Comments from a far

Found this website kinda of randomly, while researching some PIPEDA information... It talks about several Key factors for marketers when looking to market to Canadians - a report published by Marketing Sherpa.

Some of the tips are very funny; our strong relationship with hockey is mentioned a few times, and the "Looooong" winters - LOL - that we have here and the "Short" summers... Some times I love when things like this are produced and published - makes me smile and wonder where some of these thoughts truly come from.

Any way the key point I have issue with seems to be the idea that PIPEDA and CAN-SPAM are two related law... Guess what - THEY ARE NOTHING ALIKE...

Here are my comments posted to them, in case they decided to moderate them ;)

PIPEDA and CAN-SPAM are about as similar as apples and oranges... CAN-SPAM is a marketing law dealing with the rules, regulations and structures to have a "legal" online marketing program.

PIPEDA is a "PRIVACY" law, and has nothing to do with email marketing or spam... It has everything to do with how you can collect, use, store and maintain Personal information on a Canadian buyer. There are 10 fundamental principles that you need to follow - find them here.

For a Canadian comparison to CAN-SPAM you need to look at Senate Bill - s235 (The Spam Act).

Also for businesses I'd recommend reading the PIPEDA Checklist prepared by 4 leading Canadian Privacy Practitioners: http://tinyurl.com/PIPEDA

Q&A | Email Software

Q: Dear EmailKarma.net,

Right now I'm sending to Europe via send safe with a proxy service. I want to sent to the US via; msn, aol, yahoo.com and others. Is there any better software to send with than send safe? I'm trying to find software "light speed nexus"?

[Name Withheld]

A: Occasionally I receive questions I'd normally pass on and not answer but this one needs to be shared for the benefit of marketers everywhere.

The software your asking about is commonly used as a spam tool (or tools in this case), the whole idea of using "Proxies" to send email is just a awful idea. Many times they are blocked by ISPs before even getting mail out onto the Internet, think Spamhaus PBL. Blocking the commonly used mail port (Port 25) to prevent mail being sent by proxies is actually a highly recommended practise, drafted by members of MAAWG, to help ISPs prevent spam from originating from their networks. Many times these "Proxies" are actually created by virus infected PCs acting within a botnet.

I would recommend staying well away from both of these services, and other similar services, and finding a real Email Service Provider to work with. Supporting and using these types of tools only further supports the problems that legitimate marketers and services providers (both ISPs and ESPs) need to overcome everyday.

Video Poll Results

The results are in... with a limited number of respondents I'm not sure how scientific this is, but the results did show a number of very strong trends.

1. Embedded video in email, Does it work?

89% of respondents selected a No response, with the leading result being attributed to Poor support in email clients (50%) and rendering issues (27%). Of the yes answers (11%) the trend showed only "OK" results. No one responded with having "great" results from Videos in email.

2. How do you get around video in email issues?

Another overwhelming result showing the 85.7% of respondents choose to sent static images with the look and feel of a video screen, the remainder indicated no issues related to sending videos.

3. Optimal Video format

73% of responders answered by indicating the choice to not send video in email. MPEGs (17%), AVI and Wav files were the next most popular with 5.6% each. Write in answered included Flash, QuickTime, SWF and YouTube embedded options.

4. Tips for sending video in email, reasons not to send video in email

User comments seems to indicate a strong distrust of the Marketing Sherpa tests and results. Recommendations to Avoid Flash and other scripting were also popular due to the high probability that an ISP will pop us warnings or disable these out right in the users inbox. Providing images (or animated gifs) and links to hosted video, on your site or even YouTube, seem to be the most popular recommendations occurring several times.

We even had comments from a couple of recipients that indicated a significant dislike of the idea and application of Videos in email.

Key findings:

1. Use images that point to hosted video
2. Understanding your recipients view of your services is important
3. ISPs and email clients do not support many of the formats used to manage video
   

Thank you all for answering.

One Degree | Ensuring Your Email Complies with Relevant Laws

My latest OneDegree article is now available:

Ensuring Your Email Complies with Relevant Laws
OneDegree Today at 8:14 AM

By Matthew Vernhout

Your email campaigns are growing and you're having great success!

But did you realize that as your email marketing programs grow in complexity and reach, you need to follow the regulations mandated by the jurisdictions in which your clients and their mail servers are located? This is news to many marketers who are not used to following rules that fall outside of their immediate regional or national borders.

Full Article can be read here here.

Dealing with Vendors

As a customer you want your vendors to make an effort to get to know you, your goals and an understanding the things that you want to get out of the relationship. You want to be more then a number or a record in a database somewhere.

So why treat your customers like that? Here are a few tips to get to know your subscribers:

1. Run surveys to update profile information or demographic information
2. Ask for preferences; preferred time of day or day of the week for delivery, choice of newsletter or information channel
3. Instant update of preferences
   
4. Personalized communications; use the profile information you collect
5. Don't over collect information - if you don't plan on using it don't ask for it.
6. Be open about what you ask for - don't reject users based on their email domain

Remember - treat people like you want to be treated and you'll go far and have a successful program.

Recognizing the sender

Recently I subscribed to a email newsletter from a consulting group that offers best practices to blogger... This organization was actually started by a well known email marketer, bonus in my eyes from a content perspective... However you'll notice from the messages below that the most important of the five R's is being broken; Recognition.

All of these messages are being delivered from an individual, someone I don't actually know, and not the company i have a relationship with... Only after I open the message to see the content do I realize which company it is actually from.

The big problem with that is according to the ESPC - 79% of the respondents said they hit the "report spam" button when they don't know who the sender is.

Last item to note; each of these messages is address; "Dear Valued Subscriber" The lack of personalization is somewhat disturbing, considering I have provided my name at least once during the registration process, either for the newsletter directly of a webinar hosted by this company.

Lesson: Value your subscribers, Personalize the messages you send to them and "BE RECOGNIZABLE".

Click for larger Image:

The more I write about this the more I realize I should just unsubscribe.

ps. sorry for the small image :S

Return Path | Feedback loop updates

I'm not sure how I missed this one...

Last month while Return Path was announcing the addition of the Comcast feedback loop to their hosted solutions they slipped in a small announcement for the addition for Mailtrust's addition to their hosted FBL solutions as well (4th paragraph from the bottom).

Bringing the total for Return Path hosted FBLs to three; Comcast, USA.net, and Mailtrust.

CAN-SPAM Rule Clarification

Recently the FTC clarified a number of rules within CAN-SPAM (pdf).

Here is my understanding of these changes (please note this is not legal advice).

There are two major changes to note within these clarifications:

• Changes to the definition of a "sender." The new rule enforces the idea of a single designated sender, for messages with multiple advertisers. The designated sender is defined as the entity in the "From" line of the communication, clarifying the need to have multiple opt-outs within each messages. It also clarifies that only that designated sender need to provide an opt-out link, a valid postal address to satisfying the usual requirements within the Act (ex: subject line, headers, etc).
• Changes to opt-out requirements. The new rule stipulates the amount of complexity and information needed to be supplied by the recipient during an opt-out request. Most importantly, the opt-out process need only require that the recipient provide only their email address to unsubscribe. The opt-out process must not consist of more than a single webpage or an email reply from the recipient.

Minor Clarifications from the FTC include the following;

• A P.O. box or private mailbox has been confirmed as acceptable under the "valid postal address" requirement.
• The definition of "person" has been clarified to include the legal definition of "person," and expanded to include; corporations, groups, partnerships, nonprofits, and associations.

Habeas Study Confirms Strong, Ongoing Demand for Email

Yesterday Habeas and Ipsos, announced the finding of their 2008 email study which finds that there is still a very strong preference for email and the expectation that this will continue to be the case for several more years.

Some very interesting findings include that the majority of people trust companies that use opt-in email, have the ability to customize communications and can reliably get messages delivered. While having a strong privacy practice gets you bonus points, many people still believe that two-thirds of companies are still sharing their data with third parties.

Report Highlights include:

Email's Vitality

• 67% of respondents prefer email over other online vehicles
• Consumer opinion of the future importance of email registered far above future expectations for other online channels.
  

Consumer Concerns Regarding Online Threats Increasing

• 96% expressed concern about being victimized by email fraud, up from the 62 percent finding in the 2007 report.
• 43% of respondents voiced concern over mobile spam and virus threats.
  

Online Reputation Management Best Practices to Build Trust

• 88% of respondents said they would like organizations to give them more choices over the content and frequency of the emails they receive.
• 80% of participants favour doing business with organizations that use opt-in permission to send them email.
• 75% of participants prefer engaging with organizations that exhibit strong privacy practices.
  

Online Business Practices to Avoid

• 25% of respondents lose faith in an organization that is unable to deliver email reliably.
• Daily email messages ranked with pop-up advertisements as the most damaging online tactics to a company's online reputation.
• 80% of respondents are not comfortable with businesses sharing their email address.
• 80% feel that a business' reputation is negatively affected if it shares customer email addresses with third parties.
• Internet users believe that about two thirds of companies are likely to share their email addresses with third parties.

Transactional Email That Markets Effectively

Original Posting in May 2008, issue of ThinData's Email Strategies.

Question:
As a national retailer, we send out large volumes of email to our customers to confirm purchases or account modifications that they have made while using our online store. We want to make sure that we are respectful of our customers while using these emails as an opportunity for promotion. Can you provide any recommendations – particularly since we plan to dramatically increase our use of email over the next few months?

Our Expert's Answer:
Your issue is one that every business that conducts commerce online needs to address.

There are two major types of email – commercial and transactional. Commercial email has one purpose: promotion of brand and/or products. In contrast, transactional-focused emails are far more complex. Most commonly, transactional emails are used to: welcome new registrants or customers, confirm transactions, provide notification of shipment and outline return policies. In short, this type of email supports a critical part of your relationship with customers – they provide confidence and build trust in your brand.

There are guidelines for transactional email that you should follow – because it demonstrates a respect for your customers and for reasons of complying with industry legislation (e.g. CAN-SPAM). Here are the key rules for transactional emails:

1. 80% of the content, imagery and space of a transactional email should serve to support a previous or pending transaction – rather than be promotional.
   
   
2. Marketing content should be below the fold – and clearly set apart from the transactional information.
   
   
3. Marketing offers presented should be somehow related to the transaction. For example, if the transaction is a purchase of an iPod, the marketing content could highlight relevant guarantees, product support or iPod accessories.
   
   
4. Use subject lines that clearly identify the email as transactional. For example, "Confirming Your Purchase of..."
   
   
5. If more than 20% of the email’s content, imagery or space is used for promotional purposes, you must include an “unsubscribe” option that will be honoured. Keep in-mind that if you do this, you run the risk of losing contact with a purchasing customer.

Follow these rules and your transactional emails will serve your brand and marketing objectives well.

EEC: Good Intentions Gone Bad

Before you read remember this - I like the EEC, I like the things they do, and I like the people involved with running the organization. But this story goes to show even leaders make mistakes from time to time.

It started with an article from the EEC explaining their Earth day exercise, and what their intent was when they were sending these electronic Magazine messages to their members. Ken Magill, then followed up with a post stating that the EEC had spammed its members. Truly a case of "Good Intentions Gone Bad".

Here is my take on how it should have gone down...

• It should have been branded EEC, with the Magazine Content in the body of the message.
• The messages should have been sent "From" for the EEC, not the Zinio system
• There should not have been three copies, with two different content pieces, if this was a one off mailing.
• Messages should have been Gender neutral, or better targeted... Women's Magazines are just not my favorite reading choices. ;)
• If these are for Earth day and on behalf of the EEC - you should mention that in the content of the message somewhere (see below).
• While the intentions were good the execution get an "F" - as leaders these things should be checked and double checked before letting the message out the door.

Over at BeRelevant!, Tamara had this to say.

View the messages here:

1. First message - lacking Personalization (Dear Reader)
2. Second Message - Same as first (personalized this time), sent 3 hrs after first.
3. Third Message - New content

Upcoming Webinars

Reputation-Based Email and Web Operations Create Results (Recorded)
Joint Presentation: Habeas, LashBack and Publishers Clearing House
How being compliant and reputable online is a competitive advantage in any economy -- especially in a downturn, How to analyze, improve and manage email and Web operations with online reputation management strategies and tools, Case studies, best practices and tips you can leverage immediately for your business or clients

Are You in the Loop? (Register)
By DMNews
Date: Thursday, May 1, 2008
Time: 1:00 p.m. EST/10:00 a.m. PST
To learn how to effectively use customer data and behavior to refine marketing strategy and campaigns, join us for this complimentary webcast, moderated by DMNews editor-in-chief Elly Trickett. All registrants will receive a copy of the Aberdeen Group research paper, "The CMO Strategic Agenda: Automating Closed-Loop Marketing."


“Garbage In, Garbage Out: Catch Email Errors Before They Hit Your Database” (Register)
By Freshaddress
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
As a smart marketer, you’re already working hard to get email addresses for each one of your customers. But did you know that up to 20% of email registrations contain syntax, typo, formatting, and other errors?

Revised: MAAWG Best Practices for Volume Senders

Announced today the MAAWG Senders Best Practices Document (Version 2.0 - pfd) has been officially released.

Updates to the documentation include:

• New guidelines for legitimate email avoid being mistaken for image-based junk mail
• List permission and opt-in recommendations have been amended to reflect current best practices
• User-unsubscribe processes have been clarified
• along with a number of other updates to the document

This is a great document to read as a marketer, and should set the bar for your marketing programs.

Q&A | Is SPF2.0 Dead?

Q:
I've spoken with several folks and am still confused about whether or not SenderID is actually needed when sending to MSN/Hotmail.

What's the verdict? Is SenderID dead? Do spfv2 records need to be published? Is it sufficient to just publish SPF (v1) records when sending to MSN/Hotmail?

Sincerely confused on this one...

A:
I was intrigued by this question, as it was not something I had ever been told while working with the support teams at Hotmail, so I sent a note off to my contacts within Microsoft and got back the official word;

"In the majority of cases, using the SPF record will satisfy both SPF as well as SenderID verification within the Hotmail systems. Organizations that wish to publish a SenderID record are encouraged to do so. This second record will be used for SenderID validations, of the PRA domain only, and will take precedence over the classic SPF record."

Conclusions:

• SenderID is not dead - in fact it's still the one method used by Hotmail's authentication services.
• SPF (v1) implementations will continue to validate the MAIL FROM domain unless the sender has published a spf2.0/pra record.
• Publishing both records is not going to hurt your delivery to Hotmail.
• SPF is still being checked in the absence of SenderID - SPF is supported ongoing because most senders don't have just a 2.0 record yet.
• While only one records is sufficient, my recommendation continues to be publish both, as some other ISPs continue to pick one over the other.

Project Gmail Grimace: The Gmail Appeal video

The Email Standards Project has moved into the next phase of "Project Gmail Grimace". A Project aimed at getting the attention of Gmail's Developmet staff by having email designers send in photos of themselves feeling the pain of designing email that is properly rendered in the Gmail interface.

This week the Email Standard Project launches the first Gmail Appeal video.

Here is a description of Project Gmail Grimace:

The 2008 Gmail Appeal
Here at the Email Standards Project, we've heard from designers all over the world how frustrating it is that Gmail, the otherwise excellent webmail client, does such a disappointing job rendering HTML email.

The results of the Gmail Acid Test, a control message sent to all of the tested webmail clients, can be found here. Don't forget to share your Gmail Story.

Is Yahoo Mail still broken?

Recently Marketing Sherpa posted an article about ongoing issues with Yahoo! mail delivery and I left the following comment:

Many of the Yahoo issues have been resolved and its been said that any remaining issues are likely the result of filter adjustments and fringe cases where reputation was already near the edge of rate limiting, or filtering. Using the postmaster help pages is the recommended course of action for senders that continue to experience issues. Yahoo has been very open with their communications to ESPs, posting their the Y! mail blogs and the updated Postmaster pages... ...The real key to uninterrupted email delivery is to have a clean, consent based, highly relevant mail stream.

Working everyday with a number of very large email clients being on top of best practices, delivery requirements and changes to ISP policies is critical. If your still experiencing issues likely there are too many; bounces, complaints or your still sending mail is a manor that Y! doesn't like - too fast, too many users per connection/message, too many spam traps or dead addresses (hard bounces) being mailed to over and over.

Also Y!'s mail blog mentioned today that they are still behind in dealing tickets and that they are still working to address the issue.

A comment left for Yahoo related to these two articles echo's the same thing that I'm saying here - "I’m not experiencing Yahoo problems myself. This recent campaign sent to my list had no Yahoo issues whatsoever".

Customer service is important

Sorry this is not an email post, although is can easily be related, the lesson is equally important when dealing with customers regardless of the contact method.

Tonight while watching sitting at home with the family, I received a call from a telemarketer - not too uncommon, but the resulting conversation has likely caused this organization to loose my business in the future - depending on the response I receive from my email to their privacy team. Here is my response to this phone call (via email to the company):

Dear [Removed] Privacy Representative,

Please add me to your global phone suppression files, I would like a forms of Telephone sales promotions to stop immediately.

Tonight (at approximately 9:00 pm EST) I received an incredibly rude call from one of your phone representatives. The caller ID shows the origin of the call from [Removed] (Phoenix AZ) that began with the phrase "I need to talk to the person in charge of your [Removed] service". There was no introduction as to who they were calling on behalf off or who they were (there name was not given at all during the brief conversation), the representative also need to be prompted to identify the company he was calling on behalf of and what he was looking for. As a customer I will not let this type of service go unnoticed and unreported.

My phone numbers are as follows: [removed].

Please let know when this has been completed.

Every touch point is a possible has the potential to build and strengthen a relationship with a company or, as shown, ruin the chances of gaining a new customer. I guess we sill see what happens with this message.

Now that's how you run a contest

Great example today on getting users to enter a contest and using the data you already have to make it easy.

My Internet provider is running a contest for a free trip to Las Vegas to attend some VIP events, in a joint promotion with A&E, for the new Season of Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

Here is what made this a success:

1 - They linked directly to entry page in the email
2- Used Known Data instead of asking me to enter all of my contact information again (I'm a customer after all and they have all my details already)
3- Two clicks to enter (I read and accept the rules/regs, and click submit)
4-Fingers crosses - Hoping I win! Wish me luck

How much easier can a customer interaction get. Many of your customers are busy - make these small interactions with them easy.

Where to improve;

Offer contest entrants the chance to subscribe to your partners email (in this case A&E might have had a new subscriber - but they missed out).

Why you need Segmentation!

There are a few things that annoy me more then blatantly lazy; marketing, targeting and/or segmenting when it comes to email marketing… one of these things happened to me today.

When targeting promotions to individuals based on their age you should do one of two things... Verify their age and segment/target appropriately or give them the option to opt-out of age specific promotions in the future.

Lets dissect this promotion for a second
- Are you under 28 - NOPE
- Are you in Media buying or Planning - NOPE
- Willing to travel - SURE, but I've already been disqualified from participation (TWICE).
- Think you Cannes? - WTH is CANNES? I know the place in France, but I don't know how to CANNES anything? This is a poor play on words.

This example is actually the second mailer in recent months that started sending content based on age... This one is close - I'm not too far from 28 - but I'm excluded because I surpassed this benchmark a few years back. Sending messages like this without the option - as a subscriber - to say 'This is not relevant to me' or I'm over 28 don't send me these types of messages again can (and likely do) hurt your relationship with your subscribers.

The last faux pas here is that the opt-out process for these messages actually stop all further communication from the sender, there is no method to stop these (under X yrs) messages from being sent in the future... thus alienating your subscribers further.

Don't make this same mistake, gather the proper profile information before sending (Age qualifying promotions), or give people the option to opt-out of these types of messages while remaining part of your core program.

Following the rules

I get asked a lot about the different rules at each ISP, and how to find more information on these policies. Here is a short list of the most common domains I get asked about;

• AOL - http://postmaster.info.aol.com/
• Gmail - http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html
• Hotmail/MSN - http://postmaster.msn.com/
• OutBlaze - http://spamblock.outblaze.com/
• Yahoo - http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/

These pages contain many helpful resources that will help you understand the policies, practices, common questions and tools available from each ISP.

Have others to list, or need to know about a specific ISP - let us know or leave a comment.