Email Marketing

E-Mail Marketing and Deliverability

Agenda Today: E-Mail Marketing

Glossary of Terms Pros and Cons of E-Mail Marketing E-Mail Deliverability

Blocked E-mail Why it happens, how to avoid it

Best Practices in E-Mail Writing(manage recipient perception)

Glossary of Terms Above the fold E-mail Blocking / E-mail Deliverability HTML E-mail Open Rate Opt-in (or Subscribe) Opt-out (or Unsubscribe) Spam WIIFM

Pros / Cons of E-MailMarketing

Pros Inexpensive Easy – well, kinda easy Trackable / Reporting

Cons Risk of hurting your brand Open rates can be misleading Troublesome: Avoiding spam

A brief history of e-mailmarketing

1999 Life is good. Openrates are amazing.Everyone succeeds.

Late 2001

Spam is everywhere,address sharing is goingwild. Consumers arefrustrated.

2006 40% of e-mail is spam.Spam filters killreliability of e-mail.

E-Mail marketing in 2008 Cost of entry is LOW Customer savvy is HIGH No more reliable metrics! False Positives

Occurs when a program used to filter spammistakenly marks a legitimate message as spam

When stringent filtering tools are too effective, thereis a fairly high chance of getting false positives

ISPs wrongly identify as much as 19-25% oflegitimate incoming email as spam

Major Problems

AOL receives roughly 2 billion e-mailmessages a day, of which about 75percent are blocked and another 4 to 7percent are sent to the bulk folder.

Source: 3/14/04 ClickZ News

Increase Your DeliverablePercentage

E-mail message

Internetbasedfilters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

ISP andcorporate

filters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

Personale-mailclient

• key words• blacklists• attachments

Recipientperception

• subject line• from address• content

Your goal is to increase the percentage ofrecipients who move from stage to stage.

Why e-mail is not delivered…

There are various “stop points” or“filters”

E-mail message

Internetbasedfilters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

ISP andcorporate

filters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

Filter Scoring Tech talk: rules based heuristic engine combined

with a genetic algorithm blah blah blah... The point is: there are MANY different algorithms

used to denote an e-mail as spam

Black Lists Blacklist: a fancy name for a pre-determined

filter Used by ISPs and e-mail clients (outlook’s spam

filter) Based on exclusion and result in false positives Many ISPs delete e-mails containing URLs on

their blacklists without bothering to notify thesender (source: ClickZ)

White Lists Whitelist: a fancy name for a list of trusted

senders Whitelists are inclusionary, focusing on certifying

legitimate e-mail sources The bonded sender program is an example of a whitelist

Playing nice with AOL

Get on the AOL Whitelist Get on AOL Enhanced Whitelist

Images and links will appear by default 30 days good performance will automatically get on

on there Get an AOL Test Account ($20/month) become familiar with the AOL client's nuances check your messages via AOL's Web interface

Playing nice with AOL

Add information along the following line to the topof your AOL messages: Please add our e-mail address,

newsletter@yourdomain.com, to your AOL address book.(Just click on the address book in your e-mail account,put newsletter@yourdomain.com on your list ofaddresses, and click "add.")

Send messages to AOL separately HTML rendering

90-95 percent of AOL subscribers use version 6.0 or later(less HTML rendering issues)

Do no use: scripts (e.g., JavaScript, VBScript), Java,frames and IFrames, Tooltips, ActiveX, video, audio,external style sheets, and meta refresh.

Even more on AOL

Remove all bad addresses Do not resend a “hard bounce” Monitor feedback loop and complaint

reporting

Notes on CAN-SPAM legislation Federal standards for sending e-mail Signed into law December 16, 2003 CAN-SPAM = Controlling the Assault of Non-

Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of2003

Adherence has been pitiful: In July CAN-SPAM compliance was less than 1%

(source: MX Logic) 16% of mailers tested weren't honoring opt-out requests as

prescribed by CAN-SPAM(source Jupiter Research)

DOJ recently announced it has arrested and indicted dozensof spammers and Internet fraudsters.

5 Simple ways to adhere to CAN-SPAM

Make sure every piece of information in headersis accurate, true, and in no way misleading.

Include an opt-out link. Immediately andzealously honor opt-out and unsubscriberequests.

Include your physical business address. Indicate if the e-mail is an advertisement. Clearly mark sexually explicit material.

Why e-mail is not delivered…

There are various “stop points” or“filters”

E-mail message

Internetbasedfilters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

ISP andcorporate

filters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

Personale-mailclient

• key words• blacklists• attachments

Spam filters built into MicrosoftOutlook

Search your hard drive for filters.txt

Source: Harvest Digital, September 2003

Pornography?

Source: Harvest Digital, September 2003

Outlook thinks it is…

“over 18”

Source: Harvest Digital, September 2003

Why e-mail is not delivered…

There are various “stop points” or“filters”

E-mail message

Internetbasedfilters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

ISP andcorporate

filters

• key words• blacklists• attachments

Personale-mailclient

• key words• blacklists• attachments

Recipientperception

• subject line• from address• content

Recipient Perception - Why wedrive away customers

Source: Quris, September 2003

Best Practices for E-Mail Writing

Managing “Recipient Perception” From field

Identifies the brand Be simple, clear

Subject lines Defines offer in clear and interesting terms Information is more powerful than teases “Guess what?” 45 character maximum (Hotmail) Test, test, test

http://www.emaillabs.com/from_subject_line_tool.html

Managing “Recipient Perception”

45 characters

E-Mail components: bestpractices, cont.

Email body Be brief Write to be scanned, not read Use subheads, bullets to stress key points Be brief Key call-to-action should be “above the fold” Don’t forget opt out Be brief

Be more relevant Easy ways to customize content:

Time since last action Time since last site visit Behavior on site Follow up emails

• Not opened• Opened, not clicked• Clicked, not purchased

When to E-Mail

Never on a Monday or Friday (ingeneral)

Avoid the morning spam session Be sensitive of time zones

HTML or Plain Text E-Mails

HTML Can be a much better presentation Can draw the eye to more than one section Can cause deliverability issues Can cause HTML rendering issues

Plain Text Tried and true Can come across more personal Ensured to be read by all e-mail clients

Web sites mentioned in thispresentation:

ClickZhttp://www.clickz.com

AOL Whitelistshttp://postmaster.info.aol.com/guidelines/sender.htmlhttp://postmaster.info.aol.com/guidelines/enhanced.html

E-Mail Labs – Test your subject and from fieldshttp://www.emaillabs.com/from_subject_line_tool.html

Questions / Thank you