New Zealand has had enough of businesses and individuals not paying attention to their anti-spam laws. They had been going with educational efforts, but they're fed up now. Fines for spamming, either via email or SMS, are $200,000 for an individual or $500,000 for a business.
If you're a New Zealand resident and you're getting spam, you can file a complaint with the Department of Internal Affairs.
If you're sending to New Zealand residents, make sure you're honoring unsubscribes or it can cost you up to a cool half-million.
Countries all over the world are fed up. ET handles your unsubs for you, so if you're sending through us, no worries. Just make sure that if you're a new customer you've imported your previously unsubscribed customers as unsubscribed or that you don't upload them as Active subscribers.
The process of implementing or replacing an email marketing module that will be distrbuted to your customers (and even your customer's customers) can be a daunting exercise, not only due to the complexity of developing functions like list management, content editing and tracking, but also because of the importance of factors outside the bits and bytes.
For example, deliverability (the rate at which emails make it to the subscriber’s inbox) is affected by the reputation of the sender not the quality of the code. Without the right policies and people to work with the major ISPs, the value of email (no matter how beautiful) is diminished.
To help you assess the magnitude of becoming your own Email Service Provider on behalf of your customers, we’ve put together a "top-ten" list of high-level requirements that our Partners have shared with us along with a bit of color.
1. Reliability System availability and uptime are critical issues for email. As email volume grows, so must the system behind it. System failures will occur whether the system is in-house or 3rd party so management and recovery processes are constants.
2. Deliverability Reputation and remediation capabilities are critical to ensure consistent, timely email delivery. Managing this process is one of the most expensive elements of email. To maximize delivery, the system must support a permission based, strong opt-in model as well as private (dedicated) IPs or domains.
3. Security In addition to data protection standards (e.g. encryption/SMTP) to keep customer data safely behind the firewall, the system must maintain data integrity across multiple hierarchies and parent-child relationships.
4. Transactional, operational sending Many ESPs do not support this capability within the framework or API. These types of emails, from loyalty programs to notifications, have become as effective as mass marketing emails in terms of driving consumer behavior.
5. Relevance The ability to use subscriber attributes and external data tables to deliver tailored messages, including HTML, text, hyperlinks and images, has grown as a key differentiator for email marketing systems. Dynamic content is an example of innovation in this area.
6. Performance List processing, send execution and tracking response are key metrics to be optimized. In today’s world of social media and instant buzz, customers want to know that there emails will be delivered in near real-time.
7. User experience This category includes usability, look and feel as well as integration with external systems. The extent of control desired often dictates the go to market approach. An open, flexible framework will allow for a phased deployment.
8. Tracking Access to opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and conversion statistics are vital to measuring the impact of email programs. If this data is not available, it will become more difficult to justify cost from the user’s perspective.
9. Unsubscribe options Support for campaign based or publication based management of unsubscribes is essential to building and sustaining subscriber lists.
10. Multi-channel Though Email remains a red-hot market and will continue to be a major channel of communication (despite the NY Times opinion, marketers expect to utilize other established and emerging channels, such as SMS (Text), Voice, Landing Pages and Social networks. Supporting such channels within a single platform will enable you to satisfy demand as it grows.
Your list will no doubt be unique - containing more granular requirements on what is needed to satisfy customer demand in your market. We'd love your feedback on what features, functions and/or factors are most important to you and why...
Stay tuned for the next part of the series...The Partner Paradox.
For example, deliverability (the rate at which emails make it to the subscriber’s inbox) is affected by the reputation of the sender not the quality of the code. Without the right policies and people to work with the major ISPs, the value of email (no matter how beautiful) is diminished.
To help you assess the magnitude of becoming your own Email Service Provider on behalf of your customers, we’ve put together a "top-ten" list of high-level requirements that our Partners have shared with us along with a bit of color.
1. Reliability System availability and uptime are critical issues for email. As email volume grows, so must the system behind it. System failures will occur whether the system is in-house or 3rd party so management and recovery processes are constants.
2. Deliverability Reputation and remediation capabilities are critical to ensure consistent, timely email delivery. Managing this process is one of the most expensive elements of email. To maximize delivery, the system must support a permission based, strong opt-in model as well as private (dedicated) IPs or domains.
3. Security In addition to data protection standards (e.g. encryption/SMTP) to keep customer data safely behind the firewall, the system must maintain data integrity across multiple hierarchies and parent-child relationships.
4. Transactional, operational sending Many ESPs do not support this capability within the framework or API. These types of emails, from loyalty programs to notifications, have become as effective as mass marketing emails in terms of driving consumer behavior.
5. Relevance The ability to use subscriber attributes and external data tables to deliver tailored messages, including HTML, text, hyperlinks and images, has grown as a key differentiator for email marketing systems. Dynamic content is an example of innovation in this area.
6. Performance List processing, send execution and tracking response are key metrics to be optimized. In today’s world of social media and instant buzz, customers want to know that there emails will be delivered in near real-time.
7. User experience This category includes usability, look and feel as well as integration with external systems. The extent of control desired often dictates the go to market approach. An open, flexible framework will allow for a phased deployment.
8. Tracking Access to opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and conversion statistics are vital to measuring the impact of email programs. If this data is not available, it will become more difficult to justify cost from the user’s perspective.
9. Unsubscribe options Support for campaign based or publication based management of unsubscribes is essential to building and sustaining subscriber lists.
10. Multi-channel Though Email remains a red-hot market and will continue to be a major channel of communication (despite the NY Times opinion, marketers expect to utilize other established and emerging channels, such as SMS (Text), Voice, Landing Pages and Social networks. Supporting such channels within a single platform will enable you to satisfy demand as it grows.
Your list will no doubt be unique - containing more granular requirements on what is needed to satisfy customer demand in your market. We'd love your feedback on what features, functions and/or factors are most important to you and why...
Stay tuned for the next part of the series...The Partner Paradox.
As mentioned on MediaPost's Email Insider and elsewhere, the Maine Attorney General's office recently ruled that email addresses of people who contacted various state departments are fair game, that they must be supplied to anybody who submits an inquiry via Maine's Freedom of Access Act.
This means that any sort of advocacy group can petition the state government to provide a list of all the email addresses of people who contacted them on a given topic; and then they would be able to spam those people, to further the advocacy group's goals. BAD NEWS.
Spamhaus blogged about this; click here to read their take on why this is a bad idea. We couldn't agree more with Spamhaus's take on this issue. For our part, we sent a letter to the Maine legislature, looking to explain why we prohibit third-party lists-- any list compiled via this method would clearly NOT be a permission-based email list and we'd clamp down hard on anybody who tried to use a list like that via ExactTarget.
As Morgan Stewart and I explained in our letter, "Allowing advocacy or other groups to obtain email addresses from the Maine state government via a Freedom of Access request allows these groups to build spam lists that will cause harm to internet service providers and end consumers. The owners of those email addresses did not consent to have their email addresses shared with third parties or added to other email lists. Further, recipients of such emails will have to take an affirmative step to unsubscribe from those lists, which adds to the burden of those recipients.
"There is no known legitimate use for email address data in this context other than to compile a non-permission email list and send spam to it. Whether or not the topic of the spam is related to advocacy of something under Maine law is irrelevant; spam is still spam. It is our opinion that there are ample alternate methodologies under which advocacy or other groups may identify and contact Maine residents, without resorting to the most unwanted of email scourges; spam. Please don't enable the sending of spam to Maine residents by allowing their email addresses to be obtained from government agencies."
How about it, dear readers? When you contact somebody in government to provide feedback on an issue or apply for some sort of permit, do you think it's fair that groups can query the government for your email address and be able to add you to a list? And if you're an email marketer, do you really think this is a winning email strategy? Blasting people who didn't sign up for your emails? I sure don't.
This means that any sort of advocacy group can petition the state government to provide a list of all the email addresses of people who contacted them on a given topic; and then they would be able to spam those people, to further the advocacy group's goals. BAD NEWS.
Spamhaus blogged about this; click here to read their take on why this is a bad idea. We couldn't agree more with Spamhaus's take on this issue. For our part, we sent a letter to the Maine legislature, looking to explain why we prohibit third-party lists-- any list compiled via this method would clearly NOT be a permission-based email list and we'd clamp down hard on anybody who tried to use a list like that via ExactTarget.
As Morgan Stewart and I explained in our letter, "Allowing advocacy or other groups to obtain email addresses from the Maine state government via a Freedom of Access request allows these groups to build spam lists that will cause harm to internet service providers and end consumers. The owners of those email addresses did not consent to have their email addresses shared with third parties or added to other email lists. Further, recipients of such emails will have to take an affirmative step to unsubscribe from those lists, which adds to the burden of those recipients.
"There is no known legitimate use for email address data in this context other than to compile a non-permission email list and send spam to it. Whether or not the topic of the spam is related to advocacy of something under Maine law is irrelevant; spam is still spam. It is our opinion that there are ample alternate methodologies under which advocacy or other groups may identify and contact Maine residents, without resorting to the most unwanted of email scourges; spam. Please don't enable the sending of spam to Maine residents by allowing their email addresses to be obtained from government agencies."
How about it, dear readers? When you contact somebody in government to provide feedback on an issue or apply for some sort of permit, do you think it's fair that groups can query the government for your email address and be able to add you to a list? And if you're an email marketer, do you really think this is a winning email strategy? Blasting people who didn't sign up for your emails? I sure don't.
In my previous blog post I explained what email preheader text is and why it is important. Below you will find some tips for creating your preheader text.
Tips for successful preheader text:
Call to Action – Unlike in your subject line, it’s ok (and encouraged) to use your call to action as your preheader text.
Be Positive - Use positive wording for preheader text. For example instead of saying, “Having trouble viewing this email? Click here” try “view this email with images.” The design team has a great blog post about this.
Support – Make your preheader text support you subject line. If you remember from my post Improve Your Email Subject Line, the subject line should support what is in the email. It is all one big circle.
Character Count – Keep in mind the length of the preheader text that will be displayed in the inbox (before opening). This length varies depending on the email client. To give you a character count reference, Gmail shows about 100 characters for subject line (this number varies based on screen size) and preheader text collectively (so if you have a long subject line none of your preheader text will display) and the iPhone displays about 140 characters (in the traditional vertical view) regardless of subject length. There are also some email clients that don’t display any.
Proper Placement – The marketing preheader text (aka the call to action) should be in the top left of the email. This way it will show up in the inbox. Then your more functional preheader text (such as add to address book, unsubscribe, forward to a friend) should be in the top right corner.
Short and Sweet – The pre-header text is meant to be a short summary that the subscriber can quickly glace at. If you make the pre-header text to long it defeats the purpose.
Echo – A common mistake by marketers is repeating the subject line as the preheader text. This repetitive and doesn’t add any value.
Look and Feel – Preheader text is generally smaller then body copy, but it should still be readable. Keep in mind color choices (dark text with light background or reverse is ideal) and font size (minimum of 8pt font).
Be Creative – You are competing for attention in the inbox. Write preheader text that is going to grab the attention of your subscriber and is going to make them want to read your entire email.
Test, test, test – Like everything else in email marketing, your preheader line needs to be tested. Try an A/B split with different pre-headers and test to see which emails get the most opens and conversions.
Tips for successful preheader text:
Call to Action – Unlike in your subject line, it’s ok (and encouraged) to use your call to action as your preheader text.
Be Positive - Use positive wording for preheader text. For example instead of saying, “Having trouble viewing this email? Click here” try “view this email with images.” The design team has a great blog post about this.
Support – Make your preheader text support you subject line. If you remember from my post Improve Your Email Subject Line, the subject line should support what is in the email. It is all one big circle.
Character Count – Keep in mind the length of the preheader text that will be displayed in the inbox (before opening). This length varies depending on the email client. To give you a character count reference, Gmail shows about 100 characters for subject line (this number varies based on screen size) and preheader text collectively (so if you have a long subject line none of your preheader text will display) and the iPhone displays about 140 characters (in the traditional vertical view) regardless of subject length. There are also some email clients that don’t display any.
Proper Placement – The marketing preheader text (aka the call to action) should be in the top left of the email. This way it will show up in the inbox. Then your more functional preheader text (such as add to address book, unsubscribe, forward to a friend) should be in the top right corner.
Short and Sweet – The pre-header text is meant to be a short summary that the subscriber can quickly glace at. If you make the pre-header text to long it defeats the purpose.
Echo – A common mistake by marketers is repeating the subject line as the preheader text. This repetitive and doesn’t add any value.
Look and Feel – Preheader text is generally smaller then body copy, but it should still be readable. Keep in mind color choices (dark text with light background or reverse is ideal) and font size (minimum of 8pt font).
Be Creative – You are competing for attention in the inbox. Write preheader text that is going to grab the attention of your subscriber and is going to make them want to read your entire email.
Test, test, test – Like everything else in email marketing, your preheader line needs to be tested. Try an A/B split with different pre-headers and test to see which emails get the most opens and conversions.
I'm not a fan of offering incentives to entice folks to sign up for email programs. Why? Because you're bound to have folks sign up who are only, or more, interested in your incentive than they are in getting your email.
The subscriber signs up, gets the free swag and then they do one of the following:
1. Unsubscribe
2. Unsubscribe by hitting the "spam" button
3. Stay on your list, but don't ever open, click, or convert
4. Stay on your list and become the bestest, most engaged subscriber EVER!
One, two, and three are more likely to be the case, in my experience.
Admittedly, I don't have any data that definitively proves that incentives are a bad idea, but what I'm suggesting makes sense and I've seen incentives burn clients in the past. On more than one occasion I've seen correlation between incentivized sign up and higher than normal complaint rates.
I'm not saying that incentives are taboo or verboten, but their use should be considered carefully.
Offering incentives may be one way to help build a list, but a questionable method for building loyalty.
I'd be more interested in sending my email to a leaner, but more targeted, list of subscribers who are solely interested in the content rather than a list littered with subscribers who are interested in a freebie.
The goal should be to put forth an offer and content so compelling that no incentive is needed. The offer or email needs to be incentive enough for signing up.
The following post is from Brooke Francesi who runs email marketing at Aptera, an ExactTarget customer. Aptera is a custom software development and web design firm.
With a new year, a new decade, and a lucky seven anniversary on the horizon, Aptera is looking forward to 2010, especially what is holds in store for our e-mail marketing program. Unlike other marketing avenues, it’s a relatively painless process to analyze the overall success of your e-mail campaigns and adjust where needed. That’s exactly what we’ve done to create our resolutions for 2010.
More effective segmentation:
While our subscriber lists are already segmented into basic categories, we realize that segmentation doesn’t have to end there. For 2010 we are resolved to revamp our system and divide subscribers into vertical markets in order to better serve their interests. We do our best to adhere to ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule! mantra and that’s something better segmentation can only help.
1, 2, 3 Testing:
This year we’ve vowed to stop listening to what people tell us will work, and find out what really works. We know what worked last year, but will it work this year? Numerous sources report that testers achieve significantly higher open and click-through rates, as well as conversion rates. We’re not going to just believe it; we’re going to test different variations of the message, the creative, the timing, and the frequency.
Get social:
For Aptera, 2010 is the year we eradicate the “one-way-road” approach to information. We’re building a four-lane highway to connect data-rich sources of information. Keeping e-mail and social media apart just doesn’t make sense. We plan to share the stand-out information in our e-mails, and recruit opt-ins from friends and followers in our social environments. Why would we use social networking and e-mail as mutually exclusive channels when we can utilize them together?
There are easily over a dozen other 2010 resolutions we could be making to improve the success of Aptera’s e-mail marketing campaigns, but there sense in getting ahead of ourselves. I firmly believe that positive change occurs in baby steps, and by setting oneself up for success rather than failure. So, here’s to 2010 and e-mail success for everyone!
With a new year, a new decade, and a lucky seven anniversary on the horizon, Aptera is looking forward to 2010, especially what is holds in store for our e-mail marketing program. Unlike other marketing avenues, it’s a relatively painless process to analyze the overall success of your e-mail campaigns and adjust where needed. That’s exactly what we’ve done to create our resolutions for 2010.
More effective segmentation:
While our subscriber lists are already segmented into basic categories, we realize that segmentation doesn’t have to end there. For 2010 we are resolved to revamp our system and divide subscribers into vertical markets in order to better serve their interests. We do our best to adhere to ExactTarget’s Subscribers Rule! mantra and that’s something better segmentation can only help.
1, 2, 3 Testing:
This year we’ve vowed to stop listening to what people tell us will work, and find out what really works. We know what worked last year, but will it work this year? Numerous sources report that testers achieve significantly higher open and click-through rates, as well as conversion rates. We’re not going to just believe it; we’re going to test different variations of the message, the creative, the timing, and the frequency.
Get social:
For Aptera, 2010 is the year we eradicate the “one-way-road” approach to information. We’re building a four-lane highway to connect data-rich sources of information. Keeping e-mail and social media apart just doesn’t make sense. We plan to share the stand-out information in our e-mails, and recruit opt-ins from friends and followers in our social environments. Why would we use social networking and e-mail as mutually exclusive channels when we can utilize them together?
There are easily over a dozen other 2010 resolutions we could be making to improve the success of Aptera’s e-mail marketing campaigns, but there sense in getting ahead of ourselves. I firmly believe that positive change occurs in baby steps, and by setting oneself up for success rather than failure. So, here’s to 2010 and e-mail success for everyone!
I admit it. I am, at heart, a gamer. I always have been. I always will be. I got hit by the bug early in high school with AD&D and it hasn't left me since.
I am also opposed to spam, in its many forms. Unfortunately, sometimes these two things intersect and one of the things has to give way. I'm pretty sure you can figure out which one it is. You may think I'm talking about Zynga, but I'm not. Although their games have had to give way recently because of their practices. I'm talking about another game.
Guild Wars. I bought Guild Wars back when it came out and have played it on and off over the years. I even bought some expansions and was going to get GW2 for a Christmas present. Every once in a while, they send me a newsletter, even though I unsubscribe every time. I have now unsubscribed more than five times. I send them a nice email each time, explaining why this is bad and a violation of CAN-SPAM. I even get a personal response saying they won't do it again. Then I get another just when I'm about to start hoping that it's ok to start supporting them again. The most recent one was the day before I went Christmas shopping.
I am heartbroken. I love my games. Don't look at me like that! There are worse vices that I could have, like underwater basket-weaving or tai chi skydiving. Fortunately, there are a lot of other game companies that get it. I'll give my money and time to them instead.
Way back in late 2007, I mentioned a change at Earthlink regarding bouncing addresses and how they measure subscriber inactivity. Like a lot of other ISPs nowadays, they shut off mailboxes after a period of inactivity. In this case, 90 days.
This week, a commenter asked, “How do you reactivate an account?”
If you're an Earthlink user, and you're wondering how to re-activate your mailbox, I'm not sure. I assume you would just log into it like normal, and that would re-enable it. But, I'm not 100% sure about that; you should contact Earthlink support for assistance.
If you mean that you're a list manager and you're wondering how you re-enable that address so that you can send mail to it again … you cannot. This isn't a situation you can impact. Whether or not this subscriber's address becomes valid again is up to the ISP and/or up to the end user. (See my note above to any end user wondering about this.) The chances of an address re-activating is probably pretty slim; if somebody hasn't checked their email in months, they've probably moved on to greener pastures (i.e., they've changed email addresses).
What you can do is decide if you want to keep emailing those people. It's going to be a lot better for your sending reputation if you stop mailing users whose addresses are no longer valid. The ET system handles this automatically.
It's a bit similar to engagement, in that, if your contact or campaign strategy involves weeding out recipients who are no longer responsive to your mailings, then you're already way ahead of the game. Weeding people out of your list who never read your emails (and whose addresses are invalid) means you're much more likely to enjoy successful inbox delivery.
This week, a commenter asked, “How do you reactivate an account?”
If you're an Earthlink user, and you're wondering how to re-activate your mailbox, I'm not sure. I assume you would just log into it like normal, and that would re-enable it. But, I'm not 100% sure about that; you should contact Earthlink support for assistance.
If you mean that you're a list manager and you're wondering how you re-enable that address so that you can send mail to it again … you cannot. This isn't a situation you can impact. Whether or not this subscriber's address becomes valid again is up to the ISP and/or up to the end user. (See my note above to any end user wondering about this.) The chances of an address re-activating is probably pretty slim; if somebody hasn't checked their email in months, they've probably moved on to greener pastures (i.e., they've changed email addresses).
What you can do is decide if you want to keep emailing those people. It's going to be a lot better for your sending reputation if you stop mailing users whose addresses are no longer valid. The ET system handles this automatically.
It's a bit similar to engagement, in that, if your contact or campaign strategy involves weeding out recipients who are no longer responsive to your mailings, then you're already way ahead of the game. Weeding people out of your list who never read your emails (and whose addresses are invalid) means you're much more likely to enjoy successful inbox delivery.
Our previous blogs, Connections Extreme Makeover: AAA Ohio Redesign and Connections Extreme Makeover: MarketingExperiments Redesign covered the Design Solutions teams’ redesigns for AAA Ohio and MarketingExperiments. To finish up, we’d like to share our thoughts on our final redesign.Pier 1 Imports is a retailer that focuses heavily on unique furniture, home décor and accessories. Based on our conversations with Pier 1, the bulk of their customer base falls around females in the 50-60 age range. High quality products are marketed through the channels of print, in-store collateral, web, and email. Though the use of email and web, Pier 1 uses these channels to drive brand recognition and encourage online browsing before driving the consumer to the store to make a purchase.
With this in mind, the ExactTarget team took a very sophisticated and streamlined approach to the Creature Comforts email campaign, using warm, harmonious colors and existing brand elements to deliver value and increase engagement with the Pier 1 brand. Let’s break apart our strategy and check out the email:
Preheader
Experience and testing tells us that this area of the email is very important, and can serve as a main driver to engagement. We deliver two strategic ways to view the email as a web page, forward the email, and connect via social media on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. As an added benefit, some email clients pull this teaser text into their inbox preview before the email is ever opened.
Header
The header features the brand mark in prime email real estate and will link to the Pier 1 homepage. To the right, we’ve pulled out the three most strategic links to drive subscriber engagement based on past email performance metrics and value provided on the website. Room gallery is an important place to drive web traffic and engage the subscribers in furniture placements in different room settings. The Pier 1 Studio offers amazing design tips and ideas that will engage subscribers, and Special Values have proven to be of high interest based on past clicks and obvious savings.
Feature
This feature uses a combination of on-brand fonts, text rendering and imagery to offer a clean look directly placed in the preview pane. This simple room shot will encourage click through to the website, focusing on a clean, simple, and sophisticated approach in line with the quality of the products offered. The design elements of line, color and quirky framing will help the Pier 1 brand stand out in the crowd.
Body
Four products are dramatically outlined and provide a sleek way to encourage pre-shopping on the website. These products were strategically chosen from the images provided as they are highlighted in the campaign and artfully pull through the rich fall colors. Allowing subscribers to see the actual prices and pieces of furniture pulled out can help set brand expectations and encourage click through.
Recovery Module
These three items provide even more value to the subscriber audience, giving them convenient access to savings through Pier 1 Rewards, ability to buy gift cards online, and finding a store. Metrics show that most subscribers already know where their stores are, but those that don’t can easily click through.
Footer
Main website navigation is important to include, but click data shows us that it does not necessarily require prime real estate in the email. Copyright, privacy, unsubscribe, and customer relations functionality are important (and some are required!) and can fall in one clean line as they are self explanatory. Disclaimers and CAN-SPAM compliant mailing address follow.
While the results of the Makeover showed that Pier 1’s control design outperformed the redesigns in actual sales conversion, our team strove to stay true to the brand and add a new dimension to the email program that strategically reorganizes Pier 1’s offerings, allowing the true beauty and quality of the products to shine. It is highly useable and engaging, with strategic goals of boosting click-through, web traffic, and ultimately driving consumers inside the Pier 1 stores for more.
Thanks for reading some of the stories behind Extreme Makeover: The Email Design Competition! Look for more 1 to 1 marketing advice and Email Design Tips in our upcoming 2010 blogs.
A client was asking the other day about B2B deliverability, how it differs from B2C, who the big players are, etc.
This isn't the first time the topic of deliverability in the B2B (business-to-business) email realm. Back in June, I answer the question, "Is B2B Deliverability Different?" In a more recent blog post, I link to information from Google about how they've become a very large host of B2B mailboxes.
Clearly, Google is a big player in this space. Meaning, a lot of the B2B mailboxes you send to are going through spam filters run by Google; just as if your recipients were at Gmail.com. What that means to you is that the same rules apply to sends to both those Gmail.com users and any B2B domains hosted at Google.
As I mentioned before, Yahoo, Hotmail and Google host mail for more than 264,000 domains, Google making up approximately 106,000 of those domains. (All three of these guys probably host mail for very many more domains than this; this is just a snapshot based off of last year's client list data. Meaning, if a domain doesn't show up on an email list, I don't know about it.)
That means you've got a huge chunk of the B2B email space hosted by top consumer webmail providers. Meaning that the B2C rules significantly apply to B2B senders, by the fact that the same spam filters are involved.
In the more specific B2B realm, there are too many players to list. Postini, Cloudmark, Barracuda, Ironport, Symantec Brightmail and MessageLabs are just a few of them. There are hundreds, maybe thousands more.
The way these filterers work is very similar to how B2C ISP spam filters work. They build a reputational view of you based on spam complaints, engagement, bounce rates, etc. They're a bit more invisible to some senders, as it's not always easy for you to know exactly what % of your mailing list might be behind a Brightmail filter, for example. But they still matter, very much so. In this combination of hosted service providers and appliance developers, getting tagged as a bad guy means you end up with delivery problems far and wide.
If you end up with a bad reputation as measured by Barracuda, and your mail is going to be blocked or filtered at the more than 85,000 customers that use Barracuda spam-filtering devices.
If Cloudmark determines the mail you send merits a bad reputation, you'll probably find it hard to successfully get to the inbox at any mailbox protected by any of Cloudmark's anti-spam solutions -- that's over 850 million mailboxes in 190 countries!
That's why B2C and B2C are more similar than you might have thought. Filterers handling either type of mail both look at your sending reputation, and treat your mail acordingly. Blocked at any of these providers on either side of things means that you're going to have issues delivering mail to a whole bunch of different mailboxes.
This isn't the first time the topic of deliverability in the B2B (business-to-business) email realm. Back in June, I answer the question, "Is B2B Deliverability Different?" In a more recent blog post, I link to information from Google about how they've become a very large host of B2B mailboxes.
Clearly, Google is a big player in this space. Meaning, a lot of the B2B mailboxes you send to are going through spam filters run by Google; just as if your recipients were at Gmail.com. What that means to you is that the same rules apply to sends to both those Gmail.com users and any B2B domains hosted at Google.
As I mentioned before, Yahoo, Hotmail and Google host mail for more than 264,000 domains, Google making up approximately 106,000 of those domains. (All three of these guys probably host mail for very many more domains than this; this is just a snapshot based off of last year's client list data. Meaning, if a domain doesn't show up on an email list, I don't know about it.)
That means you've got a huge chunk of the B2B email space hosted by top consumer webmail providers. Meaning that the B2C rules significantly apply to B2B senders, by the fact that the same spam filters are involved.
In the more specific B2B realm, there are too many players to list. Postini, Cloudmark, Barracuda, Ironport, Symantec Brightmail and MessageLabs are just a few of them. There are hundreds, maybe thousands more.
The way these filterers work is very similar to how B2C ISP spam filters work. They build a reputational view of you based on spam complaints, engagement, bounce rates, etc. They're a bit more invisible to some senders, as it's not always easy for you to know exactly what % of your mailing list might be behind a Brightmail filter, for example. But they still matter, very much so. In this combination of hosted service providers and appliance developers, getting tagged as a bad guy means you end up with delivery problems far and wide.
If you end up with a bad reputation as measured by Barracuda, and your mail is going to be blocked or filtered at the more than 85,000 customers that use Barracuda spam-filtering devices.
If Cloudmark determines the mail you send merits a bad reputation, you'll probably find it hard to successfully get to the inbox at any mailbox protected by any of Cloudmark's anti-spam solutions -- that's over 850 million mailboxes in 190 countries!
That's why B2C and B2C are more similar than you might have thought. Filterers handling either type of mail both look at your sending reputation, and treat your mail acordingly. Blocked at any of these providers on either side of things means that you're going to have issues delivering mail to a whole bunch of different mailboxes.
There are plenty of reasons I like to attend MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit, but the single best reason is the speakers. The line-up of speakers for the upcoming Email Summit ‘10 in January is no exception.Keynoting Email Summit ‘10 will be Joseph Jaffe, President of crayon and bestselling author of "Join the Conversation" and "Life After the 30-Second Spot." Joseph keynoted ExactTarget’s Connections 2008 conference and is one of the brightest minds in our business. In his presentation at Email Summit ‘10, Jaffe will discuss the expanding role of email to establish powerful relationships with customer evangelists, and show how to equip this base with the necessary tools, techniques and incentives to spread word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals to social networks, trusted peers and communities.
As a special bonus, ExactTarget has arranged for each attendee of Email Summit ’10 to receive their personal copy of his new book “Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones”
Headlining the B2B track will be Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch. Brian is the author of "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale" and his presentation is titled: How to Design Email Lead Nurturing Programs That Drive Sales. This is a can't-miss presentation for B2B marketers who must nurture prospects through a long sales cycle.
Andrew Chang of AirTran Airways will keynote the B2C track. Chang is Manager of Marketing Strategy at AirTran, and his presentation is titled: Successful Email List Management: Fixing the Leaky Bucket, and will highlight AirTran's email subscriber acquisition strategy that has enabled the airline to grow its subscriber base more than 15%.
Want to Save $600 on Your Email Summit Registration?
We consider the Email Summit to be one of the best conferences on email marketing, and have arranged a special discount to encourage you to attend.
For a limited time, ExactTarget is offering a $600 discount off the Email Summit conference fee of $1,695. This offer expires January 8th, so move on this now! To take advantage of the discount, go to this special Email Summit ’10 registration page.
A reader named Don posted a comment containing the following question: “I'd really like to end your spam. I do not trust the link on your spam because, just like all the other spam merchants out there, your e-mail appears to be poised to cause more problems than clicking is worth. How do I make you go away and stay out of my in box?”
Don, I'm sorry you're receiving spam from a client of ours. Our clients are only allowed to send mail to people that signed up for their lists. We don't buy or sell email lists, nor do we allow clients to do so. If you want us to investigate, and make the mail stop, feel free to send us a spam report at abuse AT exacttarget.com. Note in your email that the message is unwanted spam and be sure to include a copy of the message, including full headers, if possible. We will immediately investigate, and take action against our client if they are indeed out of compliance with our opt-in permission requirements and anti-spam policy.
Policy compliance (making sure our clients don't send spam) is occasionally a challenge for anybody providing email-related services to a large number of clients. We've got the tools and expertise to be able to nip a lot of these issues in the bud, before you ever see them. But, one of the many components to taking action against spammers is based on reports we receive from the outside world: ISPs, anti-spam groups, and end recipients like yourself.
As far as trusting the link in the email message -- all the unsubscribe link does is mark you as unsubscribed in that client's account. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't secretly sign you up for somebody else's email lists. It doesn't give the client permission to email you later (and if they do, they're breaking our rules). However, it doesn't tell us that you thought the message was spam. So if it was spam, feel free to report it to our abuse address, as well, as noted above.
As far as trusting us, the company, ExactTarget, I'm not sure what I can tell you to convince you that we're a legitimate email service provider and not spammers. But here's what I know. ET is a real company, based in Indianapolis (though I work from Chicago), and I've worked for them, helping to oversee and continually improve our anti-spam efforts, for more than three years now. (I have a long history of spam fighting, going back more than ten years.) As you can see here, we have a lot of legitimate, well-known companies as clients. Also, if we knowingly let our clients send spam, ISPs would get fed up with us and block all mail from all of our clients. So that's why it's in our best interest to prevent our clients from sending spam -- it's necessary for us to be able to succeed in the email industry. So it would be extremely unwise of us to do anything other than immediately respect your click on the unsubscribe link, and ensure that our client stops sending you mail.
Don, I'm sorry you're receiving spam from a client of ours. Our clients are only allowed to send mail to people that signed up for their lists. We don't buy or sell email lists, nor do we allow clients to do so. If you want us to investigate, and make the mail stop, feel free to send us a spam report at abuse AT exacttarget.com. Note in your email that the message is unwanted spam and be sure to include a copy of the message, including full headers, if possible. We will immediately investigate, and take action against our client if they are indeed out of compliance with our opt-in permission requirements and anti-spam policy.
Policy compliance (making sure our clients don't send spam) is occasionally a challenge for anybody providing email-related services to a large number of clients. We've got the tools and expertise to be able to nip a lot of these issues in the bud, before you ever see them. But, one of the many components to taking action against spammers is based on reports we receive from the outside world: ISPs, anti-spam groups, and end recipients like yourself.
As far as trusting the link in the email message -- all the unsubscribe link does is mark you as unsubscribed in that client's account. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't secretly sign you up for somebody else's email lists. It doesn't give the client permission to email you later (and if they do, they're breaking our rules). However, it doesn't tell us that you thought the message was spam. So if it was spam, feel free to report it to our abuse address, as well, as noted above.
As far as trusting us, the company, ExactTarget, I'm not sure what I can tell you to convince you that we're a legitimate email service provider and not spammers. But here's what I know. ET is a real company, based in Indianapolis (though I work from Chicago), and I've worked for them, helping to oversee and continually improve our anti-spam efforts, for more than three years now. (I have a long history of spam fighting, going back more than ten years.) As you can see here, we have a lot of legitimate, well-known companies as clients. Also, if we knowingly let our clients send spam, ISPs would get fed up with us and block all mail from all of our clients. So that's why it's in our best interest to prevent our clients from sending spam -- it's necessary for us to be able to succeed in the email industry. So it would be extremely unwise of us to do anything other than immediately respect your click on the unsubscribe link, and ensure that our client stops sending you mail.
Taking responsibility for one's deliverability is something every sender should logically do. Not only is it in your best interest as a sender, but there are many variables that are beyond anyone else's control but the sender's.
The sender typically provides the method of opt-in for subscribers, builds the emails and communications, loads subscriber lists into ExactTarget, segments subscriber data, and hits the "send" button. Seems to me that the party responsible for the aforementioned, the sender, has a vested interest in monitoring how all that hard work pays off.
Not monitoring your deliverability is like spending money without regularly checking your account balance and just figuring that your financial institution will let you know when you're out of money and in trouble. Sure you can keep spending and spending without giving thought to how much money's in the account, but eventually your account is going to run dry, you're going to start getting penalized for attempting to spend money you don't have, and eventually your ability to use your debit card or write checks is going to be suspended.
You'd never dream of spending without monitoring your account balance and leaving it up to your bank to monitor, so why would you send through ExactTarget without monitoring whether or not your email is arriving in the inbox and your hard work is paying off?
Thankfully, ExactTarget gives you the ability to monitor your sending, and thus, your deliverability. We've built a whole host of tracking mechanisms and reporting tools so that our clients can monitor opens, clicks, subscriber engagement, and bounces, among other things.
If you notice that opens or clicks seem lower than usual or if your deliverability rate drops, it could be due to a deliverability issue. Let us know about it and we'll look into it. You can get in touch with us by calling our Client Success Center at 866-558-9823 or by emailing help@exacttarget.com. You can also open your own Client Success Center case in ExactTarget 3Sixty under the BackOffice tab.
Here's why political lists should always be double opt-in (confirmed opt-in): To prevent stuff like this.
Blogger Danny Sullivan points out that he has ended up on the email list of a councilmember from a city 400 miles away. What good does that do for the councilmember? Danny's not a constituent; not even a potential constituent.
How did the councilmember obtain his email address? Bought list? Unconfirmed signup process? Hard to say; lots of political senders seem to do a lot of crazy, unethical stuff to build their email lists. They often horse trade list data with others in the same party. And the net effect is that once you end up on one list, your address is going to end up on many more lists.
Reminds me of the good old (bad) days, where my friend Mickey Chandler and I both got signed up for mailings lists relating to political persuasions the opposite of our own. At my last employer, it was a coworker who signed me up for a list because he thought it would be "funny." Then the volume started growing, as the entity that handled the original forged subscription request shared their lists far and wide. I bet that address is still getting political spam to this day, even though I left that company in 2006.
Blogger Danny Sullivan points out that he has ended up on the email list of a councilmember from a city 400 miles away. What good does that do for the councilmember? Danny's not a constituent; not even a potential constituent.
How did the councilmember obtain his email address? Bought list? Unconfirmed signup process? Hard to say; lots of political senders seem to do a lot of crazy, unethical stuff to build their email lists. They often horse trade list data with others in the same party. And the net effect is that once you end up on one list, your address is going to end up on many more lists.
Reminds me of the good old (bad) days, where my friend Mickey Chandler and I both got signed up for mailings lists relating to political persuasions the opposite of our own. At my last employer, it was a coworker who signed me up for a list because he thought it would be "funny." Then the volume started growing, as the entity that handled the original forged subscription request shared their lists far and wide. I bet that address is still getting political spam to this day, even though I left that company in 2006.
Mark Brownlow blogged about, among other fascinating things in a series on what email users say, why people unsubscribe. What was top reason?
Drum roll please.....
Merkle's View from the Inbox reports that recipients unsubscribe are
75% - Sending me stuff I don't care about
73% - Way too many "valuable offers"
Epsilon's Global Consumer Email Survey says North American consumers unsub because:
Sending me junk I don't care about
There's links to more studies there and guess what they say. These studies are nicer about phrasing it, as is Mark. I call it nicer things all the time, but what it comes down to is this....
There is a portion of your list that thinks your offers are valuable and really truly wants to get them in their inbox. They're your fan club.
There is a portion of your list that is ambivalent. To them, your offers are clutter. You might be able to turn them into truly engaged, loving subscribers.
There is a portion of your list that thinks your offers are absolute junk and never wants to hear from you again. They hate you.
Best practices are there, in part, to help you lose the third portion more quickly (or never add them in the first place) and help turn more of the second portion into the first. If you increase your volume or frequency, the ambivalent group does not join your fan club. They become haters and nobody wants that.
Drum roll please.....
Merkle's View from the Inbox reports that recipients unsubscribe are
75% - Sending me stuff I don't care about
73% - Way too many "valuable offers"
Epsilon's Global Consumer Email Survey says North American consumers unsub because:
Sending me junk I don't care about
There's links to more studies there and guess what they say. These studies are nicer about phrasing it, as is Mark. I call it nicer things all the time, but what it comes down to is this....
There is a portion of your list that thinks your offers are valuable and really truly wants to get them in their inbox. They're your fan club.
There is a portion of your list that is ambivalent. To them, your offers are clutter. You might be able to turn them into truly engaged, loving subscribers.
There is a portion of your list that thinks your offers are absolute junk and never wants to hear from you again. They hate you.
Best practices are there, in part, to help you lose the third portion more quickly (or never add them in the first place) and help turn more of the second portion into the first. If you increase your volume or frequency, the ambivalent group does not join your fan club. They become haters and nobody wants that.
There's been a lot of talk about email authentication and related things like domain reputation out in the deliverability blog-o-sphere of late. I'm not linking to anyone in particular, as I don't want to single anyone out, and a lot of people have made a lot of different points, both good and bad.
But if there is one meme that I keep stumbling across, one that I think is (perhaps) technically accurate, but missing the point, it is this: Email authentication doesn't improve your deliverability. That's not what it's for. It doesn't positively impact your ability to deliver mail.
Just for the record, let me point out that email authentication improves deliverability. A couple of rather large ISPs utilize authentication in a way where, directly or indirectly, it improves your sending reputation. Consider:
Hotmail: The 2007 Microsoft Whitepaper "Sender ID Framework: Protecting Brands and Enhancing Detection of Spam, Phishing, and Zero-Day Exploits" explains (among other things) how Hotmail uses Sender ID, one specific type of email authentication. They include a "hypothetical" chart on page 20 showing how Sender ID can add to results from content filtering and other reputation results. The "hypothetical" boils down to, in my opinion, that they don't want to tell you the exact impact any of these measures has on the ability to get mail delivered, but I do believe that this demonstrates that Sender ID is indeed one of the factors used as far as whether or not mail is delivered to the inbox at Hotmail, or if indeed it will be delivered anywhere at all. Hotmail has been known on occasion to discard mail, and also, Hotmail will very clearly decline to assist a sender or email service provider writing in about a delivery issue, if the from domain in use in the problematic sends lacks a Sender ID record.
Consider all of this, and I think you would agree with me: I very strongly believe that authentication has a significant, non-zero impact on the ability to deliver mail to the inbox of Hotmail users. Is it the only measure they use? No, not by a long shot. Does it mean you can send spam, as long as you authenticate? No, and that instance, you can hypothesize (based on the chart on page 20 of the whitepaper) that whatever modest positive reputational boost you may receive from authentication is going to be overwhelmed by the much stronger negative reputational hit you'll take due to other factors, such as high numbers of invalid users, spamtrap hits, and spam complaints. In other words, email authentication + spam = you get blocked.
Yahoo: If you're a list-based sender (like an ESP, ESP client, or self-sender managing your own marketing lists), it is necessary to authenticate your mail with DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) if you wish to participate in the Yahoo Feedback Loop (FBL). Feedback loop participation is important, and does have a significant, if indirect, connection to your sending reputation. Senders who don't participate in an ISP's feedback loop tend to have higher complaints than senders who do, if all other variables are equal. Why? Because if you have an FBL, when somebody complains about your mail, you are told about it. You receive a report back. You're able to unsubscribe the recipient. You're able to compile aggregate data that tells you which list segments are most problematic. Both the ability to unsubscribe those who complain, and the ability to adjust your marketing efforts based on aggregate FBL complaint data, have a positive impact on your ability to deliver email to the inbox successfully.
Maybe that's not why authentication was invented. Maybe that's not even its intended purpose. But as I stand here today, I see a very clear connection between email authentication and improved email deliverability. It's that simple.
But if there is one meme that I keep stumbling across, one that I think is (perhaps) technically accurate, but missing the point, it is this: Email authentication doesn't improve your deliverability. That's not what it's for. It doesn't positively impact your ability to deliver mail.
Just for the record, let me point out that email authentication improves deliverability. A couple of rather large ISPs utilize authentication in a way where, directly or indirectly, it improves your sending reputation. Consider:
Hotmail: The 2007 Microsoft Whitepaper "Sender ID Framework: Protecting Brands and Enhancing Detection of Spam, Phishing, and Zero-Day Exploits" explains (among other things) how Hotmail uses Sender ID, one specific type of email authentication. They include a "hypothetical" chart on page 20 showing how Sender ID can add to results from content filtering and other reputation results. The "hypothetical" boils down to, in my opinion, that they don't want to tell you the exact impact any of these measures has on the ability to get mail delivered, but I do believe that this demonstrates that Sender ID is indeed one of the factors used as far as whether or not mail is delivered to the inbox at Hotmail, or if indeed it will be delivered anywhere at all. Hotmail has been known on occasion to discard mail, and also, Hotmail will very clearly decline to assist a sender or email service provider writing in about a delivery issue, if the from domain in use in the problematic sends lacks a Sender ID record.
Consider all of this, and I think you would agree with me: I very strongly believe that authentication has a significant, non-zero impact on the ability to deliver mail to the inbox of Hotmail users. Is it the only measure they use? No, not by a long shot. Does it mean you can send spam, as long as you authenticate? No, and that instance, you can hypothesize (based on the chart on page 20 of the whitepaper) that whatever modest positive reputational boost you may receive from authentication is going to be overwhelmed by the much stronger negative reputational hit you'll take due to other factors, such as high numbers of invalid users, spamtrap hits, and spam complaints. In other words, email authentication + spam = you get blocked.
Yahoo: If you're a list-based sender (like an ESP, ESP client, or self-sender managing your own marketing lists), it is necessary to authenticate your mail with DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) if you wish to participate in the Yahoo Feedback Loop (FBL). Feedback loop participation is important, and does have a significant, if indirect, connection to your sending reputation. Senders who don't participate in an ISP's feedback loop tend to have higher complaints than senders who do, if all other variables are equal. Why? Because if you have an FBL, when somebody complains about your mail, you are told about it. You receive a report back. You're able to unsubscribe the recipient. You're able to compile aggregate data that tells you which list segments are most problematic. Both the ability to unsubscribe those who complain, and the ability to adjust your marketing efforts based on aggregate FBL complaint data, have a positive impact on your ability to deliver email to the inbox successfully.
Maybe that's not why authentication was invented. Maybe that's not even its intended purpose. But as I stand here today, I see a very clear connection between email authentication and improved email deliverability. It's that simple.
Somebody asked me today if we support Gmail's unsubscribe functionality (yes), so I thought it would be good to mention it here again.
Since this summer (2009), Gmail has offered an option on some email, where, if you click the "this is spam" button, the Gmail system will ask you, "Would you like to unsubscribe?" If you click yes, an unsubscribe request is sent back to the sender. In the case of ET-served emails, yes, ExactTarget handles this unsubscribe request automatically and will unsubscribe that recipient.
For more on Gmail's unsubscribe process, check out this August, 2009 Email Experience Council (EEC) article by my boss, Chip House, and this July, 2009 blog post by Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise.
Note that we can't MAKE the unsubscribe option appear on your email messages in Gmail - Gmail chooses whether or not to make this option available in response to specific email sent and whom it was sent by. It looks to me as though they tie it to sender reputation - meaning, if you're a good, clean sender, this functionality is more likely to appear.
Since this summer (2009), Gmail has offered an option on some email, where, if you click the "this is spam" button, the Gmail system will ask you, "Would you like to unsubscribe?" If you click yes, an unsubscribe request is sent back to the sender. In the case of ET-served emails, yes, ExactTarget handles this unsubscribe request automatically and will unsubscribe that recipient.
For more on Gmail's unsubscribe process, check out this August, 2009 Email Experience Council (EEC) article by my boss, Chip House, and this July, 2009 blog post by Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise.
Note that we can't MAKE the unsubscribe option appear on your email messages in Gmail - Gmail chooses whether or not to make this option available in response to specific email sent and whom it was sent by. It looks to me as though they tie it to sender reputation - meaning, if you're a good, clean sender, this functionality is more likely to appear.
This post was guest written by Lary Stucker of FreshClicks.net, a blog about Marketing and Analytics Strategies.
If you're anything like me, one of the big draws of online marketing is the ability to use analytics to track, report, and improve your marketing campaigns. Not only can you use this data to demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts, you can also gain greater customer insight by studying how they respond. So lets look at 4 practical ways you can improve your email campaigns by using your basic reporting tools.
1. Improving Delivery Rates:
Low delivery rates make ISPs nervous. When ISPs get nervous about your emails they label you as SPAM first and ask questions later. Your email campaigns' delivery rates should be in the high 90%. If they are not it means that you need to:
• Filter out those bad and old email address: When you send email to bad addresses, ISPs take notice. Often ISPs will flag a known bad address and if you are sending email to that address they are going to think you are sending spam.
• Improve your collection methods: Make sure potential subscribers clearly understand what they are signing up for, and use a double opt-in method. You can even write the confirmation email so that it reminds them why they signed up for your list in the first place.
2. Improving Open Rates:
You got the email in their inbox, but now what? When someone receives an email they usually open it in the first 24-48 hours. After that, it has been pushed so far down by new emails and other priorities that it will most likely get deleted. So every minute that goes by decreases the possibility that they are actually going to open your email. There are two things that you can measure and test to improve your open rates:
• Time of Day/ Week: Your subscribers are busy people, and depending on the type of campaigns you are running they might not want to read your newsletter or "special offer" first thing Monday morning. I use our existing web analytics to see which days are the most busy on our website. Then I'll look at which hours are the busiest on those days. Once I have that data I'll create random samples from my subscriber list and send on those busy days/hours and see which ones have the best open rates.
• Subject lines: make sure that your subject lines are interesting, enticing, and actually re-enforce the body of the email. The great thing is you can test subject lines and see what kinds of messages entice your subscribers to open. You'd be surprised how the smallest changes can make a big difference. We had a campaign with a decent open rate, (16.8%) after adding the word "Tips" to the subject line our open rate jumped to 25.4%! Suddenly the email went from looking like a marketing piece, to a useful resource our subscribers could actually use. By the way, the body of the email didn't change, but the subject line changed the expectation of the subscriber.
3. Improving Conversion/ Click-Through Rates:
One of the best things to improve conversion and click-through rates is to make it clear what the subscriber is going to find when they click on any link. We recently ran an "upgrade" campaign and decide to run A/B testing on a random portion of our list. The email to group A contained a link with a "Upgrade Now" button, while group B received an email message with a "buy now" button. What we found out was that group A expected the link to give them information about obtaining a free upgrade while group B clearly understood that the "buy now" link would take them to our store to purchase the upgrade. The results, 9.2% conversion rate on the "Upgrade Now" group and a 19.4% conversion rate on the "buy now" group. A difference of 210%!
4. Decreasing Unsubscribes
Lets be totally honest for a second. There are two reasons your company is putting resources into email campaigns. The reason you state on your signup form, to inform, educate or entertain your subscribers, and the reasons you discuss back at the office. Whether it’s to drive direct sales, nurture leads or increase brand awareness, email marketing is a valuable tool for your company. You know it and guess what, your subscribers know it too, and their okay with it. What they want is to not feel like you are trying to trick them into anything. Make sure that your email campaigns add value, have a consistent send schedule, and don't surprise them. After sending a campaign I always check our unsubscribe rates. Our average unsubscribe rate is 0.01%-0.02%. Anytime I see it above those rates I know something went wrong. Usually it has to do with the perceived value of the message or the time between campaigns. When you have analytical evidence like an increase in unsubscribe rates it is a lot easier to convince your copywriter and others in the company of needed changes.
What do you think?
By studying the analytical of your email campaigns you can greatly improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and gain greater insight into your customers. What kinds of insights have you been able to gain from your analytics? How were you able to use that to improve your email campaigns and marketing to your customers? I'd love to hear from you on twitter @LaryStucker or on my blog, www.FreshClicks.net!
If you're anything like me, one of the big draws of online marketing is the ability to use analytics to track, report, and improve your marketing campaigns. Not only can you use this data to demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts, you can also gain greater customer insight by studying how they respond. So lets look at 4 practical ways you can improve your email campaigns by using your basic reporting tools.
1. Improving Delivery Rates:
Low delivery rates make ISPs nervous. When ISPs get nervous about your emails they label you as SPAM first and ask questions later. Your email campaigns' delivery rates should be in the high 90%. If they are not it means that you need to:
• Filter out those bad and old email address: When you send email to bad addresses, ISPs take notice. Often ISPs will flag a known bad address and if you are sending email to that address they are going to think you are sending spam.
• Improve your collection methods: Make sure potential subscribers clearly understand what they are signing up for, and use a double opt-in method. You can even write the confirmation email so that it reminds them why they signed up for your list in the first place.
2. Improving Open Rates:
You got the email in their inbox, but now what? When someone receives an email they usually open it in the first 24-48 hours. After that, it has been pushed so far down by new emails and other priorities that it will most likely get deleted. So every minute that goes by decreases the possibility that they are actually going to open your email. There are two things that you can measure and test to improve your open rates:
• Time of Day/ Week: Your subscribers are busy people, and depending on the type of campaigns you are running they might not want to read your newsletter or "special offer" first thing Monday morning. I use our existing web analytics to see which days are the most busy on our website. Then I'll look at which hours are the busiest on those days. Once I have that data I'll create random samples from my subscriber list and send on those busy days/hours and see which ones have the best open rates.
• Subject lines: make sure that your subject lines are interesting, enticing, and actually re-enforce the body of the email. The great thing is you can test subject lines and see what kinds of messages entice your subscribers to open. You'd be surprised how the smallest changes can make a big difference. We had a campaign with a decent open rate, (16.8%) after adding the word "Tips" to the subject line our open rate jumped to 25.4%! Suddenly the email went from looking like a marketing piece, to a useful resource our subscribers could actually use. By the way, the body of the email didn't change, but the subject line changed the expectation of the subscriber.
3. Improving Conversion/ Click-Through Rates:
One of the best things to improve conversion and click-through rates is to make it clear what the subscriber is going to find when they click on any link. We recently ran an "upgrade" campaign and decide to run A/B testing on a random portion of our list. The email to group A contained a link with a "Upgrade Now" button, while group B received an email message with a "buy now" button. What we found out was that group A expected the link to give them information about obtaining a free upgrade while group B clearly understood that the "buy now" link would take them to our store to purchase the upgrade. The results, 9.2% conversion rate on the "Upgrade Now" group and a 19.4% conversion rate on the "buy now" group. A difference of 210%!
4. Decreasing Unsubscribes
Lets be totally honest for a second. There are two reasons your company is putting resources into email campaigns. The reason you state on your signup form, to inform, educate or entertain your subscribers, and the reasons you discuss back at the office. Whether it’s to drive direct sales, nurture leads or increase brand awareness, email marketing is a valuable tool for your company. You know it and guess what, your subscribers know it too, and their okay with it. What they want is to not feel like you are trying to trick them into anything. Make sure that your email campaigns add value, have a consistent send schedule, and don't surprise them. After sending a campaign I always check our unsubscribe rates. Our average unsubscribe rate is 0.01%-0.02%. Anytime I see it above those rates I know something went wrong. Usually it has to do with the perceived value of the message or the time between campaigns. When you have analytical evidence like an increase in unsubscribe rates it is a lot easier to convince your copywriter and others in the company of needed changes.
What do you think?
By studying the analytical of your email campaigns you can greatly improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and gain greater insight into your customers. What kinds of insights have you been able to gain from your analytics? How were you able to use that to improve your email campaigns and marketing to your customers? I'd love to hear from you on twitter @LaryStucker or on my blog, www.FreshClicks.net!
Recently, the ExactTarget Design Solutions team competed in Extreme Makeover: The Email Design Competition during our annual Connections user conference. Our competition included teams at Mighty Interactive and Smith-Harmon. ExactTarget clients Pier 1, AAA Ohio and Marketing Experiments participated to have each team create an email redesign. Each design was then deployed to a subscriber segment and analyzed by Marketing Experiments to arrive at a winner based on clicks and conversions.After weeks of preparation and anticipation, the winners were revealed. During the reveal, the Connections audience also participated by voting for their favorite design using ExactTarget text messaging.
The Results (drumroll please)...
Round 1: Pier 1 Redesign
Email: Creature Comforts Event
Audience Favorite: ExactTarget
Winner*: Mighty Interactive
- Generated 86% more clicks than other competitors
- Generated 25% more sales than nearest competitor
Round 2: AAA Ohio Redesign
Email: Membership Renewal
Audience Favorite: ExactTarget
Winner: ExactTarget
- Outperformed control CTR by 26%
- Outperformed projected revenue of 2nd place by 4%
Email: Marketing Experiments Journal Newsletter
Audience Favorite: Smith-Harmon
Winner: Smith-Harmon
- Outperformed 2nd place by < 2%
- Outperformed control CTR by 26%
- Outperformed control unsubscribe rate by 15.9%
In the coming weeks, we will be featuring an in-depth blog on each of our team’s designs for Pier 1, AAA Ohio and Marketing Experiments. To view slides of the designs and results, visit 3sixty Connections 09 Resources. Congratulations and thank you to each team for their hard work and participation!
Do you ever feel like you're outside in the cold, looking in on someone else's wonderful celebration? Is that what you felt like this weekend, when you looked at your Yahoo test box and saw other people's emails being delivered yet yours were delayed? It's not fair! You send good email. You get low complaints. Your users are engaged. This cannot be!
When I worked in network abuse, the department responsible for stopping spam coming out from ISPs, I hated this time of year. You pretty well work from Thanksgiving straight through to New Year’s including weekends, along with the mail admins. You do this so that people get the email they asked for and your mail servers don't turn into a burning pile of expensive slag. We would rotate who worked with a laptop on one knee and the new nephew on the other each holiday. It's not much fun and it's not very rewarding.
ISPs’ mail servers are SWAMPED on Thanksgiving weekend, close to Christmas, and immediately following Christmas. Everyone is sending right now. First priority is personal, meaningful email. One-to-one family and friend emails. Second is small mailings, usually To: a small list of people with a small list of Cc:s and a lot of traffic back and forth. After that is lower-volume regular mailing lists. Then comes highly engaged mailing lists (think hobby lists). Then marketing lists, trying to prioritize in order of how engaged their subscribers are. Scattered in all of that is trying to block a lot of spam and fighting off random Denial of Service attacks.
Everyone sends more email during the holidays, including individuals. That puts a horrible strain on the ISPs’ mail servers. It’s not that Yahoo and Hotmail and AOL don't want your recipients to get your marketing emails. It’s that their users have made it clear that their first priority right now is finding out whether or not they’re going to get to see their new niece or whether they have to wait until Christmas. After that, they’ll find out what you have in mind for savings.
Highest priority is given to email being sent from other ISPs’ outbound mail servers. Sometimes during the holidays, complaints rarely come into play with priority. If there’s not enough MTA sockets (the number of slots that you have for inbound connections) or bandwidth for the other ISPs’ outbound servers (personal email), then ESP customers, business emails, etc, have their connections deferred. It’s much more important to Jane and Joe User to find out what time everyone is meeting at Grandma’s house and who is bringing the pie than it is to find out which items are on sale at which store.
Mail servers will continue to try to deliver email for up to three days, so anything that got deferred on Thursday will keep pounding on Yahoo until Saturday. Spammers spike their volume Wednesday around midnight because all the abuse admins are away for their family gatherings. Some offers go out Thursday, but the main bulk of them hit Friday. Mailers keep on trying to send or resend because their email hasn’t been delivered yet, which causes more problems. Then you have Cyber Monday and more mail on already overloaded servers. It will be Thursday before some customers see their mail bounce and much of it will be mail that would normally be delivered.
Don't take it personally. Mail servers are at capacity right now. Annalivia Ford who wrote that fantastic poem from last week, Laura Atkins from Word to the Wise, and Mickey Chandler who is the go-to for all things related to spam law all talk more about this on their own blogs.
It's truly not that ISPs don't want to accept your email. They have limited resources and they're doing everything they can to get as much wanted email to their users as the can. Their mail servers are like the roads on the holidays. Plan ahead and expect delays.
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