2012 is well under way and we’ve been busy spreading fresh ideas and keeping tabs on exciting new developments in email marketing. In this pick of recent web articles, we’ve highlighted news of an important step forward in email security and some new thoughts on A/B split testing. Plus Loren McDonald from Silverpop’s two-part interview with Alchemy Worx CEO Dela Quist sees some typically trenchant opinions expressed on topics such as email frequency, subject line and ‘the nudge effect’.
Joining forces against phishing
An important new working group, DMARC.org, has been set up to further combat phishing by improving methods of blocking bad email. Sam Massiello, General Manager at Email Security Specialists Return Path, expresses his confidence that this coalition of companies, including AOL, Google, Microsoft and PayPal, will make email business more secure than ever.
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It is no surprise to see the banks involved in this new standard. The reduction in phishing messages that this new working group aims to achieve should serve to further increase the confidence in email marketing.
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To remove or not to remove?
Is your organisation too quick to remove inactives from its database? In the second part of the Silverpop interview, Dela Quist tells Loren McDonald of his dismay at being removed from databases as a consumer himself, and how it highlights the importance of ‘the nudge effect’ in cultivating customers over a long period. He is also typically outspoken on the topic of subject lines, once again going against the accepted wisdom and arguing, the shorter the subject line, the less likely you are to convey meaning. He concludes with some strong words regarding marketers’ visceral fear that the public hates getting email “Ecommerce thrives on email,” he says. “If we can get that message out, everyone would love what they do.”
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Is less really more?
In the first part of this interview with the Silverpop blog, Alchemy Worx CEO Dela Quist tells Loren McDonald why he still feels marketers should be sending more emails, not less. “The challenge is not ‘How do I send less?’,” Quist argues. “It’s How do I get my list to tolerate more?” He also challenges the trend among marketers towards reducing email volume, arguing that email frequency becomes less of a problem, the better the customer’s perception of the brand. “How they feel about the email program is actually driven by how they feel about the brand,” he says. “Email is the tail, not the dog.”
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Testing, testing
How can your email campaigns best benefit from A/B split testing? That’s the question addressed by Alchemy Worx Marketing Director Riaz Kanani in this feature for the DMA website. In particular, he focuses on manual testing, which is often presumed to be costly and complex compared to automatic testing, but which can be far more useful if you have a specific need, or want to test something that is unique to your organisation. Kanani explains how different approaches are better suited to different amounts of data and sample sizes, and stresses the importance of being patient, letting your campaign run its course before you jump to conclusions.
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Last updated: Oct 17, 2016 admin
