Interesting Email Marketing Facts that even the Black Panther® may not know.

Email Marketing /

Interesting Email Marketing Facts that even the Black Panther® may not know.

People are motivated to Read an Email with a Subject Line that is trendy, has a song lyric or a Movie Title.  Didn’t you just read this because of the title of this Blog?

 

Research on the web, shows that email marketing will produce:cat

  • Conversion Rates 3 times higher than marketing to prospects and customers using Social Media.
  • Consumers that like to receive relevant email messages.
  • 300 times more revenue with a Welcome Letter rather than a bulk email.
  • Committed customers and positive business growth.
  • Brand recognition for most people when a company logo is consistently used.
And that most people:
  • Do not download the images you spent hours selecting.
  • Will click on a red link before a blue link.
  • Respond to over-mailing, by unsubscribing.
  • Like to receive marketing emails less than three times a month.
  • May think you’re a spammer if the recipient doesn’t like or recognize your FROM address.
  • Open more pet and animals services email marketing messages than any other.
And Email Marketing messages: 
  • Are 5 times more likely to be seen that a message on a social media channel.
  • Have a higher open and click rate, about 6 times more when the email marketer uses Transactional emails.
  • Are read on mobile phones more and more.
And Mobile Users:
  • Usually, do not open/read messages with big images.
  • Email Messages opened on a mobile device may cut off characters or the text will wrap around to the next line.
  • Respond better to short personalized Subject lines, less than 50 characters.
  • Use their mobile devices more often to reopen a marketing email a second time.
  • People respond better to multiple topics in a single subject line.

And SPAM filters, a topic in itself are very anal.  If your recipient, for example, filters out the word CIALIS they will end up filtering out the word specialist –  and SPAM filters are bad news for Nonprofits who lose about $15,000 a year in donations.

Inactive subscribers may be lurkers.  Researched by another ESP, their published findings indicate, over 30% of inactive list members, are in fact, not inactive.  This class or subscribers may only be reading the Subject Line of your message.   When the Subject is something they are interested in, they go directly to your website or Facebook page: in the meantime, your email stats do not record an open.

Additionally, these inactive subscribers purchased more and are less likely to leave your list.   So is everything you know about inactive subscribers wrong?  A great blog subject for next month.

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Who Really Engages With Your Email Messages?

Email Marketing /

Who Really Engages With Your Email Messages?

Who Really Engages With Your Email Messages?

You want your customers to engage with your email messages, increasing your ROI. What could stop them?  Email automation, (or in this case the program your list subscribers use to block out that unwanted email – the SPAM FiLTER), is only as smart as the programmer. – And limited by the instructions that come with it.  That and the fact that successful email campaigns have a time limit and a lifecycle, you might wonder which is a bigger menace to your ROI, email automation or over-emailing?       penguin

In an ideal world, all your subscribers will engage with your messages,  SPAM filters are perfect and there is no such thing as over-emailing. This is not a perfect world. Over-email, you lose subscribers.  if you continue to over-email you might be considered a SPAMMER, your messages are just deleted or filtered into oblivion.   Over-emailing can lead to lower engagement, lower conversion rates, and definitely lower ROI.

Lower ROI is not the goal.

You want members to engage with your messages, therefore view email as the best marketing tool since the traveling salesman; same personal one on one communication delivered right to the door. (or inbox in the case)  However, unlike the salesman, email is easy to exploit and squander. Email does not give you the opportunity to overcome objections or dazzle them with your personality and charm. And it does not engage your subscriber in an ongoing conversation.   In most cases, you’ll never need to see or talk to your list member: the impression you leave with your subscriber is limited to the email you send to them.  It then becomes important to understand the type of person who engages with your messages.

How do you determine who your subscriber really is  – collect the general demographics, age, and gender and expand the data to include the type of content your subscriber engages with, the links they click on, the day and time they read your email to the hat they purchased and the friend they referred.   Use this knowledge to send triggered, targeted email – if you know, for example, a customer purchases an oversized shirt and funny shoes every October, you expect they will be purchasing this October. Be proactive; leading up to October send them an image of oversized shirts and offer a discount on another purchase if they refer a friend.

Use your collected demographics to target people who live in NYC in the dead of winter, by offering wool gloves and warm hat combinations while in warmer climates, the offer is changed to straw hats and cotton gloves.  It’s so easy to personalize each message as you’re targeting a specific group at a specific time.  Segmenting your list with essential personal content will yield higher ROI as deliverability improves with list engagement.  How do you know it’s working, measure your success!

Just how do you measure success?

Measure any metric you deem important, such as how did the customer engage with your message, what time was it, where are they, did they click on all links or just open the email and delete it.  Did they forward your message to a friend or save it for themselves to open later?

Barring the subject line, which you have tested with segment emailing, is your only measurement, email opens and website visitors – is that really enough?   What other factors can you measure to let you know your email campaigns are more or could be more successful than you think?

  1. Confirmation email, did they confirm? If they did not confirm, should you rewrite the synopsis of the signup URL, or should you rethink your offer in exchange for their email address?
  2. Have you lost subscribers after your initial Welcome letter? The most important email you’ll ever send hasn’t changed, it’s still the Welcome Letter.  Whether you are offering a service, selling retail or running a nonprofit organization, the goals are all the same.  Increase the customer, client or member base and keep them happy and interested.
  3. Format: you changed the number of images and people unsubscribe. Are the images optimized for mobile and PC?  How many people did not like that change?  Test any changes first.
  4. Do you track your customers from the day they joined your list, to their first purchase to the time it took for their first purchase to the number of emails to get their next purchase? When did they lose interest in your messages, what did you change?
  5. Do you know what device they use to read your messages? Is your email readable and configured correctly for the mobile crowd, the IPad user and laptop?  Does it render well in all browsers for all devices, if not, people may leave?
  6. What time of day are your messages read and just where are your list members? Are your emails being neglected because you are in the grass seed business, emailing people who live in downtown Chicago? Do you send Monday Emails to people who work at night?  A profile page and some analyzing may reveal a better time to send out that weekly newsletter and correct the mailing to target homeowners instead of city dwellers
  7. Are you sending a book instead of a newsletter? Is there an ideal limit on content, longer or shorter? When you run tests, which one has better results?
  8. What is unique about your company, do you capitalize on your customer service, fast delivery, speedy checkout and money back guarantee? All these are measurable, and if you don’t know the answers, send them a survey.

And don’t forget to continue to use the same metrics you always have: Delivery rates, bounce rates, click-throughs and open rates.  They are all important measurements to be successful.

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Email Delivery Explained!

Email Lists /

Email Delivery Explained!

Sending and receiving email is similar to traditional mail.

mailboxTo send a letter through the mail it requires a “to” and “from” address. The “to” address directs the letter to its destination, and the “from” address can be used in case the mail is returned. In the digital world, a mail exchanger (MX) server can be used to send and receive email.

The MX server has specialized software for distributing mail. To determine the destination of the email, the mail delivery agent (MDA) reads the header and determines if the email should remain on its own server or send over the internet to a remote server. The MDA takes the place of the postal worker, in this case, it looks at the “to” and “from” addresses and determines if it can be delivered locally or placed on a truck and sent across state lines

To accomplish this, the MDA uses two specifications, the address record (A Record) and the mail exchange record (MX) record. The A record takes the domain of the host and translates it into an IP address that an email can be sent to. The mail exchange record includes the hostname for the domain as well as a code that prioritizes the email. The lower the code number the higher the priority. Incoming emails are routed through the IP address as assigned in the A record.

An example of these records is below.

A Record:                                                                            MX Record:

Domain: Dundee.net

Host Name: Mail

IP: 11.11.11.222

 

Domain: Dundee.net

Mail exchange: mail.dundee.net

Priority:10

 

 

So, how do these internal records affect your emails being sent? Let’s look at a specific example, you are mailing your welcome letter to your new member, his email address is Freeman@dundee.net. The mail delivery agent looks at the domain, in this case, it is Dundee.net and compares it to the A record. The A record converts the domain into an IP address where the email will be sent. Next, the MX record is used to redirect the email to the mail host and tells the host what priority the email is. The email is then sent using these guidelines and reaches its destination where it is opened.

It’s as simple as that and requires no stamp.

For more information on how email travels check out our blog:

From goal setting to trip planning how does your email list travel?

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Easy Proven Strategies for BIG Fundraising Projects

Non Profit and Personal Hosting /

Easy Proven Strategies for BIG Fundraising Projects

A Capital Campaign is a targeted fundraising effort designed to raise funds for a specific project. They’re often used to support building projects or construction jobs; the type of effort that requires multiple years and millions of dollars to complete.

Do you have a specific project that your non-profit organization would like to complete; when you’re adding an addition to your Church building or need a new roof on all the out-buildings, regardless of the scope of work, such projects require time and money: A Capital Campaign maybe the way to go.

Capital Campaigns have been on the rise these past several years, as more non-profits incorporate them into their fundraising strategies.   These Campaigns can
  1. Kick-start an organization’s new enterprise
  2. Expand the funding for existing projects
  3. Assist with the acquisition of land for expansion
  4. Help with large-scale equipment purchases and/or needed supplies

Capital Campaigns can be a very effective form of fundraising for massive projects if they are planned with capacity, vision and donor potential.  The goals should include a way to:

  • Increase the donor commitment to your organization
  • Create new donor relationships
  • Increase the overall sentiment for higher investment
  • Guaranty continued to support launch your Capital Campaign with email marketing program with Dundee Internet Services.

Share your vision with your current donors and encourage them to share it with a friend: easily done with Dundee’s Email Marketing refer a friend link.   Let email marketing play a part in the excitement of expanding or buying a new building for those after-school programs.  Use cost effect email marketing to keep your audience well informed of your project with weekly or monthly emails.

Chat with your core group of donor’s investors and prospects using Dundee Internets Discussion List Service. Clear up questions about costs, dates, and projections in a secure email environment: and you can archive your conversations into searchable messages for reference too!

domainWork your goal because Capital Campaigns involve hours of work and need the support and involvement from everyone in your organization. Send a timely email Newsletter hosted by Dundee Internet that keeps everyone up to date with the events of the CEO and Board and their efforts and engagement in this project. The support of the management team will energize a Capital Campaign for everyone. As the Capital Campaign advances, budget, staff, and committees will change, a Newsletter is an ideal vehicle to keep everyone in the loop.

Analyze your Donor Potential to ensure you have the donor base to raise the money you need to be successful. There are online tools to help you with this endeavor including Email.  Identify and solidify your goals, use email marketing to:

  1. Include those prospective donors that you know you need in every communication. With discussion lists, you can solicit their input and support their ideas
  2. Use prior knowledge of the giving trends of your donors. Use personalized timely, relevant content to contact them at the right time
  3. Setup an email board review list to engage your Board of Director and major donors, their commitments will inspire others to join

Email marketing with Dundee Internet can assist any campaign; with an informative email announcement, reach your base with timely information.  Email can set the expectations of the audience as you draw closer to your Goals.

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FUNraising Season: Create Perfect Emails That Get The Results You Need, Everytime.

Non Profit and Personal Hosting /

FUNraising Season: Create Perfect Emails That Get The Results You Need, Everytime.

As part of FUNraising Season don’t forget to create emails that get the results you need.

We all want our customers and prospects to have a successful customer experience no matter what Season it is.    Since 1995 interest in Data Mining (knowledge discovery) has grown: most every industry and organization, from the government to the local mom and pop store,  collect information about their customers, prospects, citizens, and volunteers.  All of the information you collect is very valuable because it will paint a profile of the person, or type of person that shops at your store, eats at your restaurant or donates their time and money to your nonprofit organization.

In general, when everyone shops, eats and donates (to mention a few activities), their likes and dislikes, opinions and brand loyalty is being tracked. With this in mind, if you collect the right data you can create a personalized profile, based on the information you have about said subscriber.  In fact, people expect that their favorite charity, for example, to use the data the charity has about them to create and deliver a better-personalized email experience and a better FUNraising Season for you..

A better experience for your subscribers is one that uses personalization to promote loyalty and will guide your supporters on a more desirable journey. 

With the right personalization inserts, your email will evoke feelings of value and appreciation: an all-around positive feeling towards your nonprofit.

Don’t

  • Rely just on data points that use only the name, email address, location
  • Assume that just because its written, it’s correct. Test every email you intend to send; Nothing is less personal than receiving a “Dear First Name” or “Dear %lastname%” email when you’re trying to get personal

Do

  • Taylor your message to be relevant, include the last event they attended, the donation they had made: Use insights derived from well-designed research
  • Address the subscriber’s needs, desires, fears, preferences and other aspects of their personality in your message.
  • Verify your message is going to the right list at the right time
  • Send relevant content
  • Make sure all the content is timely, free of spelling and grammatical errors
  • Check that graphics and images render properly in all email clients including mobile
  • Confirm all links go to the right place

Put together an in-house procedure that includes multiple opportunities for you and your staff to:

  • Proofread and check your triggered email, such as the personalized auto-reply that sends a “Thank You”  email message when someone donates
  • Verify this is the correct list, Is the right list, correct segment (s)
  • Validate the criteria for your triggered email, does make sense?
  • Review your contacts. are they labeled accurately?

If you need help with personalization or have questions, drop an email to help@dundee.net.   We’re always here to help.

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Key Information For Email Marketers

Email Marketing /

Key Information For Email Marketers

As 2017 comes to an end, are you happy with how well your company performed? Are you concerned about 2018, and what will it bring to the table?

Your monthly profit analysis may project the overall health of your business at year end. It really doesn’t tell you what you are doing right or doing wrong.

The best way to find out about your company’s successes and failures:  turn to those who use your product or service, your customers.  Don’t rely on Social Media, some people may love your product, but their mother doesn’t, so they give you a negative review to keep the peace.  Does that really happen – you never know.  Send email surveys, the perfect way to allow your customers to give the feedback you need.  Allow them to remain anonymous and post their answers online to a specific URL or let them tell you who they are when they submit their answers by email.  Either way here’s the top 5 reasons you should include a survey in your email marketing program.

Unlock success to email marketing with the right tools for the right results. praying cat

  1. Customer/member feedback: Looking for overall satisfaction, or why your customers visited your site only to abandon their shopping carts. A survey will allow you to ask those burning questions you really want to know.
  2. Measure Morale: Is your audience satisfied with the direction your company is moving? Or are they frustrated with your customer service? Use surveys as a tool, not just to find out the good, but also what your company can do to boost your consumer’s morale. Happy customers will pay off in REPEAT business.
  3. Surveys as Testimonials: When using a survey, it is important to leave a comment section. This section can be used to elaborate on an ongoing issue or to praise your company for its strengths. In turn, you can use these comments as a testimonial for prospective clients.  It may be just what you need to convert a prospective client into an active one.
  4. Fine-tune Pricing: There are many nuances on how to determine your pricing. However, this is the perfect venue to ask your customer what range of prices they may be willing to pay for your services. This may help your business stay competitively priced, may even help your future sales campaigns.
  5. Become Proactive: Once the data has been collected you can use this information to make changes within your company and to set goals for the upcoming year. For example, if your survey reflects that the customer wait times on support calls are too long, then a reasonable goal for the next year might be to hire more customer support to decrease wait times.

Adding a survey to your email campaigns can provide you with key information that can be used to make your customers happy, and in return result in repeat business. Just a little bit of effort to add a survey to your marketing can yield large returns.

Dundee Internet Mailing List hosting: Surveys are part of the package!

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Who Really Processes Everything They Read or Hear?

Non Profit and Personal Hosting /

Who Really Processes Everything They Read or Hear?

As a society, we are “plugged in” to the world around with information: Who Really Processes Everything?

Information is everywhere.  There is so much information coming at us from all directions, all the time, it becomes difficult to process everything.  In fact, some of us just mentally stop processing everything we read or hear altogether.  It becomes too overwhelming to think about.  Too much information can desensitize us, cloud the critical issues, for ourselves, our family and our community.

As a non-profit, you need to get your information out there too.

But as you know most people, businesses, and organizations understand that their customers, clients, and volunteers are inundated with groups to join on Facebook, Twitter feeds to follow, banner ads to click on, Instagram posts to view, etc., AND if you’re running the media campaign on these Social Networks, what once was a simple few hours a week has probably turned into a full-time job.

Is it necessary to spend so much time on the Social Web? Is that the best way to keep up with your current goals and directives: Keep in touch with your donors, volunteers, and community members.   Not to forgo the Social Frenzy but it’s been noted that a much simpler and direct approach works better when it comes to communication with these groups, email –  a push technology that has been used for years:  it’s easy, trackable, cost-effective, and personal, with instant results. Unlike Social Media, where you have to wait for your audience to log on to a certain unsearchable web page, with email, you just create your content and send it out to your list members.

Dundee Internet offers list hosting on the Lyris ListManager platform.  When you create your email content, to raise money, ask for volunteers, share a story or just automatically say thank you for a purchase you can easily personalize all your email messages, speak directly to them, not to a group of followers.   For example, John is a member of your list, he has a Cocker Spaniel named Daisy. He recently purchased a daisy decorated dog a collar from your website to support a dog rescue adoption event. Personalized your email:

Dear John,

“We thank you for your recent purchase of our hand-painted dog collar. We hope Daisy enjoys it! “kita dog

And follow up, automatically a few days later, with an event reminder for Rescues with a personal invitation.

Connecting to people through email is an easy, simple and dependable way to make your non-profit stand out from the rest.  Adding personalization and using other email tools, such as triggered email you will solidify your subscriber base, adding and keeping loyal and beneficial members to your organization.

Email tools will allow you to compose and schedule advance notices, thank you messages, membership anniversary greetings, to email specific receipts, email timely renewal reminders.  All email messages can be sent on a specific date (i.e. Holiday) or as a result of a recipient’s action (i.e.  Purchase), You can decide the parameters and sending criteria for any type of message.

Don’t get lost in the Web of Social Media.  Along with your Social presence make sure you use email marketing to reach out and grab the attention of your supporters.  Show them they matter to your non-profit as an individual with personalization, just one tool you can use when running an effective email campaign with Dundee Internet Services.  For more information on what ListManager and Dundee Internet Services can do for you please visit our website at https://thelisthound.com/non-profits

 

It’s Fun-Raising Season!

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Email Privacy Changes On The Horizon, More Rules To Follow For Some Email Marketers

Email Marketing /

Email Privacy Changes On The Horizon, More Rules To Follow For Some Email Marketers

The European Privacy Law is coming on May 25, 2018. The title of picture of a card with GDPR and key this act is officially known as The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); its all about the protection of the privacy rights of EU individuals, including email privacy.

Even though this is enacted in Europe this will require significant changes by organizations worldwide.

Essentially GDPR will gdprenact new rules on organizations that offer goods and services to the people who reside in the EU; specifically targeting organizations that collect and analyze data that involves EU residents, regardless of the location of that organization.  This includes email privacy rights

The GDPR proposes to do the following:

  • Improve the rights of individuals by giving them the ability to access the data that a company collects on them, the right to correct mistakes, to delete information, object to how the information is processed and to move their data.
  • Make companies responsible as to how individual information (data) is processed and handled
  • Require companies to report data breaches within a certain time frame, i.e 72 hours
  • Impose fines and sanctions on an organization who unintentionally failed to maintain data privacy, as well as those who intentionally failed compliance.

The bottom line, companies that deal with any EU residents information will be required to update their privacy statements, change the way they put data protection in place, and follow new procedure guidelines.

As a list owner, with subscribers worldwide, the General Data Protection Regulation will expect compliance to protect email privacy rights.

As a list owner or a list hosting company for that matter, if you collect, record, use, store, change and or erase any personal data from your customer list(s) or contacts for EU residents it must all fall under the GDPR guidelines.

To understand the guidelines here a brief definition of the terms in the regs., per the GDPR

Personal Data:  Any information that identifies an individual or can be used along with other data to identify an individual.  That includes the normal information such as social security numbers, house addresses, phone numbers, email address but this reg. indicates that other items we normally do not associate with an individual such as the IP of their computer and social data among other things is considered personal data.  Those collecting information on their subscribers, such as preferences in color, finances, to a login name can be considered personal data if such data can use this to identify an individual.

Process Data: Is defined as any action that affects the data, including but not limited to storing, retrieving, collecting, recording, copying, moving, alternating, restricting and erasing.  In summary, if your lists of subscribers contain any personal data of any EU citizens you and your list provider falls under the GDPR.

Suggestions for List Owners with EU subscribers:

  • Review your privacy and security policies
  • Continue to allow your subscribers to unsubscribe from your list anytime they want to leave
  • Always include an unsubscribe link in your mailings
  • Only add email addresses to your list that are lawfully obtained
  • Make sure your subscribers are opted-in or doubled opted-in to avoid  issues
  • Review your list member records for accuracy
  • Tell your subscribers how their personal data is being used
  • You may have to change the way you collect list subscribers.  If you collect an address by offering a white paper download, for example, according to the GDPR, their email address cannot be stored and used because they didn’t actively agree, at that point,  that’s its okay to use their data.

Things to consider:

  • You may use the subscribers’ data by emailing to them, for example, update your subscribers’ profile, make corrections and changes.
  • Individual subscribers may contact your ESP directly to make corrections, changes, and updates to their profile page.
  • Individuals may ask you or your ESP what personal data you have concerning them
  •  

Noncompliance: Why worry?

An EU marketer must be concerned with the stricter regulations and high penalties.   A list owner with EU based subscribers must be concerned as well   As for the ESP, it’s our job to know and act as needed in these cases.

You can read more about the GDPR:

https://commission.europa.eu/index_en

https://ico.org.uk/global/page-not-found?aspxerrorpath=/media/1624219/preparing-for-the-gdpr-12-steps.pdf

Discover, manage, protect and report.

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Are Email Feedback Loops Driving You Nuts

Email Marketing /

Are Email Feedback Loops Driving You Nuts

As an email marketer, you are responsible for sending hundreds, or maybe even tens of thousands of emails to those subscribed to your list. These are email campaigns you’ve worked on for weeks; testing to verify your campaigns will send the right message at the right time and bring in that expected ROI. However, some of the most significant feedback you need to make your campaign successful is what your recipients do with the emails you send them.

What your recipients do with your email once they receive it boils down to a few choices that include:

  1. Open
  2. Save for late
  3. Share with a friend
  4. Delete immediately
  5. Mark as Junk/Spam Mail
  6. Report you as a SPAMMER and complain to the ISP you’re hosting with.

As a marketer, we try to avoid them later, but it does happen,  so don’t let Feedback Loops drive you nuts!

When the recipient marks your mail as spam and complains to the internet service provider (ISP) they usually notify the sender of the complaint. Once notified, you should have unsubscribed the complainant from the list. One way to do this efficiently is the use of a feedback loop.

Feedback loops (FBL) are used by most ISP’s. Essentially, it’s a system that assists senders to keep their subscriber lists clean.  Some ESPs (Email Service Providers) set up FBLs for their customers, with those ISP’s that use them, Dundee is one of those providers.  A typical FBL format includes a button or link, which when clicked allows the email recipient to register a complaint about the received email.

  • (fig. 1). It is also advisable to ban the complainant’s email address so they cannot re-subscribe to the list and send another complaint.  This is important because an increase in spam complaints can influence the senders’ reputation.

    Different ISP have their own feedback loops – some use the same provider – here
  • AOL
  • BlueTie – by Return Path
  • Comcast –by Return Path
  • Fastmail – by Return Path
  • Rackspace
  • Gmail
  • Time Warner Cable – by Return Path

Questions on Feedback Loops?  Just ask help@dundee.net

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