Marketing Sherpa Quotes Web Ad.vantage About Email Newsletter Advertising

A Marketing Sherpa article entitled “Alert: How to Lift Response Rates For Email Newsletter Ads”, has quotes from Hollis about how to advise clients on media buys and creative buys. An excerpt from the article is below:

“What eight major agencies placing email ads told us …

Over the past three weeks, MarketingSherpa research staff contacted eight major interactive advertising agencies in New York and San Francisco with significant accounts placing email newsletter ads (among other media.)

We contacted them via email and then followed up by phone. Multiple times.

Unfortunately, not a single one would go on the record with a recommendation, or even any type of comment, regarding how they advise their clients on creative and media buys that works best to evade HTML blockers and preview pane folds.

They simply had nothing to tell us.

Hollis Thomases, who heads WebAdvantage.net, a smaller but highly reputable firm in Baltimore, MD, was the only exec to respond on the record. She noted that her creative and media buying team have been aware of the problem:

“For the most part, when it comes to email newsletter advertising, the publisher controls where ads are placed/located and sold, not us media buyers. Publishers have been less flexible with how they’ll change their newsletter ad placements or ad types than even their Web pages.

“We haven’t been asking for or even offered email newsletter ad placements based on optimized preview pane placements, however,” she continues, “We’re just happy if a publisher with the right audience for our buy even has an email newsletter in which we can carry advertising.”

MarketingSherpa also contacted Loren McDonald, Chief Marketing Officer at J.L. Halsey, who initially headed research efforts into preview pane usage last fall, for his take on the matter. McDonald advised as we do that email advertisers start:

o Testing text-only ad creative including a spelled out URL click link instead of HTML when possible.

o Asking for a two-placement, putting an HTML ad as well as a text message in an email newsletter issue. “SmartBriefs is a publisher that allows advertisers to do this.”

o Requesting ad positioning in the left-hand column if not at the top of the newsletter (the top is frequently sold out as well as being more expensive — although perhaps worth it.)

However, he agreed with Thomases that the real fight advertisers have on their hands now is an educational battle with the publishers. Often email newsletter templates are decided on by a graphics or production department who have not been given any guidance from ad sales.

It’s time for media buyers and major advertisers to speak out.

“I did a best practices session for 60 editors in New York recently,” McDonald notes. “I showed them how their own newsletters appeared in the preview panel with images blocked. ‘Would *you* open this? I asked. I beat them up, and they loved it.” Rest assured those editors are meeting with the design department as we speak.

With advertiser pressure and meetings, we can bring the rest of the newsletter world around.”

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