Email Experience Council Announces Roundtable and Advisory Committee Chair Election Results

New York, NY, August 21, 2008 — The Email Experience Council (eec), the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), today announced the 2008 Member Roundtables and Advisory Committee chair election results.

“The Email Experience Council’s recent growth and success did not stem from just one person’s efforts, but are the results of the collective efforts, passion, and dedication of the community,” said Jeanniey Mullen, eec founder and executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Zinio and VIVmag.  “The email marketing community is fortunate to have an active membership that continuously steps forward to donate their time and energy.  With their help, the eec has become a force, and the leaders of our roundtables and advisory committees drive that force forward.  I am pleased to invite the new group of leaders into the heart of the eec as they continue our focus of enhancing email marketing and communications.”

DMA Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Ramesh Lakshmi-Ratan, Ph.D., said, “The members of the roundtables and committees bring to the eec impressive talent and a solid and varied list of accomplishments.  We very much appreciate their generosity of time and commitment to helping the eec as it works to advance email as a powerful marketing and business communications channel.”

2008/2009 Chairs

The eec is pleased to welcome the incoming chairs for its Roundtables and Advisory Committees, including the newly formed Consumer Education Roundtable that is focused on reaching out to consumers and helping them get the most out of their email experience.

The Consumer Education Roundtable

Jason Baer, President, Convince & Convert

D. J. Waldow, Account Manager, Bronto Software

The Deliverability & Rendering Roundtable

Michelle Eichner, Vice President of Client Services, Pivotal Veracity

Jack Sinclair, Chief Operating Officer, Return Path

The Email Design Roundtable

Lisa Harmon, Principal, Smith-Harmon

Megan Walsh, eMarketing Manager, Williams-Sonoma

The List Growth & Engagement Roundtable

Arend Henderson, Chief Analytics Officer, Q Interactive

Nate Romance, Senior Strategist, ExactTarget

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable

David Daniels, Vice President, Research Director, JupiterResearch

Loren McDonald, Vice President of Industry Relations, Silverpop

The Advocacy Advisory Committee

Jordan Ayan, Chief Executive Officer, SubscriberMail

Jordan Cohen, Senior Director of Industry Relations, Goodmail Systems

The Member Initiatives Advisory Committee

Joel Book, Director of eMarketing Education, ExactTarget

Stephanie Miller, Global Markets Catalyst, Return Path

The Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee

Kay Cavender, Director of Communications, Silverpop

Lana McGilvray, Vice President of Marketing, Datran Media

The Nonprofit Project

Dylan Boyd, Vice President Sales and Strategy, eROI

Aaron Kahlow, Founder, Online Marketing Connect

The eec thanks all members who applied for these chair positions, as well as all members who voted in this year’s election.

“In addition to congratulating our new chairs, we would also like to recognize all the fabulous work of our outgoing Roundtable leaders,” said Stephanie Miller, eec Roundtable Leadership Chair and global markets catalyst of Return Path.

The Email Design Roundtable released three email checklists:  the Code QA Testing Checklist, Email Design Checklist, and Welcome Email Checklist, as well as wrote two blog posts addressing the issues in those checklists:  Email Design Checklists Save the Day: Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Put Your Welcome Message to Work with the Welcome Message Checklist.

The List Growth & Engagement Roundtable released an interactive Excel-based ROI Calculator for Retailers to help measure the return on investment of their acquisition and retention email mailings, including deployment costs, list growth calculations, and more.  The Roundtable also shared list growth tactics for how to deal with lapsed subscribers — List Growth Challenge: Lapsed Subscribers.

The Communications Roundtable (now the Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee) launched the eec Speakers Bureau, which matches eec members with speaking opportunities at events that currently have little or no programming about email marketing.  Click here to read about the official eec Speakers Bureau launch.

The Advocacy Advisory Committee published a series of Email Advocate blog posts that discussed regulatory and legal issues.

Several other projects to be completed in the coming weeks include a Deliverability Resource Guide from the Deliverability & Rendering Roundtable and an Email Marketing FAQ document from the Research Roundtable (now the Member Initiatives Advisory Committee).

About the Email Experience Council (eec)

The Email Experience Council (eec) (www.emailexperience.org), the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association, is a global professional organization striving to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and advocating its importance in business, and its ROI value.  The eec is committed to regularly conducting a broad series of email initiatives for a variety of organizations that highlight the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle, and branding device.  Additionally, eec members are setting the standards for email through Member Roundtables.  The eec members are representatives of other trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners, clients, and companies focused on the potential of email marketing via mobile and other digital devices.

About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

The Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) is the leading global trade association of businesses and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques.  DMA advocates standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the end-to-end direct marketing process.  Founded in 1917, DMA today represents nearly 3,600 companies from dozens of vertical industries in the US and 50 other nations, including a majority of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations. 

In 2007, marketers — commercial and nonprofit — spent $173.2 billion on direct marketing in the United States.  Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures generated approximately $2.025 trillion in incremental sales.  In 2007, direct marketing accounted for 10.2 percent of total US gross domestic product.  Also in 2007, there were 1.6 million direct marketing employees in the US.  Their collective sales efforts directly supported nearly 9.0 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 10.6 million US jobs.

The Power of Direct:  Relevance.  Responsibility.  Results. 

# # #