Determining statistical significance for email split tests

Posted on May 10, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Quite often, I come across the question: how can I determine if my email test results are statistically significant? Recently someone asked this on EmailMarketersclub.com again. I won’t dive into the discussion, if (or when) this is necessary at all or if it wouldn’t be better to just rely on brainpower and gut feelings when evaluating tests in internet marketing. Instead, I’ll just provide you with a quick, yet well-founded and flexible solution. Continue reading →

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comScore study might attach new importance to measuring open durations

Posted on May 4, 2012 by | 1 Comment

In a recent study, comScore and Pretarget analyzed 263 million display ad impressions over nine months across 18 advertisers in numerous verticals. After collecting the data, Pretarget did a correlation analysis, including variables such as gross impressions, views (75% of ad within screen, either above the fold or after scrolling), time in-view, hover/engagements and total hover/engagement time, clicks and conversions. The results are astonishing. They for example show that… Continue reading →

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Which email marketing software is the best…?

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | 3 Comments

… someone at focus.com asked a while ago. Besides legal aspects, this one surely belongs to the most frequently discussed topics. However, the answer is simple: The best email service provider is the one that delivers you a maximum output with a set investment, or a set output with a minimum investment. In other words, it depends on the available budget and on the goal, one wants to achieve. No software fits them all: Template engines, support, deliverability, user interface, professional services … There are many aspects for vendors to differentiate from one another, and many pitfalls for customers. Continue reading →

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Email & data analysis: Does timing affect open rates? An analysis of variance (ANOVA)

Posted on April 16, 2012 by | 6 Comments

Let’s get back to the study from my last blog post for a minute. Not only had the outcome on subject line lengths caught my attention. (Remember: subject lines containing less than 10 characters are supposed to perform best.) Another thing I found intriguing was that the day of week, on which a mailing is delivered, would have no effect on response rates. Can this be true? Let’s have a practical look into some email data. Continue reading →

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Benchmark reporters: show your data, please

Posted on April 11, 2012 by | 4 Comments

From the introduction of a recent benchmark study:

“This study will help you to understand what metrics you should be analyzing when reviewing your email marketing program, what goals you can set based on similar organizations, and how your email marketing program is performing”

– sounds promising. Next, under “Key Findings” it comes up with a remarkable outcome saying that

“shorter subject lines continued to outperform their longer counterparts. Fewer than 10 characters achieved the best open rate at 58%.”

The group of mailings with super-short subject lines naturally stands out in a bar chart which illustrates average open rates across different length ranges (see figure right). So far, so good.

However, the question of what you can really make out of such numbers often catches me lately. Should I prune my newsletter subject lines down to 10 characters, now? I don’t think so. To anticipate my view: these finding are useless or even harmful, if presented this way. Why is that? Continue reading →

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Before sending an apology email, try to correct your newsletter

Posted on March 29, 2012 by | 2 Comments

What If you accidentally emailed 8 million subscribers instead of just 300 churned customers? You would probably owe someone an excuse. That is what happened to the New York Times at the end of last year as described on emailmarketing.de. The NYT sent an apology email exactly three hours later. It said, “This e-mail [which you received earlier] was sent by us in error. Please disregard the message. We apologize for any confusion […]”.

Mistakes in email marketing are always annoying. They can never be completely avoided. However, you do not always have to set up an apology email. On the contrary, each additional email might be one email too much resulting in an unsubscribe. In addition, some errors can be corrected (or at least reduced) even after the send out, especially if they are detected instantly. Therefore, don’t fall into blind actionism. Depending on the severity and on how many readers were affected, you could instead consider the following five ideas (no claim to be complete): Continue reading →

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Yahoo! and eco team up to improve email deliverability

Posted on March 22, 2012 by | 4 Comments

As you might know, the German email landscape is special in several ways. For instance, three local email providers own about 75% of market shares for consumer email addresses. It’s not Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or AOL – but GMX, Web.de and T-Online. Second, the association of the German Internet Industry (eco, representing ISPs) and the Dialogue Marketing Association (DDV, representing bulk mailers) joined forces in 2005 to launch the so called Certified Senders Alliance (CSA, about) – a central bulk mailer whitelist.

Yesterday, Yahoo! Mail joined this trusted network project to improve email deliverability for accredited senders. Below, you’ll find some useful background information. It also helps to understand, why deliverability is perhaps not such a big problem in German B2C markets as it is in other regions… Continue reading →

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New insights into Gmail’s spam filtering

Posted on March 21, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Gmail‘s email sorting and prioritizing is based on a complex sets of rules, clustering, machine learning schemes, reputation and user feedback. To be more transparent, since yesterday the webmailer not only shows why it classified certain emails as important (“priority inbox”), but also why certain messages were sorted out into the junk folder. This might also give some valuable new insights for troubleshooting inbox placement issues for email senders which occur more often since a few weeks as reported by Return Path… Continue reading →

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BtoB study: 2012 Email Marketing – A Legacy Channel Continues to Deliver

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | 3 Comments

In an online survey, held between December and January, the ‘BtoB magazine’ asked 332 b2b marketers questions on topics such as email practices, list acquisition, opt-ins, deliverability, mobile email, triggers and other email marketing related aspects. Some keyfacts include: Continue reading →

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Time to combine email with Google+ – 4 tips you shouldn’t miss

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | 2 Comments

90 million users (Larry Page), 100 million users (Paul Allen, Vic Gundotra via NYT), a decreasing 3.3 minutes share of social networking time in January (comScore via CNN) and so on. Those numbers fueled discussions about the status quo and the future of Google+. Wherever the truth lies – let’s assume that Google+ plays an important role in several sectors, like the tech scene. And let’s assume further that it will play a generally more important role in the near future. Especially email senders can benefit from the close integration with Gmail, regardless whether if it’s deliverability or social sharing. Below you find four tips on how to leverage this linkage to your advantage. Continue reading →

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