Best Practices Checklist: Email Marketing Best Practices 101

In This Article…
If you’re considering implementing an email marketing program or are currently emailing but experiencing underperformance, this article provides you with a list of ten best practices that will assure improvement in your email marketing campaigns.  

The Top Ten
Despite what you may hear, email marketing is a complicated process with many moving parts. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a successful email marketing program or campaign while keeping things relatively simple. We’ve narrowed down the ten best practices that you absolutely must remember. If you follow them, you certainly won’t fail!

1. Make Sure That Your Email Has Many Obvious Links
The purpose of your email is to drive traffic to your landing page, product page or website. It’s really that simple to define the main purpose of an email. Without driving clicks to your page or website, users can’t convert to sign-ups or customers. They key to accomplishing this is, quite simply, capitalize on every moment where a user may feel compelled to click. Include lots of links (at least one per paragraph of text) and make sure that your links look like links. Using strong calls to action and even authoritative “click here” messaging will also help you.

Takeaway Message: It’s a best practice to have many links and to make sure that those links are obvious to the user.

2. Minimize Your Use of Images
We’ve covered this in great detail in a previous article, but always keep in mind that an email is not a print mail piece. Many (if not most) of your recipients will not see the images included in your email, which means that every image you include can be wasted space. Use well-coded html instead of image heavy design. Never send an email that is simply one big image and certainly don’t put any messaging in an image that a user must see to complete the action you want from an email (i.e. “click here” or “order now” messages).

Takeaway Message: Use images sparingly, rely on html to enhance the look of your email and never use an image to convey a critical or important message.

3. Make It Easy to Unsubscribe
It may seem counter intuitive to make it easy for a user to leave your mailing list, but the other option is much less appealing. When users get frustrated while trying to figure out how to remove their email from your list, they eventually just start to flag your email as spam. Every user who notes your email as being spam counts against your sender reputation with email providers and makes it harder (and sometimes impossible) to get your email into the inbox instead of the junk folder.

Takeaway Message: Have clear, easy-to-find unsubscribe links that require minimal action from the user to complete the task of unsubscribing.

4. Follow Spam Tips From the Beginning and EVERY Time That You Send Email!
We’ve also covered in detail the best ways to avoid getting flagged as spam and removed from your users’ inboxes, but we can’t emphasize enough how important it is to follow those steps. More importantly, it’s important to follow them from the beginning of your email marketing effort and to follow them every single time you send. We know that it’s tempting to send a harder sales email that trends against some of our advice for staying out of the spam folder, but it only takes one email that looks like its high spam to keep you out of the inbox for weeks, months or years afterwards.

Takeaway Message: Even if it means your email isn’t as effective as a sales tool, following all of the steps to avoid being flagged as spam is absolutely, unquestionably critical with every send.

5. Maximize Your Email Template Dimensions
You don’t have a lot of space in a person’s inbox to convey a message, and most of your users will be viewing your email in a preview pane with the images turned off. Make sure that your html email template isn’t more than 600 pixels wide and that you clearly get your value proposition and at least one link into the first 100 pixels of height. It won’t look as nice as putting a shiny header graphic up there, but it will yield better results. Also, consider a secondary column on the right or left hand side in order to get more information above the fold of an email preview pane!

Takeaway Message: Design for what your email will look like in a 600×200 pixel space without images loaded! How it looks in those dimensions with that restriction is how must users will see the final email.

6. Keep Your Text Short and Easy to Scan
Most users aren’t going to read the full text of your email. They’re going to scan it for key points that they may be interested in. Keep your text short (very small paragraphs or bullets) and use font bolding and additional colors to highlight words or phrases that you know will be important to your users and clients. Too much text will get your email deleted just about as fast as anything, and it creates more risk for triggering spam filters.

Takeaway Message: Less is more! Content may drive the internet, but it doesn’t improve email performance. Write concisely, user trigger and keywords and make sure that your most important messages are highlighted or bolded.

7. Keep Your Email List Clean
There’s no value to not taking the time and making the effort to make sure that you’re removing bad email addresses from your house list. Making sure that incorrectly formatted email addresses are caught when somebody signs up and then “pruning” addresses that are returned as undeliverable, non-existent or with full inboxes from your list before the next send isn’t optional if you want to have a successful email marketing program. If your list starts to show a higher percentage of undeliverable email addresses, email providers will flag you as spam.

Takeaway Message: Even if it creates more work for you, make sure that you’re pruning your list and removing bad emails from it. The result if you don’t will put you in the spam folder!

8. Properly Use Alt Text, Title Text and Linking with Images
Because using images in email can create dead space, maximizing the code behind those images is critical. Make sure that ALL of your images have both alt text and title text as different browsers will read those two types of text differently (Alt text and title text are the text messages that appear when an image doesn’t load or when somebody hovers over an image with a mouse). Also, make sure that all of your images are actually links to your landing page or website. This way, at a minimum, your potential image dead space can still drive traffic to your destination.

Takeaway Message: Make sure that all of your images are properly coded. This means not only making sure that the image height and width is properly defined but also that the image has alt text, title text and is linked to a webpage or landing page.

9. Send Test Emails BEFORE You Send to Your Main List
There’s nothing worse than sending an email and then finding out that it went right to the spam folder or that something in your email layout broke in Hotmail’s email viewer or Outlook’s preview pane. Before you send an email to your entire list, send a test version to a test account using each of the big email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail/Live/MSN and any account using an Outlook client). If there are any significant segments of your list using another email provider, you’ll want to include that in your test as well. If you catch any errors, there’s still time to start disassembling your email and fixing them, or remove a problematic segment of your email list.

Takeaway Message: Catching an error in an email sent to a seed address is useless if it happens after you’ve already sent to the main list. Use your seed addresses to test send to and check formatting and deliverability before you send to the main list.

10. Make Sure to Piggyback a Text Version of the Email
We’ve previously discussed how to decide if you should use an html email or a text only email, and our recommendation is that you use both. But, at a minimum, if you are using an html email you must piggyback a text only version of the email onto your send. A number of people do opt to view email as text only, and, increasingly, people are reading text-based email only on mobile phones.

Takeaway Message: Make sure, no matter what, that your html email has a piggybacked text email attached to it! It’s that simple!

Bonus Tip! Always Ask Users to Add You to Their Contact List!
At every opportunity, remind users that they can be assured that they won’t miss out on the valuable information that they love receiving from you if they add your send address to their email contacts list. The more people you get doing that, the better your deliverability will be!

These ten best practices won’t make you a perfect email marketer, but they will certainly make you better than most! Just use these tips as a checklist when putting your email campaign together and you’ll be fine!

The first step to getting started with email marketing, whether you’ve got your best practices down or need to work to implement them into your program, is to select a quality email sending partner. Comm100, who provided you with this complimentary list, offers a completely free, hosted email and newsletter solution. It’s both a great long-term and short-term solution to getting your email marketing off of the ground to just about any type of customer or client email list!

Carimi T-Vice All Black Affair 2010 at Soho Studio Miami, Fl HISTORY OF THE HAITIAN FLAG For a countrys citizens, the national flag is indisputably a symbol of general pride. They would consider any offense to their flag to be an offense to their country. Beyond being an icon though, a flags origin can often say a lot about a nations social make-up or history. Haitians feel no different and even reserve a special day to honor it. That day is May 18th. In Haiti, Flag Day is a major national holiday celebrated with great fanfare on the grounds of the national palace. Flag Day is also observed by Haitians in the Diaspora. In The United States for example, teenagers whether in High School give homage to the red and blue by carrying it around with them or on their persona for at least a week. Haitis flags origin is tightly linked to a history of struggle for freedom. In the early days of revolt in St. Domingue, the slaves did not have a flag. However, they did notice that their former masters were using the French Flag. From 1791 to about 1793, the revolt became more widespread and gave rise to a number of large groups still fighting independently. In those times, each main leader would use any piece of cloth as a flag. Slowly the slave movement found some synergy and came to follow the leadership one main person: Toussaint Louverture. Realizing that you cannot fight three enemies at the same time, Toussaint and the army of revolted slaves fought successively for the Spanish …
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Building Customer Relations With Email Newsletters

Email marketing is one of the best ways to establish and deepen relations with your customers. Why? First, the people who opt-in to your email newsletter are people who are genuinely interested in your products, services and expertise. They want more information. They are members of your targeted market. A prospect sold on your expertise will soon be sold on your products or services.

Secondly, email marketing is incredibly affordable. While traditional advertising requires a hefty budget for design, printing and production, media placement, and so many more, the cost for sending a mass email to many customers and prospective customers is extremely low per contact.

Third, email newsletters are so easy to create and use on a regular basis, and can target customers with messages that are tailored specifically to them. Newsletters can also be formatted to maintain and reinforce a company’s branding and corporate image.

Can’t you just send out an email from your own email account? Sure, you can. But there are inherent risks in doing so, and even more benefits from using a paid service. First, when sending email from your own account to many recipients, you run the risk of being blacklisted by anti-spam measures. While getting blacklisted is not an irreversible obstacle, proving the validity of your emails to the offended anti-spam organization can be troublesome, and your emails, even your normal emails, may be undeliverable to many addresses until the situation is resolved.

On the other hand, using an email service lessens the likelihood of getting flagged by the spam cops. Email campaigns are “dripped” on a specific schedule to specific service providers to stay under the radar of the anti-spam measures.

Most paid services also provide powerful statistics for email campaigns that help measure effectiveness. Imagine being able to see who has read your email, who has clicked links in your mail, which ads were most effective. Imagine being able to track when someone forwards to a friend, and then add their friend to your subscriber list! With statistics like these, your campaigns can be adjusted regularly to return the best results.

Online Outbox will do all of this for you! Try it for free now!

Email newsletters are extremely effective in bringing in more visitors to your website, resulting in more sales. It is greatly effective in bringing return customers and picking up new customers as well. With a proven email newsletter system, your marking campaign will soar! Your email newsletter is an invaluable resource for your business. Get started today with Online Outbox!

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Email Marketing – Three Keys Before You Hit Send

Unfortunately, the first word that pops to mind when many people mention email marketing is ‘spam.’ The junk mail of the modern era, spam is frequently held up as an abominable combination of inconvenience and social evil, with spam blockers and anti-spam petitions filling the news online and offline. Of course, this means legitimate email marketing campaigns can get lost as weary consumers indiscriminately flag all marketing material as spam just to keep their inboxes clutter free.

How then can a company that has a legitimate, creative idea for an email advertisement series avoid getting caught in the spam trap? There are three key steps good copywriters and marketers can take to set themselves apart and boost their message open rates.

A Cautionary Tale

Important campaigns usually succeed or fail well before they’re ever launched – in the planning stages. Consider a recent and already infamous Intel advertisement. The advertisement had athletic sprinters lined up to race, a reasonable attempt to link the company’s processors to speedy performance. It failed because these athletes all were African American gentlemen who appeared to be bowing to a tall, smug looking Caucasian businessman. This was a clear breakdown in the planning process. No one asked the fairly obvious question ‘What could be wrong with this image?’ Intel pulled the advertisement and publicly admitted the mistake, but the image remains as a vivid reminder that cutting corners in the planning phase can bruise your brand.

1. Lay the Groundwork

The lesson here is that simple research, like enlisting a test audience, can mean the difference between hit and miss. The same holds true for email advertising campaigns – research is vital. Just because you can send out 100,000 generic emails within a few minutes of setting up a campaign idea does not in any way mean you should. Strategic planning up front not only can save you time in the long run, it also can secure your results.

2. Know the Audience

Previous articles have referred to the phenomenon of audience-influenced brands. This is particularly true now that the Web has become so extensively accessible. People’s opinions can catch public attention almost instantly, and word of mouth can spread across the entire world in a heartbeat. Whether or not you want the audience to control your brand is irrelevant; it can and will happen of its own accord, and you should be prepared for it.

Have you taken the time to really get to know your audience? There are thousands of Internet communities dedicated to every conceivable topic, hobby, interest, or fad and your product very likely falls into one of these. Visit these user forums, find out what people are saying, what needs are not being met, and what the general opinion is. Also, don’t just mine for information, but participate in the discussion. Engage and learn how people think and what they want to know about things. This isn’t a chore; this is an opportunity that businesses have rarely had in the past, a goldmine of information for any marketer to tap.

3. Kick up the Content

In many cases, businesses fail to treat email as a legitimate medium, although they’re eager to take advantage of it. Disregarding outright spam, even some well-intentioned ‘campaigns’ amount to little more than a poorly organized message presented in a jumble of mismatched colors rather than a serious attempt at focused communication.

The content of the email has to be strong. The first line has to provide a good hook, the body has to get the core, essential details out quickly and effectively, and the end has to have a call to action (be it a purchase or a website visit). Take the time to craft a message that shows you respect the reader’s intelligence, and put as much thought into the structure of the email as you would any other example of your best writing.

Once these three key elements are in place, consider a test circulation of your campaign before officially kicking it off. There is very little substitute for getting another pair of eyes to look over your hard work. They can spot unfortunate mistakes, call attention to strong points, and help you refine the process before the message is irrevocably out on the Web.

David Rovics: Black Flag Flying Come all you sailors near and far You honest men know who you are All of you who’d dare be free Combine with us upon the sea Together we will drink a toast Ride the wind on down the coast See the merchant ship to board Raise a jar and swing a sword Watch to see the merchant captain crying When they see the black flag flying The war with Spain is over now No more Jack over the bow We fight for no one but our class We’re gonna kick some captain’s ass All you who’d live before you die Come give an honest life a try Sail beneath the skull and bones Pay no heed to crowns and thrones No more greedy princes lying When you sail with the black flag flying No more whips and no more chains To live free or die is what remains If life is too short either way You might as well live free today All for one and one for all We’ll board the ship and make the call Join us, all you good men And have your liberty again Watch the crew now leave their captain frying As they come sail with the black flag flying Here’s to Fly and Roberts, brave and true And Mary Kelly’s gallant crew It seems to me the world is ours Watch as the mighty Navy cowers We have no nation but the sea No creed but that we will live free We’ll loot and burn all that we can That’s run by a dishonest man Their end is near and there is no denying When they see the black flag flying If I could predict the future then I would But all I know is this is good 1720 is the year And there is nothing …
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Email marketing Best Practices that are Commonly Ignored by Email Marketers – Lyris

The Ten Most-Ignored Email Best Practices

Over the last several years email has become one of the most preferred marketing tools and publishing channels. Every email marketing program follows a set of best practices. Some of these include signing up new subscribers and optimization of the email message for the best possible view.

Lyris, leaders in email marketing solutions, conducted an audit of 203 commercial email messages and found that few email marketers are using all the possible best practices in their email marketing programs. This meant that they were not getting the maximum from their email marketing efforts.

During the course of our audit, we divided senders into six market segments: publishers, retailers, travel, financial services, business services and consumer services. We found that some segments had adapted to using email best practice more so than other segments.

The Ten Most-Ignored Email Best Practices

1. Subscription-administration center in each email message Percentage Rate of users: 17.7 %
Subscription-administration is an important component of your email message that helps to keep you connected to your email newsletter subscriber and ensures that your mails are not flagged as unsolicited email.
Tips: Somewhere in your site, you should provide an email address to unsubscribe followed by an unsubscribe link. You should also furnish a link to your privacy page, along with your reference page. Always include your contact information that states your street address, phone number and email address.

2. Site search function Percentage Rate of users: 17.7 %
Tip: By providing a site search function within your email message, you will allow users to search through your site for anything from products, past article archives, company information, or any useful information that they may be seeking. This helps the subscriber to search without having to go to the main site and follow through with the search.

3. Forward to a friend link Percentage Rate of users: 25.1%
Tip: Providing a link to forward your email messages on to friends of the same interest, is far more efficient than just adding a line somewhere in the body of the email requesting that they forward the email. The best thing about using a link is that it is sent through your server, allowing you to track all those who forward your messages. It will calculate how often your emails are forwarded, and what actions are resulting from the forwarding link. By providing this link, it also eliminates any sending errors that may arise when recipients try to simply forward the mail through their email client.

4. Subscriber Link Percentage Rate of users: 27.1%
Tip: Offering a subscription link in your email newsletter allows all readers who had it forwarded from a friend to sign up. This subscriber link eliminates searching the site for instructions. By saving the email reader time, you may just score one more subscriber if it’s fast and efficient.

5. Add-to-safe-senders-list request Percentage rate of users: 35%
Tip: Making sure you are added to the approved or safe senders list keeps your emails from being blocked or targeted on a black list. Providing a safe senders list request will enable email readers to add you to their white-list, with convenience.

6. Web Version Link Percentage rate of users: 37.4
Tip: By providing a web version link, it allows email clients to view your email message in their web browser instead of a preview pane. Many have either blocked images or don’t support HTML messages.

7. Telephone contact number provided Percentage rate of users: 40.4%
Tip: If your reader or client wants to directly contact you, a contact number is imperative. Without one, you may just lose a sale, or prospective client. Many times users feel that email is less social than direct contact. By providing all contact information, you are providing that extra step for them, by cutting out the frustration that email often causes. No more hunting your web site in frustration trying to find your contact information, it will be right there at their disposal.

8. Displaying the recipient’s email address Percentage rate of users: 43.8
Tip: Having credibility is one of the biggest challenges of sending and receiving email messages. To take the fear away that your email is not credible, you should always help the reader that may have duplicate copies sent to them by displaying their email address so that they may determine what email address they wish to unsubscribe from your mailing list. Many times they will have different emails for different uses, and will get your email to each and every email listed.

9. Navigation links within the email directed to the web site Percentage rate of users: 48.3 %
Tip: Providing navigation links at the top of the email newsletters will strengthen your relationship with your readers. Using links in the newsletter with multiple sections or articles help your subscribers navigate more effectively. Having multiple site links let your readers see different portions of your web site that they would normally miss or not see at all. Having these navigation links adds value to your website as well.

10. Email address provided for feedback or contact purposes Percentage rate of users: 53.2%
Tip: Implementing an email contact gives your subscribers a fast and easy way to contact you. Subscribers often have questions they need answered in a timely manner, and having an email contact gives them the security to know that if a problem arises it will be resolved soon. Most email marketers add only an email address rather than a phone number. Every email marketer should implement this email marketing best practice for no other reason than to build character and rapport for a lasting relationship.

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Improve Email Deliverability: 15 Tips for Successful Email
Marketing

Delivering email newsletters and sales messages to opt-in
subscribers and customers is getting more exasperating—and more
expensive—by the day.

Delivery rates for email have gone through the virtual floor.
According to MarketingSherpa, one out of every six people who
asked to be on your mailing list won’t receive your email
newsletter or marketing message because a spam filter blocks it
by mistake.

Why you’re just not getting through to them As
you probably know, the challenge you are facing is primarily
spam filters, electronic and human. And no wonder. Consider
these sobering numbers:

10 out of 12 messages reviewed
are considered spam (Postini.com) average users receive
42 unwanted sales pitches a day (Jupiter Research) 70%
of all email messages will be spam by 2007 (Radicati Group)

Your emails fail to reach your subscribers for three basic
reasons. Either the email is blocked by the subscriber’s ISP or
enterprise firewall (in which case it never gets delivered), the
email is blocked by the subscriber’s spam filter (in which case
it gets delivered but is never seen) or the email is deleted by
an irritable subscriber with an overzealous delete-key-finger
who does not recognize your “From:” address or mistakes your
email subject line for something unwelcome.

But take heart. There are some tactics you can employ today to
increase your email deliverability scores and reach your
newsletter subscribers and customers with the email messages
they have asked you to wing their way.

1. Hire someone to monitor your mail Your most
expensive option is to retain the services of a third-party
vendor to monitor your email deliverability. For a fee,
ReturnPath.net, PiperSoftware.com, Deliverability.com,
DeliveryMonitor.com and other companies will seed your mailing
list seeded with hundreds of email addresses from a variety of
domains. When your email arrives, these firms record the time,
count the number of emails that escaped the spam filters, and
generate a report that shows deliverability scores for each ISP.
These reports help you notice which ISPs are blocking your
messages or only allowing a few to get through before blocking
the rest. You can take the steps needed to improve
deliverability.

2. Test your email messages for spam before
sending The above companies and a host of smaller
software firms let you run your email message by a spam filter
before sending. They search for “free,” “buy now” and other
words that trigger spam filters. That way, you can see if your
message is likely to be flagged as spam somewhere enroute, and
tweak where needed to improve your score before hitting Send.
Try the free service at www.ezinecheck.com.

3. Make sure your ISP is not on a blacklist
Spammers may have abused the servers of the autoresponder or
listserver service that you use. As a result, the major ISPs may
have blacklisted or blocked emails from these servers. To
discover if you are blacklisted, find the IP address of the
email server and do a spam database lookup at www. DNSstuff.com
or www.OpenRBL.org.

4. Slow down your email send rate Some ISPs set
a threshold for how many emails you can send during one session.
If you exceed this threshold, their software flags you as a
spammer and blocks the remainder of your messages. One way
around this wall is to send your messages in small bursts, say
200 at a time, with a pause of a few minutes between bursts. The
other solution is to host your list on a reputable listserver.
The more popular ones include Constant Contact, AWeber, Topica,
and GotMarketing Campaigner.

5. Send your email when it’s most likely to get
read If you send your message to businesses on a Friday
afternoon, chances are that your recipients won’t check their
email until Monday morning. Your message will be buried way down
the list with a ton of spam ahead of it (assuming the
recipient’s inbox is sorted by date). The most recent messages
will get the attention, and your message will likely get
overlooked or deleted in the rush to start work. The open rate
for email is strongest within the first two days of delivery.
Then it drops off a cliff.

6. Mail on the best days Online marketers have
discovered over the years that B to B emails are read most often
when they arrive on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, around
noon. Mondays are too busy. And Fridays are too close to the
golf course.

7. Use the right email service Choose a
reputable service provider who is respected by the major ISPs.
They will work on your behalf to keep you off blacklists and
deliver your messages on time.

8. Help subscribers change addresses In every
email message, tell your subscribers where they need to go to
change their address or modify their subscription. You’ll reduce
the number of bouncebacks you receive each mailing.

9. Use creative copy tactics to circumvent spam
filters Spam filters block your e-newsletters and
marketing messages in a number of ways, and one of them is
looking for words that are found in most spam. These include
perfectly legitimate words and phrases, such as “free,”
“opportunity,” “multi-level marketing [OK, that one is
debatable],” “compare rates” and “free installation.” Most of
these words you can get around by employing a thesaurus. Instead
of saying “free,” say “complimentary,” or “no charge.” You can
also disguise the word in some way (free becomes free~, or
fr*ee), although you must tell your subscribers what you are
doing beforehand.

10. Get your subscribers to whitelist you When
your subscribers opt-in to your list, immediately tell them to
add your sending email address to their whitelist or “allowed
senders” list so your messages are never blocked by the
subscriber’s spam filters.

11. Use a distinctive, predictable subject line
Include a phrase in every subject line that shows at a glance
who you are and what your message is about. Subscribers get used
to recognizing each message from you. For example, one popular
e-newsletter includes the phrase “DM News-iMarketing News Daily”
in every email subject line.

12. Welcome new subscribers immediately As soon
as someone signs up for your e-newsletter or opts-in to your
list, send them a welcome email. Immediately establish a
connection between their opt-in action and your email that
confirms their membership.

13. Make your email welcome message look like your
sign-up form Help new subscribers to recognize you in
their inboxes by branding your online sign-up page and your
welcome email with the same colors, images and typography.

14. Send from the same domain that signs them
up The domain in your welcome message and subsequent
messages should match the URL of the webpage that subscribers
used to opt-in to your list, otherwise they may not recognize
you as the sender and delete your message by mistake.

15. Use the same From: address Keep your From:
address constant. This helps subscribers who have added your
email address to their whitelist or “allowed senders” list.

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Effective Email Marketing

Getting into your customers mailbox is pretty much the same as knocking on the door. You’re not in there yet!

It seems that one of the biggest problems people are having is getting their readers to OPEN the emails in the first place!

Truth is, you can be promoting the best product in the WORLD, and have the most enticing email copy possible, but if you’re not writing compelling subject lines that get the emails opened, all your hard work is lost…

So today I’d like to give you FIVE tips for writing effective email subject lines that can easily DOUBLE the open (and click-through) rates on your next email.

Tip #1: Use personalization for added attention

Ever been in a large crowd, and you suddenly hear your name being called?

Even if you’re hundreds of miles away from home and it couldn’t possibly be someone calling you, you still look up automatically, without even thinking, right?

Hearing your name instantly gets your attention!

Now imagine how much more powerful your emails could be if your customers could “hear” their names right in the subject line.

Sending out an email with a personalized subject line is the equivalent of calling someone’s name in a crowd: it has that same power to grab their attention.

So instead of a subject line that says something like:

“I have the information you’re looking for”

… you could try something like this:

“Dave, I have the information you’re looking for”

Pretty simple, right? But it really works!

In fact, according to a recent report by MarketingSherpa, by writing personalized subject lines that include the first name of your customers, you can get almost TWICE as many people to open the email and click through to your offer.

And if you wanted to take personalization one step further, consider adding another personal detail to the subject line, like the city your customers live in (you’d need to collect that data from them, of course).

Start with a subject line that looks like this:

“Want to get out of the city this weekend?”

… and then make it really compelling by adding personal details:

“Janet, want to get out of Tucson this weekend?”

And the great thing is that, as long as you’re collecting your visitors’ first names (and any other data you think is useful), there are plenty of tools out there you can use to automatically merge their names and personal details into your emails.

Tip #2: Keep your subject lines SHORT

Here’s a test: open up your email program, and take a look at the subject lines in your inbox.

Are there any that stand out more than others? Any that you read first, or get you interested in learning more?

Chances are it’s the shorter subject lines that grab you, right?

It’s actually been proven that subject lines that are less than 35 characters had HIGHER opening and click-through rates than those with subject lines longer than 35 characters.

So keep it short and sweet! You don’t need to explain in detail what the email is about in the subject line, you just need to give enough information to make people want to open the email to read more.

And if you REALLY want to increase your open and click-through rates, make sure you put your benefit, offer, or most important element right at the beginning of the subject line.

That way, if someone’s email program cuts off the end of the subject line (which is pretty common) you’ll still get your main point across.

Tip #3: Keep the formatting simple and understated

If you sent an email to a friend, asking her if she wanted to shopping, would you type your subject line like this:

Would You Like To Go Shopping On Saturday?

Or how about like this:

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO SHOPPING ON SATURDAY?

It’s pretty unlikely, right?

So why would your emails to your customers and subscribers have subject lines that were formatted like that?

The more your subject lines look like personal emails from friends, family members, or business associates, the more likely it is that they’ll be opened. The more they look like spam, the less effective they’ll be.

So avoid capitalizing each word (or the entire subject line), and avoid exclamation marks and dollar signs, which can increase your chances of having your messages flagged as spam, and will be sure to set off warning bells with your recipients.

Tip #4: Use a compelling “angle” to get your readers interested

Of course, getting your readers to open your emails requires more than personalization and formatting. You’ll still need to come up with an interesting angle that grabs your customers’ attention, and makes them WANT to open the email.

Here are some ideas for subject lines that we’ve had success with in the past:

Make an announcement or share news: People want to be the first to find out new things, especially if your site covers a specific industry.
Make your reader curious: Make your reader curious about what’s in your email by suggesting they are missing out on an important offer or piece of information.
When you use this technique, make sure you leave something to the imagination. For example: Paul, are you making this common mistake?
Create a sense of urgency: Consider creating a sense of urgency in your subject line by limiting time (Frank, only three days left) or quantity (Mary, only 250 copies available).
Emphasize benefits: Another powerful approach for your subject line is to state how your readers will benefit from your email. If you can tell them how they’re going to save money, save time, make their lives easier, etc, by opening and reading your message, you’ll have the most success.

Tip #5: Make sure your subject line relates to the content of the email

Nobody likes to be fooled or tricked, and deception is the WRONG way to earn your customers’ trust and respect, so make sure your subject line is related to your actual messages.

(In fact, it’s a legal requirement under the CAN-SPAM Act that the subject line be authentic and not misleading).

So if your subject line says Mary, three ways to save money, you need to make sure you actually are talking about that, and preferably within the first few paragraphs. Otherwise, your visitors will feel cheated, and that will hurt your credibility.

By following these simple tips for writing and formatting the subject lines for your emails, you should be able to increase your open rates and click-through rates by up to 50%. And considering your opt-in list is where you’ll find your most valuable customers, think how that could crank up your bottom line.

To your success,

Gary Neame

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Technorati Tags: Effective, email, marketing

Find Top Rated Email Hosted Anti-Spam Solution

Find the Top Rated Email Hosted Anti-Spam Solution

Historically, spam filtering has occurred at ISPs, on enterprise gateways (e.g., a DMZ server), on mail servers, and on desktops. These strategies, especially when they’re combined to create a multilayered solution, have been effective in reducing the amount of spam users receive in their mailboxes. But increases in spam create slower mail server processing rates as well as require additional storage for messages flagged as potential spam. That’s why many organizations are looking to replace their first-generation spam software solutions either with a spam-filtering appliance or by entrusting spam-filtering tasks to a hosted service.

Hosted services filter email messages before they reach an organization’s email server. Using a hosted service reduces server resource usage, requires no additional hardware or software purchases, and means messages identified as potential spam are stored at the host site. Often, hosted service providers can respond quickly to newer forms of spam. Larger organizations often use hosted services to support additional email functions such as outbound filtering and encryption and adherence to compliance policies, but hosted services are also suited for small companies with 100 employees or less or that aren’t ready to hire a mail administrator. Number of email users is usually the price determinant in hosted services; the more email users you have, the higher in cost the service becomes. Many service providers make additional services available, including automatic disaster recovery and failover, offsite message archiving (for compliance and business continuity), data redundancy, IM protection, and outbound filtering. The inclusion of one or more of these services can affect the price of a hosted service plan.

Hosted antispam solutions are generally offered on a subscription model—you pick which features you want to implement and supply the number of mailboxes you want covered, then the solution provider gives you a price quote. You can probably expect to pay less overall—especially when you consider administrator time and bandwidth savings—than if you were running your antispam product inhouse, plus you get the benefit of a fixed cost, making budgeting a smidge easier.

Let’s examine the cost-savings in time and bandwidth use. In the case of inhouse spam protection running behind the corporate firewall, your servers must begin the process of receiving each message, then run the various detection methods for spam before rejecting or quarantining a message. Outsourcing this function frees both the bandwidth required to receive these messages and the server processes necessary to examine them—and when you consider that most estimates suggest that 95 percent or more of all messages are spam, you can see that these resource savings could be huge for your organization.

You should also see time savings in administration, though some ongoing tuning of a hosted solution will likely be necessary. Most services provide a means for administrators or end users to check their quarantined messages for false positives as well as to classify and report messages they receive as spam; how well the service implements this review process could be a key factor in choosing a provider.

Setup for a hosted filtering service is usually just a matter of changing your MX records to point to the provider’s servers so that all your incoming mail passes through their filters. Therefore, implementing hosted filtering is generally quite simple. However, this arrangement can cause privacy or security concerns for many companies, so be sure to note what protection a provider offers for your data.

Most spam solutions combine filtering methods, using proprietary scanning algorithms, widely available Realtime Blackhole Lists (RBLs), Bayesian or pattern-recognition filters, and other methods. Because of the many types of spam, and the many characteristics of such messages, it’s widely recognized that using a layered approach to detection relying on different engines and techniques is the most effective way to capture unwanted messages.

Perhaps the strongest selling point in favor of hosted antispam filtering is the service providers’ ability to quickly react to new threats. In addition to using multiple filters, service providers can draw on their vast networks of clients to alert them to the latest type of spam currently hitting email inboxes. For instance, as soon as a message is recognized as spam anywhere on the service provider’s network, the provider should tag that message as spam across all the recipients it’s hosting (assuming, of course, the spam was a mass mailing). The larger the provider’s customer base, the more people available to report spam, and therefore the less likely that any one customer will see spam make it through the filter. By the time a new, malicious email message targets your users, there’s a good chance your hosted provider already has it blocked. Most service providers announce their frequency of updates so you can tell how current your protection should be at any time.

This Buyer’s Guide will help you evaluate spam-filtering hosted services.

There must be a free trial Don’t shell out cash for something you aren’t sure will suit you. Does the company have 24 by 7 live support? Many companies claim they have 24×7 support, where actually they might not have. Try to call their support line at office/off office hours to test if they do have 24×7 support. It must work in with your current email software Check for compatibility. Setting up shouldn’t require a university degree. Many good services now provide a wizard type set up with automatic configuration. It must be customizable You should be able to add/edit/delete your list of “approved” addresses. It must be secure and has good user ratings Check the company background and technology they are using in conjunction with their filtering/blocking service. Also check the company’s business background and user ratings. It must has higher spam capture rate and lower false positive rate The hosted service must have higher (99%+) publicized spam capture rate and lower(1/200K-) publicized false positive rate. Incoming SMTP servers has to be spread around the globe with 100% uptime (SLA) Service provider must be able to trace a single email traveling via their network No lost emails should occur You are able to review spam online to evaluate the false positives matrix

Technorati Tags: AntiSpam, email, Find, Hosted, Rated, Solution

Email Marketing Spam Content Checker

Emailcenter offer a free email marketing spam content checker that scores your email against spam filter rules.

The checker looks at the following characteristics in your email marketing campaign:

*

Content and phrases used in the email

*

HTML tags and styles used

*

Header information such as ‘From’ address and subject line

Upon running the check you will be presented with a score and a list of reasons why the score was generated. If you score under 3 your email should cope fine against most spam filters, between 3 and 5 is problematic while anything over 5 is almost certainly going to get trapped as spam.

Maxemail users can access a spam checker from the Maxemail interface. Alternatively anyone else involved in email marketing can register for access to the free spam content checker here

What are the key spam characteristics the tool highlights?

Phrases

If your email is loaded with spammy phrases such ‘Free’ or ‘Offers’ the tool will highlight these for you. Some industries such as finance will see more issues here than most due to their standard terms for their products being the same as words used by spammers who offer loans and financing.

HTML errors

Filters don’t look too kindly on email marketing messages with invalid HTML code. This might be incorrectly defined colours such as #FFF instead of #FFFFFF.

Junk code and images

It is important to minimize the amount of HTML tags that you use. Filters look at the ratio of text copy to images and HTML tags. Too many images or tags suggest that it could be spam.

Blacklists

The filter looks at the major IP blacklists to see if the server that sent the email marketing campaign is on any of these blacklists. This often gives a particularly high score that would cause the email to be junked.

From address

As many spammers use a false address to send email from this is flagged as high importance by the filter. Indeed examples of where it may be picked up as spam would be if the address has lots of numbers in.

Subject line

Any spam phrases included in the subject line tend to have a much higher importance than if they were simply in the body text.

Unsubscribe text

Even if you are being a good permission marketer and providing an opt-out link this can actually give you a higher spam score than if you do not have an opt-out option. This is no excuse not to include an opt-out link though simply experiment with how you phrase the opt-out statement to overcome the filters rules.

Missing headers and MIME parts

A badly formed email will generally get rejected by the filter. This would include missing dates in the headers or incorrectly formatted MIME boundaries.

Related Checkered Flag Articles

Technorati Tags: checker, Content, email, marketing, spam

Searching for a motorcycle online. Found a deal. Army guy says, just got deployed to Iraq, but use EBay and their buyer protection program. The bike is with a shipping company. They’ll send it to you, you have 5 days to look at it before you have to decide. We can all sympathize with a deployed soldier. So I say "Sure", then I get an email from "ebay@support-allvehicle-protection.com" for the invoice and "ebay-support@support-allvehicle-protection.com" for a follow up. Everything looks nice with the ebay Motors logo. Instructions say to use a company called "Money Gram" because "This is a large purchase PayPal doesn’t qualify for this transaction" (it says that in the invoice) – REALLY? so I went to the ebay website and the paypal website to see the limitations.

What is PayPal’s transaction limit?
The maximum amount allowed for a single transaction is ,000 USD by a PayPal member.
If you don’t have a PayPal account, you can send a maximum of ,000 USD for a one-time, single transaction.

The invoice aays
"4. The deposit (US ,900.00) must be sent by Money Gram Money Transfer using cash money. Sending the payment by any other method will void this transaction and your right to refund."

So I googled Money Gram and found all sorts of fraud related stuff. Basically, you have to pay for it in Cash at a location (the only one is a Wal-Mart near us). Or you can pay online and then you have to go to Wal-Mart to pick up the check – but the fraud comes in because people pay online and then when they show up at the store, they are informed that "Someone already picked it up." http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/42582/the_money_gram_scam.html?cat=3

And even if you went to Wal-Mart, game them 00 and picked it up yourself, the invoice says to send it to the Vehicle Agent:

Vehicle Purchase Program Agent Details
Agent: Karina Larkins
Details:2018 Clinch Avenue
Knoxville TN 37901
United States

Just some random person in Tennesee? Not, EBay Motors or something more "official sounding"?

Too many red flags. I just wish I knew someone in Knoxville. And I’m mad because we sent the guy our home address to ship the motorcycle to – Yikes!

Technorati Tags: agent details, buyer protection program, cash money, cat 3, ebay, ebay motors, ebay support, ebay website, email, invoice, knoxville tn, larkins, money gram, money transfer, paypal account, paypal member, paypal website, shipping company, transaction limit, wal mart

6 Tips for Effective E-Mail Marketing in the Automotive Aftermarket

The majority of the automotive aftermarket is made up small businesses, from manufacturers to installation shops and most owners are so invested in the everyday ebb and flow of the business that marketing is relegated to an afterthought. However, your company is sitting on a goldmine, but most small businesses in the industry struggle to use it effectively. Here are some tips to help your small business be it retail or wholesale reach out to your e-mail database.

One:

Stop sending bulk e-mails from outlook, hotmail, aol,  or your standard e-mail program. This only flags your e-mail address as a spammer, and the majority of your contacts are not even getting those e-mails. Sending to 10 or more e-mails or sending a number of BCC e-mails are both major red flags to spam filters.

Two:

Subscribe to a web based bulk e-mail service, this will keep you off the spam lists, and they all have built in templates that include all the required legal information, and unsubscribe features. They also have great tracking tools that allow you to see how effective your e-mail campaign is, I recommend and use Constant Contact, however, there are many good programs out there. For as little as a month these services will tell you who is reading and responding to your company’s e-mails.

Three:

Add a “Subscribe to our Newsletter” button to your website to help grow your e-mail list. Many bulk e-mail tools have a built in feature that will create this code for your website and add them directly to your database. Or just talk to your web site administrator about adding one.

Four:

Decide what kind of e-mail you are sending out and how often. I recommend at least a monthly newsletter, with additional featured product or special announcement e-mails twice a month. Be sure that these e-mail redirect people to your website to generate traffic and sales.

Five:

Get a professional e-mail address beerfreak72@fakemail.com is ok to invite your friends to a BBQ but it is not professional for e-mail marketing. If you have a web site talk to your site admin about creating an e-mail address as well. If you do not many sites like godaddy.com can set up web mail that can be set up to go to your e-mail program. Addresses like customerservice@ABCcompany.com or Info@ABCcompany.com if your company name incorporates the owners name or the owner is well known by the clients then dave@ABCcompany.com would be the most effective.

Six:

Keep it simple your e-mail has less then a few seconds to impress your message on someone, if you can capture their attention they may just read your e-mail and click on to your website.

Clear subjects are important:  

Subject: SUPER SALE ON SATURDAY SURE TO SURPRISE SOME      

Subject: Hyper Exhaust: All Performance Exhaust Systems 40% Off

The first one in all caps may capture your attention, but it will be seen as spam by many filters and your targeted group does not know who it is from, or what is on sale, giving them little reason to click on it. However, the second tells the reader in the subject who it is from, and what is on sale, if those customers are in a market for an exhaust system they will click on it, while the majority would have simply clicked delete without reading the first.

While it sounds like a lot of work, these direct promotions can have a major impact on developing your brand and driving sales. Also if your company does not have the staff, or if you simply do not wish to do it yourself, many marketing firms can handle your e-marketing needs for a nominal monthly fee. E-mail marketing has some of the highest return on investment, as it is low cost and high impact, and in any economy that makes sense.

Technorati Tags: Aftermarket, Automotive, Effective, email, marketing, Tips