While I am not typically one to fall into the whole New Year’s resolution “thing” (yes, air quotes would have been appropriate here Britney); I actually have TWO of them this year. I won’t get into too much detail on the first one, except to say it’s fairly standard and involves a battle with myself to exercise a little self control when it comes to all things sweet and calorie-laden. The second, however, I feel is fit to share in this most public of forums.

Those of you managing email programs, it’s time you finally do something about all of the issues that we’ve been reading and talking about for oh-so-long now. How many more conferences and summits do we need to attend to know it’s time? What am I talking about? As technology advances, our emails are starting to look WORSE!

The following have an impact on your email’s performance:

- Widespread adoption of Outlook 2003 with preview pane enabled
- Web based email clients (e.g. Yahoo!) are now using preview panes
- Images not loading by default in many email clients
- People receiving email on mobile devices

What can you do about it? Well, you have to start by wiping-clean the chalkboard board of your mind - no more of the “same old same old” email look. You know what I’m talking about, the old “banner at the top of the email, with the logo on the left, and the offer on the right”. First of all, it’s boring. More importantly, when that banner doesn’t load, no one sees your logo. And, if your offer is part of the graphic, there is a good chance no one can read it. Expecting readers to download images just to get the gist of your email is asking for more effort than most people have the time to output.

I’ve been saying it for a while, but people rarely listen or are afraid to stray from the norm. You don’t NEED a logo on the top left. People should see who sent the email in the FROM field. That’s what they look at to decide if they even want to open your email. But now that Email Labs is saying it, maybe I will be more credible.

Now, I’m not saying to avoid the use of pretty pictures altogether. Just don’t make your email reliant on them to deliver the message. Use a combination of web text and colored background cells for navigational and promotional information. Once the reader is engaged and decides to check out the entire email, you can wow them with great creative that adds to the experience and strengthens your brand.

So back to resolution two … I won’t take “no” for answer when I tell my clients this is how they need to be doing email. Even if I have to do it without the extra energy from a pre-meeting sugar binge.

CNN.com recently posted an article that commented on an AP-AOL survey and the discovery that there is, brace yourself, yet another generation gap between teens and adults and the way these demographics use technology. Specifically, the AP-AOL poll took a closer look at the outrageous amount of instant messages (IM) that are traded back and forth on a daily basis by a younger American audience.

Although instant messaging has been available for almost 10 years, there are some, mainly adults, that either find this electric form of real-time communication unacceptable, or more commonly, incomprehensible.

The AP-AOL poll revealed a number of statistics that once again compliments the idea that America’s youth are more likely to comprehend and utilize the ever growing technological tools that are available in today’s marketplace.

According to the poll that surveyed 1,013 adults and 500 teens:

- Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.

- More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and one in five send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.

- Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely as adults (17 percent) to say they can’t imagine life without instant messaging.

- When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.

- About a fifth of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date. Almost that many, 16 percent, have used it to break up with someone.

Though the AP-AOL poll uncovers some interesting statistics, let’s discuss these results juxtaposed to another form of a new age communication channel: e-mail. Should companies scrap their e-mail campaigns for something new and shiny? Before we write off this technology, let’s think about what happened when e-mail was introduced. Did everyone stop sending memos and correspondence via snail mail? No.

The adoption of IM in the younger generation doesn’t mean that marketers have lost the tool of e-mail. Conversely, it means that we’ve gained yet another medium to reach a different audience. There is only one thing a marketer can do in this fast-paced environment if they want to survive – keep up.

We live in a society that relies heavily on the progress and evolution of technology. Teenagers are not only immersed in these technological advancements on a daily basis, but are, more importantly, interested in learning and utilizing these new tools that streamline the lengthy and obsolete customs of a distant past.

There are some demographics that will continue to rely heavily on traditional offline marketing campaigns as their major source for consumer research. The older generations of America’s population have not all purchased a ticket on the trendy technology train. Rather, they still rely on advertisements that they have grown accustomed to, trust, and, more importantly, comprehend. Much like Gen X, the e-mail generation will continue to see e-mail as a useful tool to receive targeted information.

That is why it is important not to jump ship when something ‘new’ or ‘better’ comes along. E-mail isn’t Betamax. E-mail isn’t IM. But e-mail is here to stay.

The AP-AOL poll should be a wake-up call for the marketing community. Reminding us that there is still time for traditional and interactive marketing to co-exist and serve as a poster child for corporate America’s beloved ‘synergy.’

I just unsubscribed from the Buy.com emails (finally). Those guys really bludgeon you with emails and probably for the better part of six months I just deleted them without even looking at them, like it was part of my daily chores for the day. So I finally decided to unsubscribe. I was surprised that they actually had a preference page to allow me to select one of the following:

- Basic Emails

- 2 Emails per week

- 1 Email per week

- 1 Email per 2 weeks

- 1 Email per month

- Deal Alerts Emails only

- Entertainment

- Technology

- Unsubscribe

A decent choice list by them but the options were radio buttons and not check boxes (meaning I could not choose multiple items)! So I could choose to only receive technology emails but I’d still get them daily. Or I could select to get emails from them once a week but they’d still send me entertainment content which I don’t want. They were so close!

I can’t stress the importance of properly created preference centers for email marketing. And in today’s world if you don’t give your customers as much flexibility and control over how you communicate with them you’re missing the boat. Silverpop, one of our partners and truly one of the best Email Service Providers on the planet, has a great white paper section on their site and in particular they have one entitled, “Give Customers What They Want with Preferences.” It’s a great read. Maybe they should send a copy of it over to Buy.com

As a full service interactive agency, we work with many companies to help them understand the best way to run their email marketing campaigns. One of the mysteries of email marketing is when and how often email campaigns are sent. Over the last several years I’ve read countless analyst reports that attempt to pinpoint the right time, day and frequency an email campaign should be sent depending on the industry (i.e. retail, travel, b2b, etc.). When asked by clients and colleagues when and how often a campaign needs to run, I’m often reluctant to quote these statistics as they try to replicate them for their own campaigns. The fact of the matter is that frequency and timing of an email campaign should really depend on when you have content that is most relevant to the recipient. Now I’ll admit that’s easier said than done, but it is possible for any organization that’s willing to take this approach.

The simplest approach is to tell a client their industry typically sends an offer campaign 4 times a month, and that reports/statistics show that recipients have a high open and click-through rate on Thursday between 10am and 11am. I would have certainly provided sound strategy to my client and we’d end up sending an email once a week on Thursday between 10am and 11am. Granted we’d probably get average and perhaps above average results but so would everyone else.

I’d argue that we all know relevant content sent to a recipient when they want it will achieve the best possible results. For example, getting a lunch coupon for Chick-fil-A at 11am because I clicked or hovered over a banner ad in yahoo mail or hotmail will result in a higher conversion rate of that coupon than sending a blast campaign to everyone in my mailing list once every month. Yet the vast majority of campaigns are sent on a pre-defined frequency and time, typically to an un-segmented list (i.e. the message isn’t relevant to every recipient), and the content/offer is normally pretty generic. These campaigns still achieve good results but the approach can trap organizations into a routine as you scramble to get content based on a fixed schedule and start comprising on creative, content versions, segmenting, and testing in order to keep costs down mostly due to low ROI (cost of production and broadcast fees vs. revenue generated).

We should expect more from the web! So I’d rather tell a client they should send a campaign only when they have unique and valuable content that is relevant to a unique recipient. Stop sending “blast” campaigns to the whole mailing list and don’t create filler content because of a set frequency that recipients find generic. Introducing the concept of life cycle campaigns, trigger-based campaigns, personalized and dynamic segmented content campaigns regardless if the client is ready technically or logically can be a tough sell to any marketing department. Those who understand it embrace it, and those who don’t typically get caught up in the cost of running these types of campaigns, the sophistication in the logic and technology needed, and the change/risk of doing something so different. What we all need to realize is that the power of the tools we have, real-time data, and analytics that are at our fingertips has made this level of campaign available to any organization and can achieve far higher ROI than the typical blast frequency strategy.