DEMO | Email Data Source

Are you monitoring your competitors?

No, while the Email Data Source team is, and your competitors might just be watching you. Yesterday I was lucky enough to get a live demo of the Email Analyst product from Bill McCloskey, President and CEO.

What is Email Data Source you ask?

Email Data Source is a marketing intelligence company focused on monitoring the email campaigns of ten’s of thousands of companies and providing email competitive intelligence.

What do they do?

Bill explained that Email Analyst is currently monitoring over; 36,000 companies, 400 thousand email lists and is receiving a whopping 150 thousand messages each month, with a growth rate that is doubling year over year.

What does the tool do?

The Email Analyst tool is being used by online marketers to track:

• The number of messages being sent by specific mailers each day per day and the sites Alexa trending data changes in correlation to these messages
• The original graphics and links still enabled allowing you to review messages and data from years past.
• Search past mailings based on keyword in the content or the messages Subject for your own brand or that of your competitors, allowing patterns and trends to be identified
• Compare your offers year over year
• Monitor and track you affiliates and how there mail effects your own program
• Monitoring links and content for errors or dead links in your messages

Early data exists from as far back as 2003 for some mailers and the list continues to grow each month. This is something to look into for your future projects and as a tool to monitor your creative and the direct web impact directed from each of your campaigns.

Click here to view the interactive demo of Email Analyst.

BUZZ | Hey Gmail!!!

The Group over at the Email Standards Project (ESP) is looking for help getting the Gmail developers attention and they are asking for your help.

Here is a quote from Mathew Patterson over at the ESP:

The idea is simple - play off the well known Gmail collaborative video with
our own video. Theirs was people passing the Gmail 'M' from frame to frame.

They are asking for your images - expressing pain at the rendering issues experienced in the web client - to be posted to a Flickr group dubbed Project Grimace.

These guys have pushed the envelope in the hopes of achieving email rendering standardization globally, already getting the attention of both Yahoo and IBM.

OneDegree | Activation Emails: How to Make a Positive First Impression

Congratulations! You’ve got a new subscriber – someone who took the time to enroll on your website. At a minimum, they’ve given you some contact information and permission to communicate with them. They may also have given you details about their preferences and probably a variety of demographic details that you will use for segmentation and targeting.

Now what?

Find out on OneDegree where I answer this question in my latest article "Activation Emails: How to Make a Positive First Impression".

Where are you hiding your opt-in?

I subscriber to a lot of email, and frequently I'm reading a marketers RSS feed (almost 100 at last count) published by the same company as well. I'm often surprised by some marketers or sites that don't have a clear or easy to find a subscription mechanism. If I want information from you, make it easy to find - you may be surprised at the list growth you experience.

This also goes for your RSS feeds, making this easy to subscribe to should be part of your design and execution processes, hiding these or not providing them could be costing you valuable subscribers. Feedburner makes it very easy to add various subscription services directly to your page with their "Chicklet Chooser", making it easy for users to add to their Yahoo page, or their Google reader.

For example you will notice the EmailKarma subscription box is easily found to the right side of the page, and the choice for both email and RSS are available, making it easy and obvious to access by you the reader. I also employ a double opt-in to ensure that you really are you when subscribing.

Interested users should be given easy methods to interact and access relevant information on your site, in your RSS feed or via your email program. Have at least one subscription form on every page make sure it is above the fold and easy to understand for all of these options.

What would you do?

Recently on the Email Marketers Club the question was raised;

"My provider had a major issue, where another client's content was sent to my list, causing a number of my subscribers to get angry and unsubscribe from theme email lists. Should I find a new Service Provider?"

So far the responses have ranged of - get out now and fast - to send your lawyers in - to everyone makes a mistake it's how you recover from the mistake that matters...

What's your take on this? Does everyone deserve a second chance or should the current provider get left in the dust?

Updates at AOL

Laura from, Word to the Wise, is reporting some new features at AOL including;

AOL's announcement on the Email Sender and Provider Coalition call that they have begun checking DKIM on inbound email being sent to their domains (AOL.com, AIM.com, Netscape.net and cs.com).

The other interesting piece of information to come from this call is that AOL, is also going to start asking "How do you categorize this messaging stream?" when your applying for whitelisting within their mail services. What this means is that AOL is looking to track metrics on Transactional mail vs. Commercial/newsletter type email entering their systems.

This builds on the SPF authentication tests that AOL has already been using for the last couple of years.

CSS Hover in HTML Email

Mike Kleiman has been experimenting with the Hover CSS tags and presented his results over on his blog. This allows for a mouse over on a link or image where you can you expand the area and show additional text beneath it.

Mike's test results also show some very promising results, although he does caution for Gmail recipients:

I know right away this won't work in Gmail, since hover cannot be applied
inline and Gmail cuts out the style block. But it's still worth an
experimentation anyways since I found Gmail simply defaulted to show the entire
content and so even when it breaks the user is still getting essentially the
full experience.

Please share your results if you test this.

Yahoo facing Layoffs

The New York Times is reporting that Yahoo is looking at layoffs for hundreds of there employees, siting falling stock prices and some failed initiatives over the last few years.

The exact number of employees to be let go are still being determined but early blog reports that an expected 10 to 20 percent could be cut.

The TechCrunch is also reporting this although with slightly different numbers, and is hinting at the process already starting with the layoffs of 30 people in the Yahoo Answers program.

Stay tuned for more news on this topic.

Q&A | Preventing an Unexpected Spike in Email Bounces

Reposting this Q&A from ThinData's Email Strategies where I answer the question, "What do I do when an ISP discontinues a domain or migrates users from one domain to another?"

A subscriber asked:

We're a large media firm sending email to subscribers throughout Canada and the United States. I've heard recently that one of the largest US ISPs has discontinued sending messages to some email domains. What kind of impact will this have on my email marketing campaign? And, what can I do about it?

Our Expert's Answer (That's me):

Here's the scoop: One of the largest US ISPs is bringing into their system a large volume of email addresses that had formerly been distributed by another ISP. During the migration of these email domains, subscribers were encouraged to switch domains (similar to a few years ago when "@home" subscribers were prompted to actively change their addresses to "@rogers", "@shaw" and "@cogeco" – based on the appropriate local ISPs).

If you are sending emails to subscribers in the United States whose email domains were distributed through the originating ISP that have not been correctly updated, you will find a dramatic spike in your email bounce rates. Under these conditions, you can take the following steps now to reduce the impact on your email campaigns' success:

1. Work with your ISP or ESP to ensure that all of the relevant domains are removed from your mailings
2. Plan for an increase in telephone calls regarding missed email messages
3. Review your email campaign content to ensure that critical subscriber information can be accessed through another method (e.g. placed on your website)
4. Have your ISP or ESP quantify the increase in bounces attributable to this ISP's actions so that you can factor that information into key elements of your campaign, such as:

• Initial conversion goals
• Delivery analytics
• Testing schedule
• Related follow-up messages

Finally, ISPs across North America are constantly changing their practices and policies which in-turn will have a dramatic impact on your email campaigns. As a result, for all of your campaigns, include time and resources to review ISPs' evolving rules as well as verify and update email addresses.

Do you have anyother tips; please share them by sending an email to contact or leave a comment here

Microsoft Phishing Filter Error

Return Path is reporting on the following error made by Microsofts anti-phishing filters:

On Monday some messages sent to Hotmail users were being routed to the junk folder with the Warning: this message may be a phishing scam. The reported error resides with the Microsoft phishing filter that had flagged a very common link in many HTML messages, specifically the link http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml.

The Microsoft team has adjusted the phishing filters and assures senders that the issue has now been resolved and that no actions need to taken.

Share your experiences with us by sending an email to contact or leave a comment.

Even the Pros get it wrong

From time to time it amazes me how people can miss simple things in their email programs. Everything from a typo in a name (I know you've done it - I have), and forgetting to hyperlink an important URL or image...

How about your footer and unsubscribe link - it's the same every week, in every message, it's part of your template right? - How can you get it wrong one day?

MediaPost did, as common source of information for many marketers and a great resource managed to do this today with their reminder promotion for the "Media Magazines' Agency of the Year 2007" promotion. Hopefully they catch this and be able to fix it for their next mailings.

Can you spot the error in their footer? (Hint: it's not the [Emailaddress]. I removed my address from the URL example to prevent false unsubs)

If you would like to unsubscribe from this type of email follow the link below:
http://www.mediapst.com/unsubscribe.cfm?email=[EMAILADDRESS]&end
MediaPost Communications 1140 Broadway, 4th floor, New York, NY 10001

Did you catch it?
It's their domain name Mediapst.com which is directed to another completely different site (possibly even a cybersquater cashing in on typos like this). There Unsubscribe rates will be effected by this and possibly a few extra complaints will be added to this messages from ISPs like AOL and hotmail as users will not able to unsubscribe.

I would also recommend a review of SpamResource's posting: Gmail's Taking Care of Me, regarding the sending of non-relevant or extra messages to your subscribers (hint hint).

Are you missing out, join the EMC

Some great discussions are happening over at the Email Marketer's Club, are you missing out?

Today's topics include:

• Canadian Email Marketing
• Frequency of contact?
• Driving More B2B Opt-Ins...
• Is it ok to send a one off email to customers who have not opted-in?

The club has also added a number of new features like; a Job board, Chatroom, Wiki, Events calendar, regional discussion groups like "Canadian eh?" and a fan page on Facebook.

Common out and join your peers, get involved and share your experiences.

Don't let this happen to you.

I received a "forward to a friend" message today from where the website used my wife's Hotmail address as the from as the sender, instead of their own domain. Can you tell what is wrong with this picture?

A little background. I use Thunderbird with the Sender Verification Extension (SVE) for some of my email. This extension allows mail sent to me to review and verifies the messages I receive with the following techniques; Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys (DK) to verify the sending domain, and SURBL, Spamhaus, DNSWL, and SenderScoreCertified for reputation information on the domain.

What is happening here?
Hotmail has stated that hotmail.com email will only originate from their system networks via their published SPF records. SVE is noting that this message has failed the SPF tests as it was sent from a mail server outside published hotmail network, in this case about.com's email network. This may cause a number of different issues, such as; bulk mail delivery, blocking of messages or spam reports by the intended recipient.

How do you rectify this?
Use your own static from address and have the proper authentication records configured and use the forwarders name in the subject of the message (ex: #FirstName# #LastName#, wants to tell you about...). Or for a more advanced configuration use a Resent-From address that allows you to configure authentication records for your mailing domain and have a visible from of the forwarded. Talk to your mail administrator to identify your best options and how to proceed.

Have any other tips; share them at contact or leave a comment.

Coding an HTML Email in 3 Easy Steps : Part 3

Mike has just finished part 3 of "Coding an HTML Email in 3 Easy Steps" and has provided useful code suggestions, tips and a generic starting place for future email messages.

Here are some of Mike's Key tips:

• Place a doctype at the top of all emails to ensure code is following standards in Outlook and Express
• Always enclose the email in an open and close HTML set of tags, this lowers spam score
• No need for the head tag, and always ensure the style block is placed BELOW the body tag
• The overall link style is used because some clients will rewrite links using their default font/color
• The td alignment fix was used for issues in Hotmail live wherein a centered table would force all internal cells to be aligned center as well
• A complete table, with an ID of cssshell to ensure the style block is used on this table only, if you use overriding styles with no ID attribute you run the risk of styling the entire interface of a webmail client

Do you have other coding tips you would like to share? Email them to contact or leave a comment.

Coding an HTML Email in 3 Easy Steps (parts 1 and 2)

Mike Kleiman, has started a three part series called "Coding an HTML Email in 3 Easy Steps". Parts 1 and 2 are currently available and part 3 should be available soon.

Coding an HTML Email in 3 Easy Steps : Part 1

This posting discusses the need to plan and prepare your message, images and copy so that they will be rendered correctly in the largest number of email clients (web and software).

Coding an HTML Email in 3 Easy Steps : Part 2

Part 2 talks about the importance of Font selection for maximum support and the likely issues you will run in to when setting up your messages. Mike also covers CSS tricks to help preserve your message's look and feel, from boarders to cell spacing.

I'm eagerly awaiting part 3, Check out Mike's blog for the latest updates.

ISP Update | Road Runner

I have received several notices today stating that the following domains have been disabled on the Road Runner network effective 1/7/2008, as part of their planed migration announced in 2007:

• jam.rr.com
• midsouth.rr.com
• mn.rr.com
• se.rr.com
• sport.rr.com
• swfla.rr.com
• ucwphilly.rr.com
• houston.rr.com

Mail that is being sent to these domain is bouncing as "User Unknown". For the last several months these domains have been forwarding to the users new Comcast address and the users have been reminded by their service provider to give senders their new Comcast address.

What does this mean for me?
You may notice an increase in bounces from these domains for the next couple of mailings while these domains are hygiene out of your email lists. There may also be an increase in calls to your customer service teams regarding missing email, these users should supply their new @comcast.net email address to begin receiving communications going forward. Many users will use this transition as a way to stop spam that is currently sent to their Road Runner Accounts by transitioning and only updating some of the subscription information.

What should/can you do?
Recapturing these users at the next interaction on their website should be a priority, as sending them an email notice is not an option as these addresses are already bouncing. These users have been given ample time by their ISP to update any relevant information regarding mail that they want to remain subscribed to. You should remove these users as part of your standard hygiene process before mailing any future campaigns.

Looking at an ECOA (Email Change of Address) program may also be an option, there are several services available to accomplish this (FreshAddress and Return Path both offer these types of services).

What should you NOT do?
Do not update all of these addresses from @domain.rr.com to @comcast.net as the existing user base may already be using the same alias but for a different individual.

Please Note: ExampleUser_at_houston.rr.com is not necessarily the same individual as ExampleUser_at_comcast.net. Also note that a large number of the Road Runner domains are still functioning as normal, so this is not a universal change for all Road Runner users.

Best Day of the week...

Reciently it was announced that Wednesday afternoon is the best day/time of the week to send email to subscribers... Guess what happened lots of marketers looked at this and said "I should mail Wednesday Afternoons". Moving forward your going to find that Wednesday afternoons are probably not so effective and another report will be published saying that some other day of the week will become the best day to mail.

The real trick here is that each email program is unique and the subscribers will all behave defirently. Take the time to find your subscribers sweet spot and you'll not regret it.

Here's how (assuming 1 M-F mailing per week):

• Segment your lists into a five groups send each segment the same offer but on different days of the week. This might need to be modified based on your mailing schedule or program needs.
• Alternate sending to these segments in the morning one week and the afternoon the next.
• Repeat this test for five cycles to give a good view of each segments performance on each day of the week:

M	T	W	T	F
1	2	3	4	5
2	3	4	5	1
3	4	5	1	2
4	5	1	2	3
5	1	2	3	4

• Review metrics from all mailings to determin the best day of the week to send "your" messages.
• For additional testing or targeting find the best day of the week to mail and segment into time alotments (00:00 - 6:00, 6:00 - 12:00, 12:00 - 18:00, 18:00 - 00:00).

Singeling out any specific day will potentially have negative long term effects on your email program. I guess you could say "The best day to mail is any day that ends in Y".

Share your results email them to contact or leave a comment.

Cleaning house in 2008

Starting back after holidays I'm welcomed to a very full inbox... Sorting through these can take a lot of time so I've decided to clean house and find the important pieces quickly.


Here's how you can do it too:

1. Create a new Personal Folder (.pst) for all mail in 2008, or event better create multiple folders for each kind of mail you receive - i.e. internal communications, client communications, alerts, reports etc... Outlook lets to make a number of these. Ask your IT person if you need help with this.
2. Archive last years mail into a 2007 file and only use these for reference use... Anything still open or needing action from last year should be left out of your archive for quick access.
3. Create (or review) some Outlook rules, group similar subjects and common from/to addresses into an alert and automatically file these to help keep your inbox clear - Remember alerts are important these should not be ignored, using key word filters help separate; notice, warning and fail alerts easily enough. Coloured flags can also be used to flag important messages from Clients (each can have their own colour), or your "Boss" as a visual aid.
4. Look for newsletters your no longer reading - the ones in the Round-to-it folder - and unsubscribe from them. If your not reading them now you probably don't need them.

Hope you have a great and successful 2008.