Experience Council recently launched…which has the potential to be a real positive addition within the Email Marketing Industry.

As they state, their mission is to…. enhance the image and celebrate the ROI value of email marketing through the proliferation of email and digital marketing best practices, trends and cutting edge technologies through the demonstration of applied success.

It’s great to see this effort, and we look forward to helping them achieve their goals!

Email marketing continues to evolve….this new council will no doubt help foster Email Marketing’s continued positive growth.

Return Path has overhauled its popular Bonded Sender program after soliciting feedback from marketers, publishers, ESP’s, ISP’s etc.. The service has been renamed Sender Score Certified and is doing away with the entire “bond” concept, which was not popular with most users of the service. We have been a reseller for Bonded Sender and have had great success with the service. I am however much more excited about the overhauled program. As Matt Blumberg, Return Path’s Chairman & CEO writes:

“What we learned was that the program was ground-breaking when it was launched in 2002 but that it needed a makeover in order to meet the challenges that have evolved around spam and deliverability for both senders and receivers during the past few years.”

Taking that feedback, Matt and his team have executed and launched a better, more efficient email accreditation program. The highlights of the new service include the following, which are listed on Return Path’s website. Congrats to Matt and his team.

Per Matt blumberg, New Sender Score Certified features include:

1. New and Improved Data: the program is now powered by our newly launched Sender Score Reputation database, which George wrote about last week – a robust source of reputation information sent to us daily by scores of different sources on the Internet, including B2B and B2C, domestic and international, ISP and commercial filters;

2. Complete transparency: the Sender Score Reputation Monitor service allows clients to have 100% visibility into every metric tracked for the program, including some super-cool drill-down features;

3. Bye-Bye, Bond: these high standards make the bond unnecessary (and they really made us need to find a new name – can you imagine Bondless Sender?). You’re either on the list, or you’re not. The transparency makes it much easier for us to work with our clients on compliance; and

4. Radically Reduced Complaints: the new standards have allowed us to raise the bar on the quality of the program. We’ve built the statistical model underlying the program to have a VERY high correlation with some leading spam filters, enabling us to remove a huge number of senders who were previously on the whitelist. The result? Our largest ISP user, Microsoft, reports to us a nearly 90% drop in the number of complaints in their network coming from users of the program – and that was off a very small number of complaints to begin with, relative to the rest of the email universe.

If it’s not the most obvious rule with email marketing, then it’s tied for whatever might be #1.

In email marketing, as with any other marketing channel, it’s all about the relationship! If you succeed at building a strong relationship, then you are likely to have a good shot at converting a lead into a customer, and having a customer who sticks around for a long time.

Email offers it’s own unique set of challenges when it comes to building a relationship….but it also offers unique opportunities. When generating leads online, email’s obviously a critical component as it serves as a primary form of communication. But online marketing can be impersonal, and certainly doesn’t give you the opportunity for any face to face communication…at least not initially. So building a strong relationship takes work….

…..now here’s the obvious part!

When you are successful at generating a lead online, and you get someone to ‘raise their hand’ and ask for something to be provided to them (white paper, demo, call, free gift, etc.), or buy something, the first and most important step is to actually communicate with them via email in a meaningful way. It sounds obvious, but too often a company doesn’t even send a response email after someone has signed up for (or purchased) something. And if they do send an initial email, it’s impersonal, generic and cold.

And there goes the perfect opportunity to establish a relationship from the start, and the first impression opportunity is lost. This should be the perfect time to make a good impresssion and begin to build the relationship.

Setting up an initial response email to be automatically delivered is very easy to do, and will provide ongoing, consistent first communication. This is just the beginning of building a strong and meaningful (i.e. worthwhile to the lead or customer) relationship, but something that should never be overlooked….it’s just too easy to do!

Very interesting article from eMarketer Daily just released on what may become a hot trend worth watching……mobile email.

Take a look here

Sure mobile email’s not new….many of us use Blackberrys, Treos and the like, but mobile email hasn’t become a normal practice for the masses….no cultural shift just yet.

According to this study, a majority of mobile cell phone users would love the flexibility, and perceived increased productivity of reliable mobile email within their cell phone…..as long as it doesn’t impact their cell phone reliability.

What’s most interesting about this is not so much what it would look like to have a majority of email users going mobile, but what would the consequences be of such a shift? How would email marketing change?

Lots to consider if this becomes a permanent shift rather than just a trendy option….

Larry Chase is a veteran email newsletter expert, having started his own email newsletter back in 1995. He’s put together a list of best practices that he’s learned over the years. Check it out here.

The tips aren’t necessarily surprising, but it’s good to know that a time-tested newsletter is finding success using these techniques, and adds credibility to his recommendations.

I think #2. What can you give them that they don’t already have?, and #8. Read Your Newsletter Out Loud…. are two really good ideas that most people don’t seem to think much about.

Email Newsletters are a no-brainer for every business, whether they have a website or not.

These tips will help make any newsletter more successful!