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The primary goal is to have your message read

Misty Harris
Sun

Size matters when it comes to an e-mail’s subject line, according to a new study of more than a billion e-mails, but it’s not the only consideration for Canadian job seekers, corporations and even parents who want their messages to stand out amid fierce inbox competition.

The research conducted over a one-year period by the world’s largest permission-based e-mail marketer found that while shorter subject lines generally outperform longer ones, word choice and order are also “vitally important” to decreasing the probability e-mail will be deleted before it’s even opened.

“Significantly more people will see a subject line than its accompanying creative,” says Thane Stallings, senior analytic consultant at Epsilon, which has offices in Canada and the U.S. “The way in which content and brand messaging are positioned can be as important to e-mail success as the number of characters in the subject line.”

The study, published this month, looks at roughly 1.1 billion e-mails sent by retail and consumer services companies between June 2007 and June 2008. In each of the two industry groups, an increase in subject-line length led to a decrease in both opening and click-through rates, though the correlation was much smaller than expected.

“The length of your subject line does have an impact,” says Stallings. “But it’s not the only thing to worry about.”

Since Sharon Houlihan was let go from her IT job last summer, she’s been using e-mail to contact prospective employers. For her, as for many others seeking work in a crippled economy, getting “e-noticed” has potentially life-altering implications.

“A place to live, food in my fridge and my car (are) all on the line,” says Houlihan, a Vancouver Island woman seeking Internet work. “At this point, no work means that all goes.”

Generally, Epsilon finds the best choice is to front-load a subject line by putting the most important information first — a strategy not lost on the top executive at Toronto-based Apex Public Relations.

“It’s important to be succinct and get to the point quickly,” says president Pat McNamara, who also favours the inclusion of “power words” such as change, move, surge, break, refuge and impact. “Something that reads like a catchy headline appeals.”

Carol Panasiuk, who as senior vice-president of brand marketing firm Cohn & Wolfe sends roughly 100 e-mails a day, is highly aware of subject-line techniques when crafting professional messages. With her personal correspondence, however, she admits to erring on the side of the dramatic.

“I sometimes put HELP! as my subject line when I need to get my husband’s attention,” says Panasiuk. “I don’t really like to mislead people with come-ons but if you can make it somewhat humorous, that’s great. My cousin sent me an e-mail with the subject line: ‘Recession is over.’ I opened it up to see pictures of him having fun on vacation in Arizona.”

Taking into account the ways in which people receive their e-mail is also important. Epsilon found that 57 per cent of e-mail recipients only see the first 38 to 47 characters of a subject line because of default settings by their e-mail domains and mobile devices.

“It has to work regardless of (which) e-mail tool I use,” says technology expert Cynthia Ross Pedersen, entrepreneur-in-residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. “Worst case, a poorly chosen subject line won’t make it past the spam filters.”

But her real pet peeve is a subject line that’s disingenuous.

“Don’t send me one more insincere ‘Dear Cindy’ e-mail,” says Pedersen. “Personalization is more that putting my name on an e-mail — it’s delivering content that’s relevant to me.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

But the bottom appears closer as asset selling seems to be subsiding

Eric Beauchesne
Province

’The housing slump ain’t over yet,’ says BMO Capital Markets Jennifer Lee.

The mood in Canada‘s business community is the darkest it has been since 9/11.

That comes amid an avalanche of bad economic news, which persisted yesterday with reports of further reversals in commodity prices and more grim news from the United States — Canada‘s main export market — of plunging home sales, falling orders for durable goods and rising unemployment claims.

The Conference Board of Canada reported that its January survey of businesses found their level of confidence continued to slide through the final quarter of last year and into this year, the sixth-straight quarterly decline and to the lowest point since 2001.

The think-tank’s index of business confidence tumbled another 9.1 points to 68.9 points at the start of the first quarter, nearly 38 points down from its peak in the second quarter of 2007.

Only twice in the past — the third quarter of 2001 and during the 1990-91 recession — has the mood been darker, and in those cases, the drop in confidence preceded a contraction in business capital investment, which does not bode well for the economy, the think-tank noted.

“The latest survey . . . indicates that this pattern is set to repeat itself in 2009,” the board said.

“Faced with a progressively grimmer economic outlook, firms are significantly curtailing their investment intentions.”

The survey, however, preceded this week’s federal budget, which promises to inject $40 billion in stimulus into the economy over the coming two years, including measures to ease the credit crunch, which the board’s survey found is a major impediment to production.

But the economic news was not reassuring.

“The North American economic storm continues to roll across the continent, leaving a flood of soft economic data in its wake,” noted Mark Frey, vice-president foreign-exchange trading at Custom House, a Canadian international payments firm. Durable-goods orders in the U.S. “fell off a cliff” while continuing jobless claims increased, reflecting the persistent weakness in that job market, he noted.

Further, new-home sales south of the border plunged 14.7 per cent from November, way beyond the 2.5 per cent markets expected, leaving sales down nearly 50 per cent from a year earlier and at their lowest level on records going back before the early 1980s.

“The housing slump ain’t over yet,” observed BMO Capital Markets economist Jennifer Lee, noting that the inability to sell new homes is despite an environment of 30-year high affordability and falling mortgage rates.

And there was further evidence of global and domestic economic weakness in the Canadian economic reports.

Scotiabank, in reporting another steep fall this month in its commodity price index, noted that the “shift from ‘boom to bust’ in many commodities has been the most rapid in the history of the . . . index.

“For the fifth consecutive month, Scotiabank’s commodity price index . . . posted another sharp decline in December, falling 5.5 per cent month-over-month,” it said, noting that left the index down 39 per cent from its July peak.

However, there were signs that the bottom is getting closer.

“While commodity prices are not yet at a bottom, the pace of decline is now slowing and the forced, indiscriminate asset selling by funds appears to be subsiding,” said Scotiabank economist and commodity market specialist Patricia Mohr.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Worldwide infrastructure spending heralded

John Morrissy
Province

Global infrastructure spending could hit between $25 and $30 trillion over the next two decades as governments seek to dig their way out of a worldwide recession and put people back to work, CIBC World Markets said in a report yesterday.

The report heralded the infusion of spending on public projects like road and bridges as a more effective means than tax cuts to stimulate economic growth, and estimated that $10 billion spent in Canada could create 110,000 jobs.

“Governments all over the world are buying jobs,” said Benjamin Tal, senior economist at CIBC World Markets. “And the infrastructure sector is where many of these jobs will be created.

“In the U.S., the impact of economic growth of infrastructure spending worth one per cent of GDP is more than double the impact of tax cuts, which have a greater leakage to imported consumer goods, and which risk being saved by households.

“In Canada, $10 billion of infrastructure spending can potentially create 110,000 jobs and lift economic growth by close to 1.5 percentage points-well above the stimulus effect of a tax cut of a similar size.”

In its continuing series of announcements preceding today’s budget, the Conservative party said yesterday the document will set aside $7 billion for infrastructure spending.

Tal’s report contained some good news for Alberta‘s struggling tarsands sector, which has been hit in recent months with tens of billions of dollars in project delays. While the bulk of fresh spending will go first to new hydroelectric and nuclear projects, Tal expects the money to flow back to the oilsands once energy prices rebound.

Over the coming decade, the report estimates $150 billion a year in new infrastructure spending in the U.S., $300 billion in Europe, $200 billion in China, and expects total global spending to total $650 billion over the next two years.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Canadians in better mood and U.S. housing sales edge up

Eric Beauchesne
Province

On the eve of what might be the biggest-ever injection of fiscal stimulus into the Canadian economy, and amid projections of trillions of dollars worth of further stimulus globally, there were unexpected flickers of economic light in an otherwise darkening economic outlook.

This included a slight improvement in the still-dark mood of Canadian consumers and, in the U.S., a sharp rebound in deeply depressed home sales. “In a dramatic change of events, the economic data that was released [yesterday] was actually not terrible,” noted TD Securities. “In fact, it was somewhat encouraging.”

“Consumers indicated that they believed their financial situation was beginning to improve,” the Conference Board of Canada said. “Moreover, for the fourth consecutive month, a greater number of respondents said now was a good time to make a major purchase.”

While the Prairie provinces recorded declines in sentiment, Quebec, Atlantic Canada, Ontario and B.C. all saw small gains. However, the 2.5-point increase from December lifted the index to just 70.2, down from nearly 90 last summer and almost 100 a year ago.

“Despite the slight increase, the index remains at levels consistent with those seen during other times of economic recession in Canada,” the think-tank said.

A major real-estate firm, in a separate report, blamed the depressed level of consumer confidence, along with the slide into recession, for a slump in home sales and prices in the final quarter of 2008.

“The combination of a global economy in recession and shrinking employment figures did much to dampen consumer confidence, diminish home sales and cause house prices to drop,” Royal LePage Real Estate Services said.

But the real-estate giant also released survey results suggesting the market could get a lift from the fiscal stimulus in the budget.

Nearly half of Canadians — 49 per cent — agree that the economic stimulus in the budget will have a positive impact on Canada‘s real-estate market, it said.

“Political actions taking place south of the border are also likely to buoy the country’s economic conditions,” it said, citing another survey finding that 82 per cent of Canadians agree that the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama will have a positive impact on consumer confidence here.

News out of the U.S. that home sales unexpectedly rose 6.5 per cent last month, raised hopes that the deep housing market depression there, which triggered the global recession, may be easing.

© Copyright (c) The Province

ADVICE: There

VANCOUVER Council to vote Tuesday on extending street grid system at the north end of the Granville Bridge

KELLY SINOSKI
Sun

A plan to transform the area around the north end of the Granville Street Bridge into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard dotted with mini-parks and lined with highrises is likely to move forward next week.

Vancouver city council will vote Tuesday on the plan, which calls for rejigging the elevated Granville traffic “ loops” at the end of the bridge — about 2.74 hectares — to extend its streetgrid system and create a multistreet boulevard that will allow pedestrians and cyclists to travel more easily between the downtown core and False Creek.

A city report suggests the number of residents living in the area could increase five-fold from 300 today to about 1,500 under the plan, which is aimed at guiding the redevelopment of the cityowned land in the next five to 15 years. The 100 or so jobs based in the area were expected to remain stable.

“ It’s about making better use of that land,” said Trish French, assistant director of city planning. “ This has been a very under-utilized piece of land and it acts as a barrier for people trying to move on foot or bicycle between the downtown and False Creek.”

The plan calls for the traffic loops to be replaced by an Hconfiguration of streets that connect with the surrounding roads and the bridge. The new streets proposed — unofficially named East Rolston, West Rolston and Rolston Way — would be narrower than typical streets but would carry the bulk of traffic, which French said is relatively light, with fewer than 5,000 vehicles per day.
Rolston Way, a two-way street, would cross Granville, linking to the other two streets, which would be one-ways north and south.

The city report dubs the area, bounded by Pacific, Howe, Drake and Seymour, a “ valley gateway” to the downtown. It proposes townhouse-lined streets leading to False Creek, with somewhat lower buildings on the Granvillefronting sites, flanked by higher towers on the Howe and Seymour fringes. The idea is to upgrade the area, most of which is city-owned, in terms of image and economic viability.

The beginnings of the plan were first floated in 2002, when city council adopted its Downtown Transportation Plan , French said. She added that much of the area — including the former Travelodge site and the Yale and Cecil hotel sites, which are privately owned — have already been rezoned to conform with the evolving plan.

The Yale Hotel would be retained and upgraded as a heritage building, with 43 existing affordable housing units. The report also states that among the public benefits would be funding for up to 160 replacement lowcost housing units, to replace those at the Continental and Cecil hotels.

A reconstruction of Granville Street from Drake to Cordova is also scheduled to be completed this year. And the Vancouver park board is calling for miniparks in the area bounded by Burrard, Helmecken, Granville and Pacific.

The city estimated in the spring of 2008 that it would receive about $ 14 million in community amenity contributions from redevelopment of cityowned land.

Miro Cernetig
Sun

The City of Vancouver is quietly approaching the federal and provincial governments for assistance in refinancing the city’s Olympic Village. It needs a bailout.

And those more senior governments had better come to the table to help rescue Canada‘s third largest city. If they don’t, this could quickly spiral into something far costlier than taxpayers are being told.

Could it be as embarrassing and debilitating as Montreal‘s 1976 Olympic debt, measured in the billions, which took Montrealers a generation to pay off? Perhaps not in dollar terms. But on a per capita basis, things could get just as ugly.

Do some basic numbers and you can see Vancouver‘s Olympic exposure — already about $1 billion — soaring by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Here’s the scary scenario Mayor Gregor Robertson is facing. (Warning: there are lots of numbers. But it’s your money, so it pays to pay attention.)

The new mayor wants to get out of — or at least renegotiate — the Olympic Village’s $750-million loan with Fortress Investment Group, the Wall Street financial firm. For good reason. Interest costs are 11 per cent a year — about triple the current interest rates. That’s about $83 million a year.

Unless Fortress suddenly gets generous, the penalties for refinancing will be, as people close to the negotiations tell me, “huge.” Penalties and interest owed could be $100 million or more.

That move would bring a smidgen of good news, though. Renegotiated interest rates — with federal and provincial backstopping — might fall to about four per cent.

Still, even that deal is sobering — sort of like going down the Olympic luge. It’s slow at first but things soon get fast and scary.

If the city takes over Olympic Village financing — assuming $875 million in debt, made up of the $750 million in loans and $125 million in cost overruns — the annual interest payments would still be $35 million. This would be the annual payment for 2009 and 2010 on $875 million.

So, let’s add it up. Refinancing the Fortress Olympic loans for the years of 2009 and 2010 brings total costs to $170 million. (That’s the forementioned $100 million on refinancing plus $70 million for two years of interest.)

But there’s more. The value of condos are falling — by the start of 2010, they could be down more than 20 per cent. So the city — reacting like any speculator caught in a falling market — will want to delay the sales, waiting for better prices when the market rebounds.

Let’s be optimistic and say that happens over three or four years — from 2011 to 2014. That would mean carrying the Olympic Village debt longer than the original business plan.

I’ll give the project a break and assume 250 Olympic condo units already spoken for are sold, offering up $250 million. So trim the Olympic Village’s debt to $625 million. At a rate of four per cent a year, that might mean interest payments of $25 million each year — or $100 million over four years.

Time for another subtotal: We’re now at $270 million. (The forementioned $170 million plus $100 million in interest for delaying condo sales.)

What I’m leaving out, you might forget, is the cost of the city land at False Creek, on which the Olympic Village sits. Taxpayers are supposed to get $200 million for that. I’ve yet to hear a business plan that guarantees taxpayers will recoup that investment by 2010.

This city is facing perhaps its biggest financial crisis in history. At city hall today, Vancouver‘s mayor will begin to fill in more details and outline possible rescue plans. He needs the help of other governments to make sure the Olympic Village is built on time, with as few additional costs as possible.

But to retain credibility, one of Mayor Robertson’s promises needs to be this: City hall will stick to the business of zoning, selling city property and collecting taxes. City bureaucrats and councillors will never again use other people’s money to dabble like amateurs in a condo boom.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Presentation being streamed live on Internet

CATHERINE ROLFSEN
Sun

OLYMPICS Vancouver city manager Penny Ballem is today scheduled to give a public presentation, streamed live on the Internet, on the state of financing for the troubled Olympic Village development.

The presentation is expected to be similar to a briefing given to reporters at city hall Friday, when it was revealed that city taxpayers are on the hook for the entire billion-dollar development and that the lender has cut off funding for construction.

Also expected today is a status update on a review of the project by the city’s external auditors, KPMG, Coun. Geoff Meggs said Sunday.

Today’s meeting, beginning at 2 p. m. at city council chambers, can be viewed live at www. vancouver. ca. Members of the public can attend, but there will be no public submissions accepted during the discussion, Meggs said.
Friday’s media briefing was originally planned for today as well, but was bumped forward after The Vancouver Sun reported on Friday that the project’s U. S. financier, Fortress Investment Group, is asking the City of Vancouver to guarantee most of the $ 750 million loan to developers, Millennium Development.

“ On Friday there was a decision to go forward because of a concern about rumours and to make sure the information out there was correct,” Meggs said.

In Friday’s briefing, media were told that the city had signed a “ completion guarantee” making it legally liable for the project’s cost, estimated at $ 875 million. The remainder of the project’s value is in land already owned by the city.

Later this week, Mayor Gregor Robertson will be in Ottawa lobbying the federal government before the federal budget, and Olympic Village financing is expected to be brought up. The mayor has also been discussing the subject with the province.

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