Google's Gmail change may change Open Tracking reports

Google notified Gmail users on the 12th December that they had implemented a change to the way that linked images are handled in Gmail webmail. They explained: "...thanks to new improvements in how Gmail handles images, you’ll soon see all images displayed in your messages automatically across desktop, iOS and Android. Instead of serving images directly from their original external host servers, Gmail will now serve all images through Google’s own secure proxy servers". So images will now be seen by default by Gmail users unless they proactively switch them off in settings (or have previously done so). I first alerted email marketers to this on my Zettasphere blog on 6th December since the change has been in place for a while - it appears that around the 3rd December Google implemented a change. Now it's official, we're alerting Smart Insights readers to the change so…

Research examples of measuring email marketing effectiveness using attribution

Sometimes email is a victim of its own success. It works so well to drive revenue across all channels but this cross channel revenue is rarely calculated accurately and attributed to email. Why is this? Possible because email is the cheapest of the channels and it is shown to work without having to pull together all possible revenue. Basic stats prove email works.  However, every channel is competing for budget and has to be seen to improving over time so maybe it is time email got its fair share of the pie. An unpublished study by Alchemy Worx for one of their clients over a 10 month period to monitor revenue on days with and without sending any emails.

The charts shown in this article and all the data behind it is taken…

Examples of the many ways email marketing influences sale in addition to clickthrough

Email Marketing is already highly valued by a diverse range of B2B and B2C companies because of the excellent ROI it provides.

eCommerce brands are the biggest users of email, in no small part because the tracking makes the business case for email crystal clear.

Social media too puts huge value on the power of email. Facebook is joint third biggest sender of email worldwide. Whilst ExactTarget is the biggest ESP by sent volume, Facebook sends more email than all their clients put together (source Senderbase top senders)

Even so, could it be that email is undervalued, even by many big brands?

More often than not the value of email is determined by conversion resulting from an email click.

How about when there is no click on an email? Does it mean the email had no value?

It would be strange to consider…

5 practical techniques to help get your message through...

Value: [rating=4] Recommended link: Research from Bit.ly Blog

Our commentary on online attention spans

I remember reading a while ago in Tim O’Reilly’s book on Twitter marketing that most people most responses or tweets happen within 5 minutes of the original tweet - scary! Much worse than Email marketing where at least you have responses for hours rather than minutes. I’m not sure companies using social networks realise this unless they’ve looked at specific social media marketing reporting tools like Bit.ly which give hourly reports. The reason is obvious, most people have so many sources they follow in their stream and if they don’t see the message while browsing their stream then it’s gone. Life is too short to browse your whole stream To show how big this challenge is URL shortening service Bit.ly published some interesting research across different media. It's useful too, since…

How do you bridge the gap between email's value and the failure to recognise this value?

As a marketer, what do you associate with email marketing? The traditional media impression is one of an ageing Labrador: reliable, steady, still capable of doing a good job, but not really where the action is these days. And then there's the go-getting reality. Here are some key numbers that popped out of the UK DMA's recent National Email Client Report, which surveyed 250 brand marketers on how they feel about email marketing and its role, how they use it and what results they're getting… Is email still relevant in a multichannel, mobile and social world?

89% said email marketing is "important" or "very important" to their organisation.

It’s just about those traditional generic promotions and newsletters, though?

One-size-fits-all…

It’s a perennial dilemma for email marketers, what's our best tactic to boost revenue?

For some companies, the only way they are increasing revenue is growing the size of the email list to give a corresponding rise in revenue. While an increase in subscribers will undoubtedly improve revenue, we all know that only growing your database can lead to a declining scale of effectiveness over time as open rates drop and the number of inactive subscribers grow.

So what are the alternatives?

This article will look at those key practices for improving returns from email marketing that should be on every marketers list: Database growth Deliverability improvements Open Rate (OR) Click Through Rate (CTR) & Conversion Rate (CVR) and show you where your time and budget should be spent. So let’s start by taking a look at a fairly standard situation and see what effect on the bottom line each tactic has. We’ll start from this baseline: a retailer makes £38,880…

5 cases-in-point show why you need other metrics to review email marketing effectiveness

There have been a couple of heated debates I've been part of in the email community just recently, one about open rates and another about subject line length. In this post I'm reflecting on the open rate debate. I've added an update to the original post showing more proof that open rate fixation can be misleading. It may surprise you that the community is very split on the value of the open rate metric, seemingly, a cornerstone metric since the dawn of email marketing. It's a metric cited in every email marketing book and on every mail marketing course... So why is its value in doubt? Ken Magill reported on some of the open rate debate. Let me summarise some of the reasons…

New survey shows that clicks are only one part of the story

Email marketing enjoys a solid reputation as a direct response channel. Which is one reason email marketing metrics tend to focus on just that: the direct response questions:

"Did they open? Did they click?"

We congratulate ourselves when we go "beyond the click" and measure conversions, revenues and profits. And we're understandably excited about new metrics like read and print rates. All these numbers have important roles to play. But their availability seduces us into forgetting they do not capture all the important responses to email. The UK DMA, fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx just released the 2012 Email Tracking Study, which looks at the self-reported inbox and social habits of just over 1,000 UK consumers.

New update: Infographic released:

"In this post I share some survey data and explore the implications of email marketing “beyond the open”...showing how consumers really…

An interesting compilation for email marketers working in B2C, B2B, Event, Charity or Ecommerce marketing

All email marketers like to know how their open and click rates compare, although it's really the conversion rates and value generated per email that's important (and more difficult to measure). Here's a great piece of new research from email service provider Adestra that dissects engagement with email across sectors that I thought was worth summarising here. I'd recommend downloading a copy of the full report if you work in email marketing, lots of "food for thought".

Which subject line length works best?

The report starts by looking at engagement with the email based on length. The research, based on nearly a billion emails shows that short or long tend to work best.

Less than…

Using touchpoint analysis and surveys to find how much email really contributes

Since many email marketing services focus their reporting on open and click rates it can be difficult to show how email is influencing leads or purchase and so invest in putting more resources into email marketing to test, learn and refine.

From opens and clicks to value generated per email campaign

If you are using email marketing to drive visits to a transactional web site you are in a much better position to make the business case since you can use analytics or the email system itself to show sales generated by email. The you can start comparing the effectiveness of emails and reviewing their value through using measures like Revenue generated per 1000 emails sent, much more meaningful than open and click rates.

Using attribution modeling for email marketing

Since reporting in many email service providers is based on a…