A great post by Mark today over at Email Marketing Reports, and I'm not just saying that because I was quoted in it. Mark answers several key questions around certified (or accredited) email messages and programs including;
As mentioned in the previous Direct Mag article the DMA planed on investigating Earth Day mailings sent to the the EEC's member base (For those that didn't get the letter, Laura posted the full text here), and implement some changes to the way the EEC operates. I've noticed some odd things contained within the letter:
Too bad these discrepancies are here, I would have been happy with the answer otherwise :(
Today I reach 200 posts, and with this milestone I wanted to just look back over the brief history of EmailKarma.net with some stats from the last nine months:
About you the readers:
Most popular articles read and linked to:
Thanks to all of the readers, for helping with the success of EmailKarma.net, and for your continued support, questions, comments and inbound links - Mark, Tamara, Laura (and all the others - too many to list).
Remember you can find EmailKarma.net on Facebook and Twitter.
Q: Hello EmailKarma.net
I am currently trying to contact someone at the FiveTenOptin block list. They are carrying this message for all of the IP addresses that we own:
Reports CNAME of [removed].com.bulk.blackholes.five-ten-sg.com.Do you know where I can find information on contacting them to get this message removed?
TXT= "added 2007-05-30; unconfirmed mailing lists"
Description: Bulk mailers that don't require closed loop confirmed opt-in from all their customers.The list is full of issues and for most people it is truly a non-issue (affecting only a tiny portion of your list) when it comes to delivery. Asking the domains that are using this to white list your mail or showing them the inaccuracies (DNSBL report) with this list are probably the best way to go forward with this. If your determined to try the contact page to reach them.
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,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.
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.
Recently there was a report released (DMNews) about the use and understanding of the "Report spam" button by consumers and that they actually report legitimate email as spam.
This is not really a surprise, experience shows that users will use the button for the following reasons:
Mark has a great write up summarizing a few of the other articles written about this report.
Watch the trends in your Feedback Loops to identify potential issues in your email program, group these individuals by collection source (especially if your using multiple collection locations), Types of messages being sent and the demographics of your members to focus and improve your messaging so that it becomes relevant to your subscribers.
If your not watching - be warned - the ISPs and your ESP are all watching and you might just find your self in hot water with one or both of them.
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).
Today I found some new information sources to read courtesy of our friends over at Microsoft:
Windows Live Hotmail Technical Support Blog - The official technical support blog for Windows Live Hotmail and the Live Mail Client.I'm sure there are some hidden treasures in these... Once I have more time to digest the contents I'll share what I find.
Your mail is here, come and get it! -
Web mail musings from the Windows Live Hotmail team
Windows Live Mail
It's for more than just email
Official Gmail BlogDo you have any other ISP blogs to share, Leave us a a comment or email us at contact.
Yahoo! Mail Blog
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.
Recently I was on vacation and I was amazed how many missed opportunities to collect email address I encountered while away, even without consciously thinking about email/work ;)
Like many other vacationers I was happily shopping away in a number of different stores (the brick and mortar kind), but what did I notice missing from these locations? Email (or postal mail) subscription forms.
Where is the love?
No paper to subscribe with, no kiosks to use, no sales person asking for my address to subscribe your lists while paying. Your missing out on a valuable client here, risking my memory to remember to subscribe when I get home (7500 KM away) is a big risk, especially if your missing out on "everyone" visiting these locations.
Remembering your offline clients, could very well become your online clients, with very little effort from your POS staff (that have an active, engaged client directly interacting with them) could have added at least one new subscriber to your email list.
Here are a few questions for you to consider (please share your answers):
This might just be one of the most affordable data collection locations you have.
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: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.
- 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
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
As the year draws close to the end I'd like to share the top five articles of 2007;
For the remainder of the year postings will be infrequent, but I expect to be back full force and publishing again in early January.
Thank you all for reading, have a safe and happy holiday.
Last night was CaseCamp 6 here in Toronto a great night of networking and Case studies.
Presentations were given by:
The Globeandmail.com focused on the launch and expansion of their "Join the Conversation" program where users can comment on almost every article published to their website. Sounds like some good thought and some cool ideas are going into this product.
Vortex Mobile gave a great case study on Mobile Marketing for Levis during the Virgin Fest Toronto. The over all outcome did not distract from email marketing campaigns which actually makes the idea a great companion program.
Treehugger.com's Lloyd Alter gave a great overview of building an online community and the growing pains of a grass roots organization of 4 people to a global program with 30+ writers and a recient purchase from Discovery
Will Pate, also presented and talked about being a Brand and Community Evangelist. Providing insight into being part of the discussion and monitoring your global brand. Tips; Be Real - people can spot a fake, Be involved - respond in minutes not days or weeks, Be Positive - Negativity only lowers the view point of the average view.
A look at the Gmail anti-spam team and the methods they use to combat spam.
Gmail has also recienly published the paper "Sender Reputation in a Large Webmail Service" for the CEAS (CONFERENCE ON EMAIL AND ANTI-SPAM - 2008). This paper discussed how a large webmail service can define and use reputation to identify and clasify authenticated sending domains to be spammy or not spammy.
As part of a user education process Paypal has launched the anti-phishing challenge. I received a notice of this to my registered paypal address (I found this legitimate message in my junk mail folder1 by reviewing and verifying the DomainKey). I scored 5 out of 5 and received the seal shown here; "Anti-phishing Champion".
Paypal is also hosting information sites on How to protect yourself and supplying information on how PayPal fights phishing and the Identity Theft Guide.
American Express has also added educational information to their "Front of the line" email program with these great tips for consumers to watch out for in phishing emails:
Check out these great resources and learn how to protect yourself and your financial information.
1 - Even successfully signed and verified emails get delivered to the bulk folder.
When looking for a new Email Service Provider (or ESP) you should consider a number of different features.
Think about:
Following up on Fridays Proactive User Relationship Building, there are a few additional things that should also be done with these type of relationship building messages, especially when warning users about phishing attempts on your brand:
Here is a big tip for web developers and anyone else that is involved with email rendering and testing.
Imagine testing with legacy versions of IE (4, 5, 6) for rendering with your email or your landing pages, having to reconfigure your system each time to have the proper browser installed (because you can only have one installed at a time). Well say good by to virtual machines, or managing separate systems to view all of these different versions. The people at this site looked at the code behind the browsers and made them work independently from the Operating System. Without reinstalling your systems core browser you can run IE7 and IE 6 and IE 5 all at the same time!
You can find all the old school IE’s at http://browsers.evolt.org/?ie/32bit/standalone or download a number of other browsers at http://browsers.evolt.org/
A good way, and an easy way, to build relationships with your subscribers... Send them a birthday greeting... This year I received four such cards (one actually a physical snail mail card) from companies that I'm a regular subscriber to.
This makes a subscriber remember your brand and appreciate the 'relationship' that they have with you.
The best part is this can be an automated message, but the thought it nice. Kind of like saying thank you to a customer.
A little thought and time to remember your subscribers goes a long way and remind them that they are not just a piece or electronic data in your companies computers some where.
Thanks for remembering me:
Casino Niagara (Postal card)
Dairy Queen (2 for 1 coupon)
Jack FM
680 News
