Bronto Blog

The final day of the Winter 2008 Email Insider Summit was dominated by a 2009 pledge, an awards ceremony, and a challenge to all.

For a raw, unedited play-by-play of the Summit, check out the Twitter conversation.

The Pledge
The pledge was a list of 7 (+1) email marketing commitments proposed by moderator Stephanie Miller (Return Path), Jack Hogan (Lifescript), and Brad Bacon (The Weather Channel). As Stephanie, Jack, and Brad stepped through their 45-minute presentation, they challenged marketers in the room (and those reading this now) to make several commitments related to their 2009 email marketing strategy. We were all asked to sign individually pledges promising the following:

• I will employ long term thinking and trend my campaign-level data.
• I will only collect data that I will use and I will use the data that I have. I will ensure that my sign up process is simple, clear and easy.
• I will send every subscriber a truly optimized welcome message that excites them about about my program and sets the stage for a satisfying email experience.
• I will make at least 30% of my total messages each month tailored to the subscriber’s lifecycle, interests, or status. Really tailored. No cheating.
• I will ensure that subscribers who opt out of my email messages will not receive another email that they don’t want. Period.
• I will give my subscribers choices about what they want, and how frequently.
• I will never place a hyphen in the word “email.”
• I will….(this one was left blank for *you* to complete).

Other interesting tidbits from this panel…

• Jack Hogan said that unsubscribe rates were high on their welcome messages. However, he was okay with this because, “if they don’t want it, we don’t want to send it.”
• Stephanie Miller quoted a recent Silverpop study:  67% know but don’t care that the “report spam” button hurts marketers.
• Brad Bacon admitted that due to their strong brand awareness, the Weather Channel had the luxury of high double opt-in rates and low unsubscribes/complaints. He said, “people want our content!” This makes it hard to justify improving their programs (although he admitted several areas that needed tweaking).
• Jack Hogan showed off the Lifescript branded “Hassle Free” one-click unsubscribe button that is located in the upper right of every message. (Aside: I wonder if this button is “bulletproof”). According to Jack, there has been nearly a 1-to-1 correlation between unsubscribes (up) and complaints (down). This keeps the ISPs happy and helps overall deliverability.

The Awards Ceremony
Next up were the Email Insider Academy Awards. The trio Lisa Harmon and Aaron Smith (Smith-Harmon) and Jessica Morris (Pottery Barn) rewarded several marketers in the Lifecycle Creative Awards.

The Challenge
The morning concluded with several email industry thought leaders discussing the “new tools for new age marketing.”  Ryan Deutsch (StrongMail Systems), Ed Henrich (Responsys), and Chip House (ExactTarget) led a Q&A aptly named “Are You Smarter Than a Thought Leader?”

They proposed a series of challenges for marketers as we head into 2009. Audience members were rewarded with a $5 Starbucks card for offering a compelling case for why they were wrong. A sampling of the statements are below:

• Ryan thinks: You should stop sending promotional campaigns.
• Ed thinks: You should use the tools you have and the tools will get better.
• Chip thinks: You should enable cross-channel purchasing opportunities via personalized email coupons.
• Ryan thinks: You should invest in a centralized database of record.
• Ed thinks: You should be talking more about PROCESS.
• Chip thinks: You should find ways to engage and capture customers via inbound SMS promotions. (I won a gift card for challenging this one).

Overall, the Email Insider Summit delivered on their promise. It was 3 days of marketers and email thought leaders converging to discuss the current state of email marketing and offering predictions for what’s to come in the near future. This Summit is one you want to add to your calendars for Spring 2009.

Be on the lookout for subsequent blog posts over the next few weeks that will dig deeper into many of the topics covered at the Winter 2008 Email Insider Summit.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

Day Two at the Email Insider Summit is in the books. Powerful speakers, informative panels, and riveting roundtables ruled the day.

Don’t forget: follow the action in real-time on Twitter (#EIS).

The morning started off with Jim Sterne, Founder and President, Web Analytics Association discussing cross channel measurement and attribution of email. Some highlights:

• Marketing is about communicating value.
• Marketers think about the channel (email, store, web, etc); consumers just care about the company.
• Everything you do has to be about the customer. Has to be your “reason for being.”
• The “Critical List”: Know the value of an email address. Measure everything. Test everything. Use email as a leading indicator. Segmentation is the key.
• If you are responsible for email at your company and your job ends at the click-through, your company is in trouble.
• Email becomes a marketplace listening post - the testing ground for what will work in “slower channels” (radio, TV, etc…).
• Beware of the “Hippo” (HIghest Paid Opinion, aka the boss). Best response is, “Great. We’ll test that.”
• Test in order to statistically prove: Watch behavior, then respond to it.

Next up was “Email as a Social Media Tool.” This panel included:

Jay Stevens, VP, Online Marketing, International, MySpace
Karla Venell, Manager of Database and Email Marketing, General Mills
Brian Whalley, Community Director, Our Stage

Some of the key takeaways:

• Social Network Drugs: LinkedIn–>Facebook–>Twitter
• From Push to Pull to Sideways: Direct Mail, Email = Push; Search, RSS = Pull; Social, User-Generated Content = Sideways
• Jay of Myspace: “I laugh at the idea that social media is killing email. We’re the biggest users out there.”
• Important to not only identify influencers, but reward, empower, and engage them.

One of the more engaging speakers of the conference thusfar was Bob Frady, Vice President of Direct Marketing at Live Nation. I’ve heard Bob speak before and one of the things that I love about him is that he is very raw. He tells it how he sees it.

Bob’s presentation included many nuggets such as:

• His least favorite phrase: “Think like a marketer.” (This was followed by some choice words).
• Most email metrics mean something to us (as email marketers), but not to senior management.
• Email data is tactical, but management wants strategy.
• The promotion metrics - metrics that mean something to senior management.
• Don’t get “email goggles” - email is important, but it is not everything.
• Email is not always directly measurable, but it is an influencer - influences conversions in other areas.
• If you are not speaking your CEO’s language, you are only hurting yourself.
• Email statistics are pieces of lumber, not a house.
• If you can’t put it in a context that means something to your management, your efforts will be marginalized.

Day 3 begins shortly. Sessions include:

• A Call To Arms: How You Can Truly Move the Needle on Email
• Developing the User Experience (Lifecycle Creative Awards)
• New Tools for New Age Marketing

Can’t wait for the blog post summary? Follow the action in real-time on Twitter (#EIS).

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto

The Email Insider Summit continues to deliver on it’s promise of being, “a totally unique event where the biggest brands and brightest minds caucus for three-days on state of email marketing.” Day one did not disappoint. Below is a recap of some of the highlights.

Also, you can follow the action in real-time on Twitter (#EIS).

David Baker kicked off the conference with his list of the 12 most powerful words: Guarantee, Proven, Discovery, Love, Safety, Easy, Health, Results, New, Save, Money, and You.

Stephen Geer, the Director of Email and Online Fundraising, Obama for America, captivated the audience for nearly an hour as he gave insights into the strategies of the Obama New Media Team. Interesting points:

• 3 goals were Messaging, Mobilization, and Money
• Obama Mantra: Respect, Empower, Include
• Single biggest day of fundraising in the history of politics was day after Governor Palin’s acceptance speech
• Stephen wrote many of the “From Barack” emails. This was unprecedented as he is not a speech writer.
• Deliverabilty was an issue (not many details here). They sent a ton of email, but the volume varied by state, by individual, by data point
• When asked about “Election Day Overkill” (3 knocks on door, 5 phone calls, 4 emails), Stephen said it was not an issue…as long as you voted.
  
• Favorite quote: “2 years of not sleeping is a really long time.”

Next up was the “mom panel” as it quickly became known as. The official title was, “Consumers Speak: Mom’s Open Up about Email: A panel of Moms gives a top researcher of consumer media habits (and you) their ideas about online consumption and how email plays a part in their lives.

Moderated by Mike Bloxham, Director of Insight, Ball State University Center for Media Design, the panel consisted of 4 moms, ages 25-36 with 2+ children, and income above $100K. Some takeaways:

• Frequency of emails is like kids going, “Mom, mom, mom, mom…”
• One woman said that the computer is a “time sucker.”
• They are loyal to marketers who make it simple/quick - “send me an offer and let me purchase. Don’t have time to navigate, jump through hoops. Make it easy.”
• Some other fun comments were posted on Twitter.

The moms were a tough act to follow, but the “Marketers Speak” panel proved to be another great one. David Baker moderated this group of top marketers:

Brad Schleif, Specialist, E-Commerce, Northwest Airlines
Sal Tripi, Director of Operations, Publisher’s Clearing House
Vincent Cheung, Chief Customer Officer and SVP, 24 Hour Fitness

Some of the key quotes included:

• “No segment is too small.”
• “Send less email, more relevant.”
• “Personalization and segmentation on steroids.”
• “Make data actionable - personalized experience.”

Day 2 is starting now. Looking forward to the 9AM Keynote by Jim Sterne, Founder and President, Web Analytics Association (I sat next to Jim at dinner last night. Amazing story about how he met his wife). Also, at 9:45, Brian Whalley (Bronto client from OurStage) will be on a panel discussing “Email as a Social Media Tool.”

Finally, for the real-time, raw, filter-free commentary on the Email Insider Summit, tune into Twitter.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverabilty at Bronto

Next week (December 7-10), Bronto will be in Park City, Utah attending the Email Insider Summit (EIS). This semi-annual event, hosted by MediaPost, is - according to the site - “a totally unique event where the biggest brands and brightest minds caucus for three-days on state of email marketing.” From personal experience, I can tell you that this Summit is truly one of the best. This year, Brian Whalley (Bronto Client from OurStage and overall cool dude) will be on a panel discussing “Email as a Social Media Tool.”

Representatives from the Marriott, Target, General Mills, Expedia, MySpace, Overstock.com, and The New York Times (to name a few) will convene in Park City to share their experiences, spread their knowledge, and learn from others. Additionally, the Summit will be chocked full of email marketing experts from Email Service Providers (ESPs), deliverability companies, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and major agencies.

This Winter’s agenda is packed with great topics, including, but certainly not limited to:

• Keynote: Email and Politics - Case Study of the Obama Campaign
• Marketers Speak: Top Marketers talk about trends, issues and market dynamics and how email is evolving in their respective markets
• Email as a Social Media Tool: This panel will look at real-life examples of how companies are integrating email into social networks, incorporating user-generated content into their emails and leveraging user data from social networks back into their email program – and explore what portends in the future (Bronto client Brian Whalley of OurStage will be a panelist)

Check out some of the videos from the Spring Summit.

Please let me know if there are any topics you are interested in and I’ll be sure to focus my post-conference blog post on that item.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability

What valuable insight can 3 young adults who were not even born when Ghost Busters or E.T. were originally released provide to email marketers?

Last week, MediaPost hosted the Email Insider Summit on Captiva Island, FL. Close your eyes and imagine 150 email experts - people who spend a significant portion of their day thinking about email - sequestered on a remote Florida island for 72-hours. (Ok. Open your eyes now. Back to the real world.) Over 3 days, we dissected the email ecosystem, discussed industry insights, swapped best practices, deliberated over the new FTC CAN-SPAM regulations, debated co-registration and list rental, recapped the current state of the industry and speculated about the role email will have in the future.

One of the most intriguing panels at the Summit - Next Generation: Does Email Have a Future? - involved these 3 extremely well-spoken, intelligent students from Ball State University (BSU). For over an hour, the entire room was captivated by three people with a combined age of less than 60.

Is Facebook For Real?
The panelists began by talking about IM and texting; however, the discussion quickly turned to Facebook. August Miller, a Junior at BSU, said that he has a Facebook tab open at all times. His day starts and ends with Facebook. Amanda Pollard, a graduating BSU Senior, believes that “social networking is less professional.” She said that there is something fundamentally different about email; “it’s more professional.” Brandon Prebynski, a 2nd year graduate student at BSU, said he is more hesitant to open email than check a social networking site. According to Brandon, social networking is more fun; email is secondary. He thinks of email as “usually advertising, but not just to say hi; that is reserved for Facebook.” Brandon admits he uses Facebook whenever there is a free moment. Read the rest of this entry »