Guest comment: A fit-for-function outbox

The role of email in business and society has changed profoundly since the medium’s inception.  Long gone are the closed “networks” of university and government users. The pervasiveness of email, however, has attracted the attention of scam artists, identity thieves and other outlaws trolling the information superhighway.   The challenge therefore for honest marketers is how to distinguish their legitimate email communications from malicious spam and phishing techniques to ensure their relevant emails reach the intended prospects.

Email Marketing Challenges

As the commercial use of the email platform expands, criminals and spammers are constantly looking for new ways to make money – often by violating the law and circumventing security systems, forcing regulators and technology developers to stay one step ahead of the spammers. In the past simple measures were put in place to block the threats posed by spam. Content filters were set up to protect inboxes from messages that contained key words commonly associated with unwanted email, and mailbox owners could add additional terms to protect themselves further. Yet despite initial success, filters of this kind caused two main problems:

•               False Positives – legitimate companies, marketing a valid product, were limited in their outreach if one of their key terms was caught by a spam filter. For example, Pfizer was unable to implement effective email marketing for its Viagra product, given that the brand name was commonly cited in spam messages blasted out by malevolent individuals. 

•               Interfering with personal emails – the excessive number of filters began to place emails from family and friends into spam folders. This resulted in users growing frustrated with email filters and losing trust in their efficiency.

Building a reputation as a responsible email marketer

Marketers needed a new solution, which they found in the most unlikely of places: the credit card industry.  Email senders would be assigned a score – much like a personal credit score – based on how responsible their past campaigns have been.   The better the email senders’ “behaviour,” the fewer messages blocked.

This solution quickly became known as a “sender score,” and it spawned a series of best practices, like emailing only good mailboxes and culling “hard bounce” addresses from the database.  But the most fundamental principle is also the most simple: minimize the number of complaints from recipients, because the more the public complains, the more likely it is that the marketer’s messages will be blocked at the ISP level. 

The ideal for marketers to avoid complaints is to ensure that they are delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.  One way to accomplish this seemingly lofty goal is by reading prospects’ "digital body language" and using that knowledge to guide the buying process. What web pages did prospects visit? Which emails captured their interest? What “breadcrumbs” are they leaving that show their paths through the buying process? 

While the industry is learning what works well, it needs to take a closer look at the way preferences are analysed and segmented. Assessing the audience’s wants and requirements is a step in the right direction, but marketers should look back at previous purchasing habits to make informed decisions on how best to target the customer.  This is the most universal way to protect an email marketer’s most vital asset: his sender score.

Assessing digital body language and lead scoring

Assessing digital body language and using that insight to guide targeting brings marketers a wealth of opportunities. Monitoring which stage of the purchasing process each prospect is at will allow messages to be tailored to the individual – not the masses. No recipient will receive the same email twice, and each incidence of communication reflects that person’s propensity to purchase.

A process called lead scoring allows marketers to build a matrix of their prospects to show how “valuable” they are to the organisation. This can be done by breaking down their activity and awarding them points based on two main categories: fit (role, job title, industry) and engagement (response to campaigns, pages visited on a website). Additional factors, like downloading materials or attending events, can also be factored into the scoring.  Ultimately, this information can help organisation allocate the ideal level of resources to each prospect at the most opportune moment.  It will also help avoid any comparisons with spam email.

Moving to "Deliverability Plus"

Building advanced techniques like lead scoring advances a company’s email capabilities to a level best described as “Deliverability Plus.”  Marketers operating at this level will not only avoid spam comparisons, but they will also dramatically improve the results of their programs. 

As brands aspire to maintain a strong online marketing reputation, dispatching well timed and targeted email will demonstrate the credentials of a professional that understands how to design and execute ethical and effective email marketing campaigns.

By Dennis Dayman

Chief Privacy and Deliverability Officer

Eloqua

www.eloqua.com