Mobile Coupon Usage to Double by 2013

by Michele Shubert | September 14th, 2011

coupon
Though they are not yet widely promoted, marketers are starting to see the benefit of offering digital coupons. Since consumers can easily access them via mobile devices — at home or on the go—digital coupons have the potential to influence a consumer in the midst of a purchase decision.

“When the economy goes down, people tend to find ways to save money,” said Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates. “It’s also that the proximity of the mobile device to someone’s wallet is a heck of a lot closer than a PC when you’re out driving around.”

eMarketer estimates that nearly 20 million U.S. adults will redeem a mobile coupon this year and that mobile coupon usage will double by 2013. “Even as the sputtering economy attempts its recovery, the popularity of couponing has continued,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal. According to Elkin, the appeal of mobile coupons among shoppers is broadening the usage and acceptance of digital coupons.
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Free Email Tracking

by Robert "Dude" Spellings, Jr. | March 12th, 2010

I just ran across this very interesting email tracking service:  www.WhoReadMe.com.  Essentially, the service will allow you to do some limited basic tracking on emails that you send, for free.

I say “limited” above because (1) its only truly “free” for your first 20 emails per day, and (2) their email tracking is still handicapped by all of the same pitfalls as all of the other tracking services, which include:

  • If the recipient’s images are turned off, then none of the tracking will work at all.
  • The number of forwards/opens/unique-opens is inaccurate if multiple users are behind a corporate firewall and all have the same outward-facing IP address.
  • The metrics about browsers and operating systems requires that the recipient be using a web-based email service like hotmail, yahoo, or gmail.
  • Cookies are used to track some metrics, which don’t work in most email clients that are not web-based.
  • You are dependent on their network for the tracking, and if they experience a network failure, the tracking will not occur during the outage.
  • Cannot truly track if an email is “read” or not.
  • Cannot determine if an email was delivered to the inbox, the spam folder, the trash bin, or quarantined in a spam-filtering system.

In short, this system has all the same Achilles heels as most of the other email tracking solutions, but since this one is free, it’s a pretty good value.  I point out the limitations only because people who may not be so tech-savvy may not understand the current limitations of technology.  The current trend in online marketing is to rely heavily on these kinds of metrics, so just be sure you know what’s really happening.

Is Email Marketing The ROI King?

by Robert "Dude" Spellings, Jr. | January 15th, 2010

Ran across an interesting article in which a VP at Exact Target says that email marketing has the best ROI of any direct marketing method.

The article does make the point, rather subtly, that email has the best ROI when it’s done right.  I would have made that more clear.  Blasting out email for any address you can get your hands on won’t have a decent ROI, but sending relevant emails to people who want to hear what you have to say is very effective.  That’s the key: be relevant and send to people who want to hear from you.

Standardization Will Improve Deliverability

by Robert "Dude" Spellings, Jr. | August 21st, 2009

Reading one of my favorite email deliverability sites, I came across this article announcing what is believed to be the first attempt to aggregate email bounce codes into a single list. Warning: the rest of this post may get pretty geeked out, so proceed with caution.

Why Is This Good?
I will try to explain this in a way that keeps most people interested, but it will challenge my writing ability, I am sure. Anyway, the reason that this is good is because this is the first step in standardizing bounce codes across different email providers and ISP’s, which will lead to better spam-filtering and better delivery.

What Happens Now
From the perspective of someone who is responsible for ensuring that emails get delivered, the process of interpreting bounce codes can be somewhat frustrating. Each email provider and ISP has their own collection of various bounce codes. Usually, each company has dozens, if not hundreds, of different bounce codes that get communicated from their receiving mail servers back to the sending mail servers to indicate the delivery status of each email. Email service providers (those who send marketing emails on behalf of their customers) then interpret the bounce codes in order to convey the delivery status back to their customers. This is how senders know delivery rates, bounce rates, etc, then adjust their lists and sending practices to improve delivery. Its a key part of the whole system.

Improving Delivery
While is it important that email service providers convey the delivery status to their customers, its actually more important that the email service provider understand and utilize the information being sent back by the ISP’s and email providers, so that they can continuously improve delivery and reduce spam. Currently, when I get notice that we have an unusually large bounce rate at one or more domains, I have do what amounts to a manual investigation as to why the bounces are occurring because the industry has not settled on any sort of standardized set of bounce codes (there actually is a specification for general bounce codes, but its not specific enough for today’s modern delivery and spam-fighting practices). Each ISP has their own set of codes and format for reporting the codes, so manual intervention is necessary to ensure proper interpretation of the delivery status.

Standardizing the bounce codes will allow email service providers and senders to automate tasks that will ensure even greater deliverability and better spam protection. Once their is a standard set of codes to be interpreted, all of the delivery verification and proper responses can be fully automated. Email service providers will be able to shut down spammers at the earliest signs of trouble, and other delivery problems that might incorrectly send up a spam-flag currently will be reduced, if not eliminated. Standardization, like with most everything else, will make email delivery and spam detection much more efficient.

Conclusion
Although this is not actually “standardization” yet, its a good first-step toward that process. Having all of the bounce codes aggregated in one place will make it easier for email delivery experts and others to treat bounced emails (and those who send them) properly. Its an exciting step in the process. Eventually, email delivery will be almost totally ubiquitous, like turning on your faucet and expecting water. Users will send emails and the ones that should be delivered will be, and the ones that should be blocked will be blocked and reported back to the sender with the appropriate punitive measure happening automatically. It might seem like we are almost there to many users, but there is still a lot of labor going on behind the scenes that will ultimately be automated.