The Whitelist

Reinforce Trust With These Email Deliverability Best Practices

Recently I’ve been having a very frustrating experience. My emails haven’t been getting through. As someone that constantly writes about email deliverability and the importance of adhering to email marketing best practices, the irony of this recent development hasn’t escaped me. Granted, the emails I’m referring to are personal emails, from my personal gmail account, to someone who is expecting my emails, but this whole thing got me thinking: If I’m not assured my emails are getting through to one recipient who has written back and forth with me, and who, I assume, has added me to their “safe sender” list, how can you, as an email marketer, be sure that your emails are getting delivered to all of the subscribers on your recipient list?

Email deliverability remains one of the greatest email marketing challenges for a reason. The better your email deliverability, the more trusted your email sender reputation becomes, which equals more opened emails, and increased number of click throughs and conversions. All of this results in one meaningful effect to your bottom line: your ROI will climb.

The major obstacles to email deliverability are lack of consumer trust in email, and ISP blocking.

Consumer trust in email is under fire in two ways:

1) Trustworthiness: Recipients are increasingly more wary of unknown or unrecognized senders. They are on high “spam”-alert and scan each email asking, “Can I trust that this email is coming from whom it claims to be coming from?”

2) Reliability: Is email a reliable source of communication? How do I know that what I’ve signed up for is what’s going to actually come to my inbox?

So how does an email marketer reinforce trust in the messages they send?

Content. Content is king when it comes to restoring trust in email, and increasing email deliverability. Make sure that the content of your emails and subject lines don’t contain words that tend to set off spam filters (a few high-trigger words include: millions, easy income, cash, money, and others you’re probably unwittingly aware of. Look no further than your spam folder for a laundry list!). In addition to eliminating spam triggers from your email marketing messages, it’s crucial that you keep your messages relevant and specific to your subscribers. Using advanced email marketing features such as dynamic (personalized) content and triggered messaging, which automatically sends messages based on time and/or actions or inactions that your subscribers perform, means that each message will be tailored for each subscriber’s needs.

Trust = Sender Accountability. You should ensure that your ESP has adopted authentication standards. If the top ISPs in the world block your email because it doesn’t comply with their authentication systems, then you might as well have burned your email marketing budget in a beach bonfire.

Don’t worry, though: as daunting as email deliverability can seem, you should be working with an ESP that will help you. ESPs have been addressing these problems for years and are the experts on email compliance and deliverability. You’re not alone! If you need help selecting an ESP, reach out to ClickMail today.

3 Ways a Blog Can Make Your Email Marketing Easier

Keeping a blog can give a seriously large lift to responses from your emails. Maybe you know this, but you’re just too busy for blogging and email marketing.

Actually, you’re probably not. Write blog posts, and you’ll find your email campaign is taken care of. A blog can actually bring in subscribers, provide ready-made content for your emails and even lend your campaign a personable tone.

A Source of New Subscribers

Blogging means that with every post, you’re adding fresh content to your site. Search engines LOVE fresh content.

Stale, out-of-date content disappoints searchers, so search engines are designed to always provide something new. If you’re continually posting new content on your site (especially if you supplement with keywords), it’ll rank higher so searchers find it.

When those searchers get to your site, they’ll be able to read your fresh content. They’ll also be able to read that sign-up form in your sidebar (you do have one, yes? If not, go set one up, then come back and finish reading.)

And there, they can sign up to your list.

Instant Email Content

Once someone’s on your list, they probably won’t come back to your site often. For the most part, they’ll expect to stay updated through your emails.

That means you can use your blog posts as email content. The easiest way is to set up a blog broadcast, which pulls any new blog posts directly into your email template as a new message. (Like this.)

If you want to have a greater hand in making each email more unique, you can take bits and pieces of your posts and weave them together, writing a message about all your topics together, and drop in links to the various articles as you mention them.

And a Personable Tone

When your email content comes from blog posts, it’s most likely less formal than the average official company broadcast. With this more personable tone, subscribers can get to know you and feel more comfortable with your brand.

And when we’re comfortable with the brand, we’re more comfortable whipping out our wallets.

Easy, Right?

So you see how by adding a blog to your to do list, your list actually becomes shorter? List building, email writing and even traffic generation are scratched right off (or at least require far less time). Turns out, you’re too busy not to blog.

- Amanda Gagnon writes about email marketing for AWeber, a leading email service provider for small-to-medium businesses. For more email marketing tips from AWeber, you can subscribe to their twice-weekly emails here.

How to Build Your List

As an email marketer, you’re always looking to add more names to your email list. But as with many things in life, we sometimes get too focused on quantity over quality.

Which doesn’t sound like a problem in the world of email marketing, until you realize a list based on quantity will decrease your email marketing ROI and even negatively impact your email deliverability rate.

In our last post, we wrote about the benefits to culling your list for more email marketing ROI. But let’s get back to basics and talk about list building.

For a list that will yield valuable email marketing ROI, you have to focus on a quality list (which doesn’t always correlate to quantity).

Do:

• Have something of value to offer in exchange for their email address. Think of it as a quid pro quo exchange. Everyone wins, if you do it right.
• Sell your email signups: Make the reason to sign up for your emails compelling. Don’t just ask for an email address without specifying why.
• Ask people to sign up in multiple locations: Where do you have a web presence besides your website? Make sure an email sign-up link or box is available and visible everywhere.
• Offer great content that people will share. This will lead to more sign-ups (and keep your current subscribers)!

On the other hand,

Don’t:

• Add everyone your company comes into contact with to your database.
• Use sweepstakes that get you plenty of names from people who want to win…but who never want to hear from you again.
• Use third-party or co-registration techniques.

It might not be the fastest way to a massive list, but the list you’ll end up with will be full of subscribers who want to hear from you.

Make sure you remember that behind every email address is a person. Who values their privacy, and guards their information fiercely. Maintain their trust by delivering what you promised, and thank them for subscribing to your emails!

ClickMail is proud to announce that the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal has ranked ClickMail Marketing as one of the top 50 fastest growing private companies in Silicon Valley. This is the second time ClickMail’s growth has been recognized by a major publication in recent weeks. Previously, Inc. Magazine ranked the email marketing vendor 2,109 on a list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies. ClickMail will be recognized by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal at a private awards event on October 13th in Mountain View, CA.

“We are continue to build our reputation in the email marketing industry as the vendor-agnostic ESP alternative, helping clients to gain more ROI from their email marketing programs,” said ClickMail CEO Marco Marini. “This additional recognition by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal is a welcome validation of the effort we are putting forth and the need clients have for our type of end-to-end email marketing services. Without the clients, we wouldn’t have this explosive growth.”

ClickMail is growing rapidly by bringing the latest in new services and email technology to our clients, who are also benefiting by increased growth and success in their email marketing campaigns. From building an online tool for selecting a new ESP to acquiring the Bay Area’s Strategic Design Group, we have been creating new tools and offering new services that help our clients keep pace in the fast-moving email marketing industry. With over a dozen ESP systems in our portfolio, we offer the nation’s largest selection of ESPs so that we can ensure the best match is made for every client. We also pride ourselves on our excellent support team that works with our clients on fulfilling their specific email marketing needs, from increasing email deliverability to achieving maximum ROI.

Let ClickMail Marketing help you with all of your email marketing needs: contact us today!

List Segmentation for Big Payoffs

In the fast moving world of email marketing, if your email marketing messages are specific and relevant to your subscribers’ individual needs, your email marketing campaign will stand out from the rest. And it’s impossible to attain targeted messaging and individual relevance with just one message that goes out to one big list. This means it’s time to segment your lists by one or more grouping options like demographic and/or interest.

It might seem like a huge challenge to segment your list but it doesn’t have to be. In the latest issue of the ClickMail Marketer, we outline the top grouping options for optimal list segmentation, and give you reasons why these options are among the most effective. After all, the main purpose of list segmentation is to yield a highly relevant and targeted email campaign, which means a better sender reputation for you! And having a good sender reputation leads to increased email deliverability, more email opens, higher click-through rates, enhanced customer loyalty, decreased unsubscribes, and increased sales. In other words, everything you want out of your email marketing campaigns.

If you’re not sure how to get started with your list segmentation strategy or implementation, check out the September issue of the ClickMail Marketer. And if it still sounds difficult (or if you’d rather not take it on yourself), let ClickMail help. ClickMail can even point you towards ESP options that enable list segmentation. List segmentation is an investment now that will definitely pay off later. Find out how to get started in the September ClickMail Marketer.

3 Simple Ways to Strengthen Subscriber Loyalty via Email Marketing

As an email marketer, you are undoubtedly familiar with the upward stages of customer loyalty:

Prospective -> First-time subscriber -> Customer -> Advocate

Occasionally, your subscriber won’t make it to customer (“unsubscribe”) or your customer will become inactive (automatic email delete, decreased email opens, decreased/no click-throughs). Aside from the obvious important “hook” point to get your prospective to subscriber with email marketing best practices, these are other points in the customer life-cycle at which you as an email marketer have a great opportunity to bring your subscriber back into the fold.

Ultimately, nurturing your customer relationship through email marketing best practices will assure you that you have a good amount of the all-important advocates spreading the good word about how awesome your company/message/non-profit/small business is.

Here are three simple but effective tools to add to your email marketing best practices toolbox to get your prospectives to the advocate level, for keeps.

1. Open lines of communication: In every relationship, communication is key. Just ask any couples therapist, business coach, or HR consultant. The relationship you have with your email subscribers is not so different. Research has shown that when customers receive multiple methods of communication, with interesting and varied content, they are more likely to remain loyal. In addition, keep your receptivity to inquiries and comments open. Include a prominent “Contact us” link in your emails and ensure that your subscribers receive a reply.

2. Provide support: Taking #1 a bit further, using an email marketing campaign to ensure new and existing clients feel supported in their requests for help and additional information will build customer relationships and increase loyalty. Marketers can provide information, insight, news, advice, and even technical help to subscribers through effective email marketing campaigns, and also respond on an ad-hoc basis to individual queries. Keeping a log of inquiries can also be pooled into a “FAQ” for your website, collected for future email newsletter or blog topics, or otherwise addressed in an aggregate fashion. All of these responses validate a subscriber’s feeling of value to the company.

3. Ask for opinions: Email marketing best practices maintain that the more engagement you have with your subscribers, the more loyalty they will have for your business. We’ve already addressed two ways to increase subscriber engagement through communicating effectively and in a varied fashion, and being responsive to comments and help requests. But there’s really no better way to make someone feel valued than by asking for his or her opinion (and actually listening, with noticeable effects). Consider integrating periodic short surveys or questions into your email marketing strategy. Even better, provide the results of the survey in a future email newsletter, and the implementation effects directly impacted by your subscribers’ opinions.

By reaching out to your subscribers, you’re reinforcing that their opinions and feelings matter to you, and giving them a way to make their voices heard. As a result, their loyalty to you will increase and you’ll get valuable feedback. It’s a true win-win for everyone.

How to Kill an Email Marketing Campaign: Typos and Grammatical Errors

We talk a lot about killer content, well, making your email marketing campaign killer. But while uninteresting, generic, too-long or too-technical content can hurt your email campaign, there’s nothing that will kill your email marketing campaign faster than an email with spelling errors.

I’ve always suspected that typos, spelling errors, and to a lesser degree, punctuation and grammatical errors hurt the sender’s reputation, and ultimately, the bottom line. A single error in an email looks sloppy and unprofessional, and can even be a red flag to ISPs that the email might be spam. But the ramifications of a typo can indeed be worse than making a bad impression to your subscribers.

In a recent study conducted across the pond and reported via BBC news, “an analysis of [sales] figures (from an online retail website) shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half… Sales figures suggest that  misspellings put off consumers who could have concerns about a website’s credibility.”

The decreased sales figures are unquestionably attributable to shoppers wary of fraud. When a consumer is wary of fraud or phishing efforts, as they are when glancing through their emails, misspellings could be a make-or-break issue.

Although this UK study was conducted on the effect of misspellings on a retail website, the results have even greater impact on email marketing campaigns. Typos in emails are widely associated with phishers and spammers. If your subscribers believe an email may be fraudulent, or even if they are unimpressed by seeing unprofessional errors and typos, they will report those emails as spam, which teaches the ISPs to start blocking emails from those senders. This equals a plummeting sender reputation, and before you can say “oops!”  there goes your email deliverability.

It’s simply part of your email best practices toolbox to proofread, edit, and proofread again. Make sure that any copy destined for your email campaigns is spell-checked and proofread by at least two or three pairs of eyes. You don’t want to kill your killer content with a simple typo. Moreover, your email deliverability rates and ultimately, your bottom line, will thank you.

Email Marketing Best Practices: Making Your Subject Line Sing

As an email marketer, your goal is to increase your overall ROI, and that’s accomplished by improving not just email deliverability but also open rates. And as we wrote in July,  while email deliverability rates improved, from 93% to 95%, email open rates fell 9 percentage points to 17% in 2010, resulting in hundreds of millions of emails that were delivered to inboxes and never opened.

We’ve been considering reasons for this decline, and more importantly, ways to ensure your open rates are staying consistent, or better yet, improving.

Anything that captures your attention usually has a great teaser. In the world of journalism, it’s known as the headline. In the world of email marketing, it’s the subject line. Subject lines are essentially headlines for emails, and in this context, they should definitely adhere to the Four Fundamental “U’s” of Headline Writing:

1. USEFUL: Is the content valuable to the reader?
2. ULTRA-SPECIFIC: Make the expectations on what’s inside the email clear.
3. UNIQUE: How compelling and interesting is the promised content?
4. URGENT: Conveying a feeling that the message is important and intriguing enough to be read NOW is the difference between opening an email when it appears in the inbox, waiting until later, or deleting without opening.

But because email subject lines have their own formats, show up truncated in a number of email programs, and must convey enough information to lead to an “open email” response but not too much such that the entire purpose of the email is delivered in the subject line, email subject line best practices have to get a little more specific to be truly effective.

Keeping the Four “U” Fundamentals in mind is a great start to successfully developing effective email subject lines. Beyond these, adhering to the following in your subject lines are specific to improving email deliverability:

• Identification: Your subscriber needs to know at a glance who the email message is from. If you’re providing useful, unique, and specific content, your subscriber will know the emails are coming from a trusted source.
• Consistency: Be smart about how you use the “From” field – ensure it comes from the same source each time, even if you have different senders, and that the source is identifiable to the subscriber. You can also consider starting every subject line with the same identifier, so that your subscriber will know what to expect from that email.
• Useful and Ultra-Specific: Of the four “U” fundamentals, Useful and [Ultra]-Specific are of most important to your subscribers – ensuring the content is valuable to them, and their expectations are met means a greater chance for increased email deliverability.
• Use Urgency sparingly: Use urgency in your subject line only occasionally, otherwise consistent urgency becomes like an email-version of “the boy who cried wolf” and your subscribers will start to tune you out. When urgency is useful, like when there is a compelling reason to act now, or if there’s a looming deadline, this is a great technique to use to ensure that the people opening your emails don’t miss out.
• “Brevity is the soul of…” Email Subject Lines: Subject lines by definition should be short, even if there is no defined character limit. Subject lines don’t always show up in full on mobile devices or certain email applications, and it’s no use if you spend most of your time crafting a perfect subject line only to have the majority of it chopped off by your subscriber’s email provider or mobile device.

If you are able to create useful, specific, and occasionally urgent and unique-teasers in a powerfully compact subject line, your email marketing program is bound to succeed and your deliverability rates will soar. And if you can combine intriguing teasers of subject lines with compelling email content, congratulations! You’ve unlocked the secret to successful email marketing.  What is your secret? What have you found works well in your email marketing program? What hasn’t been as effective? Share with us: We’d love to hear from you.

Take Your Email Best Practices to the Next Level with Integrations

When basic one-off sending has become too much work, consider integrations with your CRM and/or an API to automate and further segment your email marketing campaigns. You’ll still be able to adhere to email best practices, but you’ll save yourself time and probably end up with happier subscribers.

By one-offs, I mean anything that isn’t automated into a campaign or trigger. For example, you might be sending out an email newsletter once per month. That’s a one-off because you create that email just for that purpose and manually send it to your in-house email list every month. If it’s one newsletter, once per month, it’s no big deal.

However, if it’s four email marketing messages plus a newsletter and you’re doing them all as one-offs, you might want to integrate, build an API or turn to a CRM tool like Salesforce.com or SugarCRM to reduce your workload. By doing this you can also send more personalized content in the one-off emails.

First off, you’ll need to decide which CRM to use, or if you have one already in use, find out if your ESP has an integration in place. If not, many ESPs can accommodate you with your own integration through an API, but this will require a person on staff (or outsourced) to create the integration.

Integrations can be a great asset to any email marketer in that they allow for your data to be managed all in one place, reducing workload and the chance of errors. They also allow for more advanced segmenting and targeting of emails. For example, an integration can enable you to send a particular email only to customers who have purchased a specific product. Or you can also suppress these customers from sends if you don’t want them to receive these types of emails again. This helps avoid added costs (and the risk of being annoying) for sending to subscribers who obviously wouldn’t have a need to purchase the product again. On the other hand, integrating means you can send relevant products to customers who have purchased a product from the same family of products.

Email best practices work when they put the customer first. Although it might feel more automated and therefore less personal, integration with a CRM or building an API for such integration will likely lead to more personal, not let, email marketing messages.

Email Marketing Best Practices - Getting Personal

I shouldn’t say “oldie but goodie” but I think something six months old is actually old in the email marketing world.

I am referring to a MarketingSherpa chart published in February 2011  showing tactics used to improve the relevancy of emails. I looked it up again as I’ve been thinking on making email not only more relevant, but more, shall we say, personal? And by personal, I mean customer-centric.

In a way, personal is what we mean when we say relevant. What is relevant email content to me differs from what’s relevant to you why? Because we are two different people with different wants, needs, interests, likes and dislikes. When an email is truly relevant, it feels personal…like it is meant for me.

When you look at this MarketingSherpa chart showing tactics used by organizations to improve relevancy, all five do just that–improve relevancy–and by making the emails not only more relevant, but more personal.

The messages are segmented: More personal.

Organizations use preference centers so subscribers can get email when and how they want: More personal.

Messages are dynamic: More personal.

And triggered messages arrive at just the right time in just the right circumstances: More personal.

More relevant, yes. But these tactics work because they make email more personal. And that’s email marketing best practices at their best.

Are you getting personal with your customers yet? If not, call on ClickMail.