19 Email Deliverability Terms Every Marketer Should Know
From our friends over at Hubspot:
Deliverability is an ever-changing and important piece of a strong email marketing strategy. In fact, according to Return Path’s recently released Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, email deliverability has become increasingly more challenging. A 6% drop in the second half of 2011 brought inbox rates to 76.5% globally, compared to 81% in the first half of 2011. In other words, only 76.5% of commercial emails sent reached recipients’ inboxes. Furthermore, email blocked and flagged as spam increased 24%. Eek!
Read entire article here.
Purchasing a Marketing List? Consider These Recommendations First
During our last blog, we discussed how to build a quality marketing list through organic means. Some businesses will still opt to purchase a marketing list to ramp up their efforts. If you are considering such a route, we would like to share a few tips with you to help increase your chances for success. When acquiring potential customer lists, insist on these key things:
Ask for exclusive rights to the list. This will prevent a competitor from acquiring the same list.
Insist on a quality guarantee. While the company who provides you with a marketing list can do nothing to assure customers will purchase your product or service, it can guarantee that you will find the list to be authentic—meaning the names, addresses and phone numbers on the list are eligible for contact based on the CAN-SPAM Act and the Do-Not-Call Registry, and that the contact information is current and legitimate, save for a small percentage that may be obsolete due to business closure, moves, and natural attrition.
Follow the trail. Some companies piece together contact lists without gaining the proper permission from the recipients, which can ultimately land you in hot water if you use the list. Ask for documentation about how the list was obtained, including the IP address where each contact was acquired. Most reputable marketing firms will partner with corporations and offer their contacts select offers that align with their proclivities …and care what you are offering their contacts so they don’t opt out of other affiliated mailings as well.
Join us in our next blog where we’ll discuss how to write a welcome letter for new opt-ins.
How Small Businesses Can Create a Strong Database
It’s easy to understand the temptation to ramp up your database numbers with a quick infusion to catch up with your competitors and make your brand look hot. The truth of the matter is, false inflation does little to propel small businesses forward and may actually cost you more money in the long run.
We had a client recently purchase a localized database list from a data service company. At first glance, several contacts jumped out at us because we knew of the businesses—past tense. They had dissolved several years earlier. Upon further inspection, our client was able to determine that almost 50% of the list was obsolete and that of the remaining contacts, few were viable as potential customers.
While the database firm would not refund the client’s money for the bunk list, our client did halt all efforts to contact the businesses on that list, saving on postage, man-hours, phone calls, and electronic efforts that would have all been essentially flushed down the toilet.
Of course it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers game, but how long have we known that quantity does not trump quality? What good does it do for a local restaurant to have 7,000 Twitter followers if the majority of them live outside of the state, or even out of the country?
For local, small businesses that provide a localized service, slow and steady wins the race when it comes to building an online reputation. For larger, nationwide businesses or those that ship products or provide services globally, large infusions may provide strong results.
So what’s a small business to do? To build a quality marketing list:
| 1. Capture existing customers by verifying or collecting information at check-out. | |
| 2. Create a refer-a-friend program to reward customers for referring new customers to your business. | |
| 3. Display your business at local events, community samplings, and festivals to capture local interest. td> | |
| 4. Join a networking group and grow your reach through select partners. | |
| 5. Tag-team with local vendors to cross-promote your products or services through “select third party” offers. |
All of these things will help you collect a database of potential customers. Unlike wide-open grow-your-numbers programs on the web, these tips account for proximity and interest in your product or service when collecting database information.
Catering to the Masses While Staying True to your Brand Identity
One of the most difficult hurdles for small businesses to overcome when communicating with customers is brand identity. The Internet is laden with competitors who appear to have an edge in some aspect of the business you share. So how can you really make yourself stand out in a crowd while staying true to who you are and what you do?
Focus on Your Assets
Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it! This means if you’ve just received another award for that scrumptious apple cobbler in your bakery, put it front and center in your advertising efforts and allow it to “transfer credibility” to your other products. If coffee is an ancillary product and you don’t do it as well as Starbucks, don’t pretend. Instead, mention you have a seating area for people to meet and relax and that you serve a house blend of roasted coffee alongside your fabulous baked goods. It’s hard to keep yourself from “overselling” something you believe in, but if your coffee is just coffee, don’t set your customers up to believe they are going to receive custom-ordered gourmet drinks if they’re not. You’ll gain credibility for being honest.
Draw the Lines
Tout your specialties, but if there is a related area of business that your customers ask for and you don’t deliver, make that clear or offer alternate solutions. Perhaps you are a seamstress who creates fabulous drapes but you don’t have installers on staff. In this case, provide information about do-it-yourself window treatment installation or have a list of reputable referrals that you can provide to your customers.
Small businesses don’t grow big overnight. There may be some areas where your company cannot compete with a national company that delivers the same type of product or service. Figure out what gives you the competitive edge over them, and drive it to the bank. Perhaps you have guaranteed appointment times, a product selection that is regionally unique, or you only hire certified professionals to handle your contracts. Whatever it is that makes your company unique is what you should pour into your brand identity.
Don’t Just Send Campaigns – Deliver!
Email marketing can be a waste of time and resources if you’re not getting the highest delivery rate and response rate possible. While we at Online Outbox take care of the geeky aspect to facilitate your goals, there are still a couple things you can do that might help to increase the delivery rate of your campaigns:
1. Schedule your email campaigns. Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday work great.
Although you are able to send out campaigns immediately or anytime you wish, strategically scheduling campaigns can produce better results. For instance, if you are using our newsletter subscription form on your web site, advise each and every subscriber exactly when to expect your newsletter. This is also a good practice if you plan on sending out a series of emails. Your recipients will come to expect your email to hit their inbox on regular intervals making them more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.
2. Make it easier for readers to recognize your emails.
Like we said on Avoiding the Spam Filters and Other Email Marketing Tips – Consistency is King. Functional email templates are made available to all of our customers. You are free to customize them as you see fit. Already have an HTML email template from your old email service provider? That’s perfectly fine. You can import the HTML template file and use it on your Online Outbox campaigns. Incorporate a logo or tagline. Whatever you do, remain consistent to reduce the chances of readers reporting your email as spam.
3. Include the current date in the content.
Adding a correct date indicates when the campaign was sent. Spam filters sometimes assign spam score points if the date is not mentioned or provided incorrectly.
4. Don’t forget to pull the Text content from the HTML editor.
Before sending out an HTML email, make sure that the plain text version is attached. Messages sent in “Multipart” are delivered in a way that subscribers without active HTML-Viewer still get a decent looking e-mail. Make sure that the HTML and text version have the same or very similar content otherwise you’ll get more spam points.
5. Avoid excessive graphics and complex HTML.
Several spam rules involve issues related to HTML. If the newsletter has too many graphic elements, it gets just as many spam score points. Most email clients and webmail services automatically blocks images so if users don’t understand what the mail is about, your email is most likely headed towards being reported as spam. Try to keep it simple – the percentage of text should be higher than the percentage of HTML or images for maximum readability.
6. (Nicely) Ask your recipients to whitelist you.
One smart way to increase deliverability especially for future messages is to ask your readers to add you to whitelists or their address book.
7. Links must be clean.
If there’s a need to include link/s in your email campaigns, ensure that none of those are blacklisted URLs. Exert a little extra effort to verify the sites you are linking to and save your campaign from getting some more spam points. You can use online tools like MXToolbox.com or BlackListAlert.org for this purpose.
8. The Test.
We’ve said it before but we will remind you again – test, test, test BUT avoid using the word “test” in the subject line when sending live trial message to yourself or a personal test list. At this point, you probably know the reason – spam filters, again. Generic test messages are viewed as spam so when conducting your diagnosis, test using the actual email subject and content.
Split Testing Provides Valuable Marketing Insights
In our last blog, we discussed how to appear on potential customers’ radar. Each of your mass correspondences should contain at least one of the following:
1.Entertainment value
2.Education for consumers
3.Special offers or discounts
4.Relevant and timely information
5.Clever tips and tricks
Now how can you tell which of those types of communication is right for your business? It’s a question we were asked so much at Your Design Online that what started as a small division became an entire company on its own, and so Online Outbox was born.
Some companies just throw their messages out into cyberspace and hope for the best, but we like to take an approach that’s a little more scientific. And so came one of our strongest features at Online Outbox: Split Email Testing. We developed easy-to-use tools that track your message’s reception and open rate.
With Split Testing, you take the same core message and craft it several different ways. You send half of your audience a message written one way (say humorously) and send the other half of your audience the message written another way (say educationally-driven). Online Outbox tracks its reception and delivers you the numbers so you can then make an unbiased decision about how to proceed with your messaging. Split Testing allows you to fine-tune your presentation style and hone in on exactly what will elicit the best response from your customers.
Split Testing is one of the most reliable ways to test your campaign’s efficacy. If people don’t open your emails or you have an unusually high opt-out rate, it’s a strong signal that you need to further refine your company’s message.
For specific advice on how to turn your company’s message into a winning message, please contact a representative at Online Outbox. We have writers and consultants who have a birds-eye view of what’s working and what isn’t, and we’d be happy to share our expertise to help you capture and keep a large share of your market!
How to Show Up on your Customers’ Radar (or Newsfeed!)
Have you given much thought lately to how the average American family spends its time? It’s quite a departure from how we lived our lives just ten short years ago.
One of our clients recently shared his epiphany with us. His family was sitting in the great room in front of the television. No one was talking but there were four conversations going on in the room around him. Why? You guessed it—everyone was chatting via social media-enabled devices—their laptop, iPad, or cell phone. His daughters were even forwarding web-links and sharing Facebook comments with each other while in the same room as each other, yet without exchanging a single word verbally. He figured this out when the girls broke out in laughter at the same time but he didn’t catch a joke—they’d texted it to each other.
As ludicrous as indirect-direct communications may seem to those of us who grew up a few decades earlier than this rising tech-enriched society—a new form of communication has arrived and society has embraced it in almost every commerce-related and social aspect of their lives.
How can you get into that inner circle? That is the question web development firms are clamoring to answer. People aren’t always going to search for you, and yet, you still have opportunities to appear in front of them. Getting invited into people’s Twitter feed is one way you can send out short message bursts to them on a frequent basis. Converting them to your inner circle where they’ll accept your newsletters and special offers is where the art of messaging and communicating comes in.
You may have heard that content is king, but so has everyone else. Instead of heeding the rush to shove content out the door, resist the urge and hold back. Insist that quality is present in every communication; otherwise you’ll quickly get blocked or dropped by potential customers. What makes your communication worthwhile? It should have one or more of these key components:
1.Entertainment value
2.Education for consumers
3.Special offers or discounts
4.Relevant and timely information
5.Clever tips and tricks
The number one way to show up and stay in your customers’ inner circle is to give them something they perceive as valuable: a laugh, a breaking news update, special offers, education, or tips and tricks. Does your messaging contain one of more of those components?
Stay tuned for our next blog where we will discuss specific ways to discover which of these components is right for your specific company.
How NOT to Look Like an Email Marketing Spammer
You may be using email marketing for the right reasons but are your intentions alone powerful enough to get past the spam filters? Not a chance. To increase email campaign deliverability and steer away from being falsely treated as a spammer, learn what spammers do and dodge the practices that make you look like one.
We’ve shared tips about Reducing Spam and Spam Words on previous articles. Now let’s have a closer look at how spam filters work. The best example we could use is this very long list of spam criteria used by SpamAssassin (an open-source spam filter) to sort out junk. In a nutshell, each email you send is examined from top to bottom, what people see, the code behind the email, email headers, plus your sender reputation. These spam filtering rules were accumulated over time from all the spam reports and it continually tweaks itself based on how email recipients treat the email messages they’re getting.
Most of items in the list are codes, programming languages and server information which are significant, but for the sake of our human eyes I picked some that we can read, so you can see examples of items with high spam scores:
Say, if a substantial number of recipients mark unwanted emails similar in nature (e.g. ED drugs sales emails) as spam, these spam filters would then analyze the content of those emails. Depending on the threshold set by individual ISP’s like Yahoo!, Comcast, Verizon, etc. most or all future messages that exhibit similar characteristics to those emails will be treated as spam, which are either sent straight to the junk folder or in some cases, not delivered to the recipients email address at all and the sender won’t even know it. Email client users are able to control their degree of security at the account level. In Yahoo!, individual users can block hosts so no email from that host can get through, not even in the Spam folder and the sender won’t even know about it.
Spend some time scanning the contents of your own junk folder, and observe what types of messages are sitting there as spam. Read through these Examples of Bad Email Messages that you absolutely don’t want your email campaigns to look like.
A few Online Outbox customers have had questions about the spam threshold under the Email Validation section when creating/editing an email campaign. On rare occasions, the test message never comes, even though the campaign shows a good spam score. The Email Validation tool is more of a text-based filter – it is not equipped to validate coding errors like W3C Markup Validation Service. If it’s possible to keep the spam score at its starting value of 1.5 that would be ideal. Spam standards are getting continually tighter, so we recommend that you don’t take chances by squeezing even a spam term or two and with high hopes that emails will get delivered to your distribution list.
Utilize the feature “View your email in different email programs” for previewing, as it also points out formatting rules per email program. If you know HTML and basic coding, you may Create Your Own Custom Template. Also see: Rock Solid HTML Emails to serve as a guide. Or you can simply have us design a Custom Email Template for you.
And last, but the most powerful act all email marketers must know: CAN-SPAM. Be informed, refine your methods and work your way up to an even more productive email marketing.
Sharing is Caring: Social Media on Newsletters
One of the best methods to increase your popularity and web presence is through effective use of social media. You may have seen social buttons on websites or blogs, but have you thought of using the power of sharing on the emails you’re sending out? Although your subscribers can forward emails they’re getting from you via webmail or their email client, wouldn’t it be lovely if you can make their lives easier by showing them a way to share it on Facebook, Twitter or virtually everywhere in the world wide web? Here are 3 of the nicest ways to add social media sharing buttons/links to your newsletters.
Very easy to use. Simply fill in the page title and the URL of whatever link is included in your newsletter that you want to get the people to share, press the Get Button Code to generate an HTML code that you can paste into one or all of your Online Outbox HTML email campaigns. Registration is not required to use the site.
Better looking buttons here and there’s an option to register if you want to separately track how your readers are using the sharing button. Again pretty simple, paste the URL you want to share – it can be your website or a blog post, select a “style” and an HTML code should pop up at the side.
Unlike the previous two, ShareThis requires registration before you grab a hold of a button code for your newsletter. Anyhow, once you get past that prerequisite, you’re in for a painless three step process to pick the code you need and you’re done.
See? There’s a bigger world for your newsletters than limiting them to the subscriber’s inbox. Maintain a healthy relationship with your subscribers, provide quality content and encourage them to share your newsletter content if you wish to make it available to a bigger audience. Do you know of other methods to improve the reach of email campaigns?
Mapping out your Email Campaign Strategy
In our last blog, we discussed how timeliness, value, and relevance are important to your email campaign. Next we’re going to show you how to effectively map out your strategy.
Update your Signature
Invite people to participate with you in online forums, including everyone who interacts with your business—even vendors and service providers. You can do this automatically by changing your email signature so all of your e-correspondences invite people to link with you through your website, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blog accounts. Don’t forget your paper correspondences, too!
Get out your Calendar
Briefly map your 12-month sales history and what you’d like to accomplish in the upcoming 12 months. If widget sales were so hot last July that you got overzealous and ordered more than you could sell, run a clearance special alongside the unveiling of this year’s model. If the bulk of your business occurs in November and December, what campaign materials can you put together to promote an early-bird special in October or a blow-out sale in January?
Once you find your sweet-spot, work on expanding it a few weeks out on either side. If you can identify a lull in your business, ask yourself and your customers what would motivate them to buy during that time. After you’ve outlined your catalyst for seasonal sales, plan to design a message and an offer directly related to the buying group you’re targeting (i.e., clearance shoppers, people who have to have the latest gadgets, emergency buyers).
Send it When They’ll Receive It
We can’t speak to everyone’s e-mail viewing habits, but common sense should dictate that launching a campaign on 5:00 p.m. on a Friday or 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday is not going to garner a terrific response rate. Friday afternoon is a heavy wrap up time so people can get out the office door, and 3:00 a.m. finds most people fast asleep. Ideally, you should send your email in the early to mid part of the week in the mid-part of the day. There is always room for exceptions, especially when the call to action is related to an upcoming event.
Check out our Online Outbox feature that will let you schedule the date and time your message is sent so you don’t have to be present to send it!
Next month: Talking back to your Customers
The Do’s and Don’ts of online communication success.