It was standing room only on Wednesday night 11/7 for the Trends in Email Marketing event at The Bellevue Club.  ExactTarget sponsored, DRG offered free cocktails to attendees, the bar was humming and we had a who's who of Seattle and Portland marketers. A few board members relinquished their dining seats to accommodate the event guests.

A knock out panel of marketing experts spoke about email marketing:  Annette Barnes, Director of Email Marketing from Alaska Airlines, Stacy Bennett, Online Marketing Manager from Tommy Bahama and Cheryl Engelaer, Group Marketing Manager of Microsoft.  Our moderator Justin Foster, VP of Professional Services at WhatCounts assembled the panel and facilitated an in depth discussion.  

Our surprise guest was Craig Spiezle, Director of Online Safety from Microsoft.  I saw Craig speak about email deliverability at the first annual ExactTarget Connections conference in Indianapolis this fall and was really impressed—so invited him to join us.  Not only did he join us, but he co-moderated the panel!  (Note: ExactTarget was the sponsor of this event.)  

Craig is a founder and chairman of the Authentication Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) in addition to being the director of online safety at MS.  Although our event focused on trends, RFM scoring and more — it was great to have Craig talk about deliverability which is a huge part of email marketing today.

In the past email marketers knew the rules:  avoid spam words such as FREE in content and be diligent about list management.  But that's all changed.  Now what matters is your online reputation which is comprised of a number of factors.  Frequency and volume of emails sent, whether your IP is registered and most importantly the relevance of your emails.  

This means that getting content appropriate messages to the people who want them is what counts.  Even people who've opted in to receive your communications "junk" your mail when it comes more frequently than they desire or the content doesn't meet their needs.  The process of junking your mail, negatively impacts your reputation—and there's the challenge.  Your deliverability goes down and in the worst case scenario you're black listed. So segmenting into audiences is just a starting place.  You also have to sub-segment your audience into different types of recipients.  Don't continue to send emails to someone who never opens them.  Instead, perhaps send a survey, or email them less frequently.