DMA Strengthens Leadership Position with New Offerings for Email Marketers

July 9, 2007 — As part of ongoing efforts to add value and improve strategic insights for businesses and nonprofit organizations using interactive marketing channels, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) today announced three new initiatives that strengthen its offerings for members involved in email marketing.

To deepen and broaden its expertise in the channel, DMA has announced an agreement to merge its Email Marketing Council with the Email Experience Council (EEC), a leading independent global organization that brings not only thought leadership but also practical problem-solving capabilities to the email marketing community.

DMA also announced today an agreement with Return Path to develop a new online tool to help email marketers better navigate the complexities of authentication and benchmark their progress against other key reputation indicators.

In addition, DMA’s Research and Market Intelligence team will publish an anthology of white papers on expert-level practices and how to implement them, and will focus its next Creative Series report on the email channel.

“As interactive channels continue their explosive growth, we have to marshal our resources to help marketers use these channels effectively,” said DMA President & CEO John A. Greco, Jr. “Maximizing the potential of email marketing is crucial to the continued success of many organizations, so we are particularly pleased to be working together with some of the most respected names in the email space to provide these new offerings for our members.”

US companies spent $400 million on email marketing in 2006, an amount that is expected to double by 2011, according to DMA’s latest economic impact research.

Email Experience Council Merges with DMA’s Email Marketing Council

Launched in 2006, the Email Experience Council has quickly become a leading voice in promoting the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle, and branding device. Made up of thought leaders from the email marketing community, the EEC has established itself as a premier knowledge base not only for thought-leadership and best practices but also for problem-solving and emerging practices.

DMA’s Email Marketing Council (formerly the Council for Responsible Email) has provided leadership to the marketing community in setting standards and promoting best practices for responsible email marketing. Since the channel’s inception, the Email Marketing Council has led high-profile efforts, including authoring the industry’s first deliverability and append best practices, co-founding the Authentication Summit, and sponsoring numerous high-impact educational programs and networking functions.

As part of DMA’s agreement to acquire the EEC, the memberships of EEC and DMA’s Email Marketing Council will merge under the EEC name. The combined group will continue to promote best practices to guide marketers in developing successful email programs. The new EEC will also play an active role helping to shape the policies and standards that will drive the future of the channel.

Jeanniey Mullen, EEC senior partner and executive director for global email marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide, will serve as co-executive chair of the new combined organization, along with Michael Della Penna, chief marketing officer for Epsilon and chair of DMA’s Email Marketing Council.

“The EEC is a community. It is a self-propelled and dynamic marketplace of expertise that fosters a collaborative approach to solving challenges and a unified approach for identifying the future of email marketing,” said Mullen. “We’re excited to deliver even more value, expertise, and political representation to our members by joining forces with DMA.”

New Partnership to Help DMA Members Authenticate Emails

Two of the greatest challenges email marketers face are ensuring their messages are compliant with the appropriate laws and regulations, and that they are “approved” by spam filters so they actually arrive in the inboxes of their intended recipients.

To help address both of these issues, DMA in 2006 began to require its members to authenticate their commercial email. However, the complexities of the various authentication protocols continue to make this a difficult process for many marketers. To help make it easier, DMA earlier this year launched an online Email Authentication Help Center (http://www.the-dma.org/emailauthentication).

To enhance this service, DMA is working with Return Path to develop a new Email Reputation Registry that will verify a sender’s compliance with regulatory requirements and score the sender’s technical practices against industry benchmarks. The free service will launch later this year, giving DMA member companies unprecedented access to third-party data about their email programs. In addition to providing authentication assistance, the registry will also help DMA members identify potential infrastructure security holes, verify CAN-SPAM compliance, and measure end-user spam complaints.

“We are excited to be working with DMA to provide this service,” said Matt Blumberg, chairman & CEO of Return Path and chairman of DMA’s Interactive Marketing Advisory Board. “The Email Reputation Registry will be a key element of DMA’s ongoing efforts to help curb spam and phishing and promote higher quality email marketing.”

DMA Research Initiatives Expand Understanding of Email Marketing

DMA today also outlined two research initiatives that will help marketers achieve greater success in the email channel. One builds on a breakthrough finding from DMA’s recent benchmarking study, Actionable Insights into Email Marketing, which found that self-assessed level of expertise — beginner, intermediate, and expert — correlated with email practices and their business results. The follow-on effort will be an anthology of white papers that document how marketers actually migrate from one competence level to the next.

“The destination is clear but not how to get there,” explained Peter Johnson, PhD, DMA’s vice president for research and market intelligence. “The follow-on anthology will help map an improvement path for marketers by focusing on expert-level practices and how to implement them.”

In addition, DMA announced today that the next edition of its Creative Benchmarks series will focus on the email channel, assessing the popularity and effectiveness of different creative elements as well as testing strategies and the integration of email and other channels.

“In helping our members become more relevant, responsible, and successful marketers, some of the most valuable resources we have to offer are clear, measurable insights on what works and what doesn’t,” said Greco. “We have done tremendous work over the past year to identify how marketers improve internally, and to identify how consumers respond to marketing messages. Now we are going to work to apply those findings to the unique considerations of the rapidly advancing world of email marketing.”

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