2015 Essential Guide: Email Markerting

EMAIL
MARKETING
2015
E SS E NTI AL GUIDE
n The Complex, Yet Straightforward State of Email Deliverability
n 7 Ways to Use Email to Combat Email Disengagement
n Capitalizing on Email’s Strengths While Overcoming Its Weaknesses
A supplement of
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abandoned their cart / was getting married / responded well to video/
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6 HOT LIST
7 Ways to Use Email to Combat Email Disengagement
Email is as popular as ever, but so are feelings of email fatigue.
Here’s how to bring wayward customers back into the email fold.
by Perry Simpson
8 DELIVERABILITY
We’ve Got Our ISPs on You
The current, complex, yet straightforward state of email deliver-
ability. by Eric Krell
14 STRATEGY
Email, Like Fine Wine, Gets Better With Age
Email continues to be a marketing staple because it works without
busting the marketing budget—and marketers continue to reinvent
it. by Jason Compton
18 TREND ROUNDUP
The Email Opportunist
Email’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Here’s how
marketers overcome the latter to capitalize on the former.
by Ginger Conlon
TableofContents
+DATAENTRY
79%Email marketing messages that reach
inboxes (a 5% decrease versus 2014) page 10
72%Consumers who value hearing from brands
through email page 15
30%Consumers who want to receive shorter
emails page 16
56%B2C emails using mobile-friendly design
page 16
Justin Foster
Liveclicker
20
1014
2015 Essential Guide to Email Marketing | TOC
“Oneofemail’sgreat-
eststrengths,simply,
isthatitworks.Email
hasbeenshownto
beasolidsourcefor
leadsandastrong
revenuechannel.”
dmnews.com | October 2015 | 3
6
8

H
ow often do you refer to your email campaigns as blasts?
My guess is that out of habit you do so not only when
campaigns are actually batch-and-blast mailings, but also
when they’re personalized or targeted.
Well, it’s time to reframe.
Sure, there’s a limited place for batch-and-blast campaigns
where the only personalized component is the greeting. But with
persnickety customers expecting relevancy and marketers hav-
ing an ever-growing array of personalization tactics, it behooves
marketers to reprogram their approaches—from the way they ref-
erence campaigns and customers to the way they segment and
strategize.
Let’s talk first about reframing how you think about modern
email marketing, using professional athletes as an example.
Many professional athletes visualize successful outcomes for
training and competition; numerous studies have shown that this
visualization, as well as positive self-talk, are highly effective and
help set professional athletes apart from the rest of us.
Now it’s your turn to get in the zone: Hanging onto the langauge of mass marketing when attempting
to transition to a more personalized approach is counterproductive. It’s time to stop saying “blast,” and
time to start saying “campaign” or “mailing.” And it’s time to stop talking about personalization, and
actually get personal—that is,
see customers as individuals,
not just as a mass, nameless
source of revenue.
Speakingofgettingpersonal:
Please stop calling prospects
and customers “targets.” I can
understand using “target au-
dience”—there’s still an element of humanity in this definition. But “targets” removes all humanity from
the equation. Let’s face it, whether in B2B or B2C, the people you’re marketing to more often buy based
on emotion than on rational decisions. So, imagine yourself in your customers’ shoes: Do you want to be
someone’s target? It’s time to put a bit more Golden Rule back into email marketing-speak.
In fact, putting customers at the center of your email campaigns is essential today. As contributing
writer Eric Krell points out in “We’ve got Our ISPs on You” (page 8), Internet Service Providers are in-
creasingly using engagement metrics, such as opens and clicks, to determine which emails get through
to users and which ones are redirected to the spam folder.
The good news is that there are myraid ways to add personal touches to email today—and the options
will only continue to increase as new technologies launch that are designed to support them. In “Email,
Like Fine Wine, Gets Better With Age” (page 14), contributing writer Jason Compton shares examples of
four companies using everything from triggers to video to moment-of-open personalization to refresh
their email campaigns and engage their audiences—all to resounding success. As Clark Cummings, se-
nior manager of member marketing at Marriott International, says in the article, “The pendulum has
swung, and people are expecting us to use their data. It’s been liberating.”
So, unlike the Golden Oldies that resurface on the radio, it’s time to make email blasts the blast from
the past that stays there. It’s time for marketers to use what they know about their customers to get
personal with them. As Listrak Chief Brand Strategist Ryan Hofmann points out in “The Email Opportun-
ist” (page 18), “Too many email marketers still deliver the same message to every single subscriber on
their list despite having data easily accessible to deliver targeted and personalized messages.”
Don’t be that email marketer. Be the one who puts customers first, and sees a blast of ROI as a result. ■
EDITORIAL
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ginger.conlon@dmnews.com
646-638-6184
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Al Urbanski
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Natasha D. Smith
Associate Editor
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Digital Content Coordinator
Perry Simpson
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Eric Krell
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EDITOR’S NOTE | 2015 Essential Guide to Email Marketing
IT’S TIME TO STOP TALKING ABOUT
PERSONALIZATION, AND ACTUALLY GET
PERSONAL—THAT IS, SEE CUSTOMERS
AS INDIVIDUALS, NOT JUST AS A MASS,
NAMELESS SOURCE OF REVENUE.
A Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the PastA Blast From Is the Past

Designing your cross-channel playbook: Email and social | 3
Methodology
The figures presented in this ebook are pulled from a month-long online assessment
that was taken between May 8 and June 8, 2015. There were 82 marketers who took
the quiz, with the following job title breakdown:
Job title of quiz respondents
21% 49%
15%23%
4%
1%
9%
4% CMO/EVP/SVP
1% Vice President
15% Director
49% Manager
9% Analyst/Coordinator
23% Other
*Numbers may not sum to 100% due to rounding.
Curious to see where you fall?
Take our quiz to determine whether
you’re a Monetization MVP,
a Retargeting all-star, a Cross-
promoting captain or just Stepping
up to the plate. And see this
sidebar for insights on your fellow
marketers’ responses!
Take the quiz now
Designing your cross-channel playbook: Email and social | 2
Email and social — sworn rivals or a dynamic duo?
Most marketers realize the importance of a seamless customer experience. But common obstacles — like lack of a single
customer view, having the right technology and organizational structure — make executing a unified marketing strategy a
challenge across channels.
The good news is there are many ways you can begin to integrate your email and social strategies. Some tactics are
easy to implement — they’ll take nothing more than a bit of coordination and cross-promotion. Others require some
additional technology and data linkage. Over the following pages, we’ll outline four levels of integration, along with tips and
recommendations for further integration.
LEVEL 1
Stepping up to the plate
13%
Four levels of email and
social integration
LEVEL 2
Cross-promoting captain
39%
LEVEL 3
Retargeting all-star
LEVEL 4
Monetization MVP
32%
16%
Designing your
cross-channel playbook
Email and social
An Experian Marketing Services eBook

H0T LIST | Essential Guide to Email Marketing 2015
By Perry Simpson
F
or many consumers, email is the lifeline through which they main-
tain relations with businesses. In fact, seven in 10 adults prefer
email as their primary marketing communications channel, with
91% indicating that they like to receive promotional emails from com-
panies they do business with, according to survey data from marketing
research firm MarketingSherpa.
It’s impossible to deny the potency of email as a marketing channel in
the face of such findings. But email’s low cost and effectiveness has, far
too often, led to over-emailing that causes email fatigue among recipi-
ents. The inevitable outcome of email fatigue? Disengagement.
Surprisingly, however, due to email’s acceptance and proliferation,
many marketers actually turn to the channel when seeking ways to
7Ways to Use Email
to Combat Email
Disengagement
EMAIL IS AS POPULAR AS EVER, BUT SO ARE
FEELINGS OF EMAIL FATIGUE. HERE’S HOW TO BRING WAYWARD
CUSTOMERS BACK INTO THE EMAIL FOLD.

reengage those fatigued customers.
“[Email] is not a fleeting moment like some other channels—there’s a
real opportunity to impress value upon customers as email creates an
impression on the user in the inbox; but email’s ability to be effective as
a reengagement channel is directly tied to what caused disengagement in
the first place,” says Kara Trivunovic, VP of digital solutions at Epsilon.
Remedying disengagement is perhaps one of marketing’s toughest
challenges, but doing so is a must. If a customer opts in to email com-
munication and regularly engages with a brand’s email content, only to
gradually (or suddenly) withdraw from communication, this is a signal
marketers need to address to ensure that they retain that customer. Just
as marketers must apply sophisticated email strategies to acquire new
customers, they must use savvy email tactics to reengage customers.
Here we explore seven ways marketers can do just that.
Get to the root cause
Customers disengage with emails for myriad reasons. Perhaps their
tastes have changed. Maybe their need for a particular product or ser-
vice has waned. Or perhaps the emails they’re receiving don’t meet
their expectations.
“Go back to the beginning and understand why a customer started
engaging with your email program in the first place. Did they subscribe
via a purchase cycle? Or perhaps you acquired them through a newslet-
ter or promotion?” Trivunovic says. “Going back to the point of acquisi-
tion will allow you to understand what your customers expected when
they signed up for your program, then [you can] deliver content that is
relevant to these expectations.”
Some marketers may assume that customers are disengaging because
they feel bombarded; these marketers may respond by curbing the fre-
quency of their email campaigns. By scaling back email communications
without understanding customers’ motivation for disengaging, market-
ers could potentially make the situation worse.
“Scaling back from a frequency perspective may help in the short term
but you still need to understand why [customers] aren’t engaging. It’s
important to determine the disconnect and adjust your reengagement
strategy accordingly,” Trivunovic says. “Consider surveying customers
to learn firsthand why they aren’t engaging. Ask them questions such
as, ‘Are we getting it right?’ or, ‘What would you like to see from us?’ to
better understand their needs and deliver more relevant content.”
Personalize
Some of the most effective email campaigns are personalized in terms
of content or triggers. Indeed, personalization is essential to relevance,
which is among the most influential factors in the engagement equation.
“The key to using email effectively is ensuring the right content is de-
livered to customers at the right time. The more tailored the interaction,
the more likely a customer is to be engaged,” says Gordon Evans, VP
of product marketing at Salesforce Marketing Cloud. “Marketers should
combine email with insights gained from customer data across the busi-
ness, as well as with other channels and tools, to achieve this heightened
level of personalization.”
Learn and act on customer preferences
If customers trust that a brand’s emails will help them solve a problem
or meet a relevant need—and do so in what they consider to be a timely
manner and at a frequency they prefer—their likelihood of disengaging
should diminish.
“Be transparent with the consumer. Ask customers what they want to
receive via email and how frequently they want to receive it and then
provide it to them,” says David Brown, EVP of customer engagement
agency Meredith Xcelerated Marketing. “Earn their trust so they can be-
lieve that when they open an email from you it will be relevant to them.”
Enabling customers to dictate the frequency of email via, say, a prefer-
ence center can be a highly effective reengagement tool.
“Allow customers to have a hand in controlling the experience. Provide
them with more options for timing, number of emails, etc.,” Evans says.
“Marketers can do a lot of testing to optimize performance, but sometimes
just asking people what they like and want can provide the best results.”
If you wouldn’t mail it, don’t email it
Although email remains one of the most cost effective and scalable mar-
keting channels, marketers should ensure that they’re sending the best
content at the best possible time—and not just send campaigns because
email is “low cost” or “easy.”
“For every email you’re planning to send to a customer you should
be asking yourself, ‘If I had to put a postage stamp on this and mail
it, would I think it was worth it to send to my customer? Would they
be willing to open it and read it?’ If the answer is no, you shouldn’t be
emailing it either,” Brown says.
Ensure that emails are responsive, and
visually optimized
Design and user experience are as important as the message itself in
email marketing today. This is especially true for emails opened on a
mobile device—especially if those emails have a call-to-action that mar-
keters expect recipients to act on via mobile.
“Make sure that all of your email is mobile optimized. Some of your cus-
tomers may have stopped engaging simply because they can’t read your
email on their phone,” Brown says. “Everything today must not only be
readable from a mobile device, it needs to look great on a mobile device.”
Know when to throw in the towel
While the goal should be to reengage customers, marketers must remem-
ber the importance of knowing when it’s time to let a customer go. Keep-
ing customer data up-to-date is vital to this because it allows marketers
to better understand their customers.
“It’s important that you keep your email list clean and periodically
remove those [customers who] have stopped engaging. If you don’t, your
overall program results suffer—plus you begin to look more and more
like a spammer,” Brown says. “Make sure that you’re working to reen-
gage, but also set a timeline for how frequently you will remove custom-
ers from your active email list.”
Change channels
Despite email’s effectiveness in reengaging even those customers suffering
from email overload, in some cases if customers disengage from a brand
explicitly because of the brand’s email practices, the reality is that another
channel may prove more effective in bringing those customers back.
“Reengagement might not always happen via the email channel,” Triv-
unovic says. “You need to take a step back from your program, under-
stand how customers are engaging across all channels and address your
reengagement program accordingly.
“Understand what the experience was leading up to disengagement
and apply this logic to your reengagement strategy accordingly. If a cus-
tomer is showing activity on a mobile text program, but not engaging in
email, you have to consider that reality.” n
Essential Guide Essential Guide to Email Marketing 2015 | H0T LIST

DELIVERABILITY | 2015 Essential Guide to Email Marketing

2015 Essential Guide to Email Marketing | DELIVERABILITY
THE CURRENT, COMPLEX, YET STRAIGHT-
FORWARD STATE OF EMAIL DELIVERABILITY
By Eric Krell
T
he current state of email deliverability is, well, confusing.
On one hand, the way Internet service providers (ISPs) deter-
mine email deliverability has quickly become more automated,
more complicated, and less personal. ISPs churn hundreds of factors
and signals through complex algorithms to determine if a message
should reach its target.
On the other hand, getting email to its destination has never been
more straightforward, according to the experts who live and breathe
deliverability each day. “The most important factor, hands down, is to
send mail that our customers want,” says Paul Rock, AOL’s program-
mer/analyst and principle lead for mail abuse. “If our customers don’t
want your mail, you’re going to have a bad time…. When our customers
want your mail, those of us at the ISPs will make sure it gets to them.”
If you’re pressed for time, stop reading here and go forth equipped
with that simple, yet essential guidance. The complete story of email
deliverability, however, is far more elaborate.
Rock’s solid advice crystallizes what email marketers should keep
in mind at all times—especially when the current state of deliverability
happens to be highly fluid, and, by the way, based on a system that was
never designed for marketing, let alone for built-in email authentication.
Given this delicate situation, it’s essential to understand and manage
the more technically focused deliverability determinants. It may be even
more important to make the humans who own email addresses fall in
love—to borrow a phrase from Google anti-spam maven Sri Somanchi—
with your carefully crafted and incredibly engaging electronic messages.

Inbox placement rates decline
Rock, Somanchi, and their counterparts at Comcast
and Microsoft spoke on the topic of “deliverability ver-
sus engagement” at the Direct Marketing Association’s
2015 Email Evolution Conference. Their message was
simple: Engagement matters, so you should track and
manage engagement with the latest monitoring tools.
“There really is no excuse for shortcuts today be-
cause if you’re using these tools, then you can have a
better understanding of what that end user is doing
with your emails—and what they’re doing on your web-
site once they click a link in your email,” says Return
Path Chief Privacy and Security Officer Dennis Day-
man, who moderated that panel discussion.
Marketers who know which products and services
email users are looking at on their website can apply
that knowledge to make subsequent emails more seg-
mented and engaging. “Treat the individual with the
email address as a person,” Dayman adds. “Don’t sim-
ply treat it as an email address.”
This sound advice is getting more challenging to ex-
ecute. Return Path’s latest research indicates that inbox
placement rates declined 5% from 2014 to 2015. “It’s
not getting any easier for marketers to reach the in-
box,” Dayman says.
This is due, at least in part, to the intensifying good-
versus-evil battle that pits spammers, phishers, and other
bad actors against ISPs, anti-abuse organizations, and se-
curity groups. “The bad guys are looking more and more
at ways to co-opt or abuse existing relationships between
known brands and customers,” Rock explains. “They’re
also targeting the trusting relationships that have been
built up between the services that companies use, such as
the various hosting providers and [email service provid-
ers], and the ISPs…. The last thing you want is a phone
call from an upset brand owner asking why their latest
email campaign was a ‘Canadian Pharmacy’ spam run,
or worse, wanting to know why complaints are flooding
in only to discover that their domain has been co-opted
to send out ‘adult’ dating-site spam.”
Four-factor identification
As email marketing use has exploded—and, as a result,
attracted more spammers, phishers, and criminals—ISPs
have fortified their controls, the bulk of which are neces-
sarily automated. In the past decade this shift has al-
tered the relationship dynamic between ISPs and their
marketing counterparts at companies and vendors.
When Spencer Kollas, head of global email deliver-
ability for Experian Marketing Services, waded into
the deliverability realms a dozen years ago, the rela-
tionships between ISPs and email marketers were more
79%➜Email marketing
messages that reach
inboxes (a 5% decrease
versus 2014)
_____________________________________________
7%➜ Email marketing
messages designated
as spam (17% increase
versus 2014)
_____________________________________________
15%➜Email marketing mes-
sages that are missing/
unaccounted for (36%
increase versus 2014)
Source: Return Path, 2015

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personal. “Today,” Kollas says, “a lot of the filtering
systems are automated.”
As a result, Kollas advises email marketers to focus
on four primary factors that influence deliverability:
unknown users, spam traps, complaints, and customer
engagement. This entails removing outdated and in-
valid email addresses from lists, avoiding spam traps,
and applying marketing skills to limit complaints and
increase the likelihood that recipients will click on
links or, even better, move mail labeled as promotional
into their primary inbox tab. “Now,” Kollas continues,
“you’ll hear people in the industry say, ‘Well, ISPs
don’t really look at engagement.’ They may call it dif-
ferent things, but it’s all around engagement. They
want to know: Do people want your mail? That’s the most
important factor. If they don’t believe the majority of
people want your mail, they’re probably going to block
it or put it in the spam folder.”
Rock has said exactly that, as well. He also runs
through a list of other deliverability factors that are im-
portant to AOL, including the use of feedback loops to
track deliverability information; the authentication and
protection of domains—preferably using Domain-based
Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance
(DMARC), a technical specification created by a group
of organizations to reduce email-based abuse; exhibiting
respect for complaints and unsubscribe requests; and the
removal of dead addresses from email marketing lists.
According to Rock, it’s helpful for marketers to seg-
regate promotional and other bulk email from trans-
actional or notification traffic. Finally, he points to a
factor that most ISP experts also emphasize: histori-
cal consistency. “New is usually bad in the anti-abuse
world, so having a good reputation with history is what
you’re after,” he says.
Return Path’s Dayman agrees that reputation is a
crucial deliverability factor. Recipients of email cam-
paigns help build or break that reputation with each
email-link click and spam button impression.
So-called best practices
Given that the majority of factors ISPs use to determine
deliverability are tactical, marketers should consider
some leading deliverability practices—a phrase that Kol-
las treats delicately. “I usually talk about best practices
with air quotes around them,” he says. “Something that
is a best practice for one [company] might not be a best
practice for another. It really comes down to their busi-
ness model, their business goals, and what they’re trying
to get out of the email communications channel.”
A consumer packaged goods company probably
should not send a message to an email address that
hasn’t opened any of the company’s emails in the past
four or five months, for example. But a tax software
firm maker may not expect its targets to crack emails
for more than six months, until April 15 approaches.
Consider the following practices in terms of how
they apply, and can be adapted, to different companies’
unique needs:
Validate email addresses: It’s a simple and frequent-
ly overlooked step that can cause major problems. “Get
the right information at the point of collection, whatever
that point of collection may be,” Kollas asserts. “When
people think about deliverability they often think: OK, I
have an email address; how do I get it in the inbox? What they
neglect to think about is: Do I have the right email address?”
Listen and respond to ISP customers: Rock exhorts
email marketers to respect—and quickly respond to—un-
subscribe requests and complaints. “Complaints about
your mail are a big deal,” he explains. “Someone didn’t
want it, so it’s probably a good idea to try to figure out
why people are complaining, and adapt…. The worst
thing that can happen is for our customers to repeatedly
complain about the mail you’re sending, especially if
they escalate their complaints via customer service or
take their grievances into the public domain.”
Be proactive: Rock encourages email marketers to
let ISPs know in advance if a change or a new campaign
may impact the normal email flow, or potentially cause
a complaint volume to spike. He also advises market-
ers to track their deliverability metrics in as close to
real time as possible. “Watching what’s happening as
your mailings go out can give you valuable feedback
to improve deliverability,” he explains. Are complaints
spiking? Are bounces higher than normal? “Seeing this
early can help avoid problems,” Rock says. Addition-
ally, knowing typical deliverability statistics for their
company can help marketers have the conversation
with an ISP counterpart if a need for that discussion
arises. Being proactive also means pulling the plug on
a campaign if it begins sparking too many complaints.
Don’t forget to market: The ease and success of
email marketing can cause marketers to focus too
much on the technology and too little on their core
skill. Kollas believes there is ample room to inject more
marketing strategy and precision into email messages.
By way of example, he says that many email market-
ing programs neglect opportunities to upsell customers
(e.g., “free shipping on any item you order”) when they
email them a sales receipt for an online purchase.
Perhaps the most valuable best practice—no air
quotes necessary—concerns treating recipients of email
marketing messages as humanly as possible, despite
the increasingly technical and automated nature of the
activity. Dayman suggests applying the “grandmother
test” to guide deliverability decision-making: How
would your grandmother feel if she received this email
marketing message from you? n
4 ISP RELATION-
SHIP MANAGE-
MENT TIPS
When it comes to working
with ISP on deliverability,
“there’s no magic button
they can push to just let your
mail through because they
like you,” Spencer Kollas
says with a laugh. But the
head of global email deliver-
ability for Experian Market-
ing Services and other deliv-
erability experts are serious
about the practices required
to build a strong reputation
with ISPs over time.
PaulRock,AOL’sprogram-
mer/analystandprinciple
leadformailabuse,identifies
fourwaysmarketerscan
strengthentheirrelationships,
andreputations,withISPs:
1.Behonestandup-front
aboutyouremailperfor-
mance:“Beawareofpossible
complaintspikesandsources
andreachouttousabout
thatifpossible,”saysRock,
notingbywayofexamplethat
areengagementcampaignis
likelytogetahighercomplaint
ratethannormalmailings.
Glossingoverdetailslikethis
raisesredflagsforanti-abuse
andcomplianceteams.
2.Don’twaituntilyou’re
blockedtoreachout:Atthat
point,quickfixesaremore
difficult.ManyISPsystems
aredesignedtointerdict
badbehaviorquickly,Rock
explains,andtheyareslowto
betrusting.
3.Whenyoureachouttous,
knowyourowninformation:
Whatdomainsareinvolved?
WhatIPs,dates,times,vol-
umes,etc.?“Openingatrouble
ticketwithoutusefulinforma-
tionjustslowsdownproblem
resolution,”Rockexplains.
4.Don’ttrytoexplainaway
orexcusebadmailing
performance:Instead,work
tounderstandtheproblem.
Complaintsarefeedback,
Rocksays;learnwhatyoucan
fromthem.

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STRATEGY | Essential Guide to Email Marketing 2015

EMAIL CONTINUES TO BE A MARKETING
STAPLE BECAUSE IT WORKS WITHOUT
BUSTING THE MARKETING BUDGET—AND
MARKETERS CONTINUE TO REINVENT IT.
Essential Guide to Email Marketing 2015 | STRATEGY
Email,Like
FineWine,
GetsBetter
WithAge
By Jason Compton
W
ine has been produced and enjoyed for millennia. In digital
marketing years, email is just as old. It is at once a stable, ma-
ture technology built on underlying tech principles that haven’t
changed much since being codified in the 1980s, and a moving target of
evolving devices, deliverability standards, and communication strategies.
With traffic up 16% year-over-year, according to Experian Marketing Ser-
vices, email continues to be a staple of ongoing customer communications.
It is universally understood, cost-effective at scale, and can be made relevant
at any stage of the customer journey. “Email remains one of the primary,
foundational channels to walk the customer down the path to purchase and
repeat purchase,” says Ryan Hofmann, chief brand strategist at Listrak.
When email marketing was first finding its legs in the early 2000s,
there were justified fears that customers would tune out. But the industry
responded and made necessary course corrections, and today email is
more popular than ever. Consumer survey data from MECLABS Insti-
tute shows that 72% of consumers value hearing from brands through
email. The next highest channel, postal mail, couldn’t muster a simple
majority at 48%. The strong affinity for email was consistent across de-
mographic groups in the survey, where email is in first place or tied for
first in every age and gender category.
That attitude is just a moment in time, however. Brands must find new
ways to stay focused and relevant, with new media and more detailed
insights. Here are several campaigns that produce results by taking a
fresh approach, not by simply blasting customers with more messaging.
Inbox video (kind of)
As video surges in popularity among consumers online, it remains a
tricky challenge for email marketers. Although officially supported in
modern email standards, most mobile email readers, as well as some
prominent desktop clients such as Outlook, will not display embedded
video content, so a click-to-view approach is still necessary for most audi-
ences. “There’s no disadvantage to using it,” says Justin Foster, VP of
market development at Liveclicker. “It doesn’t deliver a broken email, but

16.1%➜Increase in email volume
year-over-year, Q2 2014 –
Q2 2015
-Experian Marketing Services
30%➜Consumers who want to
receive shorter emails
-MECLABS
$0.08➜Revenue per email, Q2 2015
-Experian Marketing Services
56%➜B2Cemailsusingmobile-
friendlydesign
-Litmus
38%➜ Consumers who think
cart abandonment reminder
emails are annoying
-MECLABS
THE NUMBERS
STRATEGY | Essential Guide to Email Marketing 2015
the recipient just doesn’t see the video.”
Marriott International found great success with video by making it
personal and enticing. The hotel brand is always looking for new ways to
engage members of its Marriott Rewards loyalty program, and email is
an important centerpiece. The organization wanted to find new ways to
apply consumer data and insights without incurring a privacy backlash.
“Marriott being a slightly conservative organization, we have worried in
the past about people getting freaked out,” says Clark Cummings, senior
manager of member marketing at Marriott International. “But the pen-
dulum has swung, and people are expecting us to
use their data. It’s been liberating.”
The month of December is a persistently low-
water mark for hotel bookings, so it was chosen
as the testing grounds for a new concept. Work-
ing with Yes Lifecycle Marketing, Marriott de-
vised a month-long campaign for December 2014
designed around highly personalized messages,
including custom video content. “We wanted to
offer something that would use what we knew
about their stays in a way that would be fun
and interesting, not just look like a chart,” Cum-
mings says.
As the month advanced, Marriott included in-
creasingly personalized content in the body of the
email, alongside standard newsletter items and
other loyalty offers. The campaign culminated in
an end-of-year report on December 30 with bright
graphics showing personalized details for each
member, including the number of nights stayed,
free nights redeemed, and different hotel brands
visited. These figures were put in perspective
against the aggregate global points earnings and
redemptions for all members, including their most
popular destinations and cocktail choices.
The capstone of the email was a personalized
video with a click-to-view link, which put an
animated spin on these insights. To drive home
the individual touch, the subject line put it sim-
ply: “We Made This Video Just For You.”
Customers responded strongly. The innova-
tive campaign produced 86% more revenue
than December campaigns of the two previous
years. Open rates were up 20% and conver-
sions nearly 10% higher. It didn’t take the “conservative organiza-
tion” long to recognize that it needed to quickly double down on
its success. “By January 5, we decided we were going to do it again
this December. Everybody was excited about the execution and the
results,” Cummings says.
Moment-of-open elements earn engagement
However pretty its design may be, email is traditionally a static medi-
um—just a new spin on an old message in a bottle. Spicing it up with
elements generated at the moment the email is opened, rather than the
moment it was written and placed in a campaign queue, creates a sense
of urgency that can produce rousing results.
Since creating a formal email program 14 years ago, AAA Ohio has
gradually moved from generic newsletters to targeted, triggered cam-
paigns. Newsletters were popular in terms of open rate, but rarely inspired
action. “We prefer things that are more action-
able—not necessarily sales, but we want to drive
the member to engage with us in some form,” says
Nancy Weaver, senior manager, e-Business, at
AAA Ohio.
The service club holds a travel expo in Colum-
bus every January, when the weather in Ohio
strongly favors an island getaway. Working with
Liveclicker, AAA Ohio added a real-time weather
comparison between Columbus and featured va-
cation destination Punta Cana, where tempera-
tures were about 50 degrees warmer during the
promotional period.
With no other substantial change in artwork
or content year-over-year apart from the weather
information block, the 2015 emails produced a
22% gain in click-through rates. That doubled
Weaver’s expectations and earned the compari-
son tool another engagement during the spring
vacation sales campaign. With weather compari-
sons to warm locations such as Orlando, click-
through rates improved more than 75%.
Pulling the trigger
Targeted, segmented campaigns offer a significant
improvement over generic messages. But when
constructed manually, they create a labor burden
on the marketing organization that hurts efficiency
and turnaround time. “You may have the resourc-
es to get batch-and-blast emails out seven times
per week, but often those resources spend 90% of
their time getting the emails out the door,” Listrak’s
Hofmann says. “If you don’t invest in the right hu-
man capital, agency, or provider to automate some
behavior-based emails, you will forever spin your wheels on them.”
Today it’s possible to define automated trigger campaigns on a variety of
consumer actions, including search-and-abandon, browse-and-abandon, and
cart abandonment. Plus, some platforms can integrate with site data and gen-
erate automatic email campaigns based on events such as in/out-of-stock, new

Essential Guide to Email Marketing 2015 | STRATEGY
4 Ways to
Uncork Email
Performance
1. Use softer calls-to-
action, such as clickable
ratings and reviews, to
drive long-term engage-
ment—instead of relying
solely on email conver-
sion to purchase.
2. Move from manually
segmented campaigns to
automated, audience-of-
one triggered emails.
3. Incorporate real-time
elements that make the
email seem immediate
and urgent.
4. Experiment with video
delivery, understanding
that embedded video
is not yet a universal
feature.
reviews, and significant price changes.
Sporting goods vendor evo has an extremely large catalog
and a heavily seasonal business. During peak ski season,
consumer interest and product availability fluctuates rap-
idly, and evo has a narrow window in which to earn most
of its annual revenue.
Since opening in 2001 the company has gathered a great
deal of consumer behavior data, but had limited ability to
convert those insights into action. “We could easily pull
reporting to show how many
people were interested in a ski
in a given week, or how many
added skis to a cart,” says Na-
than Decker, evo’s director of
e-commerce. “But we had a
difficult time marrying that
up to actionable messages. The
timing wasn’t very close to
the action, and performance
was poor, both in terms of the
number of messages sent and
the revenue [generated].”
Working with Bluecore, evo
created a series of automated
email trigger campaigns. A
price drop of $20 or more au-
tomatically sends an email
alert to customers who have
expressed interest in that item,
without manual intervention.
Cart and search abandonment
emails are automatically sent
one hour after a session ends.
To keep the emails from seem-
ing too omniscient, evo deliber-
ately salts the abandon emails
with items related to the search,
as well, so consumers are not
confronted solely with the spe-
cific item browsed.
The triggered emails have shown substantial improvement
over evo’s conventional campaigns. Standard evo email out-
reach generates between 10 and 30% open rates, with click-
through rates of 1 to 3%. The triggered emails have a 60%
open rate and 10% a click-through rate. Most important, evo
customers reached with trigger emails consistently generate
20% more revenue against control groups who do not.
Softer calls-to-action
Wine merchant Naked Wines operates a hybrid sub-
scription model, built around a platform that resembles
a mainstream social media site. Member accounts are au-
tomatically funded with a minimum of $40 per month,
but the company does not automatically ship wines.
Instead, members are encouraged to socially follow the
independent winemakers featured on the site, and order
when the mood strikes or their cellars run low. Inviting
engagement for every order helps Naked Wines promote
more up-and-coming winemakers, and keeps consumers
invested in the process.
Email would seem to be a natural channel to nudge
members to return to the site and place an order, and
Naked Wines makes frequent use of its relationship with
Adestra to stay in touch with customers. When Naked
Wines grew large enough to do detailed segmentation
on its audience, it learned
that strong sales messages
produced only short-term
benefits. “We found that by
talking about ‘discounts’ or
‘free,’ we would get the order,
but we wouldn’t drive loy-
alty,” says Julia Fox, Naked
Wines marketing manager.
Instead of pushing for sales,
Naked Wines now asks mem-
bers to rate a recently received
wine. The thumbs up-or-down
interface is shown in the email
body, which then redirects
members to a landing page
where they can rate more se-
lections. The real payoff isn’t
just site engagement, but ongo-
ing loyalty. Shifting away from
sales email to ratings emails
increased the likelihood of
customer ratings five-fold. And
the segment of Naked Wines
customers who rate wines is
2.4 times more loyal to the ser-
vice than those who don’t.
Stay alert
Regardless of technology or
campaign tactics, the most im-
portant thing to remember about email strategy is that it’s
constantly vulnerable to disruption. Automatic filtering of
social and promotional notices into separate inboxes by
Gmail, and comparable features in Outlook, have substan-
tially altered the way email is delivered and read. More
changes are inevitable.
“As the technology companies behind email readers
improve machine learning, they will be able to better pre-
dict what customers want to see, and customers will trust
them and not be satisfied with inboxes that show email
sorted simply by the most recent,” says Daniel Burstein,
director of editorial content at MECLABS Institute.
“That will make it all the more important and vital to
deliver what customers actually value by learning about
their preferences, diving into analytics, and, heck, even
talking to them and asking.” ■

By Ginger Conlon
Direct mail is marketing’s stallion: a consistent winner, but costly. Social and mobile are the show horses: full of
tricks, but sometimes get tripped up. But email…. Email is marketing’s workhorse—always dependable, sup-
ports and connects other channels, cost effective, and continually evolving. All of these positive attributes,
however, don’t guarantee that email marketing will get the job done. The fact is, email’s greatest strengths
often double as its greatest weaknesses. Fortunately, savvy marketers can overcome the latter to capitalize
on the former. Here, 16 marketing experts provide advice on how.
TRENDS | 2015 Essential Guide to Email Marketing
The Email Opportunist
Email’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Here’s how marketers overcome the latter to capitalize on the former.
GORDON EVANS
VP OF PRODUCT
MARKETING, SALESFORCE
MARKETING CLOUD
Customers today expect a seamless
and personalized experience from the
companies and brands they do busi-
ness with, through every stage of their
journey with a business. Email is the
connective tissue of this customer jour-
ney—a connecting fiber between the
multitude of digital channels that helps
to keep customers satisfied on every
front. A MarketingSherpa survey reveals
that a vast majority (91%) of U.S. adults
say they like getting promotional emails
from companies they do business with.
Of those, 86% would like monthly emails
and 61% would like them at least weekly.
Email is a great standalone channel
of engagement, but its real strength lies
in the fact that it can be combined with
other channels to achieve a heightened
level of personalization for consumers.
Forexample,emailcanbecombinedwith
predictive intelligence to let marketers
create personalized messages that re-
sult in more clicks and conversions by
design, driving net-new revenue.
The problem arises when marketers
use email to blast content to customers
without taking their specific needs and
preferences into consideration; this only
serves to create disengagement. The
key to using email effectively is ensur-
ing that the outreach is as tailored and
personalized as possible, driving true
relevance for customers.

2015 Essential Guide to Email Marketing | TRENDS
MALINDA WILKINSON, CMO, SALESFUSION
From messaging to design, advancements in email marketing technology
provide marketers with greater insights into customer and prospect be-
havior. Reporting has become much more intuitive. With a click of a but-
ton, for example, marketers can quickly and easily identify what resonates
best with their target audiences. They can leverage that information to
create even more of what they know works best.
Email’s biggest weakness is its ubiquity. There’s just so much. Market-
ers can separate their messages from other inbox clutter by writing more
compellingsubjectlinesandprovidingmoreengagingcontenttodifferenti-
ate their offerings from the crowd. Most email marketing platforms have
testing capabilities, so start by crafting two unique subject lines, then A/B
test them to find which is most effective. To take things further, also use
those testing capabilities to measure the performance of your email de-
sign and content.
DANIEL BURSTEIN, DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL
CONTENT, MECLABS INSTITUTE
Customers value email. In fact, according to 2015 MarketingSherpa
research surveying 2,057 U.S. adults, every age group prefers companies
to communicate with them through email. And customers value email
for the same reason marketers should. As long as you have deliverability
figured out, in a hectic world, email stops customers and forces them to
take action.
Unlike social media, pre-roll online videos, even TV advertising, email
cannot be simply ignored. That action may be a “delete” or an “unsub-
scribe,” but action equals opportunity for your business. Those moments
of interaction with customers have value, and to get the most from them,
you must deliver expected value: a relevant discount or offer, helpful con-
tent, the utility of transactional email.
However, these interactions happen in a noisy world. To stick out, you
must deliver that value with a painless customer experience. Test to
discover what your customers want so you can deliver value while also
removing friction and anxiety in the process of taking them from a value-
focused email to an optimized website.
JOSE CEBRIAN, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, EMAIL AND MOBILE
MESSAGING, MERKLE
Email remains the preferred channel for consumer communications, according to a recent Merkle survey. In fact, email’s greatest
strength is that it can be used to rapidly drive specific actions; it’s fast, cost-effective, and scalable. Marketers can capitalize on
this for both one-time and automated campaigns to cost-effectively drive sales, registrations, app downloads, etc. Merkle re-
search has also found that, when combined with other channels such as social and direct mail, email can generate response rates
1.5 to 3.8 times higher than one channel alone.
Email’s weakness is the various intermediaries—such as Internet Service Providers and Realtime Blackhole lists—that stand between marketers and
their customers. These intermediaries are important because they provide the mailboxes (ISPs) and protect us from the spam epidemic (RBLs). They
have a vested interest in protecting their customers, but their presence impacts marketer’s behavior in the channel. Marketers should challenge so-
called best practices to find their own set of segmentation and sending protocol that maximizes results while respecting consumer preferences and
knownISPrules.Additionally,emailmarketersshouldcreateextrareachandfrequencyinotheraddressablechannelsinaprivacypolicy-compliantway.

CHAD WHITE, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, LITMUS
Email’s greatest strength is that it’s the most used one-to-one
marketing channel. While other channels struggle to move be-
yond broadcast messaging, email allows marketers to deliver
relevant content at scale to subscribers based on who they are,
whatthey’retryingtodo,timing,location,thedeviceandemailcli-
ent they’re using, and other contextual factors. Marketers should
use tools and tactics such as segmentation, personalization, trig-
gers, testing, and analytics to capitalize on the channel and deliver
engaging and highly profitable subscriber experiences.
Email’s greatest weakness is that it’s an open platform con-
trolled by many companies. As a result, the deliverability and ren-
dering of emails will vary from one email client to another. Unlike in
the Web world, there are no accepted email coding standards, so
coding an email is a combination of playing to the lowest common
denominatorandincludinghacksthattargetparticularemailclients.
The Internet of Things and wearables—such as the Apple Watch,
which recognizes a brand new flavor of HTML: watch-HTML—will
further complicate rendering and deliverability in the future. The
increasingly complex email landscape means it’s more important
than ever to test before sending, track performance, and always
look for opportunities to improve the subscriber experience.
ANDREA GOHR,
PRODUCT
MANAGER OF
EMAIL SOLUTIONS,
BLUESOHO
Email’s greatest strength
is its reach. As one of
the most highly traf-
ficked channels, email
can be used to easily
grab subscribers’ atten-
tion, directing them to a
strong call-to-action for
increased engagement,
brand awareness, and
ROI. Marketers should
target messages based
on individual demograph-
ic and behavioral data to
leverage this reach and
capitalize on content
that’s shared.
Email’s greatest weak-
nessinvolvestheinconsis-
tencies in appearance due
to the wide array of appli-
cations, email clients, and
varyingcomputersettings.
A misconstrued tem-
plate can negatively affect
brands and, ultimately,
the user experience. To
avoid any inconsistencies,
marketers must make
sure to code templates
responsively, account-
ing for the most common
processing systems and
email applications. The
design should be tested
on multiple devices or an
accountable simulator.
BLAISE LUCEY, SENIOR
CONTENT STRATEGIST, BITLY
Despite the ever-growing number of fac-
tors that comprise a successful digital cam-
paign, email has proven itself as one of the
most reliable channels for digital ROI. Why?
Because its path-to-conversion is far more
obvious than others in the omnichannel
mix: Marketers send a sales or promotional
emailandtheactionoccursrightafter.Met-
rics for success are fairly easy to identify—
aslongascustomersareclickingthroughto
a product page, it’s usually a good sign.
One of email’s biggest challenges is
that optimizing and A/B testing has be-
come quite challenging in the mobile era,
but it’s completely necessary for impactful
campaigns. For example, marketers need
to test frequency, subject lines, and seg-
mentation across all devices to determine
what’s working and what’s not (especially
if open rates are low). Luckily, tools exist
that can help alleviate this challenge and
allow marketers to render emails in every
possible format to test user experience
across devices and channels.
JUSTIN FOSTER, COFOUNDER AND VP OF MARKET
DEVELOPMENT, LIVECLICKER
Oneofemail’sgreateststrengths,simply,isthatitworks.Emailhasbeenshowntobeasolid
source for leads and a strong revenue channel. For example, 15 to 20% or more of retailers’
revenue is attributed to the email channel. Look at B2B companies: Many see greater return
on their email campaigns than on tradeshows and events that they spend 10 to 20 times
more on than email. From an ROI point of view, email is a no-brainer.
Another email strength is that it’s universal. Almost everyone has an email address, and
it functions as the digital connector between other channels. We read a lot of “death of
email” articles, but I think that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
Despite email’s strengths, many perceive a weakness of email to be the 80/20 problem. For 80% of email re-
cipients, marketers have limited customer data available—maybe just a name or details on something someone
may have purchased a long time ago—so they have traditionally been unable to personalize emails to those cus-
tomers and prospects. Personalization has been shown to increase email’s effectiveness. With new technologies,
there’s a huge opportunity to now personalize emails for everyone in a marketer’s database, whether or not they
have customer data. Marketers can achieve this through using real-time functionality to customize emails based
on attributes such as a customer’s language or device, for example.

2015 Essential Guide to Email Marketing | TRENDS
E.J. MCGOWAN,
SENIOR DIRECTOR
AND GM,
CAMPAIGNER
Emailmarketingisthegrand-
daddyofdigitalmarketing.It’s
a tried and true method, but
notonewithoutflaws.
The greatest strength
of email marketing is sim-
ply that it works; the ROI
is tremendous. Marketers
looking to make the most
of their budget should use
an email marketing platform
to ensure that they’re being
efficient in their messaging
efforts. Tools such as seg-
mentation can help mar-
keters make sure they’re
targeting the right contacts
withtherightkindofcontent
to promote opens and clicks.
Thechallengeisthatemail
users receive more mes-
sages than they need, and
marketing emails are not
immune to getting lost in
the shuffle. To ensure that
messages rise to the top
of the email stream, use a
compelling subject line. A/B
split testing can help iden-
tify phrases that jump out at
contacts and are more likely
to result in opens. Addition-
ally, the timing of the emails
matters tremendously. The
besttimetosendwilldepend
on your audience; again, A/B
split testing can aid in find-
ing when your contacts are
most likely to interact.
RYAN PHELAN, VP OF MARKETING INSIGHTS, ADESTRA
With the increase of big data concepts and strategies, much more focus has been put
on email marketing, and rightly so. But there are limits to what it can do. Moving into the
holiday season and 2016, it’s vital for all marketers to realize the limits of what we have
atourfingertips.
Email’s greatest strength is that can be a direct connection to the consumer at a
very personal level. How many times do you check your email…even the promotional
ones? It’s a gateway into someone’s life, comingling with messages from friends and
family.
That real connection is the greatest advantage of email marketing. From that con-
nection stems everything from response, to the extension of the relationship in oth-
erchannels,throughtotheaddressabilityoftheconsumer.Marketersarestartingto
realizethatemailisattheverycenterofthedigitalconversation—andthat’sbecauseofitsabilitytobeproactivein
a communication into a personal environment, as well as the identification that it provides outside of the medium.
Marketers have untapped resources at their fingertips, and the faster they actualize the data they have and the
customer relationships they hold, the faster that email continues to “win.”
On the other hand, email’s greatest weakness—in the words of a good friend of mine—is that sometimes email
just does not work.
It’s hard for many marketers to accept that. With such a vast and inexpensive resource, and with marketers’
reliance on it, many marketers struggle with how it cannot work. It’s not until you dig deep into the data at an indi-
vidual level, do you find that there are groups of people where email is ineffective and that other channels—such
as social media or even (gulp) direct mail—are more effective. Yet, email’s greatest weakness is also its strength
because even in a case where a cluster of people won’t respond to email, the identification of the consumer for
those other channels is its saving grace.
It’s vital that marketers learn that sometimes email does not work and they have to focus on the customers
and prospects who do want email and embrace (at even a subconscious level) the channel and the communica-
tion. Sure, give the ones that don’t a try; but the ones who do truly care, those are the ones you can win with.
ANTHONY MARNELL, VP, NORTH AMERICA, MAILJET
Email’sgreateststrengthisthateveryonehasaninbox.Consumersarereadytopur-
chase, engage, respond, or share when they’re checking their inbox. They read with
themind-setoffindingvaluablecontent—whetherit’sapromotion,areceipt,oredu-
cational content. This is why every company should be using email to communicate
withtheircustomers.Foroptimalengagement,companiesshouldrespectrecipients’
inboxes by sending highly relevant email customers can’t ignore.
On the flip side, email’s greatest strength contributes to its greatest weakness. Its
high ROI and ease of use create a low barrier; this means many companies are mes-
saging too frequently. Another reason it can be tempting to email too often: It can
be hard to stand out in a crowded inbox. Since the best email frequency will vary by
industry, companies should listen intently to their customers and experiment to find
the perfect content and cadence to engage them.
GILLIAN AHOUANVOHEKE, VP OF STRATEGY,
ANALYTICS, AND CREATIVE, ZETA INTERACTIVE
Email continues to evolve and reinvent itself as marketers become more and
more savvy.
Email’s ability to target individuals based on their specific interests makes
it the most relevant marketing vehicle when used effectively. Smart mar-
keters wield customer insight to craft a conversation that takes its cues from
past interactions. While more timely to set up, these types of responsive,
personal, automated communications can be much more effective.
But consumers get too many emails to possibly consume. Marketers are
competing against the personal and marketing communications inundating
inboxes. Emails only have a few seconds to catch a person’s attention and
convince him to respond. The more that emails can be predictive based on a
person’s behaviors, the better chance they have to communicate at a time,
and with the content that, an individual is most interested in.

KAREN BLANCHARD
VP OF MARKETING AND
PRODUCT MANAGE-
MENT, ACCUDATA
Email provides relevant, person-
alized messaging to a targeted
audience quickly. Marketers
can effectively capitalize on the
strength of email by understand-
ing their customers’ needs and
buying habits. This knowledge
helps marketers drive engage-
ment with customers and iden-
tify messages that work with
their ideal prospects. Casual
website visitors, mobile sub-
scribers, social media connec-
tions, and customers should
receive unique email messaging
based on their behaviors and
displayed preferences.
Because email addresses
change so frequently, ensuring
that messages are hitting the
intended audience can be chal-
lenging. Marketers must validate
their email database to reduce
bounce rate, protect their send-
ing domain’s reputation, and
maximize a campaign’s ROI.
Using a list hygiene service to
cleanse and append with newer
email addresses should improve
the percentage of emails that
make it to the inbox and reduce
the risk of being blocked by In-
ternet Service Providers.
LOREN MCDONALD
VP OF INDUSTRY RELATIONS,
SILVERPOP, AN IBM COMPANY
Emailmarketinghasenteredanewageofpersonal-
ization.Today’sconnectedconsumersdemandrele-
vantandpersonalizedcommunicationsacrosstheir
preferred channels—and marketers are constantly
challengedtomeetthisgrowingexpectation.
Based on a foundation of permission, email marketing helps companies
better engage throughout the customer journey by allowing marketers to
provide behavior-driven content and gather deeper insights to improve fu-
ture engagement and increase value to subscribers. A growing number of
touchpoints across the Web, mobile and social, and offline sources such as
point-of-sale and call centers provide marketers with more data, enabling
them to build stronger customer relationships. Data-driven email content
leavescustomersfeelingconnectedandsatisfiedwithbrands—andmarket-
ers who use this strategy can expect to see greater customer engagement,
loyalty,andultimately,sales.
Email marketing’s biggest weakness is also one of its strengths: Its high
ROI means it’s relatively easy to have success using the channel, even with
mediocreimplementation.Asaresult,manymarketersaren’tmovingbeyond
traditionalbatch-and-blastmethods.AccordingtoIBM’s2015EmailMarket-
ing Metrics Benchmark Study, retail/e-commerce brands saw some of the
lowest customer engagement rates—due to over-reliance on increased
frequency rather than personalization and relevance. Transforming an email
marketing program can’t happen overnight, but brands can take a “crawl,
walk, run” approach by starting with high ROI, behavior-driven programs
such as cart abandonment remarketing, and then make the case for adding
moredataandbehavior-drivenprograms.
BEN ARDITO, VP AND GM
OF CLIENT SERVICES, DIGI-
TAL SOLUTIONS, EPSILON
Today’s email marketing platforms al-
low marketers to create and execute
personalized messages quicker and
sometimes easier than other chan-
nels that also have a unique set of
strengths and weaknesses as a cus-
tomer engagement tool.
One of email’s greatest strengths is the level of personalization mar-
keters can achieve to deliver relevant messages. Personalization tactics
like time-of-open content bring real-time engagement to the email chan-
nel and are easier to execute on due to the advancement of marketing
platforms. These efforts are more measurable in tracking lift and conver-
sion than other channels offering marketers the insight they need to ad-
just campaigns and enhance message relevance.
Conversely,marketersstillstruggletodeterminehowmuchtheyshould
invest in email to give their messages more depth versus executing at the
simplest level. One of email’s biggest weaknesses is its ability to drive
short-term sales with a lack of sophistication. This masks the long-term
negative impact on customer engagement. Marketers who adopt these
short-term-focused tactics often experience a leaky bucket of subscrib-
ers because their campaigns don’t hold the sophistication necessary to
continually engage consumers.
RYAN HOFMANN,
CHIEF BRAND
STRATEGIST,
LISTRAK
Email’s greatest strength
lies in its ability to generate
the highest ROI of any digi-
tal marketing channel. Email
is the best channel to con-
nect directly with customers
to deliver the most relevant
message at the right time at
every touchpoint across the
customerjourney.Usingtar-
geted promotional commu-
nications to drive awareness,
and personalized behavioral
messages to walk custom-
ers from consideration down
the path to purchase (and
ideally, repeat purchase),
drive loyalty, and, when nec-
essary, reactivate lapsing
andinactivecustomers.
And therein lies also its
greatest weakness: the ten-
dency for many marketers
to treat the channel lazily
or nonchalantly because of
its high ROI. Too many email
marketers still deliver the
same message to every
single subscriber on their list
despite having data easily
accessible to deliver target-
ed and personalized mes-
sages. And too few market-
ers are automating lifecycle
messages; the biggest op-
portunity email marketers
have today is to deliver rel-
evant messages that will in
turn deliver the highest ROI
that companies are in need
of in today’s ultra-competi-
tive environment.

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email: valerie@us.jangomail.com
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