Facebook made an interesting announcement yesterday and should resonate with email marketers. They said they would be deemphasizing posts that “click-bait,” which is “when a publisher posts a link with a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see.”

Even though those types of posts received lots of clicks, it turns out that Facebook users overwhelmingly prefer headlines that are descriptive and give them information they could use to decide whether it was worth their time to click through. To quantify this disconnect between click volume and content quality, Facebook is now measuring post-click activity and penalizing posts that visitors quickly abandon, which they see as an indication that the content didn’t meet their expectations.

Why this should be interesting to email marketers is that click-bait-type subject lines provide a similarly poor user experience.

>> Read the entire post on ExactTarget.com

The Summer of Mobile Email Love

48% of B2C brands now using mobile-friendly email designI made a prediction last year that the percentage of brands using mobile-friendly email design would increase from 22% in December 2013 to 70% in December 2014. That prediction was looking more than a little shaky when we gave our April update, but the Summer of Mobile Email Love has got us back on track.

Between early April and early August, the percentage of major B2C brands using responsive email design rose to 36% from 18% and the percentage using mobile-aware email design rose to 16% from 15%.

That puts the percentage of brands using mobile-friendly email designs at 48%.

And that’s as of a few weeks ago. Now adoption might be over the 50% mark!

>> Read the entire post on ExactTarget.com

Email Marketing Rules (2nd Edition)Nobody likes jargon, but to effectively communicate with vendors, consultants, and other email marketers, an email marketing vocabulary is essential. To help folks better understand email terminology, I’ve added the glossary from the upcoming 2nd Edition of Email Marketing Rules to my website. You can find it at emailmarketingrules.com/email-marketing-dictionary.

This dictionary contains common email marketing terms including sender name, confirmed opt-in, defensive design, re-permission emails, and progressive profiling.

It also includes some new terms and concepts that I discuss in the book, including:

super-engagement: Tactics that further engage subscribers who are already highly engaged

device-targeted content: Using responsive email design to target subscribers with different content depending on the device that the email is displayed on

granted media: Media content produced by a brand that’s distributed to an audience the brand developed via an open platform controlled by multiple third parties, such as email and SMS

real list growth: A measure of the change in subscriber lifetime value of a list, this metric subtracts the value of subscribers lost over a period of time from the value of those gained during that period

opt up: When a subscriber opts into additional mailstreams from a brand via a preference center, loyalty program, sister brands, or another mechanism

I hope you find this glossary helpful.

>> Check out all the terms in the Email Marketing Dictionary

Email Marketing Rules (2nd Edition)I’m proud to unveil the cover design for the 2nd Edition of Email Marketing Rules, which was designed by my colleague Andrea Smith. I think the retro, blueprint-like cover perfectly captures both the complexity of the email channel and the cool-headed, straightforward style of the book’s advice. Plus, it’s really awesome-looking! Thanks, Andrea.

You’ll also notice that New York Times best-selling author Jay Baer is back for the 2nd Edition, refreshing his thought-provoking Foreword about the “Currency of Modern Marketing.” Jay is on the forefront of content and social, but he also completely gets how vital email marketing is to the marketing ecosystem. He sees the big picture and I’m thankful to continue to have him as part of my book.

Incidentally, when I showed him a draft of the 2nd Edition, he said, “I didn’t think you could make it better, but it’s way better.” That’s high praise considering it called the 1st Edition “the best book ever written about email marketing.

It’s also a bit of a relief since I spent roughly as much time writing the 2nd Edition as I did the 1st. It’s updated throughout and has two new parts: one that delves into key email marketing concepts relevance, list growth, and permission; and another that looks at the future of the channel. In total, the 2nd Edition is about 120 pages longer.

>> For more about what the new edition covers, check out  my website’s page about The Book.

View all of Chad's MediaPost columnsSubscribers change over time. Their interests change. Their needs change. Their goals change. And change can be very dramatic from one year to another and one season to another. So even if your email program has a wonderful onboarding program where you learn about each subscriber’s preferences, it’s just not enough.

Analyzing subscriber behavior can give you valuable insights into their current needs and wants, but you should also regularly be doing progressive profiling—that is, directly asking subscribers questions about their interests and preferences so you can better serve them.

When developing or refining your progressive profiling email program, here are four elements to…

>> Read the entire column on MediaPost.com

Internet_Retailer_logoHoliday planning for retailers is almost a year-round endeavor, but it starts getting serious during the summer months. To help retailers plan their email marketing campaigns, I’m writing a series of holiday planning checklists for Internet Retailer Magazine, the first of which is live now.

In it, I advise retailers to:

  • Adopt a mobile-friendly email design
  • Make mobile-friendly improvements to your website
  • Launch a cart abandonment or browse abandonment email
  • Warm up new IP addresses for the holiday season
  • Test your online email signup forms
  • Review your email opt-in calls-to-action for your stores and call centers
  • Identify opportunities to improve your holiday messaging
  • Explore your swipe file
  • Start on the “dream big” email now

For the full details on each of these recommendations, which include a lot of tips and stats just for retailers…

>> Read the full article on InternetRetailer.com.

And for even more holiday planning advice, check out our 2014 Email Marketing Holiday Calendar.

Crowd Favorites from the Swipe FileWe pin tons of inspiring digital marketing examples to our Swipe File pinboards on Pinterest every month. And each month you tell which ones most inspired you by repinning and liking them.

Here are your favorite pins among the ones we uploaded last month:

The Email Swipe File’s crowd favorite was…

Michaels >> 2-email welcome series focused on preferences >> View the pin

>> Browse the Email Swipe File

The Social Swipe File’s crowd favorite was…

Ikea Russia >> website created using Instagram’s grid view and photo tagging >> View the pin

>> Browse the Social Swipe File

The Audience Growth Swipe File’s crowd favorite was…

Home Depot >> email pitches SMS signup with $5 incentive >> View the pin

>> Browse the Audience Growth Swipe File

Help determine this month’s crowd favorites by repinning and liking the pins that inspire you most.

Gmail's native unsubscribe link in action

Gmail is making email marketers sweat again. In the last year alone, the debut of Tabs caused all-out panic, image caching set new open rate baselines, and grid view led to rendering concerns. Now Gmail is following up with a partial rollout of a highly visible native unsubscribe link in March with a full rollout, which they announced yesterday.

Now any sender including the list-unsubscribe header in their emails will have Gmail’s native unsubscribe link show up next to their “from” name when an email is opened. Previously the only senders who benefited from this functionality were those brands with stellar reputations—which were the ones who needed it the least.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of…

>> Read the entire post on ExactTarget.com

ETMC-HEMC-Blog-Sidebar-370x370Every month through January, we’ll be reviewing our predictions from the 2014 Email Marketing Holiday Calendar for last month and discussing what to expect this month in terms of holiday messaging trends.

In July, we predicted that major retailers would send their active subscribers 18 promotional emails during July—and we were right on target. Our panel of more than 100 retailers sent their subscribers 17.9 emails on average last month.

In August, we’re expecting retailers to again send their active subscribers around 18 promotional emails each. The amount of holiday messaging will be very low.

>> Read the entire post on the ExactTarget Blog

Email Marketing RulesI’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be releasing an updated and expanded 2nd Edition of Email Marketing Rules in early September. I’ll be providing more details in the weeks to come, so stay tuned.

Because I want folks to have the most up-to-date information, I’ll be taking the 1st Edition off the market on Aug. 10. But if you want a copy of the 1st Edition for any reason, now is the time to grab one. Otherwise, hold tight and wait for the arrival of the 2nd Edition in 4 weeks or so.

>> Buy the 1st Edition of Email Marketing Rules

Thanks to everyone that helped make the 1st Edition such a huge success. It’s only because of your support that a 2nd Edition was possible. Thank you!