In the latest MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Report (2010), a survey of email recipients found that only 33% have images turned on by default. That means that 67% – or two-thirds of recipients – don’t.

This is a Jericho client – Mitsubishi NZ – showing how to do email right.  With a mix of images and text balanced so that it allows the email to make sense even if your recipient is in an environment that supresses images by default.  In a corporate environment that’s quite common, as we talked about in this earlier post.

The email on the left here is as it was intended to be viewed and on the right we show it with images ‘off’.

The headline, all links and calls to action, as well as key instructions are clearly visible.

Compare this beautiful campaign to the ‘blanks’ we showed there!  (By the way House of Travel keep on doing the same thing each time they send an email…)

One thing that is on its way to counter that is that the tablets will change the way people interact with your email.

We wrote recently about whether your email is ‘touchable’.   By that we mean that readers on iPhones and iPad for now, and other tablets to come, will be searching for links they can poke their finger at - so your calls-to-action need to be bigger and intuitively they will click on images expecting them to link to content.

Email marketing and iPads and other tablet devices is going to become more ubiquitous and then it will let us have a lot of fun with email campaigns.

Hooray! We can hardly wait for everyone to have iPads – I love mine so much that I’m happy to recommend you request one for Christmas over any other option for a gift.

Then we can keep up our work with clients to make more beautiful emails than ever…

To read our weekly blog posts for the most comprehensive posts on emarketing, and email marketing in New Zealand, click the JERICHO logo at the top of the post here, and pick through the menu on the right hand side, or use the Search box.

Need a robust, experienced, trusted email marketing team on your side to help you get email design and delivery right, no matter where you are in the world?

The figure for Australia is 43 percent, and in New Zealand it’s 20 percent of all money spent online is spent on offshore ecommerce sites.

Why the differences? I’d hazard to say:
* Aust are more sophisticated online shoppers and know how to find what they want, whereever. NZer’s more cautious about doing business on another continent.

* Aust is a bigger market therefore more likely serviced by overseas sites offering delivery. NZ is tiny and not likely to even come under consideration for many sites, esp niche ones.

* Aust use eBay like we use TradeMe – and they have natural and easy access to overseas sellers there. NZ’s TradeMe has international sellers but it’s focus is very much local.

* In addition that eBay experience means that Aussies are more likely comfortable with PayPal and other payments methods whereas NZer’s are constrained by websites that don’t accept non-local credit cards (argh hands up who else gets mad at this).

*New Zealand ecommerce purchases by dollar value are weighed around flights/travel too which are usually sourced from NZ.

There are likely many more reasons…

P.S. source: The Aust. stat is as reported by Ebay. The NZ one is via The Warehouse annual report, and verbally confirmed by the lovely Tui Fleming at TWL to me today.

What do you think?  Does that ring true to you?  Why do you think that’s the case?  What do you think will happen in 12 months time?  2 years?

To read our weekly blog posts for the most comprehensive posts on emarketing, and email marketing in New Zealand, click the JERICHO logo at the top of the post here, and pick through the menu on the right hand side, or use the Search box.  To follow us on Twitter got to http://twitter.com/roanne1 and choose Follow.

86% of large Australian retail chains expect to increase their spending on online marketing during the next 12 months – and none plan to reduce it.

That’s a key finding of a study undertaken by the Australian Centre for Retail Studies at Monash University, supported by AIMIA’s Retail Industry Group.

Other core findings included:

* 78 per cent expect to develop an online selling capability.

* 53 per cent of retailers are concerned about the impact of online international competitors.

* 85 per cent of respondents believe that being proactive with online marketing and online sales will yield long term competitive advantage.

When asked to rank the top three most important Online media in the next 12 months… email marketing comes out at number one:

Perhaps the most important point is that this is seen as a landmark study that will form the basis of an annual benchmarking study, giving retailers a comprehensive picture of the rate of online adoption across a range of areas.

You are getting your seasonal campaigns designed, your stock levels right and the Christmas rush is looming – maybe it’s time to STOP and re-check what you are doing online first.

If you have an ecommerce site then you’ll love these insights we heard from Google and the Australian Centre for Retail Studies at a NZRA online retailers seminar this month.

• There are more reasons than ever to be selling or at least showing, online.  Google expects at least a conservative 35% increase this year on last years search volume for Christmas purchases.

• Does your site have search? Does it work? Presenting unhelpful results is the same as one of your store staff pointing an enquiring customer to the wrong place to look for an item – rude, annoying and off putting.  According to the Australian Centre for Retail Studies, people who search within your site are your VIP’s – they are 3 times more likely to buy than browsers.

• Even if you have a bricks n mortar store, does your site have at least your best selling stock listed, with photos and descriptions?  78% of New Zealand and Australian shoppers use more than one channel to research, pre-purchase.

• When asked how they research their purchases before they buy, consumers were presented with a list of channels.  10 out of the 12 they ranked as top ways to research were online!

• Last minute applies to online too.  New Zealand shoppers use overseas shopping sites from October to early December for their Christmas shopping.   Then they hit the local sites with the peak coming mid-December.

• Google predicts their Google Maps use on mobile will overtake use on desktop by June 2011. Location-based marketing potential is soaring.  Google can already see that mobile search is peaking – before and after work , and at lunch time as consumers use their smart phone to locate information about the shopping they are about to do.

Do these ring true to you?

We know you are busy, but your comments are always welcomed….

To read our weekly blog posts for the most comprehensive posts on emarketing, and email marketing in New Zealand, click the JERICHO logo at the top of the post here, and pick through the menu on the right hand side, or use the Search box.  To follow us on Twitter got to http://twitter.com/roanne1 and choose Follow.

These bits and pieces are all gleaned from reading we’ve done this month.  Reading is great but it takes time to then jot down your key points and relay them back in writing – we’re going to try to do more of it  – your comments welcomed.

Are you asking for email registrations everywhere – in the obvious and not so obvious places? Front and centre of your home page like BE IN THE KNOW – in capital letters on GAP.com - probably one of the most expensive pieces of ecommerce real estate in the western world?  Do you have the whole team involved and do they understand why getting an email address is a key to a customers lifetime value (LTV – all the money they will spend with you over the course of their life!)?

Are your emails touchable? Guess what! I’m reading your email on my iPad. If your calls to action are too small my fingers can’t connect – and I’ll only try a couple of times before I give up and shut you down. The great news is that when you have lots of iPhone and iPad users in your database you can think about using big beautiful images as your call to action again – because i am poking my finger and expecting them to link to the relevant part of your site or your offer.

Is Forward to a Friend dead? In some case you are better to use the prime position in your email design to promote share to social or share with your network (SWYN) than refer or ‘forward to a friend’ – especially if you are sharing a subscription promotion or competition. See our other blog posts about that by clicking the social media topic to the right.

B2B Marketing? Remember much of the basics apply to both B2B and B2C: people like to buy from people they like, we all have a needs hierarchy, we will pay to stop something being a pain, etc. In addition though with B2B it pays to: Think about your audience, Think beyond your product, Think customer lifecycle, Think multichannel, Think quality over quantity.

Do you love this?

Emma, one of Jericho’s fab designers says:

“I love it because Frankie – an edge-of-culture magazine – always makes me feel like I’m on the ‘in’ with links to things I have never seen before. The content is quite simple but leads me further into a network of incredible talent – illustrators, designers, fashion types etc – that I can never know enough about. I’m constantly hunting for inspiration from those in all types of creative and media fields, often I post about it on my blog when I find something truly inspiring – www.urbannanna.blogspot.com“

“I know that some of the content is probably advertising but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like Frankie (the people) actually honestly endorse what they are talking about and care about telling you about it too. They’re in the know, on the in. And they’re reminding me that I can be too – well, a little.”

Here it is – what do you think?  Or go to Frankie and sign up for a while and see how they play the making friends with email game (you might recall how we wrote all about ‘Spying’ in an earlier post).

Or, if you like, send me one you love, and why, to roanne@jericho.co.nz

In a recent survey^*, marketing executives reported that email is the strongest-performing advertising channel:

* Datran Media: 4th Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 2010.

The Jericho New Zealand Email Marketing Metrics Report | 2010 backs that up with benchmarking stats for you to compare against your email and other marketing campaign performance.  You can download a copy here.

If email is not performing as well as it could be for you, then you could benefit from a top down look from business strategy, goals and benchmarks, contact frequency calendar planning, design and content plans.  Look at your subscription pathways, database growth and hygiene, and best practice adherence.  And then there is resourcing, educating your team, knowledge management and sign off and quality control.

If you’d like to chat about how to use an external ‘custodian’ of this channel to support your teams, we can help – we’ve been doing this for 10 years and it’s fun, and incredibly rewarding for the bottom line.