Email: What Should Marketers Expect in 2014?

Jeannette Kocsis, EVP of digital engagement at The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks, has witnessed her fair share of marketing trends. Here, three email marketing issues she believes marketers should brace for this year.

1. New mail programs. Technology evolves and email platforms are certainly no exception. Google's popular email program, Gmail, received an overhaul in May 2013. Google unveiled a new inbox for Gmail that uses tabs to separate incoming messages into categories including Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates. As a result, Kocsis says, “We can expect continued changes to the user experience of webmail clients.” Marketers will need to rethink how they run and deliver their email promotions to take advantage of new features and functionalities.

2. Marketers will need to listen more than ever to audiences.

Errors in judgment regarding content, delivery channel, and frequency can alienate consumers and tarnish your brand. “We can expect that deliverability will continue to be a challenge, as [will be] maintaining mailer reputation,” she says, adding that “when a customer chooses channels, content, and frequencies, their preferences need to be respected.”

3. Mobile will continue to set the bar. By now, many marketers have tired of the mobile-first mantra, but Kocsis says they will continue to hear it this year. more than 1.2 billion mobile web users worldwide, marketers must “design for mobile first, meaning that if it works on mobile, it will be fine everywhere else,” she says. Tips for making email more mobile-friendly include developing an enticing subject line, including a compelling call to action, and making sure you don't inundate mobile users with unwanted messages.

How Gmail Improved Security & Email Analytics by Caching Images

Google officially announced that images in Gmail would be enabled for all webmail users on December 12th (with iOS and Android Gmail apps following suit sometime in January), regardless of whether or not the recipient clicked “display images below.” This change should prove to be a boon for email marketers, but not without some tradeoffs.

“Images Off” A Matter Of Security

HTML emails — specifically, scripts, images and links — have been disabled in email clients for so long that it can be hard to remember why this is the norm. In the early days of HTML emails, many hackers took advantage of vulnerabilities in email clients’ rendering engines to execute code, in addition to having victims click on a link or open an infected attachment. Viruses also leveraged curiosity and naivety of users with the most popular social app at the time (email) by spoofing the From: address to appear it was coming from someone in their address book or a well-known brand institution. While we don’t read headlines about viruses like Klez or Melissa crippling businesses and the Internet anymore, these threats are still real today and do happen. We can thank security precautions like disabling HTML for making this somewhat of a non-issue today.

Is Gmail Making The Internet Less Safe?

It may seem, then, that Google is actually taking a step backward. If images and links in email wreaked havoc before, won’t it happen again? This is where image caching comes into play. By caching each unique image link in the emails, checking for viruses, and then serving that one image to all users who received the email, Google’s Gmail eliminates the risk of users unwittingly downloading and spreading malware.

Gmail is also going an extra step in the security and privacy of their users. Gmail is no longer sending the IP address or information about the device that opened the email. This change will affect email marketers tracking geolocation of open data, as well as knowing whether or not their Gmail users are reading their emails in webmail or mobile.

What’s The Impact Of Google Caching Gmail Images?

The loss of data caused by Google’s caching of images only affects emails being opened in Gmail’s webmail user interface, as well as their iOS and Android apps.

Here’s a summary of which email clients are affected:

Email Domain	Email Client	Affected
Gmail.com	Gmail (webmail, iOS app, Android app)	Yes
Gmail.com	Not Gmail	No
Not Gmail.com	Gmail (webmail, iOS app, Android app)	Yes
Not Gmail.com	Business Google Apps Gmail	No

That means if someone is using the native Mail app in iOS to read emails, marketers can still receive things like total opens, the IP address that opened the email, and device information. Businesses using Google’s hosted email solution, which uses the same Gmail technology, appear not to be affected by this change, either. Email accounts like Outlook.com or Yahoo! Mail that are forwarded to a Gmail account will be affected by this change.

The biggest impact of the change is in user agent tracking, such as whether or not the email was opened in webmail or on mobile. However, at this time, this impact appears to be more positive than negative. Email marketers will finally receive accurate unique open counts for their Gmail users. Since one could read an email without enabling images, open rates have always been a faulty measurement and nearly always undercounted. Now that email marketers can see who is actually engaged with and reading their emails, they can make better decisions when it comes to removing inactive subscribers. This is important because Gmail will filter email from a sender simply for sending to too many inactive users.

The negative impacts of this change are minor. IP geolocation will no longer be available, but few marketers outside of some niche email services companies are using geolocation in their emails. Additionally, all emails opened in Gmail webmail, or mobile apps will appear to be opened in Firefox in Mountain View, CA. The Firefox user agent data is fake information and is meant to give Gmail users more privacy. All IP geolocation information will now show Mountain View, CA since this is where Google’s image servers are located. Return Path data shows that less than 1% of Gmail users were opening emails in Gmail mobile apps before this change. Marketers can trust that user agent data being sent over is primarily webmail opens. In fact, our own data shows little impact. Emails opened on mobile devices surpassed the 50% mark for all industries for the first time in December 2013, with mobile opens surging to 60% of all email open share on Christmas day. Open counts also saw Gmail webmail opens going from 2% of all opens to nearly 1 in 5 of all opens, which is a more accurate reflection of real world market share.

What Else Changes?

These changes mean we will need to change our terminology in 2014 when it comes to discusses open rates and device usage.

Unique Open Rates: Since Gmail caches the first image, unique user tracking in emails will only show the first open in email clients affected by this change (see above table), meaning email marketers can only track unique opens at Gmail. In the age of user based engagement spam filtering, the unique open rate is a better metric to track.

Desktop, Smartphone, Tablet: Device tracking categories are currently based on Desktop (specifically email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird), webmail (viewed in a browser), or Mobile (including smartphones and tablets). As an industry, we should move to changing “desktop” to include both email clients and webmail since Gmail is returning the same user agent information for all opens. Smartphones and Tablets should also be separated now that smartphones are the dominant device to read emails on, and because both offer different user experiences.

34 Tips to Maximize Email Marketing Success

Permission-based email marketing has a higher return on investment than unsolicited email, direct mail, or traditional advertising and has revolutionized the way we do business. Backed by measurable results, studies show email marketing is the marketing tool of choice for businesses looking to attract, retain, and grow loyal customer bases. Businesses all around the world use email marketing to:

Boost sales Generate leads Strengthen relationships Increase website traffic Build brand loyalty

As the popularity of permission-based email marketing grows, so does the amount of email in every inbox. Are you doing everything you can to make sure your emails are opened, read, and responded to? You know your business best, but here are 34 tips to maximize permission-based email marketing success.

Know your Audience You could have the best message in the world, but without the right audience it means nothing.

1. Start by building a permission-based list. 2. In exchange for contact information, offer your customers something of value: a newsletter, a free seminar, or more information about your products & services. 3. When gathering contact information, only ask for the information you really need. Asking unnecessary questions annoys people and may keep them from signing up. 4. Be sure to include a way for people to unsubscribe in all your email campaigns. Unsolicited email or spam can be damaging to your reputation. 5. Manage your contact lists so you can respond quickly and efficiently to requests for more information or to unsubscribe. 6. Since email addresses can change frequently, keep your list current by carefully tracking the number of bounce-backs or undeliverable emails after every campaign. 7. Be sure you have a clear and concise privacy policy that details how you will treat your customers’ personal contact information. Include a link to it in every email you send. 8. Respect the terms of your privacy policy and never breach your customers’ trust. Craft your Message An interesting message that offers value is critical to the success of any email campaign. 9. See what others are doing. Take a few minutes and sign up for email newsletters from competitors. Choose a few on your favorite hobby or a topic you’re interested in too. 10. When you get online newsletters from other companies, pay attention to what makes you open some and delete others without reading. 11. Before you create the right message, develop a marketing strategy that addresses goals and objectives. 12. Use email marketing to accomplish what email does best: increase revenue, generate leads, strengthen customer relationships, increase website traffic, and build brand awareness. 13. Get the length right. A good rule of thumb is the more frequent your emails, the shorter they should be. People will open a short "Tip of the Day", but almost no one wants to get something longer on a daily basis. 14. Keep the message personal and casual. Think like a customer and write in a conversational tone. People want to see a little humanity behind the corporate mask. 15. People respond best to messages written by one particular person at a company who they can get to know over time. This is part of building relationships. 16. Personalize the ‘From’ part of your email and be clear who the email is from. 17. Avoid using ‘FREE’ in your subject line since it has been abused by spam marketers and arouses suspicion. 18. Be honest in your subject line and make sure it reflects what’s inside. State a clear benefit that makes the recipient open your message. Only messages that seem relevant and offer value will be opened. 19. Choose a subject line that grabs your reader’s attention. Avoid vague content like "Our September Newsletter." Instead, use an interesting topic or headline from the newsletter, such as "Best Practices for Email Marketing" or "Inside: Exclusive Interview with Tiger Woods!" 20. Encourage forwarding right in your subject line. The Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM) always adds "Pls. Forward" to the ends of their newsletter subject lines and they report it's more than doubled their circulation! 21. Personalize each message and watch response rates climb. At the very least, always include the recipient’s name. 22. Write your messages so they appeal to customer interests and hobbies. Ask your customers what they want to hear about: special offers, new services, etc. Choose the Right Format Once you have the right message, you need to present it in the right way. 23. HTML and Rich media messages that include audio, video, and animation generate high response rates, but it’s still important to always have a text version for people who prefer or can only receive text. 24. Always include a hyperlinked table of contents at the top of your message so people can click or scroll right to the section of their choice. Usability studies show most people won't look beyond the first screen if there's not something immediately interesting to them. Give them a reason to scroll down! 25. Use bullet points and lots of white space for plain text messages. 26. Minimize the use of ALL CAPS and italics as they are hard to read. 27. To make it easy for readers to scan your message, keep columns of copy narrow. 28. Test your messages through a number of email accounts to make sure they look good in all mainstream email clients. 29. Consider writing your message in the same format it will appear on your customers’ screens so you can see what they will see. For text-based emails set your font to 10 point Courier going 60 characters (five inches) across. 30. Unless your newsletter is unusually long, recipients will probably read it on their screen. Your job is to make this as easy as possible. For headlines, use a larger, bold font that can be scanned the quickly. Look for Measurable Results Being able to measure your email marketing efforts is key. Measuring allows you to understand what works and what doesn’t so you can improve each and every campaign. 31. Gathering results through trackable links and having access to real-time reports will help you understand what works and what doesn't. 32. Test using different subject lines, copy, offers, and creative designs, etc. Use real-time results to see which get the best response rates. Consider sending out an A/B test to two sub-segments of your email list to see which is more successful. Refine, and then send the more successful email to your larger email base for better results. 33. When running a series of email campaigns, tweak your message as soon as you understand the results of your first campaign. 34. Above all, take the time to understand email as a marketing medium. Always analyze results and think of new ways to provide value to your members and customers.

Social Optimization: Your Content Or Yourself?

There is an interesting conversation going on at Cre8asite Forums about your clients participating in social networks and the importance of that.

The given is that social is growing in importance, as it related to search rankings either indirectly and in the future, directly.

The bigger question in the thread is, do you yourself need to be active in social or does your content need to be socially appealing? The easy answer is both.

But like EGOL said in the thread, not everyone who writes the outstanding content is able to participate within social networks. People are disinterested, too busy, confused or unable to be part of the social networks, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and others.

Does that leave them at a disadvantage or can the content make up for it.

EGOL wrote:

Although I don't embrace social with my time my website gets a lot of traffic from Facebook, Stumble, Pintrest and especially the TIL part of Reddit. My visitors take my content to social for me because they want to share it with others. It works nicely. Other people do the jobs that I don't want to do and I don't have to pay them. That's how things are supposed to work IMO. It is more genuine to let it happen that way rather than hiring a shill to do it for you.

Indeed but if there is a conversation going on at the social network and if you are not there, that can be an issue. Of course, also, building your own authority outside of your own web site, then as you share content, it just helps spread that content through the network - that also is natural.

40% of Facebook Users Visit the Site Multiple Times Per Day [Study]

As social media users are diversifying their online networking platforms, Facebook remains the dominant player, according to Pew's Social Media Update 2013.

Pew's new study reveals that more that 7 in 10 online U.S. adults had Facebook accounts in 2013, up 4 percent from 2012. By contrast, around 20 percent visited LinkedIn and Pinterest, respectively.

Meanwhile, 42 percent of online U.S. adults used two or more social networks in the past year. Among the 36 percent who used only one major social networking site, more than 80 percent said that they frequented Facebook. In comparison, 8 percent used LinkedIn,4 percent constantly visited Pinterest, and a mere 2 percent went to Instagram or Twitter.

In addition to its large user base, Facebook is the most effective platform in terms of user engagement. More than two-thirds of Facebook users visited the site at least once a day, with 40 percent doing so multiple times throughout the day, according to the study.

Instagram, a photo-sharing application purchased by Facebook in 2012, exhibits a high level of user engagement as well. Close to 60 percent of its users visited the site at least once a day, with 35 percent visiting multiple times per day. Twitter attracted 46 percent daily users in 2013, with 29 percent visiting multiple times a day.

Pew also points out that while Facebook dominates the online social networking scene, other social media platforms have developed their own unique demographic user profiles. Pinterest appeals to females; LinkedIn is frequented by college graduates and users with higher income; and Twitter and Instagram are popular with younger adults, urban dwellers, and non-whites.

Data in this report came from telephone interviews with 1,801 adults.

Rap Genius Back In Google After 10 Day Penalty, Ranks For Its Name But What About Lyrics?

Lyrics site Rap Genius says that is is no longer penalized within Google after taking action to correct “unnatural links” that it helped create. The site was hit with a penalty for 10 days, which meant people seeking it by name couldn’t find it. That’s been fixed, though it’s unclear how much traffic the site will regain for generic lyrics searches.

Rap Genius Back By Name In Google

After the penalty, people couldn’t find Rap Genius when searching for it on Google by name. Now, searches for “rap genius” show the site back at the top of Google’s web search listings (though news headlines items do come first in Google’s news box):

Removing Links To Remove A Penalty

The company explained in a blog post today that it received a manual action notice from Google on Christmas Day accusing it of unnatural linking, which resulted in a penalty. The Rap Genius post detailed some of the linking practices the company has done and how it tried to correct what it thought Google objected to, which included asking people to remove links as well as disavowing links. The post concluded with an apology:

To Google and our fans: we’re sorry for being such morons. We regret our foray into irrelevant unnatural linking. We’re focused on building the best site in the world for understanding lyrics, poetry, and prose and watching it naturally rise to the top of the search results.

Fast Return To Google

Rap Genius was never banned from Google. Instead, it was slapped with a penalty that appears to have made its content that would normally show in the first page of Google listings slip to the sixth page (sometimes called a -60 penalty).

The drop lasted for 10 days is about the same for another big brand that was hit with a penalty over linking early last year, Interflora, which found itself penalized for 11 days. But it’s less than the 90 days that both JC Penney and Google’s own Chrome browserweb site were hit with in 2011 and 2012, respectively, over link issues.

Back For Some Lyric Searches But Still Missing For Some

While Rap Genius is ranking again for its own name, it’s not clear that it is regaining traffic for what’s most important to it, generic terms related to lyrics.

Searchmetrics analyzed some of the terms sending Rap Genius traffic that it took hits for, as well as the overall drop in is search visibility. It’s too early for the Searchmetrics tool to show if there’s been rise in visibility (give it a day or two), but some spot checks on terms show it may not all be back to normal.

For “rap lyrics,” Rap Genius has a solid number one listing, back after dropping, according to Searchmetrics, 100 spots:

For just “lyrics,” it’s not in the first page of results — though it probably wasn’t there before the penalty, either:

This seems likely because the site started with a focus on rap lyrics (hence its name) while many older sites have been far more encompassing. It could also be that the other sites are just spamming Google, as Rap Genius alleged when it first blogged about being penalized and saying “other lyrics sites are almost definitely doing worse stuff.”

For a fairly high-volume search query such as “someone like you lyrics,” where Rap Genius took a 95 spot plunge according to Searchmetrics, it now ranks on page 7, not much of an improvement:

Moreover, the page that it apparently was ranking for, lyrics for Mac Miller’s “Someone like you” song, isn’t the one showing in page seven of the results. As far as I can tell, it’s not showing up in the top 100 results all.

The Rap Genius page for Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah,” which fell 92 spots, is nowhere to be found in the top 100 results, from what I can see.

I think it’s fairly likely Rap Genius will see some of its direct Google traffic recover, now that the penalty has been lifted. But I suspect that the removal of so many links may also cost it some of the rankings it previously had, so that traffic may remain lower than it was.

The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Baidu SEO

Baidu is the most popular search engine in China, which makes it a very powerful channel for B2B marketers in the global market. As of November 2013, Baidu held63.55% of the search engine market share in China. The other two big players in the market are 360 with 21.84% of the market and Sogou at 10.53%. For any B2B company with a Chinese website, optimizing for Baidu is a necessity. While it’s important to keep 360 and Sogou in mind as well, both are very new search engines that only recently emerged in the China market, so there’s not much documentation out yet on SEO guidelines.

Chinese search engine market share diagram

What makes Baidu optimization so unique is that it’s like Google 2009, but with different rules due to heavy censorship by the Chinese government. Optimizing for Baidu entails creating high quality and quantity content, fulfilling Baidu-specific technical SEO requirements, building a massive volume of links, and conforming to Chinese censorship laws. All the tactics within this article are geared towards B2B marketers, but the concepts can also be applied to the B2C sector.

Content Requirements

• No duplicate content: Baidu penalizes websites more than most other search engines for duplicate content. Every piece of content on the site should be unique. It would also be good practice to check for other websites who have scraped your content on a regular basis and request for them to remove the scraped content. When developing the site, pay close attention to duplicate content issues with the site like canonical issues, taxonomies, etc.
• Language Usage: All content and meta tags should be written in simplified Chinese characters. Baidu prefers simplified over traditional Chinese characters, and does not like romanized characters.
• Content Definitions: In the Chinese language, there are multiple dialects and multiple meanings to a single word. One word could have 7 different meanings. All words in the content should be checked for relevance and other meanings to ensure the correct words are being used. From a marketer’s standpoint, this means you need to hire a native Chinese translator with very strong language skills and knowledge of the different dialects in China.
• Content Quantity: Baidu relies heavily upon content quality and quantity for achieving rankings. Every page on the site that you want to rank should have a minimum of 300 words of unique content.
• Title Tags: Title tags should be written the same way you would for Google, but with a different character limit. With romanized characters, the title tag buffer limit is 70 characters. A simplified Chinese character is equal to two characters, so the buffer limit is 35 characters. When constructing the tag, use a keyword-rich phrase that’s descriptive of the page’s content, followed by a branded term.
• Meta Descriptions: Unlike Google and Bing, Baidu still uses meta descriptions as a ranking factor. Make sure each meta description has one or two keyword phrases along with a branded term. Also keep in mind that the meta description buffer limit for romanized characters is 156, so the limit for simplified Chinese characters would be 78.
• Meta Keyword Tags: Meta keywords may have been phased out by most other search engines, but Baidu still uses them as a ranking factor. They should be implemented on every page on the site and should include 3-5 keyword phrases. Avoid keyword stuffing.
• Image ALT Attributes: Baidu’s algorithm for crawling images is still very basic. The ALT attribute is the most important ranking factor for images, so make sure they are used on every image.
• Heading Tags: Heading usage for Baidu is no different than any other major search engine. Make sure each page has an h1 tag that appears before any other heading tag. Also make sure your heading tags follow a hierarchy. Be sure to incorporate keywords into the heading tags, but avoid keyword stuffing.
• Blogs: Company blogs are an important element to have on a website. Blogs not only allow for more internal linking, they also show Baidu that the website is content-rich and updated frequently. Baidu also has a news feed for blogs, which can help drive in more organic traffic. Be sure to submit the blog to Baidu’s news feed.

Technical SEO Requirements

• Robots.txt: Baidu does not like websites with a robots.txt file. If one currently exists, it should be removed. Any important rules that would normally be set up in the robots.txt file should be set in the .htaccess file or IIS server settings.
• Sub-domains and Multiple Domains: Baidu dislikes websites that use sub-domains and multiple domains. Only one domain per site should be used. Other language versions of a site should be hosted off of a completely separate domain and should not be linked from the Chinese version. Sub-domains should not be used at all.
• Site Speed: Site speed is a major ranking factor for Baidu. A site that loads slowly will have a much lower chance of ranking well. This further builds the case for hosting the site on a server in China, which will be explained later in this article.
• iFrames: Do not use iFrames for any important content. Baidu is unable to spider any element of a page within an iFrame.
• JavaScript and Flash: Baidu is unable to effectively crawl JS and Flash, so make sure no important content is fed through either. If you need to put navigation or any other important element in JavaScript, make sure there is an HTML alternative located somewhere on the page.

Link Building Requirements

• Navigation: As mentioned previously, Baidu has a difficult time crawling content in JavaScript. For usability purposes, having a drop-down menu for the main navigation may be a necessity. A good work-around for this would be to create a fat footer with text links to every important page on the site. Make sure every page has some form of text link navigation somewhere to make it easy for Baidu to crawl and pass on authority.
• Anchor Text: Baidu still places a lot of weight on keyword usage in anchor text. All links within the internal linking structure should contain keyword-optimized anchor text. When building links from external sites, try to optimize the anchor text as often as possible.
• Link Building:  One of the biggest areas where Baidu has not developed their algorithm is inbound link building. They place a bigger emphasis on quantity of links than quality. Building lower quality links is still an acceptable practice. With that in mind, you’ll still need to consider that what works today may not work a year from now (and also may not work for 360 or Sogou). Build high quality links whenever possible, and avoid any risky link building schemes. Directory submissions and content curation are safer tactics for building a high quantity of links. All link building activities should target websites on a .cn domain that uses simplified Chinese characters.

Chinese Law Requirements

• Physical Address: A legitimate physical address in China should be included somewhere on the website to establish that the website is China-based.
• Domain Types: Baidu prefers websites with the following domain types: .cn, .com and .net. Websites using a .cn domain are generally given preference over all other domain types.
• Web Hosting: Aside from preferring Chinese domains, Baidu also prefers websites to be hosted in China. This will also help improve page load speed.
• Internet Content Publishing License: In China, a special license is required by the Chinese government to have any chance of achieving high rankings in Baidu. Obtaining an ICP License through the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will greatly improve organic search rankings.
• Censorship: The Chinese government censors a lot of Internet content from its citizens, including most Google services and major social networks. If a piece of content contains any words blacklisted by the Chinese government, Baidu will de-index the page, or the site as a whole. Anything on this list of words blacklisted by the Chinese government should not be used anywhere on the website (variations of these words should not be used, either). If your site allows for user-generated content, be sure to put in measures to reject any content submitted with these words.

Tools for Baidu

• Submit Website: Since Baidu doesn’t have any webmaster tools or sitemap submission feature, the website should be re-submitted every time major changes are made to the website. The website submission tool for Baidu can be found here.
• Keyword Research: When optimizing for Baidu, keyword research should be done for Baidu. People in China will have different search habits than people in other countries. This keyword traffic estimator tool can be used for Baidu keyword research.