Keeping your lists clean

Falling open rates, click and purchase? Hitting spam traps and finding increased issues while trying to get in the inbox? Here are a few ideas to kick start your program again.

1 - Sunset inactive users:
Over time people lose interest in the same old email. Sunset people that have not clicked or opened an email in over 12 months (may vary by frequency of communications). Send a note to these users:

"Thanks for being a subscriber, we noticed you have not been very active lately and we do not want to bug you so we are giving you one last chance (expect 2 more of these messages) to stay on our list.... Click here to stay on the list and [Insert promotion here]. Please note you can subscriber again at a later time if you would like to hear from us again".

This will trim any dead weight from your list and save you some money for future campaigns. It also has a very prominent call to action for users that just have not interacted with you for some time, it acts as a reminder.

2 - Different messaging streams to different users
Over time your messaging may become irrelevant to an individual, these irrelevant messages generally lead to spam complaints (as a lazy unsubscribe).

Try the following:

• Predict the Lazy unsub - analize the data your provided by an ISPs Feedback loop and predict when complaints begin to rise due to irritated users receiving your messages. These events tend to vary by program, but a good measurement is # of broadcasts before the average users reports you to their ISP or time on file (# of months since subscription).
• Treat your power users differently. Users can be lumped into a number of different categories; 1- New users (on list less then 3 months), regular users (infrequent interaction with email program), and power users (interact with a high number of messages). These three groups (more groups can be defined but for example purposes this was limited to three) should be treated differently, Try new creative, subject lines, offerers (free shipping pr discounts). Your goal is to turn regular users into power users.

3 - Consider using a double opt-in on your email lists.
Rates as high as a 97% opened can be achieved by using these highly targeted and relevant messages.

4 - Small highly targeted lists
Targeting and relevancy are key triggers for a highly successful campaign... Did subscriber respond to a particular offer before, is their a complementary product you can upsell to this user, is there a replacement part that is needed every (30, 60, 90, 365 days). These users have already got your product - servicing them is an easy way to increasing your bottom line.

Got any additional ideas on keeping your list clean... Share them with us by email at contact or leave a comment.

Help monitoring your brand

Having troubles monitoring your branding? Want someone else to do it... for FREE.

In order to accomplish this try using Google alerts to monitor a number of different items. Monitor for terms related to you employer or a partner/client, others can be used to monitor news related to your industry or a special interest. This can be enlightening when it comes to customers talking about your brand

To setup a google alert;

1. Go to ether; Google News or Google Alerts
   
2. Enter your search terms (topic) - News link is recommended to view results before creating alert to ensure you get the results that you want.
   
3. Select the link "Get the latest news on topic with Google Alerts"
4. Then select;
   
   • Type of search (news, blogs, web, groups or comprehensive)
   • Frequency of alerting (As it Happens, daily or weekly)
   • and the email address you would like these alerts sent to (this will be confirmed to active)
5. Confirm the email address from #4 and your on the way to receiving alerts as items get indexed by Google.

Notes about alerts (and search tuning);

• Google allows you to have 200 different alerts
  
• Use a plus (+) sign to indicate "This + That" - (this and that together)
• Use a minus (-) sign to indicate "This - That" - (this but not that)
• Use Quotes (" ") to indicate an exact phrase - "email marketing"
• There may be other services like this but Google Alerts are free and easy to manage

Why is your ‘from’ Address so Important for Email Deliverability?

In response to the posting at trinity7 about the importance of your from address.

These are five great things to note about your campaign and your mailing address;

1) From name is not always displayed
Most email clients will show you the friendly from address used to send the email but AOL, among other, web browsers users will only see your email address.

2) Email client whitelists
Almost every email client available, be it Webmail readers (Hotmail) or client readers (Thunderbird) have built in personal whitelists for users. These personal level filters will overrule any potential filtering done by an ISP.

3) Domain Blacklisting
Domain Block listing is no longer limited to Email address, URLs are also commonly blocked by anti-spam filters check over at rules emporium to see if your listed on any of the most popular domain based blacklists. It is also very common to filter and messages containing any URL with an IP address in the message - using a Fully Qualified Domain Name is recommended for all links and images in your email messages.

4) Spam filter scoring
Many companies are now offering pre-deployment content testing for your email, even offering multiple views as to your messages appearance in the inbox. Look for Habeas, ReturnPath or Pivotal Veracity for these eRSPs.

5) Sender ID Records
We talked about The importance of Authentication last week. We also recommend that you look to use Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) as soon as your MTAs or ESP offer these solutions.

The importance of Authentication

ISPs are now serious about authentication, from SPF to DKIM, and not authenticating your email is causing issues with your mail delivery. Not authenticating can lead to not delivering your message to a user.

Taking steps to ensure that email can and is authenticated is one of the prerequisites to ensuring email delivery. Publishing your SPF and Sender ID records is relatively easy and can be accomplished in a number of minutes if you have all the right information.

What you need for SPF and Sender ID;

1. An accurate list of your outbound IP address (the network location where your mail originates) or the network range (a number of IP addresses).
   - Your ESP or technical support team should be able to provide this to you.
   
   
2. Recommend tools are available at OpenSPF and Microsoft to help build the proper records for for SPF and Sender ID records.
   
   
3. After determining your records you will need to publish these in your DNS records for your domain(s)
   
   
4. Your DNS records should look like this:
   mail.example.com IN TXT "v=spf1 MX A ip4:1.2.3.4 -all"
   mail.example.com IN TXT "spf2.0/pra a mx ip4:1.2.3.4 -all"
   
   
5. After publishing these records you should start to see your messages authenticated on delivery.

1. To test this setup, send a message from user@mail.example.com to a gmail address.
   
   
2. Open the message and select "Show original" from the drop down menu on the right side of the message, This will give you a text version of your message.
   
   
3. Look through the header (top of page) and find the list looking like this:
   - Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of user@email.example.net designates 1.2.3.4 as permitted sender)
   

Other test sites are available to use - try this one from 'Return Path'

New Zealand Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act March 2007

Mobilize mail, an ESP from New Zealand, has been discussing new laws that are starting in early September.

This posting provides a high level overview of the law and the touch points that will effect marketers sending to recipients located in NZ. This law is very similar to CAN-SPAM, but with an additional requirement for consent based (opt-in) mailing.

Key points for compliance that the act requires for compliance:

• Commercial electronic message must not be sent unless the receiver has first consented to receiving the message
• All commercial electronic messages must (unless agreed otherwise) include a “functional unsubscribe facility”
• All commercial electronic messages must include information which clearly identifies the person who authorizes sending the message and how that person can be contacted
• Address–harvesting software must not be used in connection with, or with the intention of, sending unsolicited commercial electronic messages.

Full context of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007

12 Email Marketing Best Practices

Kinetica Media has published a list of best practises for email marketing. This is a good list, however I would caution against #4 (Mail out on Tuesday or Wednesday).

Day of delivery will vary by your consumers and they type of program your running. Something else to consider about an absolute statement like this is to consider the implications of everyone mailing on these two days - your messaging will get lost in the flood and users will be nearly as responsive because of the excess noise in their inbox.

On my review I would recommend the following as the most important on the list:

2. Personalize

• This is important for building a dialogue with consumers and making them feel less like a number when working within your program.
  

5. Confirm Signups

• This is the best way to verify your consumer subscription is valid

6. Repeat Email Communication

• I would change this to read send a welcome message in real time vs 1 hour later.

7. Make it Consistent

• Great idea - send me a message every day/week/month and at the same time.

10. Have Interesting Content at the Top

• Like a newspaper would read, the best and most important content should be above the fold.

Al Diguido and the EEC

Al Diguido, formerly of Epsilon Interactive, wrote an article today in ClickZ that has the Email Experience Council's (EEC) hackles up.

Don't get me wrong the EEC has a number of good qualities and programs running, but a call to action over something written by Al is not necessarily needed. It almost feels like a scene from Frankenstein, you know the one where the villagers are after Frankenstein's monster with pitchforks and torches.

Al comments "Seems the EEC is working on guidelines around e-mail list growth, deliverability, rendering and enhancing user experiences. I would have hoped by now -- fully 7 years since I got started in the e-mail communications business -- the conversation and insights we'd be discussing would have gone well beyond guidelines on around issues such as e-mail list growth."

The biggest issue here is that there are still marketers and email senders out there that just DON'T GET IT... That is why these issues are still around, also the sheer number of best practises for each of the topics need to be formalized across the industry - the EEC is stepping in here... Last time I checked things like "e-mail list growth, deliverability, rendering and enhancing user experiences" were still very high on the importance list for most marketers.

Al also mentions the formation of the "EROI Council", focusing on helping marketers drive incremental sales and profits for their companies.

I hope the eROI (tm) is ok with this name ;)

Whitepapers, Case studies and research

The Dot Email Marketing Community is building a nice collection of Whitepapers, and research from a number of ESPs on various topics like:

• Why Email Marketers Must Care About Data Security
• What’s in the Mailbox? The Impact of One-to-One Marketing on Consumer Response
• What You Should Know About Deliverability
• Unleashing the Potential ofTransactional Messages
• The Opt-In Email Marketer’s Checklist for Inbox Delivery
• The Importance of Personalization

While your there join the Community and participate in the discussions.

BigString.com review

After receiving a comment from Michael (assuming he is from BigString.com) about a new email client I decided to give it a quick try and here are some of my observations:

* Works by sending your message as an image or hosted file, that changes to a blank image based on user settings (for each message) such as: time from first open, number of opens, or time from delivery.

* Works great if the recipient reads HTML messages with Images turned on, Inversely it doesn't work with Text readers, so some business or technical users will encounter issues with this.

* Update incorrect items in email that has already been delivered. Nice feature but open for abuse or fact changing. What better way to deal with things like insider trading - an email that sends and deliverers secret information and then becomes a blank message 2 minutes later... or other industries where email content is archived under policy or legislation and stored for future review or investigations. The Terms of service (TOS) talk about preventing abuse and terminating accounts when proof is provided that someone has abused their policies, but without proof there is only a blank message to base judgements on.

Over all I think some home based users will consider use this, but there is a lot of potential for bad things to occur in the business world.

CAN-SPAM

What do you know about CAN-SPAM? Are you compliant with the law?

It's easy - Here is what you need to know:

* It bans false or misleading header information. This means you must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email (aka. the sender)

* The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.

* It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method and you must honor the requests. Via an internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages, you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

* You have 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address.

* It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address.

* Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you.

Find more CAN-SPAM info here.

HABEAS | The Secret Behind Email Delivery Success

Des Cahill had a great article today published in Imedia; The Secret Behind Email Delivery Success. This covers a number the email world roles from a number of different touch points; the ISP, to the marketer and back to the consumer.

Quote: "Despite persistent problems -- more than 90 percent of email network traffic consists of spam and phishing for private information -- email still functions extremely well."

This is thankfully due to the ongoing collaboration and best practises being written all over the world. One such group is MAAWG's (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group), bringing the largest senders and the Largest ISPs around the world together to discuss the right way of doing things when it comes to sending email.

Read MAAWG's Sender Best practise.

Email Delivery Webinar today | WhatCounts

Email Deliverability and Reputation Management - July 26, 2007 - 10am PDT / 1pm EDT

The email marketing deliverability landscape seems to be an ever-changing challenge. Email marketers, Internet service providers and email service providers and other parties seem to have conflicting information about best practises for improving the inbox delivery of campaigns. So, we'll give the floor to deliverability expert Michelle Eichner from deliverability service provider Pivotal Veracity. Their expertise on the subject of inbox delivery and reputation management will help you ensure that all of your hard work is not sitting in somebody's junk folder.

Panel: Michelle Eichner, John Karpovich, Justin Foster

Need Stats?

Need some stats on email marketing or do you just want to see how you compare to everyone else?

EmailStatCenter.com has become the Leading Authority on Email Marketing Metrics. The site features hundreds of metrics from over 40 categories including deliverability, response rates and ROI. For more information, please visit www.EmailStatCenter.com.

Looks for stats in the following categories:

Authentication, Budgeting, Co-Registration, Deliverability, Email Usage, Frequency and From Line management

Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study

RetailEmail.Blogspot: has just releases the Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study covering a number of items and practises around; opt-in methods, communication preference setting and first points of contact with new subscribers.

Here are some interesting facts reported on in the study (how do you stack up?):

• 12% or major online retailers are providing a sample newsletters at time of sign up

• 28% of retailers offer multiple content selections

• Subscriber’s name and zip code are the most commonly asked for information by retailers

Find the full study in the EEC's Whitepaper room (login required)

Is this your marketing project?

Don't let this be you... This is a great initiative from "Bring Back The Love" from ad agency Openhere, for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.



Are you Bring Back The Love?

Habeas Appoints Ray Everett-Church as Director of Email Policy

Habeas, an email Reputation Services Provider, announced on July 17th, the appointment of Ray Everett-Church as their new director of Email Policy.

Ray's past ventures includes a number of high profile consulting jobs with companies like; Microsoft, AOL and Comcast. Ray also co-authored "Internet Privacy for Dummies" and sits on the Board of Directors for CAUCE North America, a group of volunteers working on behalf of consumers to put an end to unsolicited commercial email.

PDF, XLS spam and Phishing

Virus Bulletin is reporting a sharp increase in spam containing attachments, this time it is sent as an excel spreadsheets being sent to users. This following the trends of sending Images and PDF files in spam messages pushing stocks with false promises to provide big returns on a small investment.

Also an increase in IM spam attempting to Phish your MSN user list has begin circulating; beware of messages with text like this and asking for your IM Login and password.

Check out this web http:// messenger-scan .redirectme .net it tells you who deleted or blocked you from their MSN

Spaces added for protection

Remember never give out your user name and password to anyone.

Permission is a great start!

Awebber, an ESP from Newtown, PA writes about the effect that proper permission works wonders for your email delivery, but remind you that there are other factors are also effecting your message delivery a major one being Relevancy.

How do you stay relevant, Stephanie Miller from Return Path discusses this.

The Marketer’s Guide to Successful Email Delivery

ThinData Inc, Canada's leading Email Service Provider (ESP) has recently released a whitepaper titled "The Marketer’s Guide to Successful Email Delivery" that covers a number of Best Common Practises (BCP) that anyone sending email in any quantity should read and review. This is not just for marketers, and is written to be easily understood by new hires and seasoned veterans of the email world.

This paper focuses on 5 challenges that most marketers face at some point in their email program:

• Making sure email can be authenticated
• Maintaining a good email reputation
• Preventing being mislabeled a spammer by recipients
• Preventing being mislabeled a spammer by third-party software
• Configuring email servers to meeting industry standards

Download now and let us know what you think.

Welcome to Email Karma

The definition of Karma reads: Karma is the moral law of cause and effect by which the sum of a person's actions are carried foward from one life to the next, leading to an improvement or deterioration in that person's fate.

So how does this relate to email you ask?

The definition for email karma sould read: The factors that dictates the success or failure of a marketing program in relation to the practises that are followed while developing and executing the program is proportional to the response and success of said program as determined by the actions used to reach your customers.

In other words you get what you give... and by following best practises and listening to consumers your email marketing programs success rates are proportional to the care and thought put into your customers thoughts, feelings, emotions and interactions with you.