Email Marketing Lounge

Just a short post this week to point out an interesting development in Google AdWords that may have a great impact on email marketing in the near future. For the last year or so, Google has been offering AdWords extensions,... More

Just a short post this week to point out an interesting development in Google AdWords that may have a great impact on email marketing in the near future.

For the last year or so, Google has been offering AdWords extensions, which enable advertisers to display more information about their company, such as product details, a phone number, or a link to store directions, within their text ads. It's been a great boost for PPC and SEM marketers, but has had a limited influence on email marketing campaigns.

Interestingly, a new feature within AdWords extensions has cropped up:  the ability to capture email addresses directly within the text ad. So, for example, if I search for "Daily Deals" and an interesting text ad appears, I'm now able to subscribe to that brand's promotional emails without ever leaving the search page.  Better yet, if I'm signed into my Google account, my email address is pre-populated into the field, eliminating one more step in the email registration process.



Right now, Google's still testing this capability, but if it becomes a mainstream addition to AdWords extensions, it will hold some interesting implications for email marketers as another avenue to acquire subscribers.  This could impact marketing in three ways:

1. Copywriting: Right now, text ad copy is written to encourage click-throughs to a landing page and is usually targeted around branded and non-branded keywords. With the ability to offer instantaneous email subscriptions, email marketers may have to work with their SEM counterparts to produce subscriber acquisition strategies and copy that encourage people to sign-up there and then. This could be a mean feat given Adword's 75 character limit for descriptions, but luckily people in email marketing have some experience with this given our need to write enticing subject lines. 
   
   
2. Triggered Campaigns: Currently, to my knowledge, AdWords' email extension doesn't offer integration into any email marketing software. However, if it does (and my opinion is that it should, otherwise managing successful AdWords-based acquisition will be a nightmare), this opens up the question of how to successfully engage these new subscribers, who may have signed up for your email without viewing your landing page and so have a limited awareness of your brand.
   
   
3. Tighter cross-team coordination: In order to provide a consistent brand experience to web visitors, email marketers will have to coordinate acquisition campaigns to a much closer degree with SEM marketers to prioritize requirements. For example, which AdWords campaigns get priority during the all-important holiday season?  Which keywords are related to which campaigns?

I would love to hear your comments and opinions on this, especially if you've been part of Google's beta-test for this extension.
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Even in a recession, Mother's Day holds a special place in our holiday calendars. According to National Retail Federation's 2012 consumer spending survey conducted by BIGinsight, the average person celebrating Mother's Day is expected to spend $152.52 on gifts, up... More

Even in a recession, Mother's Day holds a special place in our holiday calendars. According to National Retail Federation's 2012 consumer spending survey conducted by BIGinsight, the average person celebrating Mother's Day is expected to spend $152.52 on gifts, up from $140.73 last year. As overall spending increases, marketers have a unique opportunity to capitalize on this year's Mother's Day trends to drive sales.

What trends are emerging for Mother's Day 2012?

The online shopper presents an ever-expanding area of opportunity for marketers. According to NRF's survey over a quarter of all shoppers will buy Mother's Day gifts online this year, up from 21.5 percent in 2011.

Mobile is decisively on the rise, as 39.3 percent of Smartphone owners and 51.2 percent of tablet owners plan to use their devices to research products, compare prices, redeem coupons, look up retailer information and purchase Mother's Day gifts.

How are these trends relevant to your brand?

Mother's Day presents a great opportunity to sneak a peek into trends for the 2012 holiday season, as it falls right between shopping-heavy periods ranging from back-to-school, Black Friday & Cyber Monday, the winter shopping season and Valentine's Day. As consumers are increasing their spend and embracing online shopping on a variety of devices, marketers need to adapt and ensure that:

• Key competitors' digital campaigns for Mother's Day are closely monitored across multiple channels. Based on this competitive intelligence your digital marketing strategy should be continuously updated to counter competitive offers, adjust creative direction, and engage tech-savvy and increasingly brand-agnostic shoppers who are interested in both quality and savings. Having this type of competitive frame of reference will not only enable you to develop relevant insights from each campaign your competition deploys and optimize your own multi-channel marketing efforts, but it will also assist you in mapping out proactive strategy that helps boost sales in real time.
  
  
• Email marketing, landing pages and websites are perfectly scalable to any mobile device so customers are able to locate all pertinent information quickly and easily whenever and wherever they prefer.
  
  
• Email subject lines and content are optimized to grab and hold customer's attention, since email marketing is increasingly a key driver of purchase for online shopping.
  
  
• The brand is consistent across multiple digital touch-points ranging from email, Facebook and Twitter to landing pages and website. Since online shoppers are ever more present and engaged with brands across multiple channels, it's important to be loud and clear about the value your brand is providing. 
  
  
• Digital campaign efforts are properly measured in order to assess ROI. Even though this has been traditionally challenging for marketers, Yesmail Interactive discovered a strong correlation between email marketing and social engagement. According to this finding, customer engagement in social channels grows when email campaigns are deployed in the same timeframe. 

These four points in combination will enable you to take a multi-channel marketing approach that is informed by competitive intelligence, optimized in accordance with industry trends, measurable across multiple digital channels and designed to outperform your competition.

How can you implement these insights today?

A recent article by Internet Retailer suggests that 8% of Mother's Day shoppers will buy gifts within 48 hours of the holiday. This gives marketers ample opportunity to apply the insights outlined above and quickly develop a multi-channel marketing effort that communicates truly competitive offers, engages their database and translates into higher sales. Follow 1800Flowers' example and do it yourself.

Subject Line: Time Is Running Out. Make Mom Smile with Over 50 Blooms of Lilies, just $29.99! (social share buttons included - sent 5/9)

1. Identify top competitors, view popular campaigns, assess their special Mother's Day offers and develop an informed multi-channel strategy
2. Send a mobile scalable email with an inviting design, attention-grabbing subject line, easy to read copy, and a prominently featured Mother's Day deal that beats competitive offers
3. Ensure the email is easily shareable with the recipient's networks through prominently displayed social share buttons
4. Follow up with a Facebook campaign that reiterates the great offer previously communicated in the email and provide an extra incentive to turn the campaign view into a conversion (in this instance, 1800Flowers offers a free Mother's Day eCard)
5. Finish with a final reminder over Twitter that works two-fold: on one hand, it prompts engagement by providing great value (like a complimentary Mother's Day eCard) while subtly promoting a featured offer once the customer has clicked on the advertised link.
   

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Today's email design creative spotlight is on the redesign of HP's Tech at Work newsletter. One of the goals of this email design was to lend a fun and engaging editorial quality to the email newsletter.  We started by making... More

Today's email design creative spotlight is on the redesign of HP's Tech at Work newsletter. One of the goals of this email design was to lend a fun and engaging editorial quality to the email newsletter.  We started by making the content larger and adding a new social section that incorporated timely content from Facebook and Twitter. For flexibility, we ensured we had a mobile-ready layout and went with single-column stacked sections. These revamp efforts would not have been possible without the help of our Partners at HP. As Scott Seiter, Designer at Yesmail said, 'One of the best B2B tech newsletters out there, HP pushed us to innovate!'


There were 3 main elements we added to HP's newsletter to achieve the engaging editorial style:

The Personalized Greeting from the editor was an easy way to give newsletter content a  human touch--a quality that goes a long way when competing with the barrage of retail messages and inbox noise.

The Jargon Watch section featured interesting industry terms and their definitions, and appeared as a kind of Easter egg item(aka fun surprise) near the end of the newsletter. This fun-yet-informative content gave readers something to look forward to, adding yet another incentive to open each month.

The Social Hub allowed for the integration of video and image posts from HP's Facebook page and tweets from Twitter, giving the tech giant a great opportunity to keep newsletter content fresh, current, and aligned with its social marketing channels.

So what do you think about this design, what do you like or what would you recommend? What newsletters have you seen that stand out in your inbox?

Want more inspiration? Be sure to check out our Email Design Look Book 2012 for more creative email inspiration. Less

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to beautiful Captiva Island, Florida with my colleagues Jason Warnock, Jordan Mallin, and Matt Gault to represent Yesmail Interactive at the 2012 Email Insider Summit brought to us by MediaPost.  After 4... More

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to beautiful Captiva Island, Florida with my colleagues Jason Warnock, Jordan Mallin, and Matt Gault to represent Yesmail Interactive at the 2012 Email Insider Summit brought to us by MediaPost.  After 4 days of engaging content and conversation with email marketing industry professionals, I returned to Chicago enlightened, tanned, and ready to take action and begin implementing key takeaways from the event.

Day 1: The festivities kicked off with an evening cocktail party on Sunset Beach at the South Seas Island Resort, host site of the Summit.  Attendees filed in and mingled in anticipation of the next 3 days of presentations and panels.  The Yesmail team made the most of this opportunity to create buzz around Jason Warnock's Competitive Digital Intelligence presentation on the morning of Day 3 and we were excited to show off the new Yesmail Interactive rebranded logo as we exchanged business cards with email marketing professionals.

Day 2: The theme of the first full day was "The Role of Email In an Integrated Marketing Strategy." The knowledge share focused on how email marketing is essential for brands to market effectively and the internal struggles many email marketers have within organizations to convey the value email plays in an overall marketing mix.  As a part of the integrated marketing discussion, the topic of how utilizing data can power more intelligent marketing and where email data fits in the fold was debated.  The presentations and panels wrapped as everyone in the room was left chewing on all the integrated marketing tips and ideas around leveraging data to gain a competitive advantage.  After the learnings of day 2, the Yesmail team was excited and anxious for the next morning to discuss gaining a competitive advantage through competitive intelligence.

Day 3: No better way to start a day centered around "Hot Topics in Email Marketing" than with a Yesmail sponsored breakfast and Jason Warnock's Competitive Digital Intelligence presentation, but not before kudos from the moderator and a round of applause from the gallery for Yesmail's rebranding efforts.  The audience was captivated and intrigued by the data and premise of Yesmail's Market Intelligence tool, leaving no brand in attendance not wondering what their competitive set looks like in this one of kind, centralized digital marketing campaign platform.  After all the conversation on day 2 around how to power more intelligent and relevant interactions with a brand's customers, it was clear that Yesmail was truly embracing and providing a tangible path to achieve this goal for our partners.  The day continued with presentations and discussions around testing, email append theory, and ROI attribution.  Roundtables focused on a variety of topics but the buzz around the "Competitive Advantage Through Customer Insight" table centered around how Yesmail is the first ESP to embrace the significance of understanding your competition in today's flooded marketing world. 

Day 4: The final day focused on "Channel Integration."  Yesmail provided a great conversation starter with the Yesmail Market Intelligence analysis on day 3 of an example retailer competitive set's social campaigns and strategy.  As effective social integrations and theories were presented, it continued to drive home the importance of understanding and utilizing a solution like Yesmail Market Intelligence to make sure your brand isn't missing out on an opportunity to further engage your customer base.  Lastly the emerging area of mobile was introduced and debated as another area email marketers need to better understand the opportunity that exists via this communication format.

All and all, the Email Insider's Summit was an exciting event where I was able to learn a lot from other fellow email marketers nd Yesmail was able to showcase our unique approach to servicing our customers.  The rebranding efforts and development around new technologies like Market Intelligence was able to create great momentum and energy around the business.   Less

A former comic book geek explains what the Avengers can teach marketers on how to run a successful email marketing program. More

As most of my friends know, I'm a reformed comic book geek. Even through I've long left my Batman lunchbox, Spiderman action figure, and Saturday morning cartoons behind, I'm still looking forward to the release of the Avengers movie this week.

With that being said, I thought I'd write a short blog post to celebrate the release, so here's 5 things that the Avengers can teach us about email marketing (For all you other geeks out there, I know there's a huge roster, so I'm only going to focus on the characters in the upcoming movie).

Captain America

While I've never been a big fan--the Capt. is little too nice for me--he's undeniably the leader of the Avengers. He's not the most powerful member, but the Avengers are led by him; he has been the one mainstay throughout everything, even when the entire team roster changed in Avengers #16. He's undeniably the Avenger's guiding light.

Successful email marketing programs also need a guiding set of values and principles that resonate with their subscribers. This helps to build a community, which ultimately means subscribers look forward to your emails. 

This community and its values must be protected, which can sometimes mean tough email list management choices: when the pressures on for more ROI, do we send another email without thinking about customer value or do we take a more long term view. As email marketers we need to know when to look to our values to guide our organization's actions, as Captain America does for the Avengers.

Hawkeye

A former villain turned good guy, the world's greatest archer rarely misses his mark and has a trick arrow to meet every situation. Flare arrow, explosive arrow, or smoke arrow, you name it, Hawkeye has probably shot it from his bow at some time or another.  I think the most ridiculous one was the boxing glove arrow.

What does Hawkeye stand for?  Pretty obvious--customer targeting, and making sure you have the right content for each target.

Ironman

While technology has always been important to Iron Man, I've always been more impressed by his ability to win the day through the use of his intelligence, like when he defeated a War Machine, who had a more technologically advanced suit of armor.

For email marketers, who have to build more complex programs and use more advanced email marketing platforms, the message is clear: sometimes it's not about the technology, but the people who are the key to success.  That's why quality account management and professional services are becoming more important, as reported in Forrester Research's 2012 Email Marketing Wave.

Thor

For the Norse god of Thunder, the most valuable lesson he ever learned was humility. Time and again, Thor has reached some sort of pinnacle--such as becoming the ruler of Asgard (the mythical home of the Norse gods) or rebuilding Asgard over Oklahoma (yup, that was an actual story line)--only to be bought back to Earth (pun not intended).

Moral of the story: just because your email marketing is going well, don't assume that's all there is to it. Be ready to introduce new elements into your email campaigns and be prepared to test to see what works best. Sometimes the results are counter-intuitive, such as one test I ran where a text-only HTML email outperformed one with imagery.

Black Widow

Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow was a former Soviet spy before becoming part of the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D, an international spy group. As part of these groups, she has consistently used her skills to provide intelligence that directly influenced plans.

Smart email marketers are also starting to use competitive intelligence, enabling their brand to stay on top of consumers' minds ahead of its competitors. For example, during the all-important Holiday season, Verizon could monitor AT&T's digital channels and email promotions and come up with a counter-strategy. So, if AT&T offers a discount on a certain Smartphone, Verizon could follow suit in Real-time or perhaps provide an offer that is more enticing.

The Hulk

One of the most memorable superheroes, The Hulk possesses near limitless physical strength depending on his emotional state--the angrier he gets; the more powerful he becomes. He's a great reminder that the most important thing that we have to do as marketers is to connect with consumers at an emotional level.

To help me remember this, I'm a big fan of the CURVE mnemonic (Curiosity, Urgency, Relevancy, Value, and Emotion), which was first introduced to me by Alex William's post.  Alex argues that all email subject lines require at least two of these elements; however I think the same argument is applicable to all
marketing touch points.

There you go: an Avengers-inspired post. I hope you enjoyed it. Would love to hear your comments and questions, so feel free to leave a note below.
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Looking for a fun way to get cool characters into your subject lines? Since last week we discussed some quick fixes to the email rendering issues that Hotmail had encountered with symbols in email designs(now resolved), we decided this week... More

Looking for a fun way to get cool characters into your subject lines?

Since last week we discussed some quick fixes to the email rendering issues that Hotmail had encountered with symbols in email designs(now resolved), we decided this week we would dive into a fun way to use symbols in order to make your email marketing campaigns stick out in your customer's inbox.

As an example, see how Gilt has already started utilizing this as a tactic to gain opens. Unlike the rest of the text-only subject line, Gilt is able to differentiate itself from the average text only subject line to grab the reader's attention among a clutter inbox. 

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Emoji - a Japanese term for picture characters (such as emoticons) often used in electronic messages and content. Last week we saw an industry wide email rendering change within all Hotmail accounts.  Hotmail users saw that specific ASCII characters within... More

Emoji - a Japanese term for picture characters (such as emoticons) often used in electronic messages and content.

Last week we saw an industry wide email rendering change within all Hotmail accounts.  Hotmail users saw that specific ASCII characters within their emails were replaced with gif images.  The swapped out characters included "©", "®", and "™" along with the spade "♠", club "♣", heart "♥" and diamond "♦". These characters were replaced with a standard 19x19 pixel Microsoft emoji icon, which typically disrupted an email marketer's branding.

While Hotmail was rolling out new changes and improvements to their emoji system, it seems that the copyright, trademark, and registered trademark symbols have also been included in their emoji package.  Within an email's source code you would now find embedded HTML code for these emoji gifs (http://gfx2.hotmail.com/mail/w4/pr04/ltr/emoji/emoji_000A9.gif).

This change in the emoji system even caused Microsoft's own branding within their email marketing messages to be affected(unintentionally). Less

My previous interview on email deliverability with Bob Sybydlo, Yesmail's Director of Deliverability,  generated a lot of interest, so I thought I'd make it part of three-part series. Since the last post was on the general state of email deliverability... More

My previous interview on email deliverability with Bob Sybydlo, Yesmail's Director of Deliverability,  generated a lot of interest, so I thought I'd make it part of three-part series.

Since the last post was on the general state of email deliverability and how email inboxing rates are declining, I thought I would focus this post by asking Bob how email marketers can improve their email deliverability.

The importance of goals

Kam: Thanks for taking some time out again. We had a lot of interest in our last email deliverability blog post. A lot of people picked up on your comments about fundamental principles marketers can apply to their email marketing program to improve its deliverability. So, I was wondering if you could share some of those principles, perhaps the top five principles you think all email programs should follow.

Bob: The top five that every email program should follow?  Let's see. I think the first principle would be to clearly define the goal of your email marketing program--is  it a deal of the program, a weekly newsletter, a transactional program, or simply a marketing message--and then to understand just exactly how you are going to target its audience. 

Kam: So when you mean what is the goal of the program, I mean how does that relate to email deliverability.  I mean surely from a deliverability perspective, the goal is always going to be I want a 100% inboxing.

Bob:  When I say the goal, I'm referring to the purpose of your email marketing program. Because the purpose of your email program will directly affect its configuration and set-up; if the set-up is not correctly identified and implemented "100% inboxing" will likely not be possible. The most important thing to understand is your audience, specifically your email list, and how these addresses engage with your messages. If you are emailing different types of marketing messages, you want to understand how those messages should be spread out.  Should they be spread out at different times of the day, sent from different setting domains, or different mailing divisions?  So spreading out your email marketing program impacts deliverability in many ways and it's a practice that ISPs recommend. 

Kam: Can you give an example?

Bob:  When I first started working with one of our clients as part of our email deliverability assistance network (DAN) program, the first thing that I wanted to do was understand the entire program and everything it was sending out to its customers.  And what I noticed was that all of the various company divisions were piled on top of each other and sending from a single IP set. This IP set was sending for a B-to-B program, a B-to-C program, a transactional program, as well as a daily deal program simultaneously. Each program sent a different amount of email volume, generated different levels of user engagement and was collecting data in completely different ways.  So what would happen was one division would mail, so the B-to-B division would mail, in low volumes, and generate a certain amount of user engagement, and then the next day or even later that day the B-to-C program would mail to a much larger audience and begin generating very high amounts of abuse complaints, when compared to what was generated during the initial B-to-B mailing. When an ISP system looked at the wildly fluctuating volume, engagement rates, and abuse complaints, they would see low volumes offset with high amounts of complaints generated by a different campaign and program all together. The client was constantly being blocked by the ISPs or sent to their spam folders.  So the first thing we needed to do was to split the program up so that the different divisions were not polluting each other. 

Kam: I guess it means you can isolate the problem and fix it rather than having this huge smorgasboard that's sending out and not really knowing what's causing the problem. 

Bob:  That is correct.  This way it was easier for us to troubleshoot what mailing program was actually responsible for the Deliverability issues their entire program was previously experiencing.  So now, while we troubleshot the problematic mailing program, the other three where able to continue mailing without consequence.

Update your database--out with the old; in with the new

Kam: Got it. OK, so what would be your 2^nd recommendation?

Bob: Always keep your database up to date. Just like what we were talking about last time. Keep it fresh, keep it clean--make sure you are removing complainers and account for who do not show any signs of life, get your new subscribers in there and make sure that you are always targeting appropriately.

Kam: Other than the basics, like getting rid of bad addresses, can you elaborate a bit more?

Bob: Sure. Email marketers need to understand as much as possible about the information coming into their systems.  So if you are collecting email addresses from a website, you should try to track when they came into your system, what IP address did they opt-in from, and when is the last time they showed signs of life, aka Engagement? If a subscriber entered your system years ago and has not responded to any of your messages, then it is possible they may never choose to engage in your program, and you must find an appropriate time to remove them out of the program.  Eventually these addresses may become harmful to your email reputation.  ISPs have a responsibility to make sure their users get the emails they want, and do not get the emails they don't want.  So if ISPs are seeing too many of their accounts receiving messages that their subscribers are simply not engaging in,  then they may choose to send all of your stuff to the spam folder.  So as you can imagine,  large amounts of these inactive accounts will offset your ratio of volume to engagement rates.  Again, always understanding what is in your database and cleaning up your old and inactive stuff is vital to maintaining good sender reputation.  ISPs are expecting you to constantly update your list anyway like this.

Brand Recognition--it's good to be known

Kam: What's your 3^rd tip?

Bob: I would definitely say #3 is branding and layout. For example, Make sure that your email, matches your Facebook, that in turn matches you company website. If the brand identification is established quickly with your receiving subscribers they will know who you are and are more likely to take a look at what you have to say. From an email perspective, that means your subject line, from-name, and message name, and all that kind of stuff, so that this works synergy between all these within brand. 

Kam: Ok. So the branding and creative, making sure that they all match together, is that just to make sure that people can recognize new the moment that they see your email in their inbox?

Bob: Yep. Brand recognition. Making sure that they see that logo, they know the company name, so that they can identify who has sent them this message, that they know why they received this message, and they will be much more likely to engage, click through, and end up on the web page. 

Who do you trust?

Kam: What's next?

Bob: Recommendation #4 would be trust your account management team and, of course, your Deliverability team. Share with them what you want to do and what you are going to be doing, so that they know what is going on.  Your account team can then help you with that process, so you've got to trust them.  A good account team can be a second pair of eyes and set of hands on your account, will provide independent advice and sometimes play the devil's advocate if needbe regarding a certain email campaign strategy or approach. And again, trust your deliverability guy, because the recommendations that come from them are always to make sure that the email marketing program performs optimally, doing whatever needs to be done to hit subscribers' inboxes and that you get the engagement rates that you want. 

Kam: Can you give examples of the types of things clients should discuss with their ESP?

Bob: Discuss with your deliverability guy what you are trying to do.  Achieving 100% inboxing and mailing as much data as you have are often two opposing ideas, but the deliverability team is always working to achieve the best possible results for your email program, and the road to get there can mean many different things.  During the Holidays, your mailing volume and subscriber list could change drastically and there is a right way and a wrong way to approach this.  Specific peak volume seasons such as: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Father's Day, Mother's Day, and the Back to School season, are all lucrative times of the year for email marketing, and in regards to the current email deliverability landscape, it is critical that we approach these seasons correctly.

No ID? No Service.

Kam: I noticed you didn't mention any technical elements, such as email authentication, in your four tips?

Bob: [Laughs] Email authentication is, of course, extremely important.  Sender Policy framework, domain keys, sender ID, DKIM and so on.  Yesmail provides each of these and we keep those up to date with our clients.  They're extremely important when it comes to defining your email program and then delivering your mail consistently.  Having your Authentication in check has become a bare minimum, and you need to go beyond that to achieve great deliverability.

How are you ensuring your email deliverability is as close to 100% inboxing as possible? Leave a post on this blog or feel free to contact us at marketing@yesmail.com.

(Image attribution: Hand and Paw courtesy of Superfantastic) Less

Most Marketers likely feel as though this topic has worn out its welcome-(pun intended). However, the 'Welcome Message' is all grown up now and is ready to put its talents to work for you as a part of your email... More

Most Marketers likely feel as though this topic has worn out its welcome-(pun intended). However, the 'Welcome Message' is all grown up now and is ready to put its talents to work for you as a part of your email marketing program. Years ago, Marketers added the simple Welcome Message out of necessity to confirm a subscription- back in the days of the dreadful double opt-in process.  Less

Yesterday afternoon the Yesmail Creative Services team detected that a major change had just occurred within the Hotmail system.  The Windows Live Hotmail email platform had begun replacing specific ASCII symbols within the HTML and subject lines of the messages... More

Yesterday afternoon the Yesmail Creative Services team detected that a major change had just occurred within the Hotmail system.  The Windows Live Hotmail email platform had begun replacing specific ASCII symbols within the HTML and subject lines of the messages within your Hotmail email account. 

What are these ASCII characters being replaced with? Well, they are being replaced with a standard Hotmail image gif of the symbol you originally tried to type in your email creative.  The issue here is that these images display these characters in one size and one font, and this standard size and font are not set to match the size and font you used within your email.  The specific characters Hotmail is targeting and swapping out here are "©", "®", and "™" along with the spade(♠), club (♣), heart (♥) and diamond (♦).

The main issue here is the fact that these standard images stick out like sore thumbs within your Hotmail account, and they break the look of any text font or color branding a corporation uses when creating their emails.  If your email contains one of these characters within the subject line, then again these images are swapped in.

The source code of your message within the Hotmail interface will now have new HTML code embedded where your Copyright and Registered trademarks were: "http://gfx2.hotmail.com/mail/w4/pr04/ltr/emoji/emoji_000A9.gif"

The Yesmail Deliverability Team jumped in to investigate and spent several hours on the phone with the Microsoft Central Support team discussing this issue.  As it turned out, we ended up informing them that this issue was occurring within their platform.  This was especially concerning on their end as we showed them that even Microsoft's own marketing emails are showcasing this image swap, and their own branded look has been broken.  The example below is from a Microsoft XBOX marketing message:


As this problem still persists currently, we will be continuing to work with them today to understand what type of change occurred within their system, and if they will choose to roll it back, or push it forward as a new rendering standard.  For the time being, the Yesmail Creative team is replacing these symbols with either custom images that match the font face, size, color and background of your message or a simple text version within parenthesis e.g. (TM)(C)(R) etc.  This will easily help maintain the consistency and branding of your message creative until the issue is resolved. Less