http://www.dbg.co.uk/ News from dbg CitySwift CMS 2.0 http://www.dbg.co.uk/guyhansonappointeddirectorofinteractiveservicesatdbg/1114?rss=31 Guy Hanson has been appointed Director of Interactive Services at dbg as a result of rapid growth within the organisation.  Guy had previously been driving new business and will now, in addition, oversee the development of dbg's email broadcast tool (dbg ecos) and client services. "The email landscape is changing and we are working with clients to be much more sophisticated and integrated with other channels. I'm excited about growing the email business at dbg even further and taking these clients on the next steps of their multi-channel journeys, extending their reach into mobile, web, and social media marketing." Guy Hanson Brett Isenberg, dbg CEO comments "Guy has been instrumental in dbg's growth within in the email market. This growth has driven the Board's decision to appoint Guy as head of the email revenue stream responsible for new business, client growth and profitability and development." Thu, 2 Sep 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/neiljohnsonjoinsdbgtoenhanceinsightandplanningoffering/1114?rss=32 Marketing services provider,  dbg has appointed Neil Johnson as new Head of Planning. With nearly 15 years experience in marketing, data and insight, Neil is well placed to drive growth within the planning, insight and analytics business area at dbg.  "Data planning needs to evolve beyond a targeting and selections model. I'm excited to be working with dbg to develop innovative data tools and strategies that balance the needs of the business with those of the consumer" says Johnson. Neil has a wide range of experience working client and agency side and across some impressive brands such as Zurich, eBay and Volkswagen. In his new role Johnson heads up the insight team which works with clients to optimise their marketing based on the intelligent use of data. Brett Isenberg, CEO of dbg, says:  "We are seeing more and more demand from clients in helping them with their marketing strategy based on customer data understanding. We're delighted Neil has joined us to help fulfil our clients' needs and requirements and drive this area of the business."   Thu, 2 Sep 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/dbglaunchnewlookemailplatform/1114?rss=30 Today, Marketing Services Provider dbg launched the latest version of its email platform, dbg ecos, to bring it in line with recent rebrand. In addition to a new look and feel, the latest release brings a range of improvements including better usability, social media functionality, SMS broadcasting facility, an enhanced reporting suite and improved online support. Hannah Graham, Marketing Director for dbg, explains: "It's been an exciting few months at dbg with the launch of our rebranded website and now the latest release of ecos. The improved ecos interface not only makes life easier for our clients, but also provides them with the ability to combine email marketing with social media and SMS to make a greater impact". The new look is getting positive reactions from customers, "The new system looks great - it's clean, easy to navigate and has some great support tips and links to guide you through the email broadcast process. The new functionality is a great addition too as organisations need to now integrate marketing channels such as email with social media and SMS. dbg are a forward thinking agency continually improving their tools and services which is illustrated in this latest release" Todd Fraser, PDV. Dale Langley, Head of Research at Development for dbg, adds:"dbg are committed to providing a best in class email broadcast tool to clients and the latest developments are all a direct result of client feedback and needs. The platform has an ongoing development roadmap and we are excited about further developments to come later in the year" If you are a current user of ecos you can see the new tool here ecos.dbg.co.uk For more information about our email marketing tool see our product pages Wed, 1 Sep 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/datasecuritywatchoutwikileaksisabout/1114?rss=29 Richard Lees, chairman of dbg, argues that the Wiki Leaks scandal in the US highlights the importance of data security. They've antagonised the BNP, embarrassed Sarah Palin during the US elections and caused a threat to US National security; if you handle sensitive information then every new Wiki Leaks headline probably sends shivers down your spine too. Although most of us don't have documents affecting national security to worry about and therefore can rest reasonably easy that Wiki Leaks is not out to get us, we do have our customers' data security to protect and it does bring this topic to the top of the agenda again. So why are we so scared of data security? Probably because we see the aftermath of data scandals and know how debilitating to a brand they can be. Bad PR does not even come close. My second instinctive reason is not one you might expect - a feeling of inevitability. It's so easy to get data processes wrong and everyone is always waiting for the real clanger to happen. Working in the marketing and data industry I understand the responsibility of handling personal data and the trust that exists between organisation or brand and consumer. Despite what people may want to believe, no bank wants to lose customer details to expose them to the risk of identity fraud; no Government organisation wants to publish private individuals details; no organisation wants to cause worry over data security but the number of diverse touchpoints that are relatively loosely controlled means it's far too probable that this can happen. So a scandal hits and we all get worried. There is no need to book onto a lecture on how to avoid espionage attempts, but rather than panic, perhaps it's time to dust off 'best practice data security'. It amazes me how some people still fail to do the basics such as merely password protecting data they are sending offsite, using secure file transfer protocols (SFTP) or if they do password protect the data at least sending the password in a separate communication to the data. It is remarkable how much customer data still moves around the internet every single day with very little control. Wiki Leaks get so much coverage because they challenge our assumptions that data is safe. It takes a story about a data leak or mishap to remind us that security should always be at the top of the agenda, as soon as we take our eyes off it the potential for disaster appears. As proud and responsible marketers, it reminds us that although the laws are there to try and regulate the industry and protect consumers from a range of mishaps, ultimately their fate lies in our hands and without regular reminders of the dangers, those hands can become a little too loosely clasped. Published: Marketing Week, 31 August 2010 Tue, 31 Aug 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/whichsocialnetworkshouldyoubackguyhansonfeaturesintechnologyweekly/1114?rss=27 Guy Hanson, business development director for marketing services provider dbg and member of the DMA's email marketing council, analyses recent email campaigns to see which social media networks work best. The blogs and marketing press is jam packed with the question - does social media work? While people are busy debating the benefit of social media, I'm confident in its benefits.  Having overtaken the adult industry, it's now officially the number one topic in terms of internet searches and traffic, and organisations are racing to get on board and be social. But what network is right for you? Are all networks equal or is there a strategy in there somewhere? Each week another irrelevant stat comes out about social media - so we decided to try and produce a simple one. By analysing social media shares derived from the email marketing campaigns we've broadcast, we find out how the different networks perform and whether they should be approached differently. Read the full article online Read how we help organisations integrate social media and email marketing Thu, 26 Aug 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/emailreviewrenaultguyhansonreviewsrenaultsenewsletterfortechnologyweekly/1114?rss=28 Have Renault got the va va voom? What springs to mind when you think of Renault's marketing?  Va Va Voom? "I see ya baby, shaking that ass"? Claude and can a car change a town? They must be doing something right if I recall multiple campaigns when thinking about the brand. They do some great email marketing too, so in this review I take their August newsletter for a test drive. This month their newsletter leads with The Mégane Experiment" - a multi channel marketing campaign they are currently running across all their channels including television, cinema, online, radio and in the national press.  If you haven't seen the campaign then the subject line "Can a car change a town?" might not be hugely interesting to you. Although they do run an indepth testing programme for every email broadcast. They have adopted some great email best practice, for example including plenty of calls to action, mixing imagery and text and social media links. Read the full article online Read about email marketing best practice   Thu, 26 Aug 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/newadditionstoouremailhygienetool/1114?rss=26 dbg verify has 2 additional options as part of our email data quality offering - mail servers and extrapolated gender. Mail servers: Testing email addresses and domains to ascertain if a mailserver is linked to an email address you can gain an understanding of the likelihood of email delivery into an inbox. Extrapolated gender: A gender can be appended to email addresses based on naming rules and formulas within the system to enhance your customer records. Email cleansing is an important process in aiming to improve deliverability and sender reputation. The added functionality of gender extrapolation allows users to enrich their data and use this for segementation and targeted email campaigns. Find out more about email address cleansing and data quality here   Tue, 24 Aug 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/richardleestobedatajudgeatdmaawards/1114?rss=18 Richard Lees, Chairman of dbg, has been appointed a data judge for the 2010 DMA Awards. Richard has worked in the industry for over twenty years and his experience spans continents and a wide range of industries.  "I am delighted to be judging some categories at this year's awards. The DMA awards are well respected and it is good to see one judge dedicated to the importance of data" The DMA awards aims to recognise ideas and excellence in the marketing community. Each judging panel comprises a group leader, planner, data planner, art director, copywriter, media buyer and at least two clients and/or category specialists. Judges are selected for their sector experience and reputation. Thu, 19 Aug 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/revampedncoanowinverify/1114?rss=15 The Royal Mail have made changes to NCOA data to increase accuracy and have created two files -  NCOA Suppress and NCOA Update. These new files have been integrated into dbg Verify, our data quality solution, meaning we can offer clients total suppression records of over 350million. NCOA Suppress: this new file replaces Royal Mail's Universal Suppression Service, which cleanses existing and suppresses old data. It includes daily and weekly updates, and is supplied using verified redirection data. NCOA Update: this is a forwarding address tool that allows users to update address details on their databases with forwarding address details. In the future, this file will be able to supply users with email and mobile phone contact details, as an additional data feed. Darren Wall, Head of Data and Bureau Services at dbg, welcomes the new files "The Royal Mail's new files have been integrated within our Verify solution and now offer our clients even more choice and the opportunity to increase the accuracy and success of their mailing campaigns." Request a data healthcheck with dbg verify and make sure your data is accurate. Mon, 16 Aug 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/benjerrysinnovativeicecreamquestionablemarketingstrategy/1114?rss=14 Marketing Week: Richard Lees, chairman of dbg, urges marketers to stick with multi-channel marketing. Earlier this month, Ben & Jerry's announced it will abandon regular email marketing in Britain in favour of communication via social media. Apparently that's how their customers told them they would prefer to be contacted. Read the full article  Wed, 11 Aug 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/flirtomaticengagesdbgforemailandmobilemarketing/1114?rss=13 Following a recent announcement that it has raised $9million in funding enabling it to launch in eight more countries, the world's number one flirting company Flirtomatic is working with marketing service and data company dbg to bring together for the first time data held on its 2.7 million multi-national users and develop fully integrated text message and email marketing campaigns.  Started in 2005, the Flirtomatic.com online flirting social network site is available to mobile users in Britain, Germany, Australia, Italy and the United States through its partnerships with Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, MetroPCS and AT&T.  The service has 2.7 million registered 18 years-plus users and over 1.5 million messages are sent each day. Georg Herbst, Customer Relations Manager for Flirtomatic, explains: "We are very excited to be working with dbg to take our text message and e-marketing to the next level.  For the first time, we will have the flexibility to stream marketing messages to our users through mobiles as well as email, encouraging them to make more use of the site, including uploading photos, buying virtual gifts and bidding in attention grabbing auctions.  "We'll also be doing some segmentation of our users, making our messages more targeted and relevant.  As part of a wider marketing mix spend, our forthcoming text and e-marketing campaigns aim to increase the number of messages sent each day by our users by 100 per cent over the coming year." Guy Hanson, Business Development Director at dbg, adds: "We are delighted to be working with Flirtomatic and to be bringing all its user data together for the first time.  Through our database, analytics and e-marketing services we will be helping them to deliver a series of exciting email and text message marketing campaigns to encourage their users to increase their activity online." For more information on dbg's email and SMS integration visit our dedicated pages Thu, 29 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/fireboxemailreviewbyguyhanson/1114?rss=11 Guy Hanson, Business Development Director at dbg and DMA email council member, reviews a recent email from Firebox. Firebox are a great brand with lots of fun content to fill their emails with and entice their customers to buy. In this review for Technology Weekly, Guy looks at the good and bad in their approach to email marketing and reveals some top tips for email marketers looking to boost campaign performance. Read the review Wed, 28 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/returnpathannounceimprovedsenderscore/1114?rss=12 Return Path today announced some new enhancements to their Sender Score. The new and improved changes include: Scores for more IPs: An increased IP coverage by 46% Faster processing for more stable scores: Access to a Sender Score every day it is updated. More data for greater accuracy: Addition of new data sources to provide a more accurate reflection of sender reputation Weighted reputation variables: The weight of reputation variables have been tweaked to accurately reflect the measure's impact on deliverability and overall reputation To read the full article visit http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2010/07/a-new-and-improved-sender-scor-1.php Find out how dbg can help you improve your email deliverabilty and Sender Score with Return Path certification. Wed, 28 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/casestudyondbgsrebrandinb2bmarketing/1114?rss=10 Read all about dbg's new look, from concept to execution, in B2B Marketing's case study. dbg Marketing Director, Hannah Graham is interviewed about the rebrand project.   Tue, 27 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/emailmarketingandsocialmediaamatchmadeinheaven/1114?rss=17 Email marketing and social media have been pitched as more competitive than the England and Germany football teams, seem to now be working in harmony together and with it producing results - a match made in heaven! Recent research by Econsultancy found that 37% of companies are using email marketing to encourage the sharing of content on social media sites. And it's no surprise. If your email subscribers share information on these sites then the viral audience that you can reach is enormous. In addition you can identify your brand ambassadors by tracking who shares your promotions, offers or message via your email software. You can then target these advocates with tailored information. As well as using email to push people to your social network sites, your social network pages can be used to boost email subscriptions. You can advertise your sign up forms and email newsletters and comms on your networks and build up your email marketing pool. Those that then sign up have provided you with information on which social networks they use so you can add this insight to your demographic information to be more targeted in email using dynamic content. The major advantage of using these two channels together is that you will be delivering truly integrated marketing - and marketing that is engaging and relevant. Topics which are discussed on your networks can feed content for your email communications, you can get feedback on your comms, products and services and brand within social networks - you can have conversations with your customers. Those that are getting the most out of the channels are joining up their marketing activities and using the data from all channels to inform the overall strategy. Fri, 23 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/directdigitalanddatatheholytrinity/1114?rss=9 Widely respected data guru Richard Lees has recently overseen the complete rebranding and consolidation of his company under the dbg banner. Anthony Begley caugth up with the quick witted Chairman to find out more about his journey on data. Read the full article on pages 18-19 in the July/August issue of Database Marketing. Thu, 22 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/dataqualitybacktobasics/1114?rss=16 To help you avoid data blunders like the one made by O2, we've collated some basic data quality tips for you to follow: Right first time: when capturing data for your database or marketing lists make sure you know what data you need, collect this fully and validate it as far as possible. Puts checks in place: before you use data for external communications make sure you have some processes and checks in place. Whether this is using a cleansing service, eyeballing, formatting or validation. You have a responsibility to check the data you are broadcasting. Be compliant: make sure you're aware of the rules around data use and keep to them. Whilst some organisations are not daunted by fines, the price of negative PR and customer perception from misuse of data is enormous. Use trusted sources: whilst there is a whole world of data out there be careful to purchase data from a reputable source and ensure they use data quality measures - if they don't, then you must. Recognise the dupes: deduping can be quite simple if your data is formatted correctly and is a common complaint from consumers. These are just the basics. You have the opportunity to be sophisticated and so  much more. Find out more about our data quality services. Find out how to extract more value from your data though insight & analytics. Thu, 22 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/marketingweekrelevantdatashoulddrivemarketing/1114?rss=3 Richard Lees, chairman of dbg, argues that marketing should be data driven, and that data should drive relevant campaigns. A few weeks ago I received an email offering me a boob job. They'd even managed to personalise it with the salutation "Dear Richard". Amusing but needless to say I didn't take them up on the offer. And I'll bet the other 'Richards' in their database didn't either. An example of totally irrelevant marketing. But marketing must be relevant, otherwise there will be no engagement, no response and no return on investment. And to be relevant we need to leverage data. Read the full article at: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/3015696.article Mon, 12 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/dmweeklyjunkfolderdodgingtactics/1114?rss=4 Guy Hanson, business development director for email service provider Database Group Interactive and member of the DMA Email Marketing Council, analyses his own inbox and comes up with some surprising insights... As you might imagine, I have a professional interest in receiving as many marketing emails as possible.  Last month I received 575, of which 20% ended up in my junk folder.  These are marketing emails that I have given permission to receive and don't include the plethora of fake Viagra, fake Rolex, fake lottery wins, etc. We use Barracuda as our corporate spam filter (along with another 100,000 corporate users around the world).  Close to two billion emails are processed by Barracuda users around the world every day, with roughly 90% being rejected! Our own stats are roughly comparable.  On average, we receive around 4,100 emails per day, of which roughly 3,600 are blocked at server level (generally of the "grow your penis size" variety).  Of those that do get through, around 10% get "tagged", meaning they will deliver to my address, but will be re-directed to my junk folder.  So these are genuine marketing emails that have been classified as spam. To see what I could learn from this, I copied the marketing email data from both my inbox and junk folder into a spreadsheet, then ran some data analysis.  Here are some of the trends that emerged: my marketing email traffic builds up consistently over the course of the week. Monday delivers around 14% of my total weekly activity, building up to 25% on Thursday (the most popular day of the week). Only 8% of total activity arrives over the weekends; on average, 22% of the marketing emails that I receive end up in my junk folder, but there are notable variations within this overall number. On Mondays and Fridays, this number drops to around 15%, while on Thursdays and Saturdays it is as high as 30%!; Time of day also flags up significant variations. I split the day up into "mornings" (8am to 1pm), "afternoons" (1pm to 6pm), and "night" (6pm to 8am). "Afternoon" comes up trumps for favourable treatment from the junk folder. Only 16% of all marketing emails received during this period ended up in my junk folder, compared with around 24% for the others; I then looked at subject lines and categorised them as "short" (less than 33 characters), "medium" (less than 66 characters) or "long" (66 or more). "Short" was the clear winner - only 11% of these emails ended up in my junk folder, compared with 26% for "medium" and 23% for "long"; I also looked at the impact of using special characters in the subject line e.g. £, %, !, etc. Many marketers will substitute "£" with "GBP" believing it will improve their spam filter treatment. So I applied this logic to my sample data set, and interestingly there was no variation (in terms of inbox vs junk folder placement) between those emails containing special characters in the subject line and those that don't; However, for that other ongoing debate in e-marketing circles - the use of the word "Free" in the subject line - the results were much more clear cut. Where "Free" did form a part of the subject line, junk folder placement was 30%, compared with 20% where it didn't, and it rose to a remarkable 46% when "FREE" was used in block capitals!; and • Finally I looked at frequency - are spam filters influenced by how often emails are received from a sender?  I split my data out by "1-4" (ad-hoc to weekly), "5-8" (more than weekly to bi-weekly) and "9 & above" (more than bi-weekly).  The first and third categories showed junk folder placement of around 75%, but for the middle category ("5-8") this number was only 11% - perhaps a good steer in terms of how often consumers want to be interacted with? This is clearly far from being a scientific analysis!  It's obviously influenced by the type of e-marketing that I sign up for and we are only looking at the behaviour of a single spam filter package.  Plus there's no direct causal relationship between the factors that I have examined on the one hand and junk folder placement on the other because spam filters don't only look at email content - they are also influenced by factors such as sender reputation metrics, broadcast volumes and blacklisting notifications.  However, it certainly throws up some interesting insights.  For example, it doesn't take a huge leap of logic to suggest that while the use of "Free" in the subject line doesn't directly result in junk folder placement, consumers may be implicitly more pre-disposed to complain about the type of emails which contain "Free" in the subject line, which then gives poorer sender reputation metrics, which in turn increases the likelihood of junk folder placement. And it shows that while e-marketers may view a simple email list as providing limited scope for more detailed behavioural analysis, this is actually not true at all.  Over and above the usual sources (click-stream data, web behaviour data, transactional data, etc.) there is masses of less obvious, but extremely rich data that can be used to complement an email program.  Sometimes it just takes a slightly more creative thought process to identify that data. Source: DM Weekly, 9 July 2010 Fri, 9 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/dbgwinsattingerjackinteractivedeal/1114?rss=2 dbg wins attinger jack interactive's five million names data management contract, creating the UK's largest bank of quality lead names. dbg has won an £200k account to manage lead generation specialist AJ interactive's (AJi) massive five million names data reservoir, creating one of the UK's largest bank of responsive customer bases currently available to marketers.  The new partnership will bring together data for the first time from AJi's portfolio of lead generation websites, including: activeyou.co.uk; holidayyou.co.uk; claimjunction.co.uk; and mobilitycompare.co.uk. dbg will collate and manage customer data from AJi's four key sites, combine it with quality data from selected partners and will prepare it for sale to marketers via a new web interface, ‘LeadBooster'.  Around five million customers will be profiled ready for data planners to extract for their campaigns from September. Alex Attinger, Managing Director of AJinteractive, explains: "Not only will dbg bring together all our data for the first time, creating a very large ever growing bank of high quality customer leads, they will make our records an even more powerful marketing tool by overlaying profiles.  We expect to more than double our data sales revenue over the next year through this key initiative." Brett Isenberg, CEO for dbg, adds: "Like many companies with multiple websites and digital data feeds, AJinteractive was unable to fully exploit its vast reservoir of data.  We are delighted to be working with AJi to manage their customer leads and ongoing feeds.  We will bring together the data collated from their impressive portfolio of websites and add attributes to allow AJi customers to pull extracts by lifestyle as well as location, interest and purchasing history." dbg has already started to manage AJi's data and AJi aims to roll-out its new data bank from the end of August. To find out more about dbg database solutions visit our dedicated product pages Tue, 6 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/positivecommentsonthenewdbgbrandatcustomerlaunchevent/1114?rss=1 Tuesday saw dbg reveal the new brand to customers at their annual event Tuesday 29th June. Customers gathered at the Marriott County Hall to hear presentations on the changing marketing landscape from Emma Woods of Pizza Express and Matt Jones from DDBLondon. The event closed with the new branding revealed by Marketing Director, Hannah Graham and a champagne flight on the London Eye. Comments on the afternoon and branding were very positive: "Some extremely interesting revelations about what is possible when data is used correctly and intelligently" Chris Rothwell, Mailbird "Very interesting insight into the developments in the industry, obviously an agency with it's finger on the pulse" Katie Deverson, Renault Thu, 1 Jul 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/newbrandandwebsite/1114?rss=5 Reflecting the seismic shift the huge rise of e-marketing and digital data has produced, data company Database Group (DbG) and email service provider Database Group Interactive (DbGi) have re-launched under one brand, dbg. Hannah Graham, Group Marketing Director for dbg, explains: "The recent surge in the importance of e-marketing and the volume of digital customer data has prompted us to unite our full service offer under one name, dbg. This reflects our ability to provide a truly integrated data service, managing both offline and online data, and providing our clients with the strongest possible insight into their customers to inform their marketing strategies - what we call a ‘multi-channel single customer view'."DbG and DbGi have been operating as individual businesses in the market - one marketing service provider (MSP) and one email service provider (ESP). We believe collectively the companies will make more impact under one brand, giving greater clarity as to who dbg is and what it does, as well as improving customer service, internal communication and cross-selling."Christine Didelot, Marketing Database Manager at Renault UK, adds: "We have been working with dbg for over eight years, collecting information about our customers to create a single customer view and to understand them better. The database is a powerful marketing tool, and with dbg's help we are learning ever more about our customers' behaviours and preferences by bringing together increasing amounts of meaningful data from both on and offline sources. I believe that dbg's rebrand under one name truly reflects the integrated data and email services it offers."dbg launched its rebrand today (30 June) with a new website www.dbg.co.uk. dbg engaged Cityswift to revamp its website and Quick Thinking to design its new logo (attached) and brand identity. Wed, 30 Jun 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/emailsoftwaresocialmediaandsmsfunctionalityadded/1114?rss=25 We've recently added 3 new exciting pieces on functionality to our ecos TM email software. Our new features include: Advanced comparison reports Our new comparison reports allow you to build your own statistic reports and track email performance easily. They can assist you with monthly reporting and measure and test activities. Social media With our new social media capability, your email recipients can share your email message on their social media networks (doing your marketing for you!). Recipients can "retweet" your message, post the information to their Facebook page and post on other sites using "Share this". Mobile marketing Broadcast email marketing and SMS campaigns side by side with our new SMS capability - integrating mobile marketing with your email programs. Contact us to find out more about these new features. Tue, 27 Apr 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/itsfullseedaheadfordbgandreturnpath/1114?rss=19 Working with its email deliverability partner Return Path, email service provider dbg now has full visibility into the delivery performance of email marketing campaigns sent on behalf of its clients. dbg is amongst the first UK email service providers (ESPs) to offer this live service which provides comprehensive information on which emails are delivered to the inbox, which are treated as spam and therefore put into junk folders and which ones fail to deliver at all. Guy Hanson, Business Development Director for dbg, explains: "Our new full seeding service, provided by our partners Return Path, is a fantastic addition to our current Mailbox Monitor capabilities.  Test programmes are now commonly used by e-marketers to gain insight into how their email will behave, but full seeding offers UK marketers the chance for the first time to get real-life insights into what percentage of broadcasts actually hit the inbox.  We look forward to reporting back in a few months on the insights gleaned from this implementation!" Richard Gibson, Channel Relationship Manager, UK for Return Path, adds: "E-marketers that only monitor acceptance rates when analysing the success of a campaign are missing the most important metric: did the email reach the inbox?  Just because an email is accepted, doesn't mean the email was actually delivered to the inbox.  Email filters can move the message to the junk folder or block it all together.  "The most important goal of email marketing has to be to reach the recipient's inbox.  This agreement provides dbg with the management and reporting tools that allow e-marketers to actually use Return Path's best in-class email deliverability monitoring tools to track their actual inbox placement rates with confidence." The benefits of this to dbg include: real-life insight into what percentage of broadcasts actually hit the inbox, for all major ISPs; the ability to create delivery alerts for the production team if pre-determined thresholds are not achieved; ability to immediately flag up diagnostic issues with Sender-ID, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM); ability to weight the reporting so that it accurately reflects the ISP breakdown of each client's mailing list, instead of treating all domains as equally important; ability to tag reports with variables of our choice e.g. transactional, marketing, corporate, etc; ability to monitor complaints by the actual campaigns that generate them rather than simulated test campaigns; ability to create time-series reports to aid trends analysis; and ability to create comparative reports focusing specifically on deliverability Fri, 26 Feb 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/renaultukdrivesforwardwithdbg/1114?rss=24 Following a three-year contract renewal starting this month (January 2010), email service provider dbg is now working with Renault UK on a new eCRM programme. Renault UK already sends an email newsletter to around 300,000 addresses each month and has asked dbg to create extracts from its email marketing database to target with relevant newsletters at key points in the customer's ownership. Andy Holmes, E-Commerce & Customer Marketing Manager, explains:  "We are looking forward to working with dbg for a further three years, kicking off with enhancements to our e-CRM programme which will allow us to keep in touch with our customers in an increasingly personal and relevant way - for example reminding individuals when particular services are due and relevant offers available." Wed, 27 Jan 2010 http://www.dbg.co.uk/dbgdesignroomhelpfootballassociationwinbacksupporters/1114?rss=23 Cheers for England were louder this autumn following the Football Association's email marketing campaign targeting lapsed members, run by dbg. dbg teamed up with design consultancy Designroom and made use of ePIC TM (Personalised Image Creative) to run a personalised email campaign designed to re-engage lapsed Football Association members ahead of the autumn's remaining World Cup qualifying matches.  The campaign scored an open rate of 64% and over 1600 clicked through to the re-join page. The campaign email, which featured an image of the England team manager holding an England shirt with each target's surname printed on the back, called for lapsed members to come "back on the team". "We are delighted with the impact of this email campaign and it's given us plenty of food for thought for the future," says The FA's Ed Coan, who works on the marketing of englandfans, the only official England supporters' club.  "The personalising technology used alongside the eye-catching creative was really attention-grabbing and certainly increased our opening and click-through rates compared to previous e-campaigns." Guy Hanson, Business Development Director for dbg, explains:  "Clever creatives and smart technology combined to make this, our first campaign for the FA using ePIC TM, a definite win.  The total opening rate was a high 64% but only 23% of these were unique, which means many people opened the mail more than once.  The difference between the two isn't normally as large and must be due to the creative use of ePIC TM  personalisation." Mon, 14 Dec 2009 http://www.dbg.co.uk/thebalvenieraisesaglasstoperfectlycraftedemailprogramme/1114?rss=22 Hand crafted niche single malt Scotch whisky distillery The Balvenie has achieved record-breaking email open and click-through rates on their unique e-relationship marketing programme since it began working with leading email service provider dbg six months ago. The Balvenie email programme seeks to engage a growing number of single malt whisky fans around the World. dbg has now managed over 20 highly targeted email broadcasts for The Balvenie, directed at single malt enthusiasts in the USA, UK and France with distillery insight, new release news and details of local tasting events, designed to increase drinker loyalty and advocacy in an area where repertoire experimentation is the norm. The Balvenie e-newsletter targets over 25,000 members of its Warehouse 24 programme and ‘warm' non members every month in the UK and abroad. Since dbg first started broadcasting these campaigns for The Balvenie in February, it has achieved an average open-rate of 60% and an average click-through rate of 25% for members of its ‘Warehouse 24' programme vs national averages of 23.6% for opens and 11.5% for click throughs (Source: DMA National Email Benchmarking report) David Mair, ambassador for The Balvenie Distillery based in Speyside in the Scottish Highlands explains:  "We'd love to meet everyone who enjoys The Balvenie in person, but growing interest in our whisky means we have an ever bigger enthusiast group all around the world for which carefully crafted e-relationship marketing offers the perfect alternative.  We're delighted with the results achieved so far in partnership with dbg who've really helped us keep the personal touch and optimise the effectiveness of the email campaigns we send, which really show in the fantastic open and click-through rates as well as the drinker responses we get." "We are looking forward to continuing to work together to help establish The Balvenie as the malt enthusiast's favourite." Neil Barron, account manager for dbg, adds:  "Working alongside creative agency Me'n'u, we're very happy with the results we've been achieving for The Balvenie.  It's very important for the distillery that they build an intimate relationship with their drinkers, and not to just ‘market' at them and we've helped them achieve that balance with some highly effective email campaigns. "Their eRM is highly targeted and multi-national so as well as improving their email deliverability and response rates, we've ensured their emails in foreign languages going to many different internet service providers look good on opening and function correctly in the right language." Fri, 13 Nov 2009 http://www.dbg.co.uk/moneyextracomtrebleemailclickthroughrate/1114?rss=21 Open rates on Moneyextra.com's email newsletter increased by 18% and click-throughs by 200% following the appointment of dbg in April. And dbg is now managing Moneyextra.com's broadcasts for the next two years. The popular personal finance site Moneyextra.com sends out a regular newsletter to its members. But with response rates of just 0.4%, it was disappointed with the results and struggling to manage the process in-house. dbg began the clean-up by running Moneyextra's database through its ‘data hygiene suite' which cleanses invalid addresses by picking-up known bounce-backs, miss-spellings and junk entries. It then ran a series of test broadcasts to improve subject lines, personalisation and creative elements, plus differences between week-day and weekend broadcasts. A live broadcast followed which ‘throttled' the email broadcast rate and ‘warmed up' the new IP address to improve Moneyextra's ISP reputation.  It produced a click-through rate of 1.2% - an uplift of 200% on Moneyextra's internal email broadcasts. Jennifer Rose, Communications Director for Moneyextra.com, explains: "We were extremely impressed with the framework that dbg applied to improve our email broadcasting results.  The fact that we are now working with clean data and actionable learnings is creating a significant uplift in our e-campaign metrics.  Our business model is closely aligned with the response rates that our email campaigns generate - an increase in response rates has a direct positive impact on our bottom line."Guy Hanson, Business Development Director of dbg, adds: "Moneyextra.com was dedicating significant man-hours to delivering their e-newsletter with poor results and little tracking.  But with our help the click-through rates on their broadcasts increased dramatically and their e-reputation rate also increased from 65 to 90 - a status enjoyed by less than 1% of commercial email broadcasters." Mon, 27 Jul 2009 http://www.dbg.co.uk/renaultappliesbestpracticetodriveupemailresponseby30/1114?rss=20 Click-throughs generated from Renault UK's monthly email newsletter to customers have increased by 30% since the car company engaged the support of email service provider dbg in January. And, following an initial trial, dbg now manages all Renault UK's e-newsletter data management. Renault UK sends a monthly email newsletter to around 300,000 addresses.  But with an acceptance rate of just 65% it asked dbg to review its e-newsletter operation.  dbg monitored the broadcast for four months, making changes along the way including: improving the quality of the email addresses; re-positioning the opt-out link; reducing spam trigger words; making better use of the trusted sender system; improving the image to text ratio; removing hidden text; and resolving its URL grey listing. The average number of monthly email newsletters opened in March to June was up 13% versus the first two months of the year, and click-throughs were up an impressive 30%.  This was in spite of an average reduction of 25% in the volume of emails broadcast, following the ongoing application of good emailing practices such as suppressing hard bounces and removing un-subscribes. Further enhancements to the process included, for example, encouraging Renault to run subject line tests on their newsletters.  For one campaign, comparing the best and worst performing subject lines gave an improvement of 14% on the number of opens and 7% on the number of clicks.Julien Regis, CRM & Prospect Acquisition Manager for Renault, explains:  "In our business there's a proven relationship between email response and sales delivered so it is essential that our email communications are as effective as possible.  During a trial period, dbg demonstrated a level of insight into the factors that influence the success of our email broadcasts that we were not previously receiving.  We are exceptionally pleased with the improvement in performance and look forward to continued success now that we have commissioned ongoing help from dbg." Tue, 21 Jul 2009