Getting your customers to pay attention to your email marketing communications may become more difficult with future improvements to email client technology if you're not explicitly whitelisted by them.

Miles Libby, the anti-spam project manager for Yahoo, had discussed upgrades to their email client that ties back to their DomainKeys email authentication process. For their upcoming release, each email will have a rating that indicates email sender authenticity.

This development makes email reputation and deliverability more of a priority as it will be visualized with the email itself. And as the technology gains traction, the decision to open an email may weigh more heavily on the sender authentication than on the subject line.

In a business or work environment, it's not unusual to be bombarded by massive amounts of email, but there are technology solutions out there that are gaining ground with Web 2.0 email users. Xobni is a free application developed by a San Francisco-based company that uses integrated technology and analytics that tie right into Microsoft Outlook. Xobni automatically threads email conversations and provides the user with an email analytics overview of their personal email volume and the volume of emails exchanged between all their contacts by the time of day.

Xobni's features will probably prove beneficial to email marketers. With tools that make email management more efficient, received commercial emails won't get in the way as much, perhaps reducing their negative perception and providing lift to customer retention statistics. On the other hand, reducing the need to read through subject lines when searching for a particular conversation might also reduce the chances of your email marketing to catch the attention of your audience.

With changes in the way consumers are going to be receiving email, there is a need for a co-evolution of marketing software that provides innovative marketing solutions that work with these new Web 2.0 email technologies.

By Rick Enrico

--Find out how to collect and analyze the cross-company data needed for effective marketing programs without the struggle of working with IT.--

Marketers who look for ways to work better with their IT counterparts will find ample references and suggestions from any search engine; the cyber world is littered with "how-to" papers and thought pieces. With all this information readily available, one would think the business units could easily find common ground.

Think again.

Reality shows us that the opposite is true, and for understandable reasons. While marketing relies heavily on corporate and internet networks to conduct one-to-one lead generation, branding campaign and customer service initiatives, IT departments are usually knee-deep with other mission-critical support requirements, particularly in operations and finance. These disparate pain-points invariably lead to conflict in priorities that, in today's world of shrinking budgets and staff, will not resolve itself simply by instituting a "Can't we all just get along" executive order.

Instead, successful organizations are deploying third-party web-based systems to enable marketers to search disassociated customer databases to build customer profiles and update segments in real-time; all without creating IT work requests in the process. These platforms streamline the marketing process by enabling companies to store customer interaction data -- such as sales transactions, demographics, website data and email addresses -- and segment that information to build relevant targeted marketing campaigns. Customer data is housed in a single warehouse that is tied to a concise central reporting dashboard. 

This real-time information empowers marketers to plan and execute stand-alone or comprehensive cross-channel marketing programs that can include email, direct mail, online video, voicemail, surveys, live chat and lead management. The results include higher conversion rates as well as increased customer satisfaction and client retention.

Here's an example. A Midwest-based retailer wanted to create an email campaign targeted to past purchasers in order to acquire repeat business. Doing this effectively meant knowing what the customers had previously purchased, and thus required integration between the company's loyalty and POS databases with an email marketing system. The company leveraged an on-demand, marketing intelligence platform to facilitate the channel integrations and segment past purchasers who were opted in to receive commercial email messages without tying up the IT department's resources in the process. The retailer then executed a targeted campaign with pinpoint accuracy. The result: The retailer witnessed a 150-percent uplift in email marketing ROI from that one campaign.

What's more, the marketing department was able to quickly combine POS and web data on its own within the technology platform to better understand customer behavior and deliver only the most relevant promotion campaigns to subscribers. Subsequently, the retailer's website traffic increased by 40 percent within 60 days.

Steps to integation

To get started, marketers must first evaluate if such a system would be of benefit to them. Start by identifying all the areas that customer data is currently held within an organization. The outcome may surprise some. In addition to a central CRM system, accounting systems, e-commerce and product marketing departments typically have other customer data not captured anywhere else.
 
Once all the proverbial stones have been overturned, organizations should consider all the marketing initiatives they do, such as direct mail, online, advertising and in-store promotions. Companies that maintain more than two customer data houses and conduct at least three distinctly different marketing promotion campaigns throughout a given business year would benefit greatly from a marketing intelligence platform.

If a more in-depth analysis of market dynamics, messaging and tactics is required, companies may consider hiring an outsourced research firm. There are numerous ones to choose from of all shapes, sizes and fee structures. Wikipedia offers links to several of them here.

When evaluating web-based intelligence platforms, marketers need to ask the following questions:

• Can the system hyper-segment data from various sources based on customer behaviors and preferences?
• Can the system "Mash Up" this data into a central dashboard for up-to-date reports and analyses?
• Does the system integrate with email marketing platforms, thereby allowing companies to plan, execute and analyze such campaigns in one click?
• Does the system automatically push updates and new versions without interrupting operations or requiring in-house IT support?

Today, marketers are in greater need for data-driven business intelligence, hyper segmentation and behavioral targeting that they can leverage to create dynamic and relevant promotion campaigns. The introduction of web-based systems helps define the aggregation, analytics and automation of customer interaction data to drive campaign optimization while still keeping marketing and IT departments out of each other's hair.

(continued from Internet Retailer: Do You Know Me? Part 2 of 8)

The following is an excerpt from the Internet Retailer article, "Do You Know Me?", by Don Davis.

More Design Work

In term of making use of the integrated customer data, Petco initially will use it to produce customized monthly e-mails. Each e-mail can be personalized with up to 12 items the customer has purchased or shown interest in.

In the second phase, Petco will customize the web pages visitors see based on their profiles. Customers who have made online purchases in the past or signed in to ther PALS account can be identified by cookies placed on their computers.

"The biggest challenge is the amount of creative you need for targeted home pages," says Lazarchic. "If I know you're a cat customer, the center theme of the home page and the offer shouldn't be dog-focused, it should be cat-focused."

Lazarchic expects to be sending personalized e-mails using the new data store by May.

The first phase of Lazarchic's plan should be standard practice, or at least in the plans for any progressive email marketing campaign and any decent email service or marketing software provider should be equipped with the tools required to deliver personalized, dynamic content. The foundation of behavior based marketing is the ability to tie customer records with sales data. That single connection gives marketers the ability to develop and execute a variety of email campaigns including: customer reengagement/win-back, customer retention, and customer acquisition.

The second phase to the Petco plan may not be for everyone, but is an innovative marketing move for those who do have an e-commerce component. If graphic elements other than featured products are made dynamic, too, then that extends the idea of relevant marketing to "relevant branding". If the look and feel of the website reflect the identity of the customer and/or the relationship between the individual customer and the product, then increases in customer acquisition and retention can be expected.

"More design work" is definitely needed to initiate these campaigns but the bulk of the work would only need to be done once, and the pages/emails generated by dynamic combination of the various elements would result in the equivalent of potentially hundreds (if not more) of static marketing messages. It may seem like a big undertaking at first, but in the long run, automated marketing solutions will undoubtable save time and resources while strengthening customer relations.

By Rick Enrico
President and CEO
Juice Media Worldwide

Marketers who look for ways to work better with their IT counterparts will find ample references and suggestions from any search engine; the cyber world is littered with "how-to" papers and thought pieces.  With all this information readily available, one would think the businesses units could easily find common ground.

Think again.

Reality shows us that the opposite is true, and for understandable reasons.  While Marketing relies heavily on corporate and Internet networks to conduct one-to-one lead generation, branding campaign and customer service initiatives, IT departments are usually knee-deep with other mission-critical support requirements, particularly in operations and finance.  These disparate pain-points invariably lead to conflict in priorities that, in today's world of shrinking budgets and staff, will not resolve itself simply by instituting a "Can't we all just get along" executive order.

Instead, successful organizations are deploying third-party Web-based systems to enable marketers to search disassociated customer databases to build customer profiles and update segments in real-time; all without creating IT work requests in the process.  These platforms streamline the marketing process by allowing companies to store customer interaction data - such as sales transactions, demographics, Web site data and email addresses - and segment that information to build relevant targeted marketing campaigns. Customer data is housed in a single warehouse that is tied to a concise central reporting dashboard. 

This real-time information empowers marketers to plan and execute stand-alone or comprehensive cross channel marketing programs that can include email, direct mail, online video, voicemail, surveys, live chat and lead management. The results include higher conversion rates as well as increased customer satisfaction and client retention.

Here's an example.  A Midwest-based retailer wanted to create an e-mail campaign targeted to past purchasers in order to acquire repeat business.  Doing this effectively meant knowing what they had previously purchased, and thus required integration between their Loyalty and POS databases with an e-mail marketing system. The company leveraged an on-demand, marketing intelligence platform to facilitate the channel integrations and segment past purchasers who were opted in to receive commercial e-mail messages without tying up the IT department's resources in the process.  The retailer then executed a targeted campaign with pinpoint accuracy.  The result - the company witnessed a 150-percent uplift in e-mail marketing ROI from that one campaign.

What's more, the marketing department was able to quickly combine POS and Web data on their own within the technology platform to better understand customer behavior and deliver only the most relevant promotion campaigns to subscribers. Subsequently, the retailer's Website traffic increased by 40 percent within 60 days.

When evaluating Web-based intelligence platforms, marketers need to ask the following questions:

• Can the system hyper-segment data from various sources based on customer behaviors and preferences?
• Can the system "Mash Up" this data into a central dashboard for up-to-date reports and analyses?
• Does the system integrate with e-mail marketing platforms, thereby allowing companies to plan, execute and analyze such campaigns in one click?
• Does the system automatically push updates and new versions without interrupting operations or requiring in-house IT support?

Today, marketers are in greater need for data-driven business intelligence, hyper segmentation and behavioral targeting that they can leverage to create dynamic and relevant promotion campaigns.  The introduction of Web-based systems helps defines the aggregation, analytics and automation of customer interaction data to drive campaign optimization while still keeping marketing and IT departments out of each other's hair.

 Source: DirectMag

 By Ken Magill

Yahoo! and anti-spam firm Cloudmark have signed on to begin using Return Path’s Sender Score Certification whitelisting program as one of the gauges they use to determine if incoming e-mail is spam.

Cloudmark is already checking incoming e-mail for Sender Score Certification. Yahoo! is implementing the scheme and will begin checking using it sometime in spring.

For Return Path and its clients, the development means the number of e-mail boxes in which its Sender Score Certification program plays a role in deliverability has risen from 800 million to about 1.2 billion, according to the company.

The Yahoo! deal significantly increases the role Return Path’s whitelisting e-mail deliverability program plays in getting e-mail delivered to consumer addresses.

AOL is now the only major U.S. Internet service provider not using Sender Score Certification to check incoming e-mail. AOL uses Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program where marketers pay a small fee to have their messages guaranteed to be delivered to AOL users with images and links intact.

The Cloudmark deal significantly increased Return Path’s influence over deliverability to business addresses and inboxes controlled by Earthlink, Comcast, Cox and Charter in the U.S., and Telus, THUS and Fastweb in Europe.

While being Sender Score Certified—a designation Return Path gives to non-spamming companies—is no guarantee an e-mailer’s messages will get delivered, the scheme is a significant factor in determining how incoming mail will be processed by the ISPs who use it, said Matt Blumberg, chief executive of Return Path.

“Being Sender Score Certified is not an ironclad guarantee of deliverability, or images and links [rendering] at most of the 1.2 billion mailboxes we cover,” said Blumberg. “But it is a very, very heavy influencer of all of those things. Anyone who is in the program has experienced significant lift.”