Discussion Lists – A Complement To Communication

Quick Tips /

Discussion Lists – A Complement To Communication

Discussion lists with advanced email features have numerous options that complement many communication arenas that are in use today.

Dundee internet hosted Discussion lists created in ListManager™ have the flexibility to:

1. Create Customize landing page

2. Brand your list(s)

3. Integrate into existing databases and websites

4. Share photos

5. Share files

6. Run unlimited lists under your domain, ours’ or theirs.

7. Employ one or many list administrators.

8. Provide numerous options and controls

Create * Share * Grow

“It worked flawlessly…. Thank you….!”
Rick of History News

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LifeCycling to Your Email Goals

Email Advertising /

LifeCycling to Your Email Goals

Everything has a lifecycle including email. Our lifecycle, like everything else has a beginning, middle and an end with a lot of stuff going on in-between.    Comparatively speaking an email list subscriber’s lifecycle is not much different, each subscriber or email address has a distinct beginning (when someone subscribes to your list), a middle (accepting your email messages) and an end (severing  their membership by leaving your list or junking your email).  However, unlike our lifecycle, you can harness the lifecycle of email using simple strategies to deliver the right message at the right time.

Because email is such a valuable marketing tool, it’s prudent  to utilize every method at your disposal to keep your members interested, engaged and reengaged –  after all,  you receive  a lot more benefit sending messages to an involved subscriber  rather than continually  sending messages  to those  email addresses that have lapsed  into oblivion.  So, rather than send that one message to all three lifecycle stages, plan to deliver the right message at the right time by knowing  and understanding the various email lifecycle stages that can be tracked and measured, expected and managed.

Email Lifecycle Stages:

There are three main email lifecycle stages.  They are the:

  1. Potential or interested customers:     A prospect who opted in to your list, who potentially wants to receive communication from you and may not have a buying history with your company.  Your goal at this life cycle might be to:
  • Confirm their subscription
  • Set their expectations so they know what to expect from you  by use of a welcome letter
  • Ask for their email preferences: (i.e. How often do they want to hear from you)
  • Conversion (Visits to your website, purchase a product, forward an email, etc.)

2. Current or engaged customers:  At this stage, your subscribers like your product and your email messages.  It’s been shown that the engaged group has a direct correlation between email marketing messages and growth revenue, therefore the goal here should be to move the subscribers in the first and third stage to this stage, and keep them there.  You might do this by:

  • Acknowledge their patronage- consider creating a VIP program
  • Continue to send personalized, relevant targeted messages based on their mailing preferences and buying habits
  • Email renewal notices
  • Send messages based on their  website page visits to your company
  • Encourage them to share their good experience with you with their friends and always, always say THANK YOU  😀

3. Disinterested or lethargic customers:  This is the last lifecycle, the separation phase where your email is considered an annoyance, or they don’t care because they never open your email anymore, and probably delete it or earmarks as spam.  They’re just not interested.  However, they haven’t unsubscribed so is there still hope?  You goal here is simple, you need to move these subscribers to the second stage, the engaged stage.  You may find success by first removing addresses that haven’t responded for ( let’s say for example) the past  6 month and segment the rest into smaller manageable groups.  Plan to execute a reactivation email campaign that may include a:

  • Invitation to reconfirm to your list
  • Link to a preference page
  • Survey with an offer
  • Special just for that day

Each of these life cycle categories are measurable.  Each can be predicted.  Each, can be managed.  The email  campaigns goal should be different for each lifecycle and can be as simple as having a goal to have your  interested customer confirm their new subscription.   Just as you plan, your email campaigns have a plan for the lifecycle of email.   And the best part, it’s easy to do.  Don’t know where to begin, contact the team at Dundee Internet, list hosting provider since 1997.

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Expect RESULTS from Your Email Campaigns, really?

Quick Tips /

Expect RESULTS from Your Email Campaigns, really?

Email has many benefits; it’s fast, inexpensive, targeted and measurable. You can test it with numerous variables to see what combinations work best and change up a campaign as needed. Email marketing puts you in control of the returns you receive, with the ability to get the RESULTS you want.

7 Steps to get RESULTS from Your Email Campaigns

Refine your Goals – are you looking for more customers, more traffic more leads?

Enthusiastically create your email campaigns – do not forget to include a call to action (ask for the sale, email address or visit) and a related landing page for your offer.

Select and Target your audience with segments and personalized messages tailored to their preferences.

Use A/B Split Testing – try different variables, a secondary landing page, change colors, and insert different graphics.  Make sure to randomize your test group.

Listen to your subscribers – send your message at the time your recipients want them.  Know the composition of your list: business email addresses versus generic email addresses, State based or overseas recipients: timing may be everything.

Track and Measure your results – from beginning to end: opens to purchase.

Simply put, improve on your next campaign – compare statistics from previous mailings, look for weakness; review your call to action, time of day, content.

Create * Share * Grow

“Just want to give praise to the owners, and employees of Dundee Internet. I have been a customer for over eight years and they continue to provide great customer service. Thanks for helping me.”  Bob G Chamber of Commerce

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Email Ambiguity – can you really test for that?

Email Marketing /

Email Ambiguity – can you really test for that?

Your computer screen is zipping along with charts, graphs and numbers.   So far so good, everything looks great.    You believe the email campaign is a success, so many website visitors, even more than you had hoped for.  Management is waiting for your report; how many people clicked on the yellow shoes, they ask – Clicked on the yellow shoes? You wonder, was I supposed to track that too?

yellow shoes

Yellow Shoe Marketing

It all comes down to using the right set of parameters and performance indicators, the key performance indicators (KPIs) to collect the data  you need.  It goes without saying, knowing the objective of the campaign (yellow shoe clicks) will allow you to choose the KPIs you believe will be the most useful to determine the success or failure of a campaign.

When you start reviewing which KPIs  to use,  it may seem a bit overwhelming, after all, you’re only trying to measure how well your email campaigns are doing and are they doing as well as you think.   So why should you be concerned with which KPI’s to use?  Because, the key performance indicator of success is your Conversion Rate.

Conversion rates are not standardized, organizations measure conversion rates differently from one another.   For example, a real-estate company’s email campaign might base their success on the number of completed buyer profiles received, a shoe store may measure the number of clicks on their yellow shoe, while similar competing industries will have dissimilar conversion goals; such as opens compared to a success rate based on the number of unsubscribes in a mailing.

KPI’s are important because they:

  • Assist with organizational objectives – what do you want to achieve?
  • Are success indicators – Are your results comparable to your market and competitors?
  • Are uniquely defined by the individual organization – Who, in your company defines the goals for your email marketing efforts?

The common types of Key performance indicators used in email marketing may describe strategic goals in terms of quantifiable parameters, which in turn will allow you to estimate the success of your email campaign.   The common key performance indicators themselves, are not based on standardized formulas –the formulas used can be defined as needed

For example, there are at least two acceptable calculations for email Open rates; one based on delivered emails while the other based on total emails sent.  Both formulas are very acceptable.  What definition are the formulas then based on the actual click on an email, or when an image renders in an email client or when someone clicks on a link within the message?
Some commonly used Key Performance Indicators

In conclusion, there are many ways to measure a successful email campaign.    The KPIs define a set of values to measure against.  Selecting the right KPI’s is contingent on having a good understanding of the email campaign goal and expectations.  However there a degree of ambiguity that comes into play, which may not be of concern if your numbers are going up, ROI is climbing, and your subscribers are happy.

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Is a Feedback loop just Email Noise?

Email Marketing /

Is a Feedback loop just Email Noise?

Is a Feedback loop just email noise?

Email has many handlers, which translates into “not all your email will be delivered as intended.”  When an ISP receives many complaints about a particular email going through their email servers (where “many” is a number based on the discretion of the ISP), the ISP may deliver those messages to the recipient’s junk folder or decide not to deliver those messages at all.  (Complaints can be collected on report spam pages, web mail, email clients or other.)

If you’re the originator of the message, that isn’t good news as your marketing efforts are wasted: your intended recipients may never look at their junk folder or worse yet, they never received your email message because it was never delivered.

Consider a typical (major) ISP, such as AOL.  AOL like all ISP’s (for a variety of reasons) wants to protect the in-boxes of their email recipients from SPAM and unwanted junk mail.  Ideally, they want to handle incoming email problems before they get out of hand and quickly resolve those “Report Spam” button issues. One way they do this is by using a communication system known as FBL or “complaint” Feedback Loops.

Feedback loops are:

  • A service that several major ISPs provide on an individual basis, to bulk mailers such as an ESP (Email Service Provider) like Dundee Internet Services.
    • An agreement between a major ISP and an ESP, where the ISP automatically forwards SPAM complaints originating from the ISP’s email box user to the ESP.  (The  sender’s organizations)
    • Used by the ESP to automatically removed the offering email address.
    • Critical for good list hygiene.

Feedback loops can:

  • Identify companies that want a preemptive approach to reduce the amount of spam sent to their users, those companies that are diligent about monitoring their mailings for abusive or otherwise unwanted content.
  • Streamline and automate the spam reporting process with specific identifiable-readable parts of an email:  using various headers used to describe the structure of MIME messages (RFC2045 and RFC1341)

Bottom line, as an ESP or any entity running mail servers with bulk mail distribution, should sign up with the feedback loops programs as it’s a good way to curtail spam and maintain a good IP reputation.  Marketers using an ESP with FeedBack Loops benefit too, their ISP is a responsible sender and as a result, a responsible sender delivers their email.

Which ISP’s offer Feedback Loop agreements, check out this partial list

https://www.mequoda.com/articles/audience-development/10-email-feedback-loop-lists/?floater=99

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5 Quick Tips To Overcome Subscriber Lethargy – Easy To Catch but Difficult To Cure

Quick Tips /

5 Quick Tips To Overcome Subscriber Lethargy – Easy To Catch but Difficult To Cure

List Fatigue is the state of an email list that has gone stale. It produces less and less returns from mailings because the list members received either too many offers or the same offers, too many times  List Fatigue  members become disinterested, inactive, and disengaged.

Combat this issue by:

  1. Regularly adding new (opted in) subscribers
  2. Re-energize you old list members with re-engagement tactics
  3. Keep your content interesting
  4. Send relevant messages using triggered email
  5. Compose your Subject Line with a goal in mind

In conclusion: Do not fall into the trap believing that List Fatigue happens to someone else – it could happen to you.  Be proactive, make one of your goals an established target list growth rate while decreasing the proportion of inactive subscribers. Contact Dundee Internet for more information.

Create * Share * Grow

“It worked flawlessly…. Thank you….!
Rick of History News

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Email – Now that’s a complex subject.

Email Marketing /

Email – Now that’s a complex subject.

Email is a complex process that relies greatly on, among other things, sender reputation, and valuable content, a degree of marketing talent, the right distribution platform and diligence to comply with ISP requirements such as authenticating your email messages. Email authentication is one-way to help your messages reach your target audience. It validates your email as being actually sent from your domain and IP address. When utilized, email authentication speeds up email identity for receiving ISP’s (i.e. AOL) as it streamlines the entire process automatically.

Email Authentication

Email authentication can be done by:

I. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) An authentication standard developed as an anti-spam measure using email validation by confirming sender IP addresses. Using SPF, the return-path of an email is verified as passed (allowed) or failed (Not allowed possible forgery). Additionally SPF defines if the initiating or source email IP address is authorized to send mail for a particular sender’s domain. With SPF records, the senders domain can be then viewed as a trusted source by the receiving ISP’s. Essentially SPF approves the IP address and domain address of the outbound MTA or message transfer agent. (MTA is in control of receiving incoming email and delivering this email to individual mailboxes (users).) The individual sets up an SPF record, your Email Service Provider should be able to assist you to set this up, if needed. SPF can allow easier detection of: • Email spoofing: A method of altering the header information of an email so that the true sender or originator of that email is concealed. • Spam*- in the cases when an email header (From Address and or/to address) is forged as the recipient’s own email address. • Viruses and Worms-such as joe-jobs, when a virus forges the email sender’s name, consequently, the forged name will receive all the bounces.

II. Sender ID Framework or just Sender ID An authentication protocol based on SPF technology is another type of email validation procedure. Unlike SPF, that confirms the displayed header of an email (i.e. Email From Address), Sender ID authenticates the source of an email message, by verifying the IP address of the sender against the assumed owner of the sending domain. Sender ID can allow easier detection of: • Spoofing: by making it more difficult to forge a senders IP address as it’s designed to authenticate the origin of each e-mail message as being sent from domain which it claims to come from based on the sender’s server IP address. • Phishing: email attempt to capture (for example) logon information, credit card, bank account number and so on, by impersonating a trusted entity to dupe the user into deluding such numbers. (i.e. An email from Ebay, which really is not from Ebay asking you to verify your password.)

III. DK/DKIM aka Domain Keys Identified Mail. An authentication process that allows the sender to digitally sign their emails, in order to validate their domain name and message content. Using a DKIM sender authentication scheme, the recipient of a message can confirm that a message actually originated with the sender’s domain and confirm that the message content has not been changed. This verification is cryptography based solution-using DomainKeys. (An authentication system that stores public key encryption to apply digital signatures to emails in DNS and digitally signs email sent by a domain). DK/DKIM records are generated by your email service provider. DK/DKIM deters: • Email fraud as it is more difficult to spoof a domain. • Substantial amounts of spam and phishing. Email authentication is a small part of a bigger picture. Managing email deliverability can be challenging and time consuming but critical to your success. Always follow Email Best Practices and drop by for the next Blog on Feedback loops.

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Do Trigger Clauses Deliver?

Quick Tips /

Do Trigger Clauses Deliver?

Yes they do!  They can be a phrase in an email that may specify a given date or event, that when occurs, will cause a mailing to be automatically sent.

Triggered mailings are used in conjunction with some action performed by an email recipient such as a visit to a website or a purchase. At the time the specific action is performed, such as a purchase of (i.e.) a green hat on a Haberdashery website, this action triggers a specific email that is then sent to that recipient such as Thank you for purchasing our Green Hat.  Triggers can also be dates such as a birthday, the date they joined or list and so forth.

Triggered mailings run on a schedule.  Normally, this is once per day, but could be as often as once per hour, or as infrequently as every month or so. You specify the exact time of day when it runs.

Each time the triggered mailing runs, it works the same way as any other mailing to a segment. It first calculates which members meet the criteria specified in the segment, and then sends them the mailing. What is special about triggered mailings is that they have a special type of segment called a triggered segment or trigger for short. A key part of a triggered segment is the trigger clause.

This determines who should receive the mailing right now.

What to know more?  Contact Dundee Internet Services, Inc

Create * Share * Grow

“Just want to give praise to the owners, and employees of Dundee Internet. I have been a customer for over eight years and they continue to provide great customer service. Thanks for helping me.”
Bob G Chamber of Commerce

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Is Everyone You Want to Reach on Your Email List? – Probably not

Blog /

Is Everyone You Want to Reach on Your Email List? – Probably not

Do you believe that email is the best marketing vehicle around? Are you certain?

Sure, email isn’t entirely infallible; it has its disadvantages, but so does every other marketing channel, including Facebook and Twitter.

Consider the Disadvantages of email marketing:  Is everyone you want to reach on your email list? – Probably not and then you find that,

1. Some email goes unopened.  Do you open all your email?
2. There are deliverability issues: Tar Pitting, Spam Traps, stale addresses etc.  At one time or another, you will have deliverability problems.
3. There are creativity limitations of the email marketer or how many ways can you say, “This offer expires soon”.
4. There may be size restrictions set by your recipients in their email client (i.e. Outlook): no graphics allowed.  Do you download all emailed html and graphics on your home computer?
5. Your list members have different communication preferences. Have you wished your favorite email newsletter only contained items you were interested in and sent to your other email address?
6. You might be suffering from List Fatigue; you wore out your welcome.  Be candid, do you want to hear from your favorite store every single day?
7. Responses dwindle as engagement diminishes.  You too are guilty of sending unwanted email to your junk folder instead of unsubscribing aren’t you?
8. Best results may require testing emails with A/B split testing.  Sounds like more work and time.
9. You have to maintain a sender’s reputation.  But you were told all those demographics from that rented list really did fit your ideal buyer profile.
10. Someone has to do list maintenance.

You might compare email marketing to traditional marketing … Is everyone you want to reach watching your TV commercials, opening your snail mailed flyer, reading your ad in that certain magazine, listening to that particular radio show, driving by that billboard …? Of course not. In addition, can you be certain the demographic data they give you is up to date and reports current? Can you even confirm you’re hitting your target audience with the right message?

Can you then conclude (from this brief presentation) that there’s more advantages using email marketing over traditional marketing?

Yes, you can!

Consider the Advantages of email marketing:

1. Instant results. You know who read your email.
2. Fastest marketing channel in use today. Just hit the send button on your keyboard.
3. Rapid brand recognition and reinforcement with behavior based triggered messages.  Acknowledge your engaged emails (i.e.) a purchase, with transactional emails.
4. Send messages according to your list recipient’s schedule.  Allow them to tell you when they want to hear from you again; offer a profile page.
5. You can conduct an email campaign in stages.  Introduce a new brand and follow up with a sale and then a reminder.
6. Allows consumers to respond to your email at their leisure.  They feel in control.
7. Create colorful HTML newsletters to grab interest.  Avoid static, mundane, see it everyday messages.
8. Personalized email from beginning to end of each message.  Not only can you say Dear Mary, you can send Mary information tailored just to her interests and do the same for all your email recipients in no time at all, no matter how many list members you have.
9. Did I mention the most cost-effective marketing tool around?  For less than the cost of a postage stamp, send thousands of targeted, relevant messages to people who want to receive your emails.
10. The best way for customers to communication with favorite brands.

The advantages of email are hard to beat. You will do great with email, using opted-in lists and the latest list technology – So is this all you need? Should you even bother with Social Media?

Yes, you should, because it seems everyone is using it! Of course, like email, social media channels such as facebook and Twitter have their own disadvantages. (Which I will not cover here). However numbers alone support the fact that social media is another powerful way to engage customers with studies that indicate social media comes in second as a marketing tool right behind number one, email.

And like opted-in member lists used in email marketing, Twitter and Facebook, are both permission-based channels. As separate entities, email, Twitter and Facebook are extremely effective marketing tools but working together, they can take customer engagement to new heights.

Advantages using Email and Social Media

1. A continuous way to keep your prospects engaged with your brand. Your customer base will increase.
2. Reinforce buying recommendations with email and social media channels.
3. Email list membership growth. Use your social media “likes” and offer your facebook members the opportunity to opted-in to your existing email-marketing list: likewise offer a signup link to your email list on Twitter.
4. Create an additional support network for your email campaigns. Work your social media connections by promoting the same on facebook while chatting them up on Twitter – all designed to keep your subscribers and prospects engaged with your brand and offerings.
5. Support and grow your subscriber base by including social media links in your emails.
6. Acquire customer insight. Read all the comments, for example, posted on facebook on your business page. Know what customers are saying, are they happy are they complaining? Discover relevant topics and trends that you can leverage to design and prioritize your email marketing efforts.
7. Ascertain the motivation driving your customers to share your content with others by taking the time to learn which social network your type of customer uses more frequently.
8. Communicate directly to your customer by publically answering questions and concerns. Use these questions for a basis in future email campaign.
9. With testimonials and comments on your product, service or company your customer engages others for you. Include reference links in your email to these public posts.
10. Measure the success of email campaigns and the social network connections to you company by taking advantage of free analytic tools.

As you can see, the advantages of using email marketing far out weight the disadvantages of email marketing. The advantage of email marketing used in conjunction with the power of social media further reduces the disadvantages – they become almost nonexistent. It might take some finesse to work out integration challenges between email marketing and your desired social media platform but it’s been proven its well worth the effort. Need help or ideas contact Dundee Internet today!

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List Fatigue: An Email List that has gone Stale

Email Lists /

List Fatigue: An Email List that has gone Stale

Email marketing is not rocket science but to some it is a science just the same.  You may make one change in your mailings and as expected (Or not) your overall results change.  If you’re working with numbers and formulas and testing with list segments, you might just come up with a mailing routine that, one day elicits soaring conversion rates, higher than you ever expected AND your facebook© “likes” double with your Internet sales hitting new numbers.  Exciting for you-Exciting for your company.  You might think, if only we can get these results more often, and conclude, maybe I should mail more often, so you do.

When you send email marketing campaigns more often, and get good results its encouragement to send again and again, usually between shorter intervals, until finally your list goes over the “just right point”  and reaches the exhaustion point, the point between under mailing an over mailing.  When you reach the exhaustion point, your conversation rates start going downhill and your members become non-responsive.  You now have a condition known as List Fatigue.

List Fatigue is the state of an email list that has gone stale.  It produces less and less returns from mailings because the list members received either too many offers or the same offers, in a short space of time. Essentially your members become disinterested, inactive, and disengaged.

List fatigue can be diagnosed with symptoms such as:

  • Subscriber lethargy.
  • Decrease interest: drop in refer- a- friend, clickthoroughs and opens.
  • Big drop in conversion rate.
  • Decline in facebook© activity.

List fatigue has some know causes:

  • Sending the same message to the same list – you find yourself hoping for different results.
  • Your messages are not important; they lack substance.
  • Mailing to an outdated, overused list.
  • The subscriber no longer fits their profile.
  • The list member only signed up for specific information: i.e. Christmas Sale

With List Fatigue, you may not notice a steady decline in membership, other than the normal churn, because members suffering from List Fatigue may not actually have unsubscribed, they only stopped interacting with your mailings.  Various studies indicate fatigued list members opt to delete your emails, or filter you right into their SPAM or Junk folder with the attitude, “why wouldn’t you just go away”.

This is not the type of message you want to convey.  You want list members who want your email. Therefore, if you find yourself dealing with a seemly fatigued list, it may be beneficial to determine the percentage of subscribers in the fatigue category compared to your entire list, creating workable components.

This is easy to do, especially if your ISP supplies good reporting tools.  For example you could select a time frame, say 6 months, look at the inactive list members (those who have zilch activity: such as no opens) and compare that number to your entire list of members.   The results may surprise you.   A fatigued list can have as high as 50% of inactive members, subscribers who remain your list members but are not interested in your messages.  Consider why someone opens your email and then think of reasons why they will not.

It could be your messages are:

  • Filtered as junk in the subscribers email client.
  • Being Blocked.
  • Saved to be read later, but later never comes.
  • Not read because the subscriber is not motivated by your Subject  Lines.
  • Long message that take too much time to read in a busy day.
  • Lost in the volume of mail received
  • (Again) sent to often, same old, same old.

How to cure List Fatigue:

As previously mentioned in earlier blogs, keep the content interesting and relevant, using segmentation and triggered email, make good use of the Subject Line and work on re-engagement.

More importantly continue to activity seek to add new subscribers (with all the acceptable Opted in methods) and re-energize the old list members with re-engagement tactics.

In conclusion, do not fall into the trap believing that List Fatigue happens to someone else – it could happen to you.  If you notice declining open rates don’t be so quick to blame spam filters and deactivated images; combat this issue by regularly adding new (opted in subscribers) and re-energizing old ones.  Your list is merely getting tired.  Make one of your goals an established target list growth rate while decreasing the proportion of inactive subscribers.

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