Does This Email Campaign Make Me Look Fat?

Internet Marketing /

Does This Email Campaign Make Me Look Fat?

There are many things to consider when someone writes copy for an email campaign.

This can include but not limited to:

lady on social media

  1. the Audience (grammar used and reading level)
  2. Subject Line,
  3. the introduction paragraph,
  4. html or plain text or both,
  5. to the use of images,
  6. links or video inclusion.

All these different elements add to the length of your email.

However, the length of an email should be reflective of the subject at hand.  For example, Mary, a subscriber to the Hand Lotion Newsletter, only expects and wants information on hand lotion.  She is interested in the content of the email when the Subject is: ‘Brands That Are Proven to Relieve Dry Skin”. However she couldn’t care less about the subject “Free Moisturizes to Try.”

Likewise, Ken also a subscriber, doesn’t really relate to the Hand Lotion Newsletter when the title is “Rose Scented Lotion”. However he is interested in the subject “Save on Fragrance Free Natural Relief Lotion.”

Both Mary and Ken are interested in content, Mary wants to learn how a product could help her, Ken wants to save money.

Because each of these emails are different, the length should be too. Although secondary, as long as the email content is well-defined, brief, and compelling.

Here are a few tips for maintaining proper email manners and keep your email campaigns from looking fat.

    1. To Say or Not to Say that is the Subject. Keep the Subject Line under 50 characters. Most mail clients only show that many characters in the inbox.
    2. What is your point? Write a personalized, focused messaged.  Do not add unnecessary verbiage by adding an introduction paragraph with links and images.  This adds length to the email message and time to get to your message across. If the reader actually takes the time to read it.
    3. Who Are you? What industry you’re in will play a large part on what length of email you’ll be sending.   Non-profits may prefer more donor stories with links than images. Conversely, subscribers to a big box retail email list may prefer several clickable images with minimal wording.  For best results, test your emails.
    4. It’s Individuality that counts. Mary, as stated wants information. She expects a longer email than Ken who is skimming down your message to see if there’s a coupon.  As the content creator of the email, length is relative to the Subject and the person reading your message.

Offering a preference page to capture unique interests, demographics, and their ideal frequency, may help you categorize your list members. This information maybe, just maybe help you come up with the right length of words to send.

With a reputable mailing list, businesses of all sizes can grow.  Stick to a sending schedule, segment your list, personalize, timely, relevant messages based on your recipient’s preferences.  Keep your messages focused, your sentences simple, not too wordy and test, test, test. In the end the results can vary.  Remember a fat, information laden email may be warranted and expected in certain circumstances and deleted in some others.

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Email Marketing Trends of 2015 that Spilled Over to 2016

Announcement Lists /

Email Marketing Trends of 2015 that Spilled Over to 2016

Predictions are like opinions, everyone has them.  How are the 2016 email marketing trends turning out for you this year?

We, at Dundee Internet have found, this year, attention being placed on:

  • Personalization, which is not limited to just saying “Hello Mr. Brown”, as Marketers are being more personal with:
    1. Dates: This includes sending an email for Birthdays, Anniversaries, Congratulations on their 365th email campaign, Holidays,  “It’s been 6 months since you purchased your first Motorcycle” to sending dated invitations to local events.
    2. History: More marketers send triggered emails based on the past actions of the customer. For example, “We are sending you this coupon because you buy our chocolate every Halloween.”
    3. Actions: Emails are constantly sent to increase ROI.  “Mr. Brown, thank you for your recent purchase, do you need a carrying case for your new tablet?”
    4. Localization: Our Marketer’s use segments to send relevant, timely emails. Perhaps to a specific zip code, city or country; or maybe just to people with the last name Brown.  With built-in automation, these emails are sent at specific days and times with attention to geographic location.
  • Sending one-on-one Emails:  Dundee Internet has software that allows our customers to use Conditional Content Commands. This allows blocks of text or graphics to be added into their messages. This creates unique, one-to-one emails tailored to the needs and interests of their recipients.
  • Predictive Sending:  Marketers would like to know what motivates someone to buy and when they will buy again.   Our customers send surveys using our hosted software Aurea (Lyris) LM with pointed questions. Using the results, they study buying patterns and past buying habits to try to predict the next customer purchase. Email campaigns are tailored and sent based on their findings.

What we trends we see for content:

  • Embedded Content: More Marketers tend to send out interactive emails. Some emails play music or a video when an email loads or show a special image. Some have great success with this, and some do not.  Marketers with recipients that have issues with loading images and other media, are segmented into their own group and sent the same email without embedded content.
  • Devices on Board: The way email is sent remained the same. However the way the message is read, has slowly adapted to  smart phones, tablet and wearable devices.

phone emailWhile remaining desktop and laptop friendly.  All these devices influence the way our marketers send out campaigns, and this influence will continue way past 2016.  Eventually the same email message must be readable and interact with the all the different applications.

With Dundee Internet, when our Marketers create a “mobile friendly” email with our HTML editor, our list hosting software automatically creates a text copy. This will allow wearable users to read marketing email messages on those little tiny wearable device screens.

  • Dynamic Content: Our customers can send the HTML content on their website, forms, and landing pages. Allowing emails to be customized based on the recipient. Aurea (Lyris) LM uses custom scripting to insert complex, dynamic content into their messages.
  • Email Quality, that’s totally up to the marketer.  Most ESPs can give you the tools to create, send and deliver your emails, but the content is up to you.

You may have considered these trends and wondered what will 2017 bring.  We believe in 2017: Personalized emails will become the norm. Look for more automation and integrated features. With advanced email marketing tools,and analytical data, we believe there will be a greater interest in predict marketing.

We think the process of creating cutting edge emails will get simpler while being more robust. Finally, more companies will develop tools specific to Aurea (Lyris) LM using Aurea (Lyris) LM’s API.

What are your email marketing predictions for 2017?

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Can You Please Rate This Email Strategy, Please?

Email Marketing /

Can You Please Rate This Email Strategy, Please?

How many email campaigns do you have going on at the same time?  Is Angie handling the weekly sales campaigns with at least 5 different segments per run? Nat is working on a re-engagement project with hopes to have it ready way before Thanksgiving. You’re gearing up for the Christmas newsletter.  Does Angie, Nat and the rest of the team all plan the same, use the same mindset when it comes to content development and workflow optimization?

What is your email team’s production methodology?   Does your email strategy go something like this:

The Planemail strategy

The team starts off with a clear defined goal.  What type of call-to-action do you want your subscriber to take?  Who does this mailing go to?  How many A/B tests will be run?  How will it be measured in terms of success or failure?

Assign Steps for Success

Keep track of who does what and when it’s supposed to be done: keep the team on target to meet the deadlines.
Who is responsible for the list(s) you’re working with?  Are they clean and up to date?
Do you write the content and code the emails yourself or are your managing someone else?

Define the Concept

Email creation can be complicated.  Is content just as important as the colors and graphics you use?  Whether you’re writing the content yourself or editing the messages sent, the email should speak to the audience, with a positive uplifting tone.   Keep the call-to-action clear.
The team may want to critique the competitor’s emails; discuss what are they doing right and what they are doing wrong.  Compare the findings with your concept.

Collaboration

If you have a team, make is easy to plan together.  Create a discussion list, with the same ESP you’re mailing with.   A discussion list is an efficient way for your team to interact over email where they can share information and provide communication to their group members.

Quality assurance

Review your completed email before you send them out.  Does it have an unsubscribe link?  Everything spelled correctly, sentence structure correct?   Does it follow your checklist? (You did create one right?)

During the workflow process your team will probably find the biggest task is the design of the emails.  There will be many tests and edits before the final design for each campaign is chosen.   And there are many ways to design an email including self-coding or templates, to using a program to layout your concept and images; i.e. Photoshop.   Make sure you block off the time needed to create the desired designs in order to keep on schedule.

Defining your email marketing campaign strategy and goals will help guide the directions of your campaign and makes it easier to measure the success of your efforts.

Easily create an excel check list for your team using some of the following headings:

  1. Date: October 1 2016
  2. Assigned To:  Angie in Sales
  3. Goal: Clicks to our website to Sale landing page
  4. Topic/Subject:  Sale of the Century
  5. Target Audience: Anyone who purchased summer clothes in the last 60 days
  6. List and Segments:  Men, Women, Teens
  7. Included Urls, Links and Forms:  Landing page URL, set to track Refer a Friend. Link to preference page.
  8. Social Media Links:  Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+
  9. Design:  1 HTML responsive. 3 columns, 2 graphics, Tahoma fonts, Red, White, Blue, 1 plain text email
  10. A/B Split Testing; Multiple tests simultaneously to a small sampling of members, including change to Subject Line, colors, fonts, time of day, position of graphics, different graphics.
  11. A/B Split Testing Results. More clicks on all blue with comic font emails sent on Monday at 3 pm.
  12. Reports: How many Emails were sent, delivered, opened.  Did the CTA work?
  13. Analyze Reports:  Open goals met?  Click-through goals met?  Bounced report reviewed and acted on.

Any email campaign, big or small will be more successful when you define a goal and plan the steps to reach it.  In other words, once you set your goals, define your strategy and plan your steps, a check list will help you keep on track.  I hope you found my checklist helpful.

What else can you add?  Please comment below.

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Do Not Be Hard On Your Soft Email Bounces

Announcement Lists /

Do Not Be Hard On Your Soft Email Bounces

https://wordtothewise.com/2014/08/asynchronous-bounces/Are you one of those marketers that faithfully remove those email addresses from your members list?  OR are you that marketer than just cannot let go of that bounced address, adding it back for future mailings?  After all, most bounced emails are the result of full mailboxes right?  Well actually no, most aren’t.  A full mailbox is easily identified in most ESP’s reports.  Automation tools, like the ones built into (Lyris) Aurea ListManager, handles those types of bounces for you. In fact (Lyris) Aurea ListManager™ by default will handle all the error mail.

If your ESP does not have full automation, a bounce report in hand will allow you to manage them manually. Allowing you to maintain that great response rate you get after each campaign. This is easy to do once you know the different type of email bounces and categories, as follows:

The Bounce Categories

We can categorize email two ways: synchronous or asynchronous.  Synchronous bounces are instantaneous as the failed delivery attempt is returned back immediately.  An asynchronous bounce is a message that, after a period of time, is returned after the message was sent out.

The way the message is intercepted will determine the speed in which it is returned in bounce state.

  1. An email sent to an invalid address for example, will be terminated. When the receiving server identifies the address as invalid, the connection is cut, the email is returned: a synchronous bounce.
  2. An asynchronous email bounce occurs when the receiving server attempts to process the invalid email. The server acknowledges the message and continues to attempt to deliver it until the delivery fails.  For example, if a mail server accepts a message and later determines the user does not exist that recorded bounce is asynchronous.

Once an email falls in one of these two categories: synchronous or asynchronous, it is further assigned a type. This is identified in the return email header.

The Soft Bounce

A soft bounce (transient failure) is an email that has been returned back to the sender. The mail is undelivered after it has been accepted by the recipient’s mail server.  This is usually a temporary condition with an expectation of clearing up in the future.  However, it is good practice to monitor these and remove them from your list. Advanced email tools automatically handle this process.

For example, our software by default, will try to send a message three times – the initial send, and two retries.  If a mail server reports that an address is permanently non-deliverable, ListManager will only attempt to deliver it once.  This is known as a permanent failure or hard bounce.  Messages that are undelivered for other reasons, like a full mail box, are known as a transient failure or soft bounce.  In that instance if an address is undeliverable initially, including all the retries it’s considered to have only bounced once.

Soft Bounces may occur when

  1. An Email is returned undelivered because the receiver’s mailbox is full at that time.
  2. An Email Message Size is too large to be delivered.
  3. Auto responders, such as a vacation or out of the office message may be incorrectly reported as a bounce.
  4. The connection to the sending or receiving server timed-out.
  5. The connection was refused.
  6. Network issues.

The Hard Bounce

All things not being equal a soft bounce on one sever maybe interpreted as a hard bounce on another server.  A hard bounce is normally perceived as a long-term or permanent condition. Is is generally not expected to clear up any time soon.  It is good practice to remove hard bounces when they occur.  However, you might want to develop an internal policy to remove the address after a few consecutive returns. Hard bounces may clear up: i.e. temporary system fault or a blacklisted domain.

Hard Bounces may occur when
  1. The recipient address is misspelled.
  2. The user doesn’t exist
  3. Your domain is blacklisted

Some ESP’s such as Dundee Internet, offers a more granular bounce grouping. Rather than just a “Hard and Soft Bounce” report, accentuated with a uniquely colorful graph for easy evaluation.

Next time you send your campaign, review your bounce report.  It should give you enough details to distinguish which bounces came from where and why. Manage your email addresses to maintain that great response rate you work so hard to achieve.  It’s well worth it.  If your ESP isn’t giving you the detail you need, drop a note to sales@dundee.net  I’ll send you a sample report. 

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Tips to Improve Donor Retention, Keep The Conversation Going

Non Profit and Personal Hosting /

Tips to Improve Donor Retention, Keep The Conversation Going

With the right list hosting service, like Dundee Internet Email List Hosting Services, you can send timely, personalized emails to thank your donors properly. Immediately after they make a contribution or volunteer their time.

Targeted email, triggered by your donors’ actions will create a more donation boxpersonal relationship with them.

When you establish a personalized connection, you are making an effort to understand why the donor supports your charity. Your response to them, with your  well thought out content, will enforce their expectations of your charity.

With your mailing list you can also:

  1. Invite your donors to upcoming events and tell them other ways they can contribute, such as volunteer opportunities.
  2. Setup list access for all your internal departments, to improve communications and planning.
  3. Track your progress when you send out an email campaign.  Create customized reports based on your needs for each mailing.  If expectations fall short, test and test again using a small audience to find the right mailing content/subject line combination.
  4. Time your donation requests based on the donor’s past activity.  Offer to set up automatic debit donations on their schedule that they select on their profile sheet.
  5. Create anniversary dates for your new donors when they are referred to your list and thank them personally–every year that they are a member.
  6. Use your follow-up gift requests with a list of donation choices that make sense to the donor.
  7. Email interesting stories to your list that highlights accomplishments, progress, and success of the cause they are supporting–let them know how their favorite charity is doing.
  8. Set up a Discussion List (or group email list) to answer questions, saving the answers in searchable archives for all donors.

With the right email strategies in place, you can improve donor retention and easily keep that conversation going.  The more you know about your donors the easier it is to create mailings tailored to their needs and interests.  If you need suggestions or assistance please drop us a line: help@dundee.net

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Email Marketers, You Need to Read This

Email Marketing /

Email Marketers, You Need to Read This

Email Marketing Best Practices

Before you send your first Email; Start, by Thinking of your marketing strategy.


email marketing: hands holding envelope with shopping cart, target, loudspeaker & symbols coming out

  1. Profile foremail marketing handsms are an excellent way to identify with your audience. A profile form allows your subscriber to update their email preferences. So when you mail, the right message will reach the right target audience.
  2. Resist sending too much email, pay attention to who signed up for what information. If offered on your profile form, how many times they want to hear from you.
  3. Ask yourself what are your email goals. Are you soliciting more website clicks, promoting a new product, distributing information that you expect will be shared, thereby growing your list? Is this a re-engagement campaign or are you just inviting someone to fill out their Profile Form? Whatever your goal is make sure you plan to deliver the right message at the right time.
  4. Communication doesn’t stop with email, follow up with Social Networks that complement your message.
  5. Triggered Segments will send messages to the right email recipient at the right time. With Dundee, easily create segments that contain one or more trigger clauses: A phrase in an email that may specify a given date or event.
  6. Invite your list members to invite their friends to join your list. With Dundee List Services you can track how many friends were referred by list members, how many of those referrals open or click on a link: an easy way to grow your list.
  7. Conditional content can set up unique one-to-one emails tailored to the exact needs and interests of your recipients, without having to write (or send) more than one message.
  8. Error Handling of your email is definitely part of your email strategy. The detection and automatic resolution of the occurrence of an email error such as a message bounces are important, just as important as tracking and ROI.
  9. Split Testing Aka A/B testing gives you the ability to send different versions of a message to radon subsets of your mailing list, and then compare the results to see which version is most effective.

 

As a final note, Dundee List Services offers the BEST PRACTICES for your email marketing strategy. To get the right message to the right person at the right time, use all the email tools your ESP provider offers.  Consider Dundee, fully automated and ready to serve, give us a call for a full free, no obligation, month of service.  (call 888-222-8485 for details or email sales@dundee.net)

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Which Email Service Provider Can Really Provide?

Email Lists /

Which Email Service Provider Can Really Provide?

Does your Email Service Provider (ESP) have supporting documentation for every feature of their email list program, or do they just offer a few notes on a website?

Dundee ListManager offers an extensive online user manual that covers numerous list subjects. From API guides to Web Forms creation (Profile Forms, Surveys, Referral Forms. . .) and everything in between.  Since ListManager’s inception, it allowed the user to do everything needed to create, send and track a complete email marketing campaign. In fact, our customers were using transactional emails (for example) before transactional emails, became a marketing buzzword.

ESP Service Features

As more ESP’s came in to being, our competition started to find more creative ways to use, report and send out an email.  As these “new” features became hot topics, most customers started to expect them.  ESPs that didn’t offer these said features, had to develop them or partner with a company that offered them. Features like Shopping Cart Abandonment and Purchase Tags to track buying habits soon became very popular. These features have been part of Dundee ListManager for years.

Some of our list competitors unable to program these features, partnered with companies that could. Now, with third-party integration, ESPs can offer everything under the marketing sun.  However, most integration performance relies on all parts working correctly.  If an ESP doesn’t have A/B testing built in their program, they hook up with a company that does. Sometimes these features come at an additional cost.

Dundee’s ListManager Features

In the case of Dundee ListManager, the A/B test feature has been part of the software for a number of years. Using the A/B wizard a user can perform as many tests as necessary to see the effect a changed variable has in each mailing.  And there is no additional cost to do so.

List Manager can integrate with other programs utilizing ListManager’s API.  In all cases, an integration with ListManager is not done to give the user additional features but done for the convenience of the user and the third party offering.  (ListManager to WordPress.)  In these instances, the users are only limited by their programmer.

And then there are the corporate “specialists” who write blogs and offer charts and surveys to help the email marketer decide which ESP they should be using.  Several of these bloggers created categories for Email Service Providers, mistakenly assuming the size of the company dictates the size of the customer (list) they can successfully handle.

For example, we are a small Corporation and comfortably handle single list sizes of 15 Million members or more.  (As many of our list owners can tell you.)  So size, company size, doesn’t matter with us.

All of our users can use:subject line

  • A/B testing, Aliases, Analytics, Archives, Autoresponders
  • Bounce Handling Reports, Bounce Management, Branding, Built-in-Reports
  • Interactive Calendar, Chart Builder, Clickthrough Heatmap, Conditional Content, Conversion Pipeline, Custom Demographics
  • Editable Regions for Templates, Automatic Error Handing
  • Forward Tracking, Setup FeedBack Loops
  • Goodbye Messages
  • Html to Text Mail Merge
  • Map Reports, Match Phrases, Member Profile Forms, Membership Expiration Dates
  • NNTP, No Mail Settings
  • Open Rates, Opted In Sign Up, Opted Out Signature Parent/Child Mailings
  • Preview Features, Profile Pages
  • Refer a Friend, Referral Forms, Run Frequency
  • Sales Cycle Map, Segmentation Management, Sequential Mailing Wizard, SOAP API, Split Test Mailings Wizard, Success % Chart, Success Tracking,  Suppression List, Surveys, Survey Form Builder
  • Template Editor, Templates,  Thank You Pages, Tracking Summary, Transactional  Emails, Triggered Clauses, Triggered Mailings
  • Segments and Events Unsubscribe
  • Vanity Domain Name, Virtual (server) Lists Hosting
  • Web Analytics Integration, Web Forms, Welcome Letter And so much more.

But all ESPs have one thing in common, and for those that don’t; what can I say? 🙁

We want customers to be successful with all aspects of email marketing.  Most of us publish some form or Email Best Practices and center Blogs around the popular concerns and topics for marketers in general, like Mobile Marketing.We tell you to use:

  1. Relevant and sometimes compelling Subject Lines.  And to avoid those words with spammy connotations. Content that is clear, with a call-to-action and may just pertain to a certain group of people: segment your list when appropriate. A consistent sender address, so the recipient recognizes you.
  2. A testing method to figure out the most effective message to send.
  3. Welcome letters
  4. An easy way to unsubscribe.

And so much more.  Most ESP probably will suite your needs, but not every ESP has the time to know you and what those needs are.  Talk to your ESP, talk to us, to find out if you’re missing a company that is small enough to know you personally but large enough to mail to the world.

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Shocked At The Idea Of Better Email Deliverability?

Email Marketing /

Shocked At The Idea Of Better Email Deliverability?

Email Deliverability, Explained:

EMAILI was looking at several Online Magazine rate cards to analysis the open rates of email campaigns. I compared that number to the cost of advertising on a typical email list. I was surprised to see published numbers such as a 23% open rate for a 48,000-member list: that’s only 11 out of every 50 people expected to either click on the email or open it and read it. I thought that the percentage was rather low. Being a company in the email list hosting business for the past 19 years, I have seen worse (rented lists) and much higher open rates for customers on Dundee’s hosting email platform.

Those open rate numbers tell me, that for some marketers, all the adjusting, tweaking, and testing, might only be done for less than 25% of their subscriber base.  That’s something to think about!  If you find yourself in that low range, you can improve the chances of an email being open and read, by looking at your deliverability first.

When you send to your list, emails may be blocked by your subscriber’s email provider. Even if delivered, the messages may not pass the recipients filter settings in their email client. Both indicate that you do not have total control over your deliverability, so what can you do?

Consider the following to find out:

YOUR ESP

Authenticate – where are you from?
  • Deliverability depends on Email Authentication, the process by which an ISP can verify the supposed identity of the sender. While there is no recommended standard for email authentication, there are several ways available to do so. Some available Authentication Systems include SPF and Domain Keys. Messages that cannot be authenticated by the receiving ISP may be blocked.
  • Email has many handlers, which translates into “not all your email will be delivered as intended.” ISP’s 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. Check with your ESP and see if this is something they are using.

YOUR BUSINESS PRACTICES

Legal and compliance
  • Deliverability depends on your email practices. As a legitimate email marketer, you want to disassociate yourself with any inkling of being a SPAMMER. Follow the CANN-SPAM ACT and check local State Laws. Listen to your ESP, they should know the Best Email Practices. Your ESP can also help you with your online email reputation and assist you when someone complains.
Your messages should:
  • Never use misleading header information
  • Keep Subject Lines on point, don’t be deceptive
  • Make it clear to the recipient this is an AD if you’re sending an AD
  • Include your location
  • Contain an easy tested opted-out option

In addition, make sure your affiliates are doing what they are supposed to be doing and not giving you a bad name by spamming your product to others. And as you probably know, refrain from buying lists. (addresses scrapped from unsuspecting websites are bad news).

Permission Please

Deliverability is about permission. What policies do you have in place when it comes to adding members to your email list? How do you interpret permission-based email marketing?

A permission-based email comes in two forms:
  • Expressed permission, the best type of consent to get, as it comes directly from the user himself (herself). For example, checking a box on a website registration form to request your email newsletter.
  • Implied permission, permission that is not given, it’s inferred from an action or relationship, such as not removing a pre-check on a website form for list membership.

If you place folks on your list without permission, you are more likely to be reported as a spammer: a status email marketer can do without.

REPUTATION

Most ESPs (I know we do) will give you a dedicated IP address for your mailings. Your sender reputation will be tied to that address.

Deliverability depends on your sender reputation. If you mail non-permission unwanted emails (SPAM) your chances of being Blacklisted are high. Blacklisted IP addresses will cause ROI losses because once you are on a Blacklist, your emails will be earmarked as such and the ISP may refuse the receipt of your message.

Being associated with a Blacklist is something you should be concerned with even if your list is all opted-in, especially if you do not have a dedicated IP address. In those cases, your ESP’ reputation is yours, as well as the reputation of those 3rd party links you might use.  You can check your reputation status and the status of your ESP with the major SPAM databases by reviewing the websites of the reporting agencies such as DNSBL.com, spamhaus.org, and SpamCop.   There are also free tools you can use to analyze those URLs included in the content of your messages as you don’t want to include an IP address that is on a Blacklist; being on or associated with a Blacklist may stop your email dead in its tracks.

Spam Complaints

Deliverability can suffer if you get too many spam complaints; reports made by email recipients against emails they consider to be unsolicited.

Complaints can happen because:
  • Some folks may not remember signing up for your newsletter, instead of unsubscribing they report you as a spammer.
  • You continue to re-add those unsubscribes, (Your unsubscribe rate, ideally should be under 1%.) you should delete them and move on. List Chun is a natural part of the sales cycle and there’s little you can do about it.

I’m sure you heard it said, avoid spammy words in your email subject lines. The list includes but not limited to “Save”, “Huge”, “Discounts”, “Free” and “Cash” – you get the idea. However, ESPs, ISPs and Spam filters have grown up, spammy words are no longer spammy words, more importantly, are a combination of online factors such as your sender reputation – the bottom line your Spammy words may not be an issue: so advertise your Huge Savings with a Free catalog without being blocked for the word Free.

Spam and Spam filters go hand in hand. Why should you be concerned about Spam Filters? Because they are being used everywhere and can affect your success as an email marketer. Spam filters are configured to work on a list of criteria, which depends on the information provided to the software and user. They can filter on just about everything, from content and formatting to sloppy coding. The Science behind the filter is interesting, I’ll cover Spam Filter Specifics in a future blog.e

User Engagement

Subscriber engagement is an identifiable and important metric for email deliverability. By definition, when an email is engaged there is a positive action taken on it by the recipient. It is believed that some ISP’s utilize the user engagement stats to determine if your sent email messages are actually wanted by your subscribers, compared to those messages that aren’t wanted or acted upon (engaged). With this information in hand, the ISP may take adverse action on your mailings, which may include slowing down your email delivery to blocking your email altogether. Logically, then, the less engaged your email recipients are the more undesirable effect on your reputation.

Design and Content

Positive deliverability may depend on content and personalized crafted targeted emails, which will give you a higher chance of reaching the inbox and increase levels of engagement once there. What you say, how you say, how the email renders on a mobile device versus a laptop affect the email experience; likewise using a “correctly coded” identifiable template versus a poorly coded template can cause deliverability issues. A badly coded design, for example, may trigger spam filters.

In addition to mobile rendered email, it’s important to provide a plain-text alternative for those organization that does not accept HTML emails. If they can’t read HTML, guess where that email will go.

DATA MANAGEMENT

How Much You Mail and When

Email deliverability depends on how often you mail; do you frequently send random email campaigns, if so, that practice will lower your sender score. Instead of random mailings, be consistent and mail on a schedule. When you send bursts of increased emails, you could be sending a message to ISPs that your list suddenly (mysteriously?) grew, which may trigger unwelcome filtering
ISPs typically look for emailing regularity that reflects a steady list growth. For a list owner that has 1,000,0000 subscribers and emails to 500,000 the first of every month, it wouldn’t be wise to decide to mail to all 1,000,000 on the second of the month, without any warning. The better way is to slowly build up to 1,000,000 emails on the new mail day: maybe 250,000 for a while, then 500,000 and so forth.

Bounces

When you look at your deliverability rate common sense will tell you to remove bounced emails. In reality, most senders will retain bounced back addresses to resend to them in the future, believing these bounces were the result of full mailboxes or misspellings. A detailed Bounce Report, from your ESP, will allow you to distinguish which bounces came from where: a full mailbox which indicates  a soft bounce,  or a  hard bounce when the email addresses don’t exist

DATA COLLECTION

And once again, optimum deliverability rates and a better sender reputation is a primary concern for marketers because deliverability issues equal significant revenue loss. One way to make your deliverability rates high is to maintain a “clean” email list. A “clean” email list (free from role accounts, misspellings and so forth) will yield better deliverability results when personalized and relevant messages are sent to the subscriber; which should reduce the chance of Blacklisting, ISP blocking, or extreme bounce rates.

Keep that undeliverable number down with consistent list hygiene such as:
  • Integrity checking. Are email addresses in the right @ format, do they end with a .com, .net, .org or other domain. Do you have role address, such as president, info or sales instead of a destination person like websplat@gmail.com.
  • Upfront vetting and common sense. Was there typos when the email address was entered, so that email address for that recipient just doesn’t exist, perhaps the user did enter the right email address then switched accounts or left the company. Maybe their email box was full and not accepting email.
  • Automatic bounce handling, which should be part of your ESP offering. Without it you must, on a regular basis, remove bad addresses from your list. (Dundee’s email platform handles all error mail, including bounces (transient and permanent failures)

There are so many factors that affect deliverability rates, I could write a book! Just remember the best defense against delivery problems, like always, starts with you. Maintain an excellent email reputation and stay focused on all the other factors (like sender score) that influence your mailing reputation.

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Can You Really Trust Email A/B Tests?

Email Marketing /

Can You Really Trust Email A/B Tests?

Have you ever use an AB Split Test Wizard?  This is one of the features included in our ListManager software.  This tool gives the user the ability to send different versions of a message to random subsets of their mailing list, then compare the results to see which version is most effective.  This type of testing eliminates any demographic or action-based bias that could alter the results.

What is discovered, whether you use the Wizard as a Dundee customer, or another ESP method, is that small changes made to your email may have a big impact on your Campaigns, whereas big changes may not.   A/B Spilt testing is important and successful results depend on the hows, whys and when.

Generally, if you are not happy with your overall mailings after you ran and used your A/B Spilt results, it could be you didn’t have a plan or process for your AB testing; In other words, you just created the tests and went with the results you thought looked good.  You may get a get a better response from your audience if you plan out a process for testing, one that you can use each time.

Before you write your process you should formulate a theory of how you think your testing should go.   Start developing a hypothesis first (or some believe an educated guess if you will) using your conversion goals:  you want to increase the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, a purchase. A theory or hypothesis will help you examine the results you get and compare them to your expectations.

Then consider,

What do you expect to learn or what problem do you expect to solve from your test?  After you develop your hypothesis, compose the process you will use to test.

A process, will help you develop tests that are quantifiable and specific – tests with measurable results that are useful and assist in planning A/B tests for future email campaigns.

Once you develop a test plan that spells out a specific process, you need only focus on testing. Your plan may include what you want to test, for example:

  • Subject Line
  • Message Length
  • Message format
  • Links and images
  • Personalized content
  • Content
  • Call to Action

Once you have your process down, some type of prioritization is needed to determine the order to do specific tests.
Test the ideas first, that have the highest chances of getting the best results.  Assign weights or value to various parts of your email.  Allocate a higher value to, for example the Subject line, as you may find   a change to the way the Subject line is written has a greater effect on the audience then let’s say removing one of the images.  Look at the confidence level of an email: are you confident that a change in the Subject Line to include some type of personalization will be well received and opened more than a change of content.  Add point for ease to do and double points if there’s an AB wizard.

And finally don’t make any of this complicated – this isn’t rocket science, as “they say”

In summary, A/B testing, is a method of comparing different versions of the parts of an email against each other to determine which one performs better.  A Hypothesis can be generated based on how you could improve your campaigns, set up your test and send.  In theory this testing method gives the user solid evidence of what performs well and what does not.  Through testing, you can get a clear idea of your customer’s preferences which will help you create the type of email they will read and act on.

Can you really trust AB tests?  Yes, if you do them right.

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