THE CHANGING e-MARKETING LANDSCAPE

With new spam filters and regulations, many financial institution marketers are being innocently "caught like dolphins" in the spam nets that are now in place with Internet Service Providers and spam software. Here’s what you should know to continue your e-marketing success….

Did you know that although a financial institution’s email message is being sent to a member’s/customer's valid address, it may never actually make it to their inbox. A great example, if your eStatement notification masks the account number with an "X" for each digit, by the third digit your "XXX" will turn on just about every spam blocker in the industry!

While financial institutions can always tell how many emails were sent, opened and the click-throughs, there is no way of knowing specifically how many (or which ones) are blocked at the Internet Service Providers (ISP) or corporate filters. Most anti-spam programs are not set to return bounce backs that would let anyone know. Measuring results with email marketing used to be easy using today’s technology. Here is an example of measuring the success of a special loan promotion email for a CU:

Emails Sent	1,935
Emails Opened by members	1,182
Click Through to CU web page	88
% Emails Viewed by members	61%

The question is – were the unopened 753 (39%) even delivered?

Astonishingly, 46 percent of email users do not use any spam filter, according to a 2003 study by Forrester Research. The same study reveals that 44 percent rely only on the spam filter their ISP provides. Only 5 percent use their ISP's filter in combination with desktop spam-filtering software. It’s a growing issue that all email marketers need to be aware of and consider in future email marketing efforts.

SO IS EMAIL MARKETING DYING?

With spam filters, new regulations and members/customers having multiple email addresses, many Marketers are starting to wonder if email marketing is dying. It’s not dying, it’s evolving, and veteran email marketers now have to be more sophisticated when using the channel.

For instance, DoubleClick reports in one of its studies that respondents have an average of 2.3 email addresses. Members/customers are starting to use available tools to limit spam and are employing separate email accounts in attempts to increase control and improve their email experience. Getting an email address is not as important as getting the RIGHT email address. Consumers report that they have separate email accounts for:

• Surfing and ordering online
• Travel
• Work or business related
• Personal "Friends & Family"

The industry will start to see a new breed of email solutions that help manage this challenge and make the e-contact more valuable.

THE CHANGING e-MARKETING LANDSCAPE

Whether a financial institution chooses to go it alone or with an email marketing partner here are some important things to know and look for in any solution that you deploy in 2004 and beyond. Does your email partner/provider:

Manage Whitelists? Are they proactively managing the process of getting on (and staying on) whitelists and getting off blacklists? Manage the AOL Feedback Loop? If enough members click "report spam" in emails from the CU in their AOL mailbox and the CU continues to send email, AOL can blacklist the CU. Manage reverse look-ups for their IP addresses? Many ISPs check the validity of the return IP address before delivering emails to your members/customers. A bad return address will prevent email from going forward. Send outbound emails in smaller batches? A large volume of emails all at once with bad email addresses is a spam signal and could automatically have that batch blocked by many ISPs. Automatically turn off bad email addresses? Emails sent to a permanently closed address is another reason ISPs will block mail.

DigitalMailer continues to be a leader in using the Internet to help financial institutions communicate with their members/customers. We employ active white list management and all the practices mentioned above so there’s no need to scrap your email address database and strategies. For more information on how we can become your email sender at a fraction of the cost or help you manage this in-house visit www.digitalmailer.com or send an email to info@digitalmailer.com for additional information.

For a FREE report on how to improve your email marketing titled "Electronic Messaging Tips For Email Success" click on the report icon or visit http://www.digitalmailer.com/offerings.html

To subscribe to our eNewsletter that shares resources, industry trends, best practices and valuable lessons learned from financial institutions and financial service providers, click on the icon or visit: http://www.digitalmailer.com/newsletter.html

DigitalMailer is a digital communication company with products such as e-Lerts, eSurveys and eStatements that assist financial institutions in gaining a strategic business advantage via the Internet. Please contact Ron Daly rdaly@digitalmailer.com or Greg Crandell gcrandell@digitalmailer.com for additional information or to share your ideas and comments.

© 2006 DMI