Undoubtedly, e-mail remains a great way to build brand recognition. But how does a new e-mailer capitalize on all the benefits that the channel has to offer? This dilemma comes up fairly often. As a result, I find myself giving a crash course in E-mail 101 to many a bewildered client. They don’t know how or where to start. They ask questions such as “Do I need to track the results on my end?” or “Do I need to have a landing page?” I assure them that they will learn all they need, and I begin my overview.

Here’s a short list of e-mail “how to” basics that I have developed over the years.Develop your creative in an HTML format Don’t sell the product/ service in the creative. You want to give them a taste. Keep copy to a minimum. You want a clear call to action and a strong enticement so the recipient will click through to your landing page. Once they’re there, it’s up to you to close them.From and subject lines should get you noticed The From line must not be misleading.The subject line shouldn’t be more then 45 to 50 characters, so use this space wisely. You want the subject line to be like catnip to the reader. Tempting as it might be, try to refrain from using the word “free.” Do remember to use spell check!Include unique tracking codes You will know with these which list a responder came from. Without this valuable information, you won’t know which list worked. It also will help you compare the tracking reports provided by the e-mail provider with the activity from your Web site.Be flexible E-mail urban legend No. 1: There is no best day to deploy your campaign. It really depends on your offer. For example, if you target work-at-home moms with school-age children, consider sending your message during the school day.Understand CAN-SPAM law I can’t stress enough the importance of this step. You must have a postal address (physical) for the mailer and an active opt-out link for the recipient to use. I recommend putting it in the footer of the e-mail. It must remain active for at least 30 days after the broadcast. If the recipient uses the link to opt out, you must remove them within 10 days of their action.By now, my e-mail neophytes have absorbed all they can from their first lesson. Soon, they will be ready to move onto E-mail 202, the deployment. But that’s a lesson for another day.Michele Volpe is VP of sales and marketing at Media Source Solutions. Reach her at mvolpe@mediasourcesolutions.com.

Popularity: 5%

Over the years I have seen hundreds of RFPs, and I’m amazed at what little is actually uncovered in the process. The decision regarding an e-mail partner is growing in significance as the channel gains share on the mainstream marketing stage. The wrong decision can be costly and lead to frustration, lost customers and missed revenue.

In my decade or so of responding to e-mail RFPs, I have seen countless missed opportunities to vet out the reality of an ESP’s offering, financial viability, support structure, platform and organizational ideology. Thus, I have assembled a “best of” RFP format that will provide marketers an accurate profile of the E-mail Service Provider.

Client Experience

• List 20 of your e-mail clients that are referenceable.
• Provide the contact information for three client losses over the last six months and why you lost each client.
• Are your strategy and account management teams separate or are they the same?
• Who will be on our account team and what percentage of time will each person allocate to our business per month?
• What are the titles of your deliverability assurance team?  Where are their offices located?
• What is your ideal customer profile? Which of your clients fits these criteria?
• How is your account management team compensated?

Organization

• Please provide organizational charts for your technology, account management and deliverability teams.
• Please provide your most recent audited financials.
• How is your firm capitalized? Do you raise money publicly or privately, and what is the status of that capitalization?
• What do you see as the most significant threat to your company, and what are you doing as an organization to protect yourself?
• Some analysts believe an integrated online/offline solutions company is a better answer for clients; others say purely focus on one channel and become a specific expert. What is your view?
• What is your employee retention rate, and how do you retain your employees?

Platform

• Please provide the results of your last four 3^rd party security audits and how you have addressed security vulnerabilities found in those audits.
• When were your systems down in 2008, for how long and why?
• Please provide a User’s Guide for the platform we would be using.
• What file import speeds will you commit to? Please provide your standard Service Level Agreement.
• What are your data automation and delivery monitoring capabilities and processes?
• Define how your real-time messaging system and processes are different from your marketing messaging platform.

Industry

• What do you see as the next major trend in e-mail marketing? 
• What makes your offering unique vs. your competitors?
• What is the biggest challenge and biggest opportunity facing the e-mail channel today?
• What is the lifetime value of an e-mail address and how do you go about calculating that value?
• Who do you view as your primary competitors?
• How does social media play into e-mail?  Are text and RSS booming or busting for your clients?

Other Suggestions

• Define our business challenges and how you would use your products and services to address them.
• Provide a cover letter from the president/CEO of your organization articulating why your company is the best fit for us.
• How do you measure success of an e-mail program?

Popularity: 3%

Are you getting the most from your e-mail marketing campaigns? The following questions will help you out.

How do you welcome new subscribers to your program? Keep new subscribers out of your regular communication stream. Contact them twice as often for the first few months. Welcome messages can drive customers to preference centers to deepen their engagement — and provide valuable profile information — remind them of program benefits, and set expectations about future content that they’ll receive.

What are you doing with unengaged or “lapsed” customers? Between 20% to 50% of the addresses on most house lists are dormant, i.e., not clicked or opened a message in 12 months. Recognize these inactive customers, tell them they are missed and ask them to update their preferences. Try “sweeter” offers to reengage this lapsed audience. Too often online marketers look at campaign performance indicators rather than customer engagement metrics when determining a program’s success.

How do you drive the dynamic content in your e-mails? Start with join date, last response (open, click), conversions, etc. Try domain-based campaigns, i.e., sending consumer domains (AOL, Yahoo, MSN) on weekends and business domains on weekdays. Basic data can drive re-engagement messages, cross-pollination and cross-sells.

What have you learned from recent tests?  Campaigns should test something, whether an A/B split test of subject lines, or multivariate tests of combinations of content or placement. A/B tests generate 3% to 10% lift in response while multivariate tests drive a 20% to 80% incremental lift in revenue per campaign. Timing, targeting and frequency are important variables.

Is your e-mail contact strategy mapped to your customer buying cycle? Campaigns tend to reflect campaign calendars and seasonal product promotions. Use the e-mail channel’s ability to reach people at the right time — consider overlaying a typical customer shopping cycle on your campaign calendar to see where opportunities are out of sync or missed altogether. While auto manufacturers can tune campaigns to test-drive prospects, maintenance buyers and the need for re-purchase, other purchases are much more sporadic and difficult to predict. So integrate Web site and search activity to drive communication as a purchase (or up-sell) decision is made.

Listen to your customers in terms of activity, interests and response, and keep your campaigns customer-centric. Asking the right questions of your program will get you started.

Popularity: 3%

News Corp.’s social networking property MySpace has reached an agreement to collect $6 million from Scott Richter and his Web marketing company, Media Breakaway LLC, for allegedly spamming its users with unsolicited advertisements. The charges originated in January 2007.

“We respect the arbitrator’s findings regarding violations of MySpace’s terms of use by certain rogue affiliates, particularly during 2006 when the concept of social networks was still developing,” said Steven Richter, president and general counsel at Media Breakaway and father of Scott Richter, in a statement. “We acknowledged early on in this process that our company should not profit from the sending of unsolicited commercial bulletins to MySpace users and offered to return any such profit to MySpace, and we repeatedly offered to work with MySpace to resolve mutual concerns.”

According to the decision, Media Breakaway must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in attorney’s fees. It is also banned from the site.

The final award in favor of MySpace was 95% less than the amount demanded by MySpace, as the arbitrator determined that “MySpace’s demands are so disproportionate to proven actual damages, or Media Breakaway profits.” The company will not be held responsible for the actions of certain affiliates who violated Media Breakaway’s own affiliate terms and conditions.

Profit figures for Media Breakaway were not available.

In September 2007, Media Breakaway LLC was named one of the fastest growing private companies in the US, ranking No. 189 on the Inc. 500 list with a four-year growth rate of more than 1,100%.

The arbitrator ruled that while Media Breakaway should be held responsible for a number of unsolicited commercial bulletins sent to MySpace users in violation of MySpace’s Terms of Use

The decision was made by an arbitrator on June 12 and comes after a $230 million verdict in the social network’s favor last month against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines in US District Court in Los Angeles.

MySpace has recently presented a strong stance against spammers and phishers on its site. At this month’s Authentication and Online Trust Alliance conference in Seattle, Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer at Fox Interactive and MySpace, went into detail about the company’s partnerships with other companies, the FTC and law enforcement to prosecute spammers and protect members’ safety.

“It’s not just about blocking, we want the message to be, ‘don’t go to MySpace if you are going to participate in illegal activity,’” Nigam said at the conference.

Scott Richter has been involved in other spam cases. Microsoft Corp. won a $7 million settlement against him in a spam lawsuit in 2005, and the state of New York got $50,000 from Richter in 2004.

Popularity: 4%

Periodically, our customer support at Returnity fields a call from a customer alarmed that their open rates, the percentage of people who received the message and were tracked as having opened it, are not as high as they would like them to be. They want to purge their list of all people who haven’t “opened” at least one of their last 4 or 5 messages.

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Popularity: 7%