Experian Marketing Services is hosting its annual Digital Summit (today through Friday) at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

This premier digital marketing event, with the theme, “Customer Obsession: Empowering Meaningful Relationships,” features highly engaging and inspiring learning sessions, providing marketers with key insights and best practices for keeping their customers at the heart and center of everything they do.

Attendees are learning from marketing experts about the latest trends in digital marketing across email, mobile, social, search and display. In addition, content from the event delves deep into understanding the new American consumer and the latest in cross-channel marketing.

And here are some of our favorite tweets:

Learn more about the 2012 Digital Summit and follow along on twitter #CMSummit
and view photos on our Pinterest board. View this blog tomorrow for updates.

Display Advertising! Solutions such as Experian’s Audience IQ^SM recognize the changing behavior of digitally-savvy consumers, and supplements email marketing campaigns with data-driven display ads. What this means is that you have more than one opportunity to engage your consumers in making a lasting impression.

For example, you can create different use cases based on what actions the consumer takes regarding the email.

• If the email is opened but the consumer didn’t click through, a similarly-themed display ad with a more aggressive offer can be shown.
• If the email is not opened, then a display ad featuring a different product and offer can be shown.

Data- driven advertising allows marketers to coordinate messages to the same consumer segment so that a particular ad campaign shows up in their inbox, and also on the websites they are visiting. This kind of synergy can drive website traffic by up to 4x if executed correctly.

• Offer a seamless sign up process
• Reward customers for subscribing
• Continue to provide relevant, valuable messaging throughout the life of the campaign

Below are a few proven acquisition tactics that can be used to gain loveable, valuable opt-ins.

Email Campaigns – incorporate your SMS program into your email campaign and identify subscribers who are ready to communicate with your brand through multiple channels. It is a recommended best practice to create a dedicated mobile email to engage subscribers to sign up for your SMS program.

Mobile Websites – Incorporate links to SMS signup forms at the bottom of every page of your mobile website to capture users already interacting with your brand on a mobile device.

Print Media – leverage print and other offline channels to acquire subscribers by including SMS calls-to-action in direct mail, catalogs, statements etc. Or, Leverage QR codes in addition to SMS calls-to-action to drive users to mobile sites and mobile/email collection forms

In-Store Signage – display your SMS call-to-action containing a keyword and short code on in-store signage to collect mobile opt-ins at store locations. Signage is most effective when it is near point of sale, or other places in the store where customers can easily take the time to text in from their handsets.

Website – Leverage your website traffic to build awareness of your mobile program. A page dedicated to mobile specifically, tends to build awareness and increase acquisition faster than small call outs and banners.

Social Media – Include keyword and short code call-to-actions within your Facebook and Twitter posts to gain opt-ins from followers and friends. Also, include sharing capabilities to allow users to like and re-tweet SMS promotions.

Store staff – Don’t downplay the effectiveness of your in-store staff – they can be a valuable differentiator for subscriber acquisition. Though SMS is widely adopted, some users may still require assistance to opt-in to programs, or to understand all of the program’s benefits.

Fifty-two percent of consumers access email via their smartphones. Given that this number is growing rapidly, and that most consumers are no longer willing to tolerate emails that don’t display properly on mobile devices, designing your emails to be “smarter” for mobile can go a long way.

• Audience – Some email analytics tools, like CheetahMobile’s Litmus, can provide a report summarizing your mobile audience by device. Based on this report you can strategize how to target and cater towards these users.
•  Design- When designing for mobile the most important factor to keep in mind is how your standard email will view once it’s been reduced down by half. Consider the following mobile best practices:
  • Simplified navigation and larger text size to increase the usability of the email on a mobile device
  • Single column layout for easy scrolling
  • Size and positioning of all your calls-to-action
•  iPhone – Media Query (MQ) is one option to optimize your emails for mobile when your audience consists primarily of iPhone users. This is a CSS code that outlines specific parameters to either resize or hide certain areas of your email. Designing with MQ in mind will allow you to take one single template that is optimized when viewed within the iPhone email application.

Check back weekly for more insight from the 2012 Digital Marketer, to be released in March. Click here to pre-order the report, and follow the conversation on Twitter at #EMS2012.

• There was a 4.4% increase in average order values
• Email volume rose by 19%
• Unique open rates remained quite positive for most verticals (which may be a result of more marketers optimizing subject lines).
• As in 2010, 26% of subject lines featured an offer this Holiday Season.
• Dollar ($) offers were the most popular this season (seen in 29% of subject lines), sneaking past last year’s leader of percent (%) off campaigns (seen in 28% of subject lines).
• Personalization in subject lines increased (31% overall), particularly in the last half of the season.

Lunchtime and afternoon hours present good opportunities to remind customers of deadlines and key offers.  Looking at the performance of mailings with ‘urgency’ in their subject lines (including the words ‘limited’, ‘last’, ‘ends’, final’, ‘hours’, ‘left’, ‘today only’, ‘hurry’, or ‘urgent’), a recent Experian CheetahMail analysis finds that that campaigns sent between noon and 4:00pm make up 11% of the volume, but generate 15% of the revenue.  A similar result is seen for campaigns sent between 4:00 and 8:00pm, which have 6% of the volume and 9% of the revenue.

What time are you sending?

What time are you sending?  Consider running time-of-day testing, it’s not too late!  Who knows what new revenue opportunity you may be able to find.

Experian CheetahMail tracks the holiday mailing activity of 385 brands that also mailed in the 2010 Holiday Season. All metrics are based on results 3 days from send.

To highlight some of the learnings, our very own Erin Geoghegan interviews Justin Foster – Co-Founder & Vice President of Market Development, Liveclicker, on the topic:

Erin: Why should marketers be using video in email this holiday season?

Justin: Video helps marketers stand out from the crowd. Right now, most B2C/e-commerce merchants are executing a ramped email sending schedule to better compete for limited consumer shopping dollars. Video offers a way for these email marketers to grab the attention of shoppers, show their products in a new light, and differentiate from the competition – all right in the inbox.

Erin: I would think we might be too deep into holiday crunch time to implement this tactic, is this not the case?

Justin: If a marketer has ready access to video content that’s ‘on message’ for a planned campaign, then it’s probably not too late. If the content isn’t there, or if there’s not a natural alignment with the current holiday calendar, then it’s probably too late at this point. If the content is there, and the marketer has never before launched a video email campaign, then I’d advise devoting at least an additional four hours of planning to the video email campaign launch.

Erin: If you could give me, as an email marketer, a three-step process for implementation, what would it be?

Justin: At risk of oversimplifying, the three steps are:

1. Get the video
2. Use the right technique to add the video to the email
3. Send the email as normal

Each of these three steps has sub-step components that will vary based on a marketer’s goals and needs. Companies that have built processes around shooting or acquiring video content will greatly simplify the job of the email marketer for part 1. Systems like Liveclicker will completely automate the “use the right technique” part, although there are still creative considerations involved. When the right techniques are used, video can be added to email today just like images, so the last step is really old hat for email marketers. I always would advocate email marketers to seek education prior to embarking on any new initiative, including video email. It pays to spend the time up front to do the research by attending webinars like the one CheetahMail hosted this week. These sessions can be an excellent source of information for even experienced email marketers.

Click here to download the webinar.

The study finds that consumers print the most digital coupons on Wednesday and Thursday

The study finds that consumers print the most digital coupons on Wednesday and Thursday, which suggests consumers access online discounts mid-to-late week to redeem them during the weekend. Conversion rates constantly exceed 60% between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. (key work hours), and conversions peak between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., as well as noon and 5 p.m.

So what can email marketers do to capitalize on the e-coupon-obsessed this holiday season?  Here are a few tips from Experian CheetahMail:

• Use testing to keep response high and costs low: Often times, emails providing coupons to high-value or existing buyers do not have to be as aggressive or frequent as those sent to new customers.
• Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity: Despite the ease of use/redemption that many online coupons offer today, customers can take a long time to buy. Use words such as “exclusive” or “limited time only” in your subject lines.
• Use coupons to drive word of mouth: Ensure that you prominently display “Share with your network” or “Forward-to-a-friend” buttons in emails containing shareable coupons. The impact can be huge!

RevTrax ran statistical analysis between December 2008 and August 2011 to determine the best time to present coupon offers. The data represents millions of views and prints broken down and analyzed by volume per day and hour, conversion rate, percentage of coupons viewed and printed, per day and hour. It also tallied the odds or likelihood that a consumer will print a coupon based on any given day and hour.

As featured in a new white paper: The Happy Holiday Inbox: Last minute tips for spreading the cheer with email this year, the biggest trends include:

• Mobile and social galore: Links to social networks and mobile viewing are amplifying email marketing promotions. Fifteen percent of email openers read emails on a mobile phone, and that number is growing. Additionally, forty percent of online consumers who use social networking sites plan to use Facebook for feedback from family/friends to help make a decision about a product, according to a survey by PriceGrabber.com.

• Touting and shouting shipping deadlines: Including deadlines to provide urgency, and directions that encourage customers to act fast, is more prevalent than ever.  An analysis of last season’s campaigns confirms that on average, shipping deadlines improve email transaction performance by 22 percent.

• Creativity shines: The 2011 holiday season is showcasing some of the trendiest and most appealing looks email has ever sported.   And it’s no wonder – compared to email campaigns without animated gifs, ninety percent have significantly higher transaction rates (60 percent) and 118 percent more revenue per email than the campaigns without the animation.

To learn more, download the white paper today.

Eighty-two percent more emails had Cyber Monday in the subject line this past Friday, November 18, to Saturday, November 26 as compared to the same dates last year, according to an Experian CheetahMail analysis.

These subject lines didn’t just tout the day, they shouted out special deals and offers that were tough to refuse. Some of the subject lines that caught my eye included:

• Up to $50 off – it’s officially Cyber Monday!
• It’s Cyber Monday!  Don’t Miss Out! + Free Shipping Every Day
• 50% off Exclusive Cyber Monday Event Starts Now
• Bonus Event! 80% Off Cyber Fix Deal Starts Now

Keep the cyber celebration going everyone – happy mailing (and shopping)!

Experian CheetahMail tracks the holiday mailing activity of 385 brands that also mailed in the 2010 holiday season. All metrics are based on results 3 days from send.