Monitoring Email Marketing

Sites like Gilt Groupe, Ruelala and Groupon are raising lots of money and acquiring members quickly.  It is a real land grab to see who will own the social commerce/flash marketing/private sales market space.  Since these sites are mostly member based and communicate their offers by email to their members, the EDS panel is ideally suited to tracking which of these players is gaining momentum.  The following is a run down of some of the main players, their comparative reach / membership base (based on the number of unique EDS panelists reached each overly the last thirty days) and some of their strategies and techniques when it comes to engaging customers via email.

1.  Gilt Groupe:  The luxury brand flash sale site reached an estimated 2.65 million uniques during the 30 days ended July 15.  Each day Gilt sent out an email blast for its main sales event that starts at noon.  As many as seven different subject lines are used for each blast, usually with a different ordering of the brands that are on sale.  Additionally an "after hours" sale takes place every few days, and Gilt sends out a blast to its entire membership base promoting this event.  The Jetsetter travel offshoot of Gilt reached an estimated 400,000 uniques during the same 30 day period.

2.  Ruelala:  Over the last 30 days Ruelala reached an estimated 1.47 million uniques.  This is a fairly low number, given that as of two months ago EDS logged Ruelala as reaching 2.0 million uniques.  It could be that the site is experiencing ISP delivery issues or (less likely) a drop off in membership.

3.  Groupon: I guess it can't hurt to get a $135 million investment to grow your membership base.  Groupon, the city by city "deal of the day" site that gets deep discounts for members based on the number of people who sign up for the offer, reached a whopping 11.1 million unique users by email during the last 30 days, according to EDS estimates.  Where is Groupon's membership the largest?  Atlanta, surprisingly, is at the top of the list.

4.  Shopittome: Shopittome, started well before the rest of the gang, and using a different approach, seems to be reaching an impressively large audience.  Our recent estimate is that they are reaching 5.6 million users, which is significant given that Techcrunch reported their membership as 3 million in April.  A major site re-design launched May 31 could be a contributing factor.  Unlike the others in this group, which send a few offers to a large number of people, Shop It To Me allows users to specify specific brands that they want to see offers on.  Offers are then collected from multiple sources and sent in an email digest.

We will check back in a month to report on which of these sites has gained or lost email market share. 

Internet Retailer's June Issue had an
interesting article about "Recession-Busters", meaning those internet retailers that significantly grew web sales from 2008-2009 despite the tough economy.  The article pointed to diapers.com as a succes story and mentioned that their growth was aided by key partnerships such as that with BabyCenter.com (a unit of Johnson & Johnson). 

When it comes to email marketing, a quick look at Email Analyst shows that Diapers.com is indeed making the most of its partnership with BabyCenter.  The June 9, 2010 campaign shown here for from "BabyCenter Partners" for Diapers.com went to an estimated 2.6 million BabyCenter subscribers, and dedicated blasts such as these from BabyCenter Partners featuring Diapers.com have been going out approximately once per week since June of 2008.  Diapers.com has also been promoted in the "My Toddler This Week" and "Pregnancy Bulletin newsletters from BabyCenter.com since May of 2008. 

Email Data Source estimates the monthly unique user reach of the combined BabyCenter email newsletters to be 10.4 million, making the relationship a strong distribution source  for Diapers.com

The June 2010 edition of Internet Retailer shows who the top gainers and losers were in terms of web sales among internet retailers.  We took a look at their list of the biggest winners and the biggest losers and pulled data from Email Analyst to get a sense of how their email marketing efforts corresponded to their web sales performance.  The results are tabulated below, and there's no doubt that the two went hand in hand.

The retailers with the largest growth in email marketing efforts (as measured by the growth in the number of email campaigns, including their own campaigns and third party campaigns that link back to the retailer's website) were Crocs.com, Express and Meijer.com. 

Retailer	2009 Email Campaigns	2008 Email Campaigns	Email Campaign Growth	Web Sales Growth
Crocs.com	222	27	722%	104%
Express.com	385	94	310%	238%
Meijer.com	254	128	98%	116%
The North Face	103	52	98%	63%
Golfsmith	313	213	47%	-26%
Diapers.com	177	129	37%	104%
Green Mountain Coffee	444	345	29%	50%
Design Within Reach	152	123	24%	-29%
iRobot.com	121	105	15%	-23%
DSW.com	203	201	1%	87%
Boston Apparel Group	687	736	-7%	-23%
Ann Taylor	557	601	-7%	-20%
Scholastic.com	195	391	-50%	-23%
Bidz.com	1,911	4,897	-61%	-47%
Nascar.com Superstore	44	157	-72%	-32%

Following up on our last blog post about Apple's email reach, we took a look at the buzz being generated by media outlets talking about the iPhone 4.  Specifically we looked at the email news alerts they have sent out in the last week.  Of the 50 news alerts from major publications that contained "iPhone 4" in the subject line, only 5 had actual links to apple.com in the body of the email.  The rest discussed the iPhone 4 but contained no links to apple.com

What does this mean for Apple?  It means that these email news alerts added an estimated 12 million unique users reached by email with news of the iPhone 4 release, but that only 500,000 or so of these unique users had a direct link to apple.com in the email news alert they received.



 

As Email Data Source has blogged about previously, Apple has tremendous reach through its email lists, derived from Mac owners, itunes users, and iphone and ipad buyers.  Apple's big news at the moment is the introduction of iPhone 4.  Their email campaign introducing the iPhone 4 went out to an estimated 80 million unique users yesterday, June 8. 

Interestingly, the campaign was sent to fewer people than the "iPad is Coming" campaign sent to an estimated 104 million unique users on March 12, 2010.  We would have expected that Apple would blast the iPhone 4 announcement out to its entire user base.  In particular, it is worth noting that the 80 million unique users includes various versions of the campaign sent out internationally as well as to subscribers to the main Apple News list.  Email Data Source logged versions of the iPhone 4 campaign in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, across Asia, and in Europe in English, Italian, German, French and Spanish.   

Recently we began tracking phishing schemes targeting US financial institutions in greater depth.  Here is a quick run down of the larger phishing schemes targeting Bank of America during the last two weeks:

The first sample phishing scheme spoofed the email address "online@bankofamerica.com" and had the subject line "Alert Message".  The attack reached 5.65% of our AOL email panelists.  AOL delivered the email to the inbox instead of the spam folder for 82.6% of recipients.  After this one send, the same attack was not repeated through May 24.

The second sample phishing scheme spoofed the email address "service@bankofamerica.com".  Starting May 15 we recorded repeated attacks each day through May 24.  The attack was focused on gmail users and reached as many as 0.3% of our gmail panelists on May 15.  Over the course of the next week the phishing scam continued to be received, reaching 0.27% of gmail panel users on the 16th, 0.21% of panel users on the 17th, and continuing to decline.  Gmail successfully placed 100% of the emails in the spam folder and none in the inbox.

The third sample phishing scheme spoofed the email address "security-alerts@bankofamerica.com" with the subject line "Important Security Update".  This phishing attach was detected on May then again on May 23, and it targeted AOL, Gmail and Yahoo users.  On May 20th it reached 0.71% of our AOL email panelists and AOL successfully placed the emails in the spam folder for 94% of recipients.  On the same day it reached .02% of our Gmail panelists and gmail successfully put in spam folder for 100% of recipients.  0.13% of our Yahoo panelists received the email, and Yahoo correctly placed the email in the spam folder for 98% of recipients.

Overall Email Data Source recorded 46 email phishing scams spoofing email addresses ending with @bankofamerica.com during the May 15 to May 24 period.  Indeed the majority of email traffic from this sending domain was phishing attempts.  Other Bank of America sending domains, such as emails ending with @ealerts.bankofamerica.com also saw phishing scams, but at a far lower rate.

Email Panel Now Shows Unique User Reach of Major Email Marketers and Trends in Ecommerce Activity of Major Internet Retailers.

New York, NY - May 24, 2010 -- Email Data Source , the leading provider of competitive intelligence for email and social media, announced today that it has doubled the size of its active inbox email panel to more than 600,000 members. The EDS email panel is the first time a Comscore or Nielsen style panel has been put together to measure email reach and inbox placement.

Email Data Source also announced new analytics capabilities which allow the company to track and report on the unique user reach of major email marketers by day, week and month.    

 

This is information that the major ratings agencies should be providing their clients but don’t because they lack the capability

“We are excited to bring this new data to the marketplace. This is information that the major ratings agencies should be providing their clients but don’t because they lack the capability,” said Bill McCloskey, Founder and Chairman of Email Data Source.

An example of the unprecedented insights gained through the EDS panel: Email Data Source reports that for the four day period ended May 7, United Airlines reached an estimated 11.2 million unique users through email. This compares with an email reach of the recently acquired Continental airlines of 7.0 million for the same four day period.

Email Data Source can now also provide data showing trends in ecommerce activity using data collected from its panel. As an example, Email Data Source tracks the number of recipients from the email address auto-confirm@amazon.com and the number of recipients from the email address customerservice@zappos.com with the subject line: Your Order Confirmation. By tallying the number of receipts delivered each day to Email Data Source panelists, the company can identify trends in ecommerce activity.

“Virtually every online sale is confirmed by an email. By tracking the number of email purchase confirmations received by our panelists, we have a great indicator of the number of people purchasing products from major online ecommerce players each day”, said Carter Nicholas, CEO of Email Data Source.

Following the Amazon example, Email Data Source reports that whereas Amazon reached an estimated 14 million unique users through all its email marketing efforts on May 7, the estimated number of people who received an email from auto-confirm@amazon.com (confirming a purchase) on May 7 was 562,000. This compares to an estimated 731,000 purchasers on May 4, 592,000 on May 5, and 627,000 on May 6.

Email Data Source is now the only company able to report on the actual, real world reach of each email marketers and the true inbox placement of each campaign. This gives marketers, for the first time, precise data to benchmark their performance and list size directly against their competitors’ email marketing programs.

 

Email Data Source announced today the top 25 Twitter Brands for the month of April.  Email Data Source produces its Twitter brand rankings by analyzing all tweets that link back to a website, and measuring the reach of these tweets based on the follower base of all people that retweeted the original message.  Factors that contribute to the rankings are:

-Follower base of brand
-Number of tweets of brand
-Number of retweets
-Follower base of retweeters

This analysis provides a real indicator of the traffic driving capabilities of these brands through their Twitter marketing efforts.  The top 25 Twitter Brands for the month of April were:

Site                                         Rank
nytimes.com                              1
eonline.com                               2
abcnews.go.com                        3
stumbleupon.com                      4
cbsnews.com                             5
huffingtonpost.com                    6
twitpic.com                                 7
nfl.com                                       8
instyle.com                                9
theonion.com                            10
ustream.tv                                11
mlb.com                                    12
facebook.com                           13
newsweek.com                        14
nba.com                                   15
pitchfork.com                            16
ew.com                                    17
people.com                              18
youtube.com                            19
msnbc.msn.com                        20
tvguide.com                              21
woot.com                                 22
sportsillustrated.cnn.com         23
etsy.com                                   24
whitehouse.gov                        25

For a complete listing of top Twitter Brands and the full calculations and data behind the Twitter Brand reach calculations, contact Email Data Source for a Twitter Analytics Demo.

Leading up to a holiday such as Mother's Day, when do email marketers start their promotional campaigns?  We took a look at the email campaign stats leading up to Mother's Day and here are the results.  For the six weeks leading up to Mother's day Email Analyst recorded more than 1,700 unique Mother's Day email campaigns from 950 unique senders. 



The vast majority of campaign activity was from marketers in the Flowers & Gifts market sector, but every type of email marketer, from computer manufacturers to non-profits took part in the crescendo.  Most activity took place during the last week of April and first week of May as shown in the graph above.  But the timing of email campaigns also depended on the type of offer being promoted. 

JustFlowers.com was fairly typical of email marketers in the Flowers & Gifts market sector.  These marketers tended to the following pattern: early reminder, promotional sale in advance, a full price promotion with a date reminder, then an urgent last chance email blast.  JustFlowers campaigns came out as follows:

Early Reminder:
April 27: Mother's Day is 12 Days Away
April 29: Mother's Day Flower Sale at JustFlowers.com

Advance Promotional Sale:
April 30: JustFlowers.com Mother's Day Savings

Full Price Promotion with Date Reminder:
May 2: Mother's Day is 1 Week Away.  Send Mom Fresh Flowers
May 5: Mother's Day is in 4 Days - JustFlowers.com

Urgent Last Chance:
May 8: Last Chance for Mother's Day Flowers

Marketers in the gifts category that require more shipping lead time than flowers which benefit from local distribution followed a similar pattern a week before.  Vermont Teddy Bear is a good example:

Early Reminders:
April 19: Look for your New Mother's Day Catalog this Week
April 21: Graduation, Mother's Day & More - Great Gifts for Spring Occasions

Advance Promotional Sale:
April 26: 2 Days Only: 15% Off for Mother's Day

Full Price Promotion:
May 1: See our New Bears for Mother's Day

Urgent Last Chance:
May 4: Hurry - Mother's Day is THIS Sunday!

The first week of April saw Mother's Day Email Marketing Activity from marketers in the following segments: Jewelry, Flowers & Gifts, Photos and Travel. 

Starting April 11, marketers of Beauty Products and Footwear joined in.

By the week of April 18 marketers in Retail, Apparel, Home Furnishings, Computers and Restaurants joined the crowd, and through May 7 the level of activity had more to do with frequency of campaigns than types of marketers.

For a complete data set on email marketing activity leading up to Mother's Day, please contact your Email Data Source sales representative.

The Under Armour brand has seen a huge surge in popularity and recognition in recent years.  This is a company that has been on a fast track: founded in 1996, it went public in 2005 and has been growing at 20% per year since.  At just under $1 billion in revenues, it is still a much smaller company than its rivals Nike ($19 billion in revenues) and Adidas ($13 billion in revenues), but when you consider that Nike and Adidas revenues are from worldwide sales and include sub brands such as Umbro and Converse (in the case of Nike) and Reebok and Rockport (in the case of Adidas) the level of direct competition between these companies in the US is closer than it first appears.

If corporate histories are to be believed, Under Armour is remarkably similar to Nike and Adidas in many ways.  All companies were founded as cottage operations (Adidas by two brothers in their mother's washroom, Nike from the trunk of a car at track meets, and Under Armour by two U Maryland grads from a basement) and became known upon signing their first major athletic spokerson).  One difference is that Under Armour came of age with the advent of internet marketing. 

So, how do the marketing efforts of Under Armour compare to its larger rivals when it comes to digital messaging?  Using Email Analyst, we took a peek at Under Armour's email marketing playbook from 2008 to the present to see how they are emulating and differentiating themselves from the competition.

By all appearances, Under Armour appears to be running a fairly straightforward, almost simple email marketing program. 

Vendor and Email Quality

Under Armour has been using Responsys as an ESP since at least early 2008 when Email Data Source first started tracking Under Armour's house email lists, and since early 2008 all their email campaigns have been run from a dedicated IP address.  The email quality has been above average, though occasionally Email Analyst has recorded a jump in broken links and bad redirects.  During a three week period in March-April 2008, however, almost all their email campaigns had greater than 50% broken links / bad redirects.  The rate of inbox placement has been consistently good for all campaigns across all ISP's, averaging 96.5% since we started tracking this statistic in January of 2010 through Email Data Source's Nielsen-like email panel that analyzes data from more than 300,000 actual email recipients.

Nike's email quality appears flawless by comparison, with virtually no broken links or bad redirects.  Inbox placement was slightly lower than that of Under Armour at 92.4% based on data from January through April, primarily due to specific campaigns in January and April that had a high percentage of spam folder placement at Yahoo and Gmail.

Adidas, which uses the ESP Cheetahmail, also has few broken links and bad redirects than Under Armour with the exception of a few campaigns in December of 2009 that did have broken links.  Inbox placement for Adidas averages 95.0% and they only appear to have lower than average deliverability with AOL. 

Campaign Reach and Opt-In Sources

Under Armour's largest email blasts go out once or twice a month and reach .08% to .09% of the Email Data Source panel.  Based on Email Data Source estimates, this corresponds to roughly 1 million people.  Other email blasts are sent every 2-3 days with a lower reach ranging from .01% to .04% campaigns.  Under Armour's email blasts are sent almost exclusively to people who have signed up for email updates or registered at UnderArmour.com

Nike's larger email blasts reach .16% to
.18% of the Email Data Source panel, or over 2 million people, and are sent approximately once per week.  Two campaigns were recorded in Q1 2010 that reached .25% to .27% of the panel.  These campaigns focused on new product releases, specifically Nike's new Dynamic Support running shoes.  Nike's US email list seems to be entirely sourced from opt-ins at nike.com or subsites such as nikerunning.com.

Adidas' largest campaigns have a reach of .12%, roughly 1.5 million people.  The largest campaign of note was an end of season sale.  More common are product introduction campaigns such as this one announcing Star Wars themed sneakers (why they didn't wait until May the Fourth to launch this is beyond us).

Unlike Under Armour or Nike, Adidas sources opt-ins from partner sites such as My Coke Rewards and Body By Milk.

Segmentation

Nike does far more in the way of segmenting than either Under Armour or Adidas.  Whereas Nike sends out two to four distinct campaigns on any given sending day, Adidas and Under Armour send out at most two.

Product vs. Engagement

Virtually all of of Under Armour's email  campaigns are direct product pitches or sales announcements.  Apart from just a few holiday engagement campaigns (one before Christmas and one for Mother's Day), a single campaign to support US troops and a "Tell your Under Armour story, there have been few other engagement campaigns during the last six months.  Only since November '09 has Under Armour included Twitter and Facebook links in its emails, and indicator that they are behind the trend towards merging email and social media under one umbrella of digital messaging. 

The campaign at right is fairly typical of an Under Armour campaign and in my opinion has weak call to action and engagement.  With the subject "You saw it at Augusta.  Now get the gear" the campaign could for example link to photos from the Augusta tournament or seek engagement in other ways, yet even the social media links at the bottom are very small.  The purchase calls to action also lack prominence.


Nike, in contrast, has campaigns that are specifically engagement focused such as the example at right from Nike +.    These types of community oriented engagement campaigns tie directly into social sites bringing Nike's email and social marketing efforts together.  Nike does few if any sale specific campaigns although most emails do have a "Just Reduced" link to sales.

Adidas strikes a balance between product oriented campaigns, sales and engagement campaigns. Examples of engagement are the customizable sneaker store Mi Adidas which is featured frequently in email campaigns and campaigns that direct subscribers to special events such as the running clinic featured in a Feb 23 campaign shown below. Oddly, Adidas appears to be making little effort to integrate email with social media: most campaigns do not include links to social sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

Presence in Third Party Emails

Email Marketing efforts also include advertising in partners' newsletters.  In this arena Under Armour shows little activity, with only a few links in affiliate partner sites such as Flamingo World and KeyCode.com registered by Email Data Source during the last thirty days.  Adidas also has relatively few distribution partnerships in place, with only a few links in newsletters such as that of the WNBA.  Nike by contrast shows far greater presence, with distribution partners such as Daily Candy and Livestrong.

Twitter

Under Armour has shown very little activity using Twitter, with only 1 tweet in the last thirty days to its 8,700 followers.  The tweet was not retweeted by anybody.  NikeStore by contrast put out 75 tweets over the last thirty days to its 11,500 followers and 54 people have retweeted their tweets.  Adidas running put out two tweets to its 86,000 followers during the same period and ten people retweeted its messages.

Today I received an email campaign from Amazon, offering a chance to win a $1000 gift card if I signed up for their clothing store email list.  It made me wonder what was motivating them to grow theiir list in this way.  Could it be that Amazon lacks email firepower even while it is the top ranked Internet Retailer?  Using Email Analyst's new panel data, I took a look at the reach of email campaigns from the top Internet Retailers and re-ranked them according to their email campaign reach. 

Company      Email Reach Ranking     Internet Retailer Ranking
Apple                          1                                       5
Sears                          2                                       7
Amazon                      3                                       1
Dell                             4                                       3
Best Buy                     5                                       9
Staples                       6                                       2
OfficeDepot                7                                       4
Officemax                   8                                       6
NewEgg                     9                                       8
QVC                          10                                      10

Apple once again proves itself to be an email power house, with an enormous list built from itunes, mac and iphone users, and what is clearly a concerted effort to keep their users opted-in.  And you can see that Amazon is ranked third behind Sears.  Is Amazon making a concerted effort to get back on top?

Many advertisers, especially those who use affiliate networks, are in the dark when it comes to knowing who their email distribution partners are. 

Email Analyst provides transparency into who your email distribution partners are.  The below is a demonstration of how an advertiser can use Email Analyst identify its email distributors including those distributors who are picking up affililiate links.

We will use Best Buy as a sample advertiser.  Email Data Source's spidering of email marketing campaigns shows all email campaigns that link in any way to bestbuy.com, whether sent from Best Buy or from a third party.

A quick search therefore shows all the distribution partners for Best Buy.  Information which Best Buy may or may not be aware of.  To the right is the list of email distributors for Best Buy.  At the top of the list, with fifteen email campaigns in the last thirdy days linking to bestbuy.com is CMJ Network, a publisher that comments on new music.  Other distributors on the list include several coupon sites, CNET and the Philadelphia Eagles. 

As it turns out, many of these distribution partners are Commission Junction Affiliates, and the presence of links to Best Buy in their emails is because Best Buy participates in the Commission Junction Network.  Email Analyst determines this because it records the clickstream data of each link in an email campaign.  The clickstream data to the right shows how a link in a Shoping Guru email redirects through Commission Junction and sends traffic to BestBuy.com.  Best Buy is unlikely to know whether or not its Commission Junction affiliates are sending out emails with links to bestbuy.com.

Using Email Analyst, Best Buy can begin monitoring all email creatives that go out from its Commission Junction Affiliates.  This allows them to monitor the use of their brand in email marketing, gaining transparency into a medium that would otherwise remain opaque. 

The Netflix top 100 list is often criticized as self-perpetuating and too long term.  Indeed, if you take a look at the Netflix Top 100 list, you will be surprised by what is still on there.  At the top of the list is Crash.  It has been at the top of the list since 2007...And if you look at the top ten movies on the list they are all movies that were released on DVD between 2005 and 2008.  The implication is that it takes a couple of years to make it on to the Top 100 list which should perhaps be renamed the Top 100 All Time Rental List.



To get a much more recent view of which DVDs are most popular, being watched at home within the last week, we took a look at emails sent by Netflix confirming DVD returns.  Using the associated email panel reach data, we can get an up to date view of the most recently watched DVDs by Netflix members. Here is a list of which DVD's have just been returned by Netflix members from March 30 to April 11, ranked by popularity:

1.  Twilight Saga: New Moon
2.  The Men Who Stare at Goats
3.  The Way We Were (can anyone help explain this one?)
4.  The Box
5.  The Time Traveler's Wife
6.  The Boondock Saints II
7.  2012
8.  Shrink
9.  Julia & Julia
10.  Michael Jackson's This Is It
11.  Blood: The Last Vampire
12.  Precious
13.  Up In The Air
14.  The Informant

One of the potential uses of data from the new Email Data Source Panel is to derive sales statistics for major internet retailers.

Following up on our iPad theme, we tool a look at what percentage of our email panalists received an email from Apple with the subject line "Thank you for Purchasing your iPad". 

From April 3rd to April 10th we record that .03% of our panelists received this email.  Half of those recipients received the email on the 4th or 5th of April. 

Based on our internal estimates, an EDS panel reach of .03% corresponds to roughly 350,000 people.  In other words, we estimate that 350,000 people have received an email thanking them for their iPad Purchase.

Apple claimed 300,000 units sold on its first day, but this included the wholesale units supplied to Best Buy.  Our estimate indicates 350,000 units sold to people who gave Apple permission to email them during the first few days of iPad sales, assuming some lag from moment of sale to follow up email being sent.

Email Data Source today announced the top email campaigns of March, 2010.  Email Data Source uses panel based reach data combined with its unique email monitoring and measuring capabilities to identify the largest email senders and analyze their email campaigns.

First Place: Apple - iPad is Coming.

At the top of the list was Apple's campaign of March 12, announcing that the iPad was available for pre-order with an April 3 delivery date.  The campaign reached 14% of the Email Data Source panel of 300,000 AOL, Gmail and Yahoo users.  Given the enormous installed base of itunes and the number of mac, iphone and ipod users, it is no surprise that Apple has managed to assemble an enormous email list.  EDS estimates the iPad pre-order campaign reached 4.3 times the number of recipients of the second largest campaign for March (featured below).  Sample seed accounts show that the campaign was sent to users who had opted-in to receiving emails through the Apple Store, iphone and Mac Pro users, as well as business accounts.

The iPad campaign was sent from at least 10 dedicated IP addresses (indeed Apple seems to control the entire IP block starting with 17.254...) and these IP addresss have an excellent reputation according to Returnpath.net's Sender Score.  The campaign also made use of the PVIQ system to maximize deliverability. 

The result was an inbox placement rate of 94% according to the Email Data Source panel, compared to an average inbox placement rate of 90% for all campaigns measured by the Email Data Source panel.  The inbox placement rate was also notably high for a campaign of this size.  Typically larger "blast" campaigns from a sender have a slightly lower inbox placement rate than segmented campaigns.  The average inbox placement for campaigns from insideapple.apple.com was 95.3% in March for all campaigns, ranging from 65% for some Asian and European campaigns to 100% for more segmented US oriented campaigns.  The inbox placement for the iPad campaign ranged from 90% for AOL users to 97% for Gmail users. 

Second Place: JC Penney

The second largest email campaign for March, as recorded by Email Data source, was from JC Penney.  Sent on March 7, the campaign featured the subject line "Check Out Spring Styles + Online Exclusive Savings and reached 3.3% of the Email Data Source panel. 

The campaign had an inbox placement rate of 93%, ranging from 89% with AOl to 95% with Gmail users.

Third Place: Astrology.com

The third place campaign was not so much a campaign as it was a daily blast.  Astrology.com Daily Horoscope regularly reaches 2.9% of Email Data Source's panelists with an inbox placement rate of 93%

Fourth Place: Kohl's

In Fourth Place was Koh's promotion of a three day Easter Sale.  With a creative "Hop on In" subject line, the campaign reached 2.3% of EDS panelists and had an average inbox placement of 89.4%.  The "Hop" theme was also used by Picturepeople.com, CVS, Piperlime and Neiman Marcus.  The lower than average inbox placement is a suprise given the top sender score of Kohl's ip address, but it is something that Kohl's should track and investigate.

Fifth Place:  TripAdvisor

In Fifth Place for March was the TripAdvisor member update (with the not so catchy title "TripAdvisor Update" featuring Spring sales.  With a significant reach of 2.1%, the campaign had below average inbox placement of 83%.

In all forms of media, online and off, there independent providers of audience measurement.  Up to now, the exception has been email.  But with Email Data Source's new panel data, media buyers can now evaluate the reach of email newsletters before they choose to become advertisers or sponsors.  Here is a quick rundown of the reach of some TV media outlets and the comparative reach of their email newsletters, ranked in order from highest email reach to lowest email reach:


Rank     Sender                    Percentage of Panel Reached
1.          Oprah                     0.49%
2.          ComedyCentral       0.13%
3.          ShopNBC                 0.12%
4.          ABCNews                 0.05%
5.          CBSNews                 0.03%
6.          HollywoodReporter  0.01%

New information from our panel shows the reach of AAdvantage email campaigns and what they are doing with their partners.  Aadvantage started the year with a campaign urging members to ask their friends for spare miles.  The email contained a link to "Tell a friend you need miles!" This campaign was received by 1.28% percent of our email panelists starting on January 6.  This compares with a reach of 1.50% for the AAdvantage monthly statement.  This indicates that AAdvantage likely sent the campaign to a large percentage of its members. 

The campaign had good inbox placement with Yahoo, getting in to the inbox vs. the spam folder for 98% of recipients.  For AOL and Gmail, however, the inbox placement percentage was lower at 89% and 88% respectively.

AAdvantage's second major email campaign of the year was with Lifelock.  The campaign offered 4,500 upon enrolling in Lifelock's identity protection.

This campaign was received by 0.34% of our email panelists starting on January 20, 2010.  Compared to the 1.50% of panelists who received mileage statements by email, and the ShareAA Miles campaign recipient percentage of 1.28%, this might indicate that the campaign was sent to a smaller user base.

The AAdvantage - Lifelock campaign had similar inbox placement characteristics as the Share AA Miles email campaign, with 98% inbox placement for Yahoo!, 94% inbox placement for Gmail and 88% inbox placement for AOL recipients.

AAdvantage finished the month with two campaigns in partnership with the Citibank AAdvantege credit cards.  These campaigns offered either 25,000 miles and a companion certificate or 30,000 miles with no companion certificate.  The 25,000 offer was received by 0.53% of our email panelists, and the 30,000 miles offer was received by 0.13% of our panelists indicating some form of segmentation of AAdvantage's list.  Both email campaigns started on January 27.  Inbox placement for the 25,000 miles campaign was 97% for Yahoo, 97% for Gmail and 88% for AOL.  Inbox placement results were similar for the 30,000 miles campaign.

Data from our new panel of 285,000 Yahoo, Gmail and AOL inboxes shows that spammers (email senders who pretend to be somebody else) successfully spoofed the New York Times, and that the major ISP's allowed delivery of these spoofed emails to recipients.  But, whereas AOL and Gmail sent 100% of these spoofed emails to the junk mail folder where they belong, Yahoo consistently let them through to the inbox for 2% to 6% of recipients.

The spoofing attempts, which were sent to an estimated 600,000 Yahoo users during the month of January and early February, mimicked the New York Times in the email from title, but had subject lines such as "News Alert: FuckBook is Open" and "News Alert: Medz for The Whole Family".  The table below shows the spoofing attempts and the % of Yahoo recipients that received the spoof emails in the inbox vs. the spam folder.

The launch of the new Email Campaign Reach and Inbox Deliverability service last week has been a big success.  We will have case studies coming out soon.  In the meantime here are some screen shots of the email panel data in Email Analyst. 

This first screen shot shows a bar chart, plotting the reach of a sender's email campaigns across our panel of 250,000 email users.  The charts can be adjusted to see a daily, weekly or monthly view of email campaign activity and reach.  Charts are also available providing email campaign stats on the reach of email campaigns per ISP. 

Variations in reach are due to email list segmentation but can also indicate ISP deliverability issues.

For each of the hundreds of sending domains covered, we provide a snapshot of average email campaign reach, broken down by ISP.  We also provide inbox deliverability statistics overall and by ISP.  This is a great way for email marketers to get a quick read on potential distribution partners.  For the first time, email marketers have an independent way of determing the reach of their email distribution partners, and whether the email campaigns of their potential partners make it to the inbox or end up in the spam folder.  We also provide contact information for potential partners.



The graphs are helpful for identifying trends for your email marketing analysis, but when you want to get in to the details, you can simply view all the email campaigns from a particular sender, along with the subject line, reach and inbox deliverability.  The examples at left cover campaigns sent by JCrew over a twelve day period.  As you eyeball the email campaign reach statistics,  you can clearly see that some campaigns are being sent to a larger portion of JCrew's email list than others.  This gives great insight into their segmentation strategies.  For more in depth analysis, all the campaigns can be exported to excel, along with the accompanying email campaign reach and inbox deliverability, broken out by ISP.  Click on the links pulls up the email creative.

Interested in finding out more?  Click here to sign up for a demo.

If you have seen our home page over the last few days then you know that we will soon be releasing a new service providing EDS customers with panel data on the reach and inbox deliverability of email campaigns.  This new service will provide a new and unprecedented depth of competitive intelligence information for email marketers. 

Our first foray into this area was a report we published in September of 2009, where we used sample panel data to compare the reach and inbox deliverability of Staples, Office Depot and Officemax.  We got great reactions from that report, and it was downloaded hundreds of times.

Since then, we have been fine tuning the service, and working on incorporating the data into Email Analyst.  Our panel has also grown in size to be greater than 250,000 email users.  

Many of our current clients have previewed the data, and the feedback has been very encouraging.  It has confirmed that there is still a real lack of transparency into email marketing, especially compared to other forms of online media.  Whereas everyone from compete.com to alexa and comscore to Nielsen report in depth on website traffic, there is virtually no equivalent for email.  With this new service, we are making this type of information available for the first time.

Here are a few comments we have received from clients who have previewed the service:

"A core business proposition for Email Service Providers is improving deliverability.  Having an independent source for deliverability data on specific campaigns and major email marketers will show the importance of working with a top notch ESP" - ESP client

"This is a great move for EDS, this is data we need.  Thanks guys" - ESP client

"We've previously gotten information on deliverability at the ISP level, but getting sufficient data for inbox vs. spam folder deliverability has been a challenge.  I'm looking forward to receiving this information regularly" - Major Internet Retailer

"Being able to go in depth on segmentation strategies and see the comparative reach of segmented campaigns vs. 'blasts' will be very helpful" - Agency client

"This a great idea, and the ability to benchmark against competitors will be a great help.  Thanks for tackling this." - Major Internet Retailer

More news, screen shots and examples of data will be appearing in our blog posts over the coming days, and expect our press release soon.  In the meantime, if you would like to pre-register for a demo, please contact us.