5 Email Marketing Halloween horrors...

A list that will make any email marketers skin crawl and have them hiding under their desk in terror....

1.       Emails containing all images

The majority of email clients will turn images off as standard.  This means the recipient has to physically choose to turn them on before they are displayed; but 40-60% of people will not do this.  Don’t put your most important content into images or chances are most people will not see your message!  Remember the 60:40 rule (60% text to 40% images – 70:30 is even better!)

2.       Spelling errors

Arrrrrrrrr!!  There is no need for spelling errors in your email – check, check and check again!  And don’t forget to send a live test of your email to yourself for a final check before broadcasting.

3.       Emails going into the junk folder

An email marketers worst nightmare... if your inbox placement is not good and your emails are going straight to the junk folder chances are they will not be seen.  Work on your engagement with recipients and how they respond to your emails – whether you are watching out for this or not, the ISPs are.

4.       Emails not displaying correctly in different email clients

There really is no excuse for this.  Before broadcast you should always test how your email displays in a variety of major email clients, both with and without images turned on, as well as how they display if the recipient is viewing the email in a preview pane or on a mobile device. If your ESP does not allow you to do this, there are other third party providers who allow this kind of testing; most notably Return Path.  How your email looks is really important to test as different ISP will render your HTML code in different ways and you don’t want the recipient to see the email they receive wrongly (images in the wrong places, fonts not displaying correctly, copy being centre aligned when it is supposed to be left aligned, misaligned borders etc) – it looks very unprofessional.

5.       Not sending in MIME format

Some email clients will not allow recipients to receive HTML emails, so always make sure you send a text only version alongside your HTML to allow the receiving system to choose the appropriate version to display. ALL ESPs will allow you to do this, so if you’re not, why not?!  You’re missing out on clicks!

Happy Halloween!

Email Marketing - Unlock the door to your deliverability

Collect your keys to the Deliverability door...

Good IP reputation + Best Practices + Engaging, Enticing content = Good Deliverability & Inbox Placement

Anyone currently running an email marketing strategy will know that getting your emails delivered to the inbox is not always easy, with obstacles not only blocking your path into the inbox but also your view of what is actually happening there. Plus, with the introduction of various forms of smart inbox seen in 2010 and the buzz around facebook mail, our job as email marketers has just become even tougher.

Not only do we need to ensure that best practice and legal angles are covered, but also that our IP sending reputations are high, we are connected with the recipient through social networking and that our emails constantly engage, interest and excite the reader into interacting.

Additionally, as permission based marketers we are always fighting against the label of the spammer and even now ISPs do not always get their filtering right; the February 2010 Return Path Email Deliverability Report showed that as much as 20% of permission-based email is not making it to the inbox.  Every email that we do not manage to get delivered to our intended recipient is an opportunity lost for engagement and in turn revenue.  Nowadays it is prudent to employ additional monitoring tools above and beyond those provided as standard by your ESP to look at your inbox placement; if your emails are not getting into the inbox, chances are they won’t be seen.

The first and most vital step to getting your emails through the door is to maintain a good IP reputation.

How do I build a good IP reputation?

Building a good IP reputation takes hard work, commitment and know-how. To begin with you need to take an in-depth look at the following key factors:

1.   Database hygiene

If your data is not accurate or has been illegally collected, you are immediately getting off to a bad start in your Deliverability mission.

-       Look at your sign up process

Ensure that all data has been legitimately collected and where possible use a double opted in program to ensure the best possible data in your main list.  You should also ensure that your signup forms prompt users to correct email addresses if they are incorrect and resolve syntax errors.

-       Keep your database clean by looking at your unsubscribe, complaint and bounce management

Make sure that unsubscribes, complaints and hard bounces are immediately marked as non-contactable in your database as well as ensuring appropriate rules are in place to deal with soft bounces (soft bounce rules may vary depending on your mailing frequency, but I would advise removing after around 3 soft bounces in a 30/60 day period.)
Complaints can be properly managed and recorded by signing up to ISP feedback loops.  It is essential to do this as ISPs will monitor your complaint rate and how you deal with this.  From personal experience , I know that not signing up for feedback loops and broadcasting emails can do a lot of damage to your deliverability and IP reputation and result in temporary or even permanent blocks from an ISP.

   - Divide your database into Active and Inactive subscribers and tailor your messaging

Whilst looking at your database, it is also prudent to split you base into two cells; active and inactive. Your active cell will include anyone who has interacted with you company in the last 6/12 months including opening or clicking on an email, making an order or purchase or any other interaction that is positive with your business. Inactives will include anyone who has not completed these actions in the time period. By splitting your database in this way, you can target these groups with specific messages; in the case of the inactives, with a reactivation programme to encourage them to interact and engage with your brand again. By doing this, you will also help to remove spam traps* from your base as well as inactive users who are not engaging with you.

With Yahoo! being the strictest in terms of not active accounts and closing an account after only 160 days of inactivity (Hotmail and Gmail are a little more lenient giving 270 consecutive days of inactivity before an account is closed; and hotmail giving users 90 days after this to reactivate their account), it is more important than ever to keep a clean and engaged database to avoid adversely effecting your IP reputation.

2.   Ensure IP authentication is in place

It is important to ensure that the receiving email client can identify who the message is being sent from by publishing an SPF record and ensuring that DomainKeys, DKIM and Sender ID are properly set up on your IPs

3.   Warm up IP addresses slowly & ensure sends are throttled going forward depending on ISP sending protocols

A new IP has no reputation and so you need to get the ISPs used to you sending to them.  You should slowly ramp up the volume of your sends per day over a couple of months so the ISPs can get used to you sending, when you send and the volume you send.  It is also important to monitor not only your overall volume on your IP but also the rate at which you send your emails in this warm up period to the different ISPs.  It is not widely published for most what they will accept, but as an example, Hotmail will only accept around 4K per day for an IP with no reputation.  You should then double this every day to build up the sending volume over time.

4.   Watch your complaint rate

As previously mentioned, it is important to immediately mark anyone who complains to your emails (reported from feedback loops) as un-contactable for future emails.  Even if you are doing this, a continuing high complaint rate can do a lot of damage to your reputation.

Try following these top tips for reducing your complaints:

·         Set subscriber expectations of your email programme from the point of sign up

o   Use your registration form and welcome email to let the subscriber know what to expect from you emails and when to expect them

·         Ensure you have an unsubscribe link at the top of your email as well as the bottom to try and discourage people reaching for the spam button

·         Make sure your unsubscribe link works!

·         Implement a preference centre to find out what consumers want to receive from you and segment your list and communications accordingly (dynamic content will assist you enormously here)

5.   Monitor everything

Once you have pressed that send button, your work does not stop there.  You must ensure that you are continuously monitoring complaint rates and your delivery rate as well as open and click rates, to ensure there are no problems with your broadcasts that need to be resolved.

What else can I do to improve my deliverability?

·         Increase Engagement

With the rise in smart inboxes in the last year including AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail and Gmail, it is important to provide quality and engaging content to your consumers once you have got through to their inboxes.

Engagement now not only includes the standard open, clicks, unsubscribes and spam complaints but more in depth elements based on how recipients interact further with communications such as:

·         Messages replied to

·         Messages read, then deleted

·         Messages deleted without being read

·         How frequently messages are received and read from a sender

Deliver the right message at the right time, to the right person.

·         Keep a close eye on your content

Not only should you be looking at how your messages render in different email clients with images switched on and off (40-60% of people will not turn images on so ensure your most important content and calls to action feature in your copy), but also don’t forget to look at the spam content of your messages that may trigger the spam filters including:

·         Large images

·         A high image to text ratio

·         Number of spam words and phrases

·         Incorrect HTML coding

·         Plan a reactivation strategy for the inactive addresses on your list

Inactive addresses in your list impact on your deliverability and sway your open and click through rate results negatively; it’s not uncommon for 40-60% of your list to be disengaged.  By planning a reactivation programme, you can clean up your list and re engage anyone who has not been responding to your communications.

How often you run a campaign like this will depend on the frequency of your regular mailings – e.g. if you email your subscribers every day, a reactivation programme every 1 or 2 months might be appropriate. In these mailings take the opportunity to tell the consumer that you miss them and they are missing out on your valuable content; let them know what they are missing out on and why it is valuable to them.  These communications are their chance to let you know that they are still interested in receiving messages from you or you will take them off of your sending list.  You can also try using a different design from your usual messages to make them stand out and add a deadline for them to respond to create a sense of urgency to drive engagement and elicit a response.

·         Ensure a consistent volume is sent over your IPs

It is a common spam practice to send a lot of emails infrequently.  Make sure you don’t fall into this cycle and keep a regular consistent volume being sent from your IPs to show the ISPs how and when you mail and what to expect from you going forward.



If you do currently have a bad IP reputation, don’t panic!  As with a credit score, a bad reputation is better than no reputation, and if you follow the tips outlined above, you can get back on track and get your emails delivered.


How is your deliverability? Have you unlocked it's secrets yet?


TOP TIP:
Don't forget to always ask the recipient to add you address to their safe sender list - by doing this, you will bypass a lot of the obstacles!!



*Spam Trap - A spam trap is an address that has either been created specifically by the ISP and published on the web to entrap spammers harvesting data without permission, or is an email address that has been dormant for as little as 6months (in the case of some ISPs) and is taken over by the ISP to trap anyone not regularly cleaning their database.

My thoughts on Ad:tech 2011

So ad:tech is over for another year; did you attend?  I did and I wanted to share a few thoughts on the day and the seminars I attended.

Overall I had a good day – I think as with anything a day at any of the marketing shows that happen throughout the year is about what you make of it, the seminars you attend, networking you do and companies you speak to.   I attended with 2 colleagues and after having an initial coffee in the networking area, they went off to attend the meetings they had booked and I ventured to the seminar area to hear the first lecture of the day on social media run by a company called Viapoint entitled ‘ Social Media – The no hype guide to practices that work’.

In this half an hour seminar, some interesting points arose in regards to social commerce being the application of social media and looking at the ‘long game’ of this channel rather than a short term play as well as increasing customer value and relationships long term and building communities with advocates. I think a lot of companies expect to see an immediate ROI from social media but this should not be the main aim in the short term.  From my point of view and from the discussion in this seminar, it is definitely prudent to think of this channel as a customer relations point and to build the relationships; use it to find out what they want, update them on the company and products and most importantly, address their concerns promptly through the channel.  The presentation also listed an interesting look at participation groups in social media and the different levels of activity:

1. In actives
2. Spectators
3. Joiners
4. Collectors
5. Critics
6. Creators - bloggers

The speaker mentioned finding out what’s driving people to the social networks and what are they doing when they get there as well as looking at principal of 'network weaving' - knowing your network and then knitting your network together.  He also mentioned the term ‘Memetics’; looking at why people follow other people – in essence, social networking is just human nature applied on the internet and the typical realms of psychology can basically be applied and adapted to study the medium.  Looking at the behavior of people provides you with information about the consumers you are targeting on social networks, how they behave and why so that you can then target your strategy around this information and get the most from your social efforts.

Two other interesting stats where also mentioned that I noted down:

• Online engagement down 19% h1 2011 (UK)
• Click through banner ads decreasing - 30% p.a. (av0.05%)

In regards to the banner advertising statistic, I have long been an advocate of using this medium for brand awareness rather than as a solid way to drive traffic to a website and I think this statistic just proves the point further.

As an added point, Viapoint also used this opportunity to advertise a free social commerce planning session with them when you quote adtech.  They didn’t however use this seminar time to pitch their company aggressively which I found was a positive point and something which some companies do too much; I feel these seminars are for learning not for pitching (fine to put your logo on every page and introduce the company on one slide at the beginning but don’t take up to much of the limited ½ hour slot with a sales pitch; if we want to know more about your company we will come and visit your stand or speak to you when the presentation is over!)  To take advantage of this offer you can call 08453193797 – the offer is only valid until 30.11.2011.


Visiting the exhibitors and seeing who was there

I took the opportunity after this first seminar to circulate around the hall and see the exhibitors who were in attendance.  I did feel this year that there weren’t so many, although shows earlier in the year such as Internet world and Marketing Week were huge, especially in comparison. I also felt that the range of different exhibitors was not as big as it usually is and had an enormous focus on agencies and, lead generation and reporting – which although is good, I didn’t feel that mobile, social media and email marketing for example were represented as much as they had been at other shows where more of a range was present, although of the companies that were there, these were the ones I did seek out.  Regardless, I had a wonderful time meeting up with contacts old and new throughout the day and speaking to companies such as Emailvision, Pure360 and the wonderful folks at the DMA among many others.  As you can tell my main interest is, and always has been email marketing and I relish the opportunity to meet with suppliers and see updates to their systems as well as discuss the industry and current trends with them.


A sales pitch before lunch…..

I also met with a former colleague for the next seminar on my list before heading out to have a good catch up over lunch at Pizza Express; conveniently attached to the venue.  The pizzas there are always good but I was astounded at the lack of good service; I know it must’ve been a busy day for them but I have never in my life been to a restaurant that when it comes time to pay the bill, the credit card machine is just left on the table and the waiter wanders off!  I was very surprised to say the least and definitely did not leave a tip!

The seminar that we attended just before this experience was about my favourite topic - Email Marketing.  The seminar was being run by Stongmail and was entitled ‘Boost email marketing performance by 600% with lifecycle marketing’

Unfortunately, this seminar included quite a few slides of sales pitch – not only at the start of the presentation but throughout!  They covered not only who they are, but went onto discuss a long list of their customers are at both the beginning and then at end of the presentation as well as how their technology can help you do lifecycle marketing – personally, I don’t find this appropriate in this setting; there is a time and a place and this was not it – in fact it succeeded in putting me off rather than the probable intention of drawing me in to their product.  In such a short seminar time slot we want to pick up some tips and knowledge as the main aim, not to be sold a product; we can visit an exhibitor stand for that purpose!

They did however (in between talking about themselves) pick up on some key points of customer lifecycle marketing and having the ability to reach the right person with the right message at the right time through email marketing automation – something I am very keen on and always strive towards for the companies I work for.  In my experience this can only increase results and makes your job as a marketer slightly easier; especially when using technology that can facilitate this including using dynamic content to product the personalised message based on your information on the individual consumer found in your database and the groups they fall into.

The gentleman leading the seminar went on to discuss looking at how you acquire people, build trust, engage and nurture. Then how you drive conversion, drive repeat conversion and loyalty as well as re-engage lapsed customers and generate advocacy with referral programs for example.  In some statistics he quoted, a survey by e-marketer found that nearly 47% companies have already adapted a lifecycle marketing programme and 58% that haven't are planning to in next 24 months.  A report entitled 'European email marketing’ produced in February 2011 also found that only 25% of marketers segment on past purchase behavior.  Such a shame when this is your most valuable data, and in ,my opinion, increased targeting in this way and throughout the lifecycle  is well worth the investment in time and technology!  Don’t forget that customers are constantly bombarded with different marketing messages and have become a lot savvier over the years and now demand greater relevance for their attention and time.

The main benefits of using customer lifestyle marketing quoted included increased subscriber engagement an increase in campaign performance and of course, an increased in customer satisfaction.  Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes when you are running a marketing campaign is important – would you be interested in the product?  Is it relevant to where you are at in your lifecycle with the company?  It is also important to remember to join on and offline marketing; as a consumer, we don't think about the channel we are being spoken to on - all we care about is the brand as a whole. Keeping a consistent message across, email, phone, direct mail, call centre, TV etc is important to present a single view of the company regardless of where the consumer is interacting with you or seeing you - they want to see it purely as the brand, not the channel through which they are engaging.

I think that another seminar that I caught halfway through also built on this point well.  This one was about discovering the non obvious and was being presented by 02mc.  They used the following example of how to use real time data and the right segments to send the right messages to consumers:

Day 1. Customer sees an email from you, visits the site, but doesn’t purchase.

Day 2. Customer sees one of your display advertising banners showing the same product, visits your site but still doesn't purchase.

Day 3. The customer see’s a Google ad from your site about the product, visits the site and makes the purchase.

But then on Day 4, they receive another email that has been generated automatically as a result of their non-purchase from the original communication you sent on day one with a discount  for that product - but the customer did buy the product the previous day!  How annoyed would you feel as the consumer?  And all it would’ve taken was an extra query in the database to join up the customers data and check for a purchase after that first communication to stop this aggravation and miscommunication.

Their main point was that it is easy to miss something you are not looking for.  Look out for the non obvious and ensure you use real time data and the right segments to send the right messages.


A buzzing brain full of mobile strategy!

At 3.50 I attend a seminar on Mobile marketing run by DMG and let’s just say it was not what I thought it was going to be! He began by listing all the things he wasn’t going to talk about (all the things I thought I was there to listen to!) and proceeded into a seminar about some really in depth mobile marketing and strategy – which was actually really interesting and gave more points than I thought I would take away from such a short time!

To start with, we were told some interesting statistics about the mobile industry in the UK:

• ROI - usage and understanding who Is using what devices
• 42% UK Smartphone penetration in UK (21m)
• Tablets have a 4% penetration in uk (2m) to grow by 2015  to 35% penetration (17m)
• 21.8m people using mobile web every month
• 43% of mobile users use apps
• 79% of Google’s advertisers around the world do not have a mobile optimised website

The focus of the presentation was then on mobile strategy and integrating mobile so that it is not a standalone platform and how people viewing content through this medium want 5 minute snacks - don't just port your website onto mobile – there will be far too much content.  Think about what people will want to consumer from you in this short amount of time while they are on the move and work with this information to build a reduced down, informative and relevant mobile site.  Objectives should be set in regards to what you want to achieve and the customer journey should be thought about – use mobile to remove barriers on customer journey and meet customer needs.  It is also important to think about the technology behind people viewing your content on a mobile and how you can improve this (e.g. the current OS being used and upgrades to this and how it affects you or viewing on a new platform such as a tablet or the possibility that kindle will introduce this feature into their product).  Another interesting fact was that Google just announced that mobile optimised sites will factor into landing page quality and perform better in Adwords.  There is a definite need for a mobile strategy to be agile and change as the market changes; which is very regularly!  It is not necessarily possible to have a mobile strategy set in stone for 12-18 months ahead; focus instead on the next couple of months and keep updating as you go.

It was interesting to note the 4 main reasons that pick up a phone and go online; “ I'm bored now”, “I'm repetitive now”, “It's urgent now”  (for example for location use and looking at Google maps, or finding a restaurant) or for mobile social media use.  Mobile is dual screen - I.e. people can be watching TV at the same time and having conversations on the internet through their phones about  TV programmes, or watching TV and playing games etc at the same time.  Mobile is now also used in store with people using phones to aid their shopping experiences by checking prices, checking with friends what they think etc.


End of another year at ad:tech

After leaving the last seminar with my head buzzing with mobile strategy, I moved on to end the day by attending the final Email Marketing seminar of the exhibition presented by Briteverify who discussed how to eliminate invalid emails before they become hard bounces in your database.  I felt particularly sorry for this speaker who in the end finished the presentation in less than 15 minutes; not surprising as there was a grand total of 5 people including myself listening to him speaking.

In this short time, he discussed the meaning of a valid email address (an address that exists and will not hard bounce upon delivery) and a client case study showing how they cleaned up their data and data collection process after spending $1 to verify 100 email addresses (€10/1000) with his company through real time email verification on sign up with an error message shown to the consumer if the email they entered was invalid (plugged right into the form).  He also briefly discussed how invalid emails affect deliverability, but what I didn’t agree with was a comment he made about his company and this technology directly affecting inbox placement.  Yes removing invalid emails from your database is always going to help deliverability as you are not having these emails clogging up your sends and reported invalid email errors, but a direct relationship to inbox placement?  Let’s just say I don’t think I have ever raised my eyebrows so high!

I think @rossnichols asked a good summing up question for the day through Twitter: “If you were to sum up the topics/insights from #adt4ech in 5 terms what would they be?”  My response to this tweet and was to note mobile applications and strategy, ESPs, search and social – although as I have mentioned earlier in this post, I don’t feel the presence was there in force as it has been previously at other shows throughout the year and in previous ad:tech’s I have attended…

 

What did you think?  Let me know!