Email Marketing Day 2014 report - Affiliate and acquisition charters - Deliverability and responsive emailing #emday2014

It's already over. Back to Brussels, it's time to make an assessment of this second edition. Before talking about the content, let's take a look at the place. Once again, several hundred (I don't have the exact number) emailing professionals gathered in Strasbourg. And even if it's not necessarily the easiest destination for the participants, it's still a good idea to get out of Paris from time to time. This time, the Meinau Stadium was chosen, an atypical place for this kind of event, but which perfectly fulfilled its role (partly thanks to a beautiful weather).

Awareness of affiliate platforms and email acquisition professionals?

For me, the most important moment of this day will remain the very first part. The one that saw the CPA (affiliation platforms) and the APMEL (email acquisition companies) present the new version of their respective charters. As much as many emailing pros were waiting for these actors, I was for once surprised by the ambition and the awareness of this part of the emailing industry. It seems indeed that a change has taken place among affiliate marketing professionals and among what is most often called "emailers". For example, OPTOUT, which was a widely accepted practice in the acquisition industry is now clearly rejected in the APMEL charter, a (small) revolution.

Is the battle won? Not necessarily. If the CPA represents today many affiliate platforms, they are not all represented. On the APMEL side, only the most important companies in the acquisition business are members. Many players, more or less artisanal in their practices, are missing and will certainly not rush to sign the new charter of the association. All this without even mentioning the advertisers, who are still too often looking to acquire leads at a lower cost without worrying about the practices and the impact of these campaigns on their brand image.

However, it is a positive signal that has been given. What remains now is to create an education strategy for advertisers. Most of the work is still to be done.

Deliverability at the center of all attentions

If there is a subject which interests the crowds, it is well this one! This Tuesday, Alain Doustalet's intervention was not to be missed. The boss of the Orange Abuse Unit (but also cyber-crime) was listened to religiously by the audience.

However, this is not what I will remember the most. For me, the essential element of this session is the rise of Signal Spam. Today, the association is developing extremely important and structuring collaborations around the fight against spam. These collaborations go beyond the cleavages and the primary interests of the different members, since we see for example the development of initiatives led by routers, which will help ISPs to better fight against abuse. This also involves the transmission of information to the CNIL so that they have the necessary weapons to carry out their missions.

However, as with the previous point, there is one point on which there should be more investment, and that is again market education. Some of the questions that were asked by the audience, mainly to Alain Doustalet, should not be asked anymore. It seems that some essential points of the fight against spam (and therefore directly related to the deliverability of campaigns) are still not assimilated. It is therefore high time to open the way of education, and Signal Spam, even if it is not its first vocation, seems to me the right place to achieve this mission.

The big question of responsive

The last part of the day was dedicated to email content. We had interventions on personalization and automation, but especially on the theme of responsive emailing. I particularly appreciated the intervention of bmobile and Orange who tried to explain the methodological approach of such a change, which in the head of a large advertiser is not simple to implement. Christine Richard and Nicolas Ruchon insisted on the need to change production practices, to review workflows, and especially to formalize good practices. Beyond the responsive aspect, this is a subject that is not talked about enough. Implementing email content optimization strategies is not only about setting up a list of best practices, it is above all about rethinking the production flow, but also the organization and the role of the teams.

See you next year!

A big thank you to the Clic et Site team for the organization of this event which is an extraordinary moment of exchange between emailing professionals (but not only, many advertisers had also made the trip). The whole ecosystem will benefit from perpetuating this type of event. Boosting the emailing industry in this way is beneficial for everyone.

Image source: @RCSA_Official