Ping Time: New CAN-SPAM rules, eec Speakers Bureau, etc.

Our latest spin around the mediasphere turned up the following nuggets:

>>Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports gives us a handful of links to resources to help us understand the new CAN-SPAM rules. >>Follow the rules

>>In my latest Email Insider column, I talk about the launch of the eec’s Speakers Bureau, which matches eec members up with speaking opportunities at events that currently have little or no programming about email marketing. >>Follow the ping

>>Simms Jenkins of BrightWave Marketing announced the upcoming release of The Truth About Email Marketing, a book about email marketing best practices, optimizing performance, privacy and SPAM, and why using email works. The book’s website features book excerpts, a resource center and more. >>Follow the ping

>>EmailKarma lays out the rules for including promotional content in transactional emails. >>Follow the ping

>>Jeanniey Mullen of the Email Experience Council talks about the results of our 2007 Nonprofit Project, which involved creating an email marketing program from scratch for the Women’s Bean Project. >>Follow the ping

>>Joshua Baer at Deliverability.com shares the news that MySpace was awarded a record-setting $223 million in a CAN-SPAM suit against Sanford Wallace. >>Follow the ping
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AM Inbox: HSN's FlashBuy

>>Join me and experts from Compendium Blogware and Habeas for a free webinar on blogging and email on May 20. Learn more.

RetailEmail.Blogspot monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:

HSN, 5/15 — Your Featured Products of the Week
HSN is promoting their FlashBuy, a weekly, online-only promotion of deep discounted, limited-quantity items. The twist here is that HSN customers get to vote on which of four products will be the FlashBuy item each Monday on a special webcast. Non-winning items are also featured on the webcast, but not at the FlashBuy price. So FlashBuy combines interactivity (you get to vote to determine the FlashBuy item), urgency (they’re limited quantity and become available at 8pm each Monday) and exclusivity (it’s only online). To drive engagement in FlashBuy, HSN has set up a separate FlashBuy email list that you can opt into on the FlashBuy landing page. I imagine HSN will continue to periodically promote FlashBuy to their core email list as well.



Circuit City, 5/15 — Bonus coupons--get more with your tax rebate!
Circuit City mimics the tax rebate tactic that Dell used earlier in the week, presenting products according to the size of the rebate check received by the subscriber (see May 14 AM Inbox). Further down in the email, they also promote gifts for grads. It’s also worth noting that in a May 4 email, Circuit City introduced a “click to view” link, which you can see at the top of this email. Previously, they hadn’t been using any preheader text.



SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Linens ’n Things, 5/15 — Memorial Day Sale Starts Now + 20% Off
Home Depot, 5/15 — Free Shipping + Savings to Get You Ready for Memorial Day
KB Toys, 5/15 — Shop Our Fun Memorial Day Ideas
Bass Pro Shops, 5/15 — Father's Day Sale - Get Dad What He Really Wants
Williams-Sonoma, 5/15 — Salute Dad with a Personalized Gift
Barnes & Noble, 5/15 — Grand Opening -- Online Magazine Store
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AM Inbox: Finding gurus among subscribers

>>Join me and experts from Compendium Blogware and Habeas for a free webinar on blogging and email on May 20. Learn more.

RetailEmail.Blogspot monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:

Sephora, 5/14 — Glow like a girl: Free Smashbox glow lotion
Sephora promotes their Beauty Guru Contest, which is looking for the next beauty must-have—“from a revolutionary new product to a color or shade that's missing from the beauty world.” This is reminiscent of Snap-on’s campaign last year to find product ideas from their customers and subscribers (see April 4, 2007 AM Inbox). For a fuller look at how email marketers recruit their subscribers, check out Reportlet: Mining Subscriber Lists for Future Workers.



SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Cabela’s, 5/15 — Get Ready for Memorial Day @ Cabela's
Blue Nile, 5/15 — Graduation Gift Ideas from Blue Nile
Bluefly, 5/15 — Introducing the NEW Summer Collection...
Ralph Lauren, 5/15 — INSIDER INFO: Our Private Sale Begins Thursday, May 15
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Questions about email and blogs?

On Tuesday, I’ll be joining experts from Compendium Blogware and Habeas for a 60-minute webinar to discuss powerful, cost-effective combination of blogging, email and search. We’ll be sharing some great case studies, best practices and tips, and of course also answering some of your questions. Because Q&A time is always limited, we wanted to give folks a chance to ask questions ahead of time. We’ll work some of the answers into our presentation and use others to kick off the Q&A portion of the webinar. So if you have questions about using email and blogs in tandem, please comment below or email me. Thanks.

How to Use Blogging and Email to Create Leads and Delight Customers
Hosted by eec platinum sponsor Habeas
Tuesday, May 20 at 11am PST / 2pm EST

Speakers:
Chris Baggott, CEO, Compendium Blogware
Des Cahill, CEO, Habeas
Chad White, Director of Retail Insights and Editor-at-Large, the Email Experience Council
Moderator:
Erick Mott, Director of Marketing & Corporate Communications, Habeas

All registrants will be able to immediately download two relevant whitepapers:
● “Exponential ROI: How You Can Achieve It with Online Reputation Management”
● “Demand Generation through Corporate Blogging: What is Blogging’s Role in Search Engine Optimization & the Social Networking Phenomenon?”

Plus, all attendees will be entered in a drawing for a chance to win a $200 gift certificate from Amazon, Circuit City, Starbucks or Zappos—winner’s choice.

>>Register Now for this no-cost webinar!
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AM Inbox: Tax rebate check messaging

>>Join me and experts from Compendium Blogware and Habeas for a free webinar on blogging and email on May 20. Learn more.

RetailEmail.Blogspot monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:

Dell, 5/13 — Save $540 on a Dell XPS laptop - Put Your Tax Rebate Check to Work!
Dell adds their name to the list of retailers using tax rebate messaging in their emails. Dell presents product assortments according to the size of the person’s rebate check, which is a very functional way of doing it. I haven’t seen anyone else do it that way. Yesterday, Office Depot promoted their Economic Stimulus Savings Center and Musician’s Friend said “Use your payback from Uncle Sam to jam with hundreds of rebates.” On Monday, Sears included a banner in their email promoting a program that allows you to trade in your stimulus check for a gift card worth 110% of the value. Chadwick’s, Circuit City, CompUSA, KB Toys, Montgomery Ward, Overstock and TigerDirect have also made plays for subscribers’ rebate checks. (For more examples of tax rebate messaging, explore the Tax Season tag.)



eBags, 5/13 — Insiders: Up to 65% off + Hot picks for summer
EBags has added a preheader message to their preheader text, which already included a “click to view” link. I’m not sure why they didn’t capitalize “gear.” Perhaps some words were cut off. Regardless, the adoption rate of preheader messages is now at about 20% among retailers. (Explore Preheaders tag.)



SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Backcountry.com, 5/13 — Memorial Day Sale - Up to 30% Off Gear and Apparel
Hallmark, 5/13 — Get Dad Dancing to Win $1000
Newegg, 5/13 — Energy-Saving PC Upgrades, DVD Burner Free Shipping Specials!
DisneyShopping, 5/13 — Free Movie Tickets to Narnia: Prince Caspian
Finish Line, 5/13 — Take An Additional 30% Off---In Store Only!
Sports Authority, 5/13 — Play Outside - Camping Gear, Apparel and Footwear
Crate & Barrel, 5/13 — Pack a picnic to go with our Table in a Bag
Spiegel, 5/13 — What to Wear To All Your Summer Events + Select Styles on Sale!
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AM Inbox: Enter the dads and grads

>>Join me and experts from Compendium Blogware and Habeas for a free webinar on blogging and email on May 20. Learn more.

RetailEmail.Blogspot monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:

Walgreens, 5/12 — 20% Off Photo Gifts for Grads + Other Great In-Store Offers!
Now that Mother’s Day is past, retailers are turning their attention to Father’s Day and college and high school graduations, as in this Walgreens email about their photo gifts.



Sharper Image, 5/12 — Be prepared for any emergency!
I really appreciate emails that put the retailer in a context larger than itself. This Sharper Image email is a great example of this in action. In it they share an emergency supply kit list from the Department of Homeland Security and highlight items that you can get from the Sharper Image, which are just three of the 12 items listed. In that context, the email seems less promotional and more educational. It also gives subscribers a compelling reason to take action, and to forward the email on to friends.



SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Dick’s Sporting Goods, 5/12 — Great Savings for the Outdoors
Williams-Sonoma, 5/12 — Outdoor Entertaining: More Than 65 New items for Summer
Harry & David, 5/12 — NEW Special of the Week: SAVE on gourmet Fresh Fruit
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EEC Nonprofit Project Recap: The Women's Bean Project

For the past 12 months the Email Experience Council’s Nonprofit Project team has been working with the Women’s Bean Project (WBP), a nonprofit that helps women break the cycle of poverty and unemployment by teaching workplace competencies for entry-level jobs through employment and by teaching job readiness skills in their gourmet food production business. During that time, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with the other Project team members to build the WBP an email program from scratch—from creating email templates and formulating permission practices to recommending an email cadence and developing a year’s worth of email topics. Instead of sending emails to their customers, donors and volunteers via Outlook, the Denver-based organization now uses a license generously donated by ExactTarget and has full visibility into subscriber engagement. Thanks to the tireless leadership of Stephanie Miller of Return Path and the hundreds of man-hours that our talented team poured into the project, we’ve put the power of email to a noble use. Congratulations to all involved.

To learn more about our work with the Women’s Bean Project, read How Email Impacts Society and check out the project details on our Nonprofit Project page.

As one of the team members, I would encourage you to get involved with our next Nonprofit Project, which we’ll be announcing in the weeks ahead. It’s a great opportunity to network with other email marketing professionals, put your talents to good use and learn some new skills. If you’re already an eec member, contact Ali to join the Nonprofit Project team.
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AM Inbox: PDF landing pages?

>>Free webinar on catching email address errors on May 13. Presented by eec silver sponsor FreshAddress. Learn more.

RetailEmail.Blogspot monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:

Sears, 5/9 — 3 Days to Save on Electronics, Appliances, & Tools
I can’t recall ever seeing a retailer use a PDF document as a landing page before, but Sears does it in this email with the Dining Dough call-to-action. I can’t think of any reason why you’d use a PDF instead of a page on your site, which would have all the branding and navigation that this plain white sheet of paper doesn’t. Here’s the email…



…and here’s the landing page:



The other thing to note in this email is that Sears has changed their preheader text, adding a preheader message and dropping their whitelisting instructions. The old preheader text was:
View the web version of this email. Make sure sears@e.sears.com is in your address book.

Kmart, 5/9 — Up to 20% off Online Today, Exclusive $5 off In-Store
Kmart has redesigned their navigation bar and dropped the search button from the top of their emails. The nav bar highlights the same departments as before, although a few have been moved around. Bringing the shape of the “K” into the nav bar design is pretty striking. Here’s the new nav bar…



…and here’s the old one from a May 6 email:



Montgomery Ward, 5/9 — On Sale This Week + Deferred Billing
Montgomery Ward has launched a blog, the Montgomery Ward’s Weblog. It’s very promotional and doesn’t have much personality (all the posts are posted by “montgomeryward”), which tells me that they really don’t get blogs at all. I suppose the fact that they call it a “weblog” is another sign that they’re not up to date on the most effective use of a blog.



Overstock, 5/9 — 7% OFF COUPON
Overstock sent this message twice. This is one of a few messages mentioning tax rebates over the past few days.



SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
eBags, 5/9 — Great gifts for Grads + Extra 15% off your purchase
Circuit City, 5/11 — Save more with coupons inside! Get Mom's gift today with in-store pickup
Walgreen, 5/9 — Great In-Store Gift Ideas and Savings for Mother's Day
Blair, 5/10 — A Mother's Day gift from Blair Home
Ralph Lauren, 5/11 — Happy Mother's Day From RalphLauren.com
FTD, 5/10 — Last Chance for Mother's Day Delivery!
Dell, 5/9 — Save up to $384 on the Gifts Mom Really Wants
Bluefly, 5/11 — EXTRA 10% OFF EVERYTHING - Happy Mother's Day
Alloy, 5/9 — Most Wanted: White-Hot Denim + Free Shipping
DisneyShopping, 5/9 — Start Your Vacation with Savings up to 50%
J. Crew, 5/9 — Want to win an island honeymoon?
Sephora, 5/10 — Hello, Sunshine: Get prepped for summer
Staples, 5/9 — Introducing our delicious new M by Staples collection.
Road Runner Sports, 5/9 — 15% OFF EVERYTHING Online! Share With Your Friends!
Norm Thompson, 5/10 — Early Summer Sale - email customers shop first!
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Week-End Trends: Mother's Day winds down

Email activity and promotional trends during the past week:

The RetailEmail Index rose 2% to 215 during the week ending May 9, and is up 3% from where it was four weeks ago. The Index score indicates that the top 100 online retailers sent slightly more than 2.1 promotional emails each on average last week.



RetailEmail Participation Rates: Last week, 96% of the retailers in the RetailEmail Index sent out at least one promotional email, up from 95% the week prior, and up from 95% during the 4-weeks-ago period. Monday was the most popular day to send retail emails last week.



RetailEmail Seasonality Meter: After Monday, it was all downhill for Mother’s Day emails. We’ll probably get a few last-minute emails over the weekend, but that’s it. It’s onward to Memorial Day, Father’s Day and graduation.



Other things referenced by retailers: summer, travel, swimwear, the beach, the outdoors, graduation
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Ping Time: Postini bug, newsletter complaints, etc.

Our latest spin around the mediasphere turned up the following nuggets:

>>Ben Chestnut at MailChimp uncovered a bug at Postini that causes emails to be blocked by Trend Micro. >>Follow the ping

>>Ben also discusses the reasons why newsletters tend to generate more complaint problems than promotional emails. (Yeah, that surprised me, too.) >>Follow the ping

>>MarketingSherpa shares four tactics you can use to deal with misspellings and typos on opt-in forms. >>Follow then pig

>>DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council has launched a blog, with initial contributions from Kath Pay, Tink Taylor and Dela Quist. >>Follow the ping

>>Josh Baer over at Deliverability.com discusses why you shouldn’t send an unsubscribe confirmation email. >>Follow the ping

>>Linda Bustos of GetElastic discusses subject line lengths and the king of short (and often nonsensical) subject lines, Urban Outfitters. >>Follow the ping
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AM Inbox: Neiman Marcus launches email reminder service

>>Free webinar on catching email address errors on May 13. Presented by eec silver sponsor FreshAddress. Learn more.

RetailEmail.Blogspot monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:

Neiman Marcus, 5/8 — NEW ARRIVALS: First Call SALE + FREE SHIPPING
Neiman Marcus has soft launched an email reminder service, joining other retailers 1-800-Flowers, Barnes & Noble, Hallmark, Lillian Vernon, Overstock, Omaha Steaks, ProFlowers, RedEnvelope, Sharper Image and Sportsman’s Guide. Their choice of “events” is limited to birthdays and anniversaries, but perhaps they’ll build that out over time.



KB Toys, 5/8 — Save Gas by Shopping Online + FREE Shipping
KB Toys tries to tap into the growing concerns about gas prices, encouraging subscribers to save gas by ordering online. Unfortunately they left the dollar sign off the “68+” in the free shipping offer so that part of the message is potentially a bit confusing.



Wal-Mart, 5/8 — Get Set Up for Movie Nights at Home and Save
Wal-Mart is also messaging to key into consumers’ concerns about their wallets. Thankfully movie price inflation isn’t anywhere near as strong as gas inflation, wheat inflation, copper inflation, egg inflation, milk inflation…well, just about anything else. As the economy worsens going into the summer, I wonder if we’ll see more messages like these from KB Toys and Wal-Mart.



SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Ross-Simons, 5/8 — Mother's Day Shipping ends TODAY! Shop Now and Save up to 20%
Tiffany, 5/8 — Mother's Day Gift Ideas & Special Shipping Offer
Circuit City, 5/8 — Bonus coupon for Mom + get your Wii today!
FTD, 5/8 — From $39.99 -- Bouquets Delivered Same Day to Mom
Abercrombie, 5/8 — Heat Up The Summer In Our Classic Shirts.
Eddie Bauer, 5/8 — UPF High Performance Fabrics - stay safe this summer.
Saks Fifth Avenue, 5/8 — What every great getaway needs
Orvis, 5/8 — Stay wrinkle-free all day in our best-selling Traveler's Hopsack Blazer
Chadwick’s, 5/8 — New Swim online only, plus a double offer!
Ralph Lauren, 5/8 — Our New Chic City Tees Have Arrived
CompUSA, 5/8 — HUGE 22" LCD only $179 - 500GB HDD just $79 @ CompUSA.com
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AM Inbox: JC Whitney spammed me

RetailEmail.Blogspot monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from our inbox this morning:

Carparts.com, 5/7 — Have You Been To CarParts.com
I’ve been asked if I receive much spam at the accounts that I use for my tracking. Those email addresses are only given to the retailers I track and I’m happy to report that spam is extremely rare—which generally makes it easy to track down the culprit when I do start to receive unsolicited email. Back in September, when I received an email from Peak Running, it was pretty easy to track it back to Road Runner Sports (see Sept. 7 AM Inbox). And when I received this email from Carparts.com, it was easy to track the permission breach back to JC Whitney, the only auto parts retailer I track (it also appears that JC Whitney and Carparts.com are owned by the same company).

Want to introduce a sister brand to your subscribers? Don’t follow JC Whitney’s lead. Instead, follow these rules:

1. Send the email from your sender address and with your sender name, not the sender name and address of the sister brand. That way your email will be recognized and not junked. Harry & David did this recently when announcing the newest member of their family, Wolferman’s (see March 26 AM Inbox).

2. Use your brand name at the top of the email, followed by the sister brand’s name. Harry & David did that in the email about Wolferman’s, and Old Navy does it for their emails about Piperlime (see Nov. 15 AM Inbox).

3. If you have a separate mailing list for the sister brand, give subscribers a chance to opt into that list as well. Gap did this when it was first promoting Piperlime in their emails (see April 5, 2007 AM Inbox).

4. Don’t abuse your list to promote sister brands. Do it very sparing. Consider adding links to your sister brands at the bottom of your emails like the Gap brands and RitzCamera do.

5. If you’re going to continue to send emails from your sister brands, give people a way to opt out of those emails. The Gap brands give you a way to opt out of the Piperlime emails they send via their Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy mailing lists (see April 4 AM Inbox). However, Crate & Barrel doesn’t give you a way to opt out of receiving the CB2 emails that they regularly send to their Crate & Barrel list, and J. Crew doesn’t give you a way of opting out from receiving the crew cuts emails they send to their J. Crew list.

For more on this topic, check out the reportlet Division of Permission.

Macy’s, 5/7 — Last day for guaranteed Mother's Day delivery!
Preheader messages are hot. Ten of the retailers I track have added preheader messages in the past 6 weeks, including Macy’s, which added one starting with an Apr. 30 email. (Explore Preheaders tag.) If the preheader message is in addition to a “click to view” link and whitelisting instructions, then it may be getting pretty crowded up there. Your above the fold and preview pane screen real estate is extremely valuable, so be mindful of how much space your preheader text is taking up. In Macy’s case, they separate each line of preheader text with a blank line, which is a big waste. Add to that the poor use of the space to the right of their logo and they’ve squandered a lot of space. Add to all of that the space taken up by the nav bar and only half the space above the fold is available to show the actual message.



Neiman Marcus, 5/7 — Oops! The site is back up! Enjoy FREE SHIPPING at ANY price.
Neiman Marcus’ site was apparently down yesterday, so they issued this apology email. They not only apologize, but they give subscribers a reason to forgive them—a free shipping at any price offer. For more on apology emails, check out the reportlet When and How to Say You’re Sorry. You can also explore the Apologies tag.



Bluefly, 5/7 — Don't Miss Out - EXTRA 15% OFF -- Designer Sale
Bluefly, 5/7 — EXTRA 15% OFF -- Designer Sale
These emails were sent just a few hours apart so I’m not sure if this was a subject line A/B test gone awry or a follow-up email that used the exact same creative (which follow-up emails shouldn’t). For that reason, I assume it’s the former.

SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Saks Fifth Avenue, 5/7 — For the MOM who has it all
Hallmark, 5/7 — The Best for Mom--Under $15
Harry & David, 5/7 — Up to 30% OFF select Mother's Day gifts, online and in Stores.
FTD, 5/7 — Mom’s Favorite Now Only $39.99! 1 Dozen Pink Roses with Free Vase and Godiva®
Coach, 5/7 — Last Minute Gift Ideas
RedEnvelope, 5/7 — LAST CHANCE for 2-Day delivery. Order today or you'll pay.
Target, 5/7 — Take it outside: Free shipping on our favorite Patio + Garden picks.
Crutchfield, 5/7 — Flat-panel TV savings & free shipping, wall mount how-to video
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