As you might know, Return Path acquired OtherInbox some months ago. One result out of this merger is… a new dataset for us, 🙂 which contains some really interesting international email performance measures. It has been published yesterday. Return Path said, they
“analyzed over 3 million email campaigns sent to users of OtherInbox and calculated an engagement score for the most popular TLDs”.
I just had some quick fun playing around with it. Let’s have a look. Continue reading
In one of the last posts, we addressed the chi-squared test for independence. With this test, we wanted to calculate, if e.g. two subject lines have a significantly different impact on the absolute number of email opens. I provided you with a “flexible” solution. “Flexible” means, it can now easily be extended to your needs. One extension would be to determine the required sample size for each of your test cells a priori. There’s no question that a split A/B test, which only incorporates 2 x 100 recipients delivers a different reliability than one, which includes 2 x 1500 recipients. So here’s a solution for choosing the right sample size — again using the R package.
Continue reading
I noticed some buzz around the German opt-in legislation lately, or more precisely: concerning the use of double opt-in. (See for example the “Drowning in data” panel recording from the last Email Insider Summit at 38:11, or this tweet.) So… is double opt-in, where subscribers have to activate their subscription by clicking a confirmation link, required in Germany? Here are the most important things for you to know: Continue reading
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
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
… 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
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
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
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
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
Posted in english, Whitelisting, Zustellungsrate
Tagged certified senders alliance, csa, deliverability, whitelist, Whitelisting, yahoo
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