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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Yesmail Market Intelligence recently conducted an IP forensic examination on a top retailer and has identified that their ESP may be using their IP addresses to improve performance of campaigns sent from other marketers. More

The lifeblood of an email program is an IP address.  It's the necessary mechanic buried deep within the email machine that makes delivery possible.  As IP technology continues its evolution and maturation, ISPs are now able to store sending reputation on IP addresses and also the Senders that are using them.  An IP address with a positive reputation is priceless, as it significantly improves an email campaign's chances of reaching the inbox.  Yesmail Market Intelligence recently conducted an IP forensic examination on a top retailer and has identified that their ESP may be using their IP addresses to improve performance of campaigns sent from other marketers.

 

We have uncovered that during the past 12 months, this retailer's email campaigns are being sent from over 19 different IP addresses (see Figure 1).  This seems highly irregular, as programs similar in size to this retailer only require 4-8 IP addresses on average.  Additionally, Yesmail Market Intelligence has detected over 25 other major companies mailing off these same IP addresses (see Figure 2) during the same time that this retailer had used, or was using them to deploy email campaigns. 

 

Retailers, like these, may have no idea their ESP is leveraging their reputable IP addresses and reputation to increase performance of less established marketers and reach recipient inboxes without having first built their own reputation.  Sharepool technology is highly frowned upon by the ISP community and leads to several other deliverability issues long-term. Marketers should always request dedicated IP addresses from their ESP, as it only takes a single marketer with a faulty campaign to cause an entire sharepool to become blocked, or worse, tarnish the reputation of the established marketers using these IPs.   

 

The million dollar question remains: Do these retailers know they are sharing IPs? 

 

Curious to learn if your IPs are being used by other marketers? Email sales@yesmail.com or contact us directly at 1-877-YESMAIL.

 

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Ken Magill from Direct posted a great summary on the "Habeas Fire Sale" today:http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/0812-habeas-fire-sale/A few snippets:"'They were bleeding money' to the tune of millions of dollars a year, said one source who asked not to be identified.""Habeas's investors also apparently... More

Ken Magill from Direct posted a great summary on the "Habeas Fire Sale" today:

http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/0812-habeas-fire-sale/

A few snippets:

"'They were bleeding money' to the tune of millions of dollars a year, said one source who asked not to be identified."

"Habeas's investors also apparently made it a little too clear they wanted out of the deliverability business."

"Those VCs [Habeas's venture capitalist investors] took a bath," said one source."

"Various sources also speculated that Return Path agreed to the deal because Habeas's pricing was so low, it was putting unreasonable downward price pressure on its competitors and the purchase simply takes Habeas out of the picture."

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Suffice it to say, Habeas was a company that was not going anywhere fast and needed an escape pod. It looks like they found one in Return Path.
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Hot off the press - Return Path is further consolidating the deliverability services space by announcing its intent to acquire Habeas. The acquisition should help reduce the confusion in the market surrounding the various deliverability service providers. Matt Blumberg the... More

Hot off the press - Return Path is further consolidating the deliverability services space by announcing its intent to acquire Habeas. The acquisition should help reduce the confusion in the market surrounding the various deliverability service providers.

Matt Blumberg the CEO and Chairman of Return Path published this key info in his blog today:

"For sender clients, we can now offer expanded service levels and access to a broader "footprint" of ISPs and filters who subscribe to our services. The consolidated company will be one step closer to providing a universal set of standards for measuring sender-focused email quality and reputation...The one thing we do know at this point is that we will be maintaining both Sender Score Certified and the Habeas SafeList as separate and distinct whitelist programs indefinitely."

We recently announced a partnership with Return Path offering their Sender Score Certified Program to our clients. Several clients who have been initial users of the program have seen great improvement in overall program performance including increased open and click rates.

Return Path's key competitor and the remaining force in the world of deliverability, Pivotal Veracity, remains a strong partner of ours. Several of our clients routinely take advantage of their inbox monitoring and content optimization tools.

It will be interesting to see how this acquisition drives the further development of both Return Path and Pivotal Veracity.

More to come for sure... Less