Sam’s Club Canada experienced the full power of email marketing last week when they ran a special “open house” email promotion.

On November 12, 2008 they sent out this email flyer with the subject “Welcome to our Open House”:

As you can see, the email is very well formatted with a big call to action at the top and two specific product focuses. One of the biggest mistakes people make when creating email marketing campaigns is that they cram in as many products as possible, which ultimately just dilutes the amount of attention each item can get.

This email proved to be incredibly effective because the day the sale started (Friday) people were lined up at 3:00am at some stores (Note: The stores only open at 7:00am). The television sold out of their Vaughan location in a matter of minutes. This obviously left a bunch of angry consumers, but that’s an issue to discuss a different day.

This just goes to show you that sending out an email with a lucrative offer can have consumers jumping off the couch and racing to your store…even at an ungodly hour of the morning!

Last week Future Shop, one of Canada’s biggest electronics retailers, launched a large in-house email promotion and made just about the biggest blunder you could make. Despite the fact that Future Shop made a huge rookie mistake (one of the things we coach all our email marketing clients about), I must give them kudos on a very interesting concept.

The promotion was “Future Shop 10 Days of Amazing Deals”. The idea is that the customer (in this case me) is supposed to check the same email every day and it will automatically update to show the new deals of the day. I’ll be the first to admit this does sound cool and is an interesting promotional idea. From a technical standpoint it’s actually pretty basic since they just change the image on their server that is being downloaded, but to the average end-user it’s entirely ‘different’ and ‘neat’. I suspect the marketing staff at Future Shop are relying on people flagging the message in their inbox and coming back to it. I sort of question whether that is a good strategy, but that is a question for another day.

The big blunder, that in my opinion ruined an otherwise cool idea, was the fact that when the email first landed in my inbox on “Deal Day 1″, none of the links worked. No matter what link I clicked on in the email, it only led me to a ‘page not found’ error. How on earth do you launch a campaign like this with that kind of problem? I mean, this not only looks so bad to each and every recipient (and I’ve got to imagine that’s a ton!), but it must kill their conversion ratio.

I can only imagine the look on the marketing manager’s face when he got the slick new promotional email in his inbox and found out it didn’t actually connect to the Future Shop website.

[I should mention that I had several people check the links from various locations to make sure it wasn’t just me that got unlucky with broken links.]

Like we always tell our customers, if the goal of your email is to drive traffic to your website, then a good rule of thumb is to make sure the link you’re putting in front of people actually works.

For every “deal day” since day 1, Future Shop did get things sorted out and the links have been working. But, the fact that on day 1 the link reading “If you are having problems viewing this email, please try the web edition” didn’t work…well, that’s a big time blunder.

Where did the summer go? I could have sworn it was just June and now all of a sudden its mid-August.

And, we all know the dreaded season that creeps up on us in August… the back to school season!

Starting last week ‘back to school’ themed emails were flying. The first wave started almost two weeks ago as many retailers were eager to start spreading the news about their back-to-school savings, but last week the number spiked dramatically.

Everyone gets on the back-to-school bandwagon trying to vie for those lucrative dollars (especially in a struggling economy). The most dominant business type that send out back-to-school related emails are clothing stores. From casual to upscale to school uniforms, these retailers were pumping out emails to their targeted audience as fast as possible. Many retailers adopted a ‘daily back-to-school email special’ that they would send out each and every day in order to entice customers to make a purchase.

Email marketing is proving to be very effective for these retailers since their target market is actively engaged on the Internet and checks their email regularly. Also, since retailers are generally contacting ‘past customers’, they already have a bond or relationship with that customer, which helps further drive future repeat purchases.

This year many of the email marketing campaigns are tied to social marketing components with outlets having a MySpace or Facebook page that they are urging people to become ‘friends’ with. This twp prong approach is gaining in popularity since sites like Facebook and MySpace have exploded in popularity.

Email marketing is growing at an outstanding rate, but it still has far to go.

Many organizations have not yet adopted email marketing because it is something new and that might make it a bit scary. But, armed with the right industry knowledge, many organizations would be more apt to take the plunge.

That’s why the Email Experience Council launched the new “Speakers Bureau” last month.

This new speakers bureau was created as a way to spread this industry knowledge and welcome new practitioners into the community, which is ready to help them reap the full benefits of permission-based email marketing and stay clear of pitfalls.

If people have questions about email marketing, everyone involved in the industry wants them to have answers, and this is a big step towards achieving that goal.

The specific email marketing topics covered by the speakers bureau are:

Email in the Marketing Mix

• Why use email marketing?
• Email’s ROI and other statistics 
• How email fits with a multichannel marketing approach

CAN-SPAM and Other Laws

• CAN-SPAM 
• COPPA 
• State laws

Permission Practices

• The different types of permission
• How to obtain permission
• Re-permissioning old addresses

Deliverability

• Sender Reputation
• Bounce management
• Feedback loops 
• ISP relationships
• What is email authentication?

List Growth Tactics

• Organic growth and retention 
• Acquisition and prospecting tactics
• How to safely rent lists 
• Potential brand damage

What to Send

• Create meaningful, relevant subscriber experiences
• Understanding and utilizing Reach and Frequency for building brand awareness
• Basic segmentation tactics
• Examples from great email marketing programs

At the moment there are speakers available in many different states.

Currently, I am the only available speaker north of the border in Canada

I’m sure this list will expand rapidly as other experts in the industry get on-board this great initiative.

View the whole list of EEC speakers.

Statistically email marketing campaigns that are sent in the morning outperform those sent in the afternoon. While this does obviously vary based on industry, it is fairly consistent.

One thing email marketers tend to overlook is that the ‘morning’ actually occurs at different times depending on the time zone of your recipient.

I have seen it happen time and time again where someone in California schedules an email marketing campaign for 10:00am local time to blast out to all of their customers. Of course, they don’t realize that 10:00am in California is actually 1:00pm in New York. So, their objective of sending a morning email campaign doesn’t exactly hold true.

If the timing of your email marketing campaigns is important than you should segment your mailing list based on geography so that you can factor in timezones.

Once you know the location of your recipient, it’s pretty easy to schedule an email to the East coast folks at one time and the West coast folks at another.

If you know that you get better results when your email arrives in the morning, then a little extra legwork can go a long way towards boosting your metrics.

A few weeks ago the Can-Spam Act was updated. It had been a full 3 years since the Federal Trade Commission first issued the May 2005 discretionary Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that lead up to the recent update.

The Can-Spam Act is the law that governs email marketing and largely establishes the base framework by which companies can send mass email. While email marketing best practices may differ from simply meeting these guidelines, it is important for every marketer to follow these rules at the bare minimum.

For marketers that had adopted ‘best practices’ before the update, it really won’t change much at all.

The most important ruling from the recent update related to the opt-out period. Back in 2005 the FTC proposed changing the law so that companies had 3 business days to process an opt-out request. Many in the email community challenged this proposal for various reasons and, I am happy to report, were victorious in their efforts. The FTC preserved that the rule will stay at 10 business days. Obviously all marketers should strive for the fastest opt-out time possible, but at this least way there is no additional added pressure, especially for larger organizations that may have several departments attempting to coordinate.

While the FTC has taken step to refine and clarify the law, most email marketers (including those using Elite Email) will not really have to adjust their practices since they are already meeting, if not exceeding, the requirements.

Here is a quick “current” summary of some key elements of the Can-Spam Act:

CAN-SPAM Requires that:

1. Provide a fully-functioning method for the receiver to opt-out (ie. unsubscribe) of your mailings in each and every mailing, and that the act of opting out can only require a single action. This means that the recipient either can click a link that takes them to the opt-out page or reply to the email to opt-out. In either case it can require no further action, such as filling out a survey. You can ask people to provide feedback as to why they are opting-out, but you cannot make that a condition to the removal. In addition, you cannot require someone to enter a password or any other form of credentials, or to have to click through to a second page, in order to effect the opt-out.
2. All information in your email, including the email headers and body/content of the email, be true, accurate, and not misleading. Essentially you are not allowed to pretend to be someone you are not!
3. You must honor all opt-out/unsubscribe requests, and immediately remove the user from your mailing list. You also need to stop sharing the user’s address with anybody, including previously agreed-to partners. You may not “repurpose” a subscriber’s email address once they opt-out by adding it to a different mailing list, or sharing it with someone else. So, overall, if someone asks you to stop emailing them…stop!
4. For any email you send that contains the advertisements of someone other than yourself or your company, the entity that the email is “From” must also have their own advertisement in the email. This basically means that the “From” sender must match at least one advertisement within the email. Doing so makes the “From” sender the “designated sender” under CAN-SPAM, making them responsible for processing all opt-out requests. If you don’t have a designated sender then each and every entity advertised in the email becomes responsible for processing opt-out requests.
5. You include your physical mailing address in each and every mailing. This can be your actual street address, a post office box, or a private mail box (”PMB”). A “PMB” includes a mailbox you may have at a store like Mailboxes Etc.

CAN-SPAM Applies To:

1.  Any bulk/mass commercial email sent to a mailing lists of any size. For instance, if you send two or more pieces of nearly identical email to two or more different people, your email can be classified as bulk commercial email for the purposes of CAN-SPAM.
2. Email that has a primary purpose of featuring your goods, services, or content even if you do not send the email yourself. This means that if you partner with a company to send out emails promoting your products/services, you can’t point the finger at them and think you’re off the hook.
3. All email sent out by your affiliates on your behalf.

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In closing, I will say that the FTC listened closely to what members in the email community had to say on the various issues and I believe that has led to strong forward progress.

It looks like in the month of March, Tuesday was the most popular day to  send emails based on a random sampling of 12 million outbound emails from Elite Email users.

The second most popular day was Wednesday, followed by Monday in third place.

With regard to the time of the day, morning email marketing campaigns sending between 8:00am – 11:00am continue to dominate.

Email campaigns launched on the weekends remained on par with previous months, yet typically yielded a lower open rate.

As we head into the summer months, I expect that email marketing campaigns sent Friday afternoon will drop off just like they have in previous years. This is essentially based on the fact that many people leave work early on Friday in the summer months, which makes it an ineffective time to try to reach out to your audience.

It’s important that email marketers also keep a close eye on holidays in the summer to make sure they do not schedule a campaign on days where people are not working.

I saw a couple support emails come in today from people asking if it’s a good idea to send emails Sunday night. Their theory, which definitely does make sense, is that by sending their email marketing campaign Sunday night, they’ll  be first in their recipient’s inbox come Monday morning.

While it is true that sending an email marketing campaign Sunday night puts you in the box ahead of anyone who sends out an email Monday morning, the research consistently shows that this is a flawed tactic.

One thing to think about is how most email programs, including the one you’re using, actually work. The email programs put the newest emails at the top of the list and slowly push the older emails down. So, if you send your email now, it will get pushed behind any other emails that may get sent to your recipient before they check their email Monday morning. While the idea of “First in, First Read” (FIFR, in case you like acronyms!) would be nice, it doesn’t typically hold true.

The other thing to think about when sending an email marketing campaign Sunday night is that when your recipient checks their email Monday morning, they are going to get a rush of messages. Usually this encompasses anything sent from Friday at 5:00pm through to Monday morning. When this big rush of emails come flying in, it’s a lot easier for your email marketing campaign to get lost in the clutter. Since you want to make sure your email gets the attention it deserves, you’re a lot better off not being part of this email flood.

It’s best to give a lot of thought to the timing of your email marketing campaigns since it can heavily skew your success. Be sure to put yourself in your recipient’s shoes because it’s their schedule (not yours!) that you’re trying to accommodate.

As of lately, I’ve heard several customers call in and ask about the length of their email marketing campaign that they are putting together. They want to know if it is wise to pack their email full of information or if it’s better to be brief and to the point.

Our email marketing studies consistently show that recipients often prefer short emails that are direct and to the point. An email that seemingly scrolls forever can often be intimidating and may scare off your reader.

Plus, it’s important to realize that your recipient has limited time in their day to devote to your email marketing campaign and if your email is designed to exceed that time (because it’s so long!) then you run the risk of them stopping short and potentially missing some key messages. Whereas, if your email is very much focused on your key points and kept as short as possible, then chances are your recipients will read all the way to the bottom and nothing will get left out.

One tactic that is very helpful for email marketing campaigns that run the risk of being very long is to include a short ‘teaser’ type paragraph and then put a “Read More” or “Learn More” link at the bottom. When the reader clicks that link, you bring them to your website where they can read the full version of the article.

This is a great approach because those that want more information can easily click the link, whereas those who aren’t particularly interested in that article can easily skim over it and move onto the next article (as opposed to just giving up completely).

The length of your email marketing campaign is an important factor and if you haven’t asked yourself lately “Is my email too long?” you may want to stop and ask that because if the answer is “yes, then there are quick and easy remedies.

A couple of weeks ago we released a brand new template category within EliteEmail.com titled “Holiday”.

I was just reviewing some of the recent template usage metrics and these new templates (obviously fueled by the time of the season) have been a massive success.

It is interesting to see that businesses around the globe of all types, ranging from banks, consultants, restaurants, bands, artists, and more all chose to send out holiday eCards to their contacts. Furthermore, in most cases these messages carried no promotional message whatsoever, and simply wished “happy holidays” and ‘happy New Year”.

This is a wonderful example of how email marketing can help boost your brand image with your customer base, even if you aren’t actually measuring sales conversions as your key email marketing ROI metric for a certain campaign.