MindComet

Why Even Good Senders Get Blocked

Now I have to be honest, most webinars I attend don’t really provide a whole lot of value. Most of them barely skim the surface of what they’re advertising the topic to be. All in all, they are a means for the company to simply promote themselves and sell their services. What I’m trying to get at is that the emphasis is on the company, not the topic when in reality it should be reversed, dontchathink?

So when I attended the “Why Even Good Senders Get Blocked” webinar hosted by Silverpop late last week, I was slightly skeptical. Luckily, Silverpop did not fall into the same pitfalls many webinar-hosts succumb to and delivered a highly informative and useful webinar detailing many points I want to share with you here.

RELEVANCE::
So first off, the entire webinar revolved around the theme of RELEVANCE and I can’t stress that word enough. If you’re not delivering RELEVANT content to your subscribers, they’re going to mark you as SPAM. If there’s a relationship gap between the marketer and the subscriber, all of the best practices in the world won’t help you if the subscriber thinks you’re simply abusing the relationship. You also need to give your users a means to stay active and involved. Give them some incentive every once in a while to keep them on board with your brand.

ENGAGEMENT METRICS::
There are many aspects ISPs look at when determining if a sender is blacklist-worthy. These include:

- tracking time the email stays in the inbox before deleted
( assuming the longer is stays in the inbox, the better for the sender reputation )

- marked as “not spam” data
( I brought this up about a year ago wondering if ISPs also take into account emails that land into the junk box which users flag “Not Spam”, which they definitely do )

- panel data
( I may be wrong about this, but from what I gathered, panel data is asking a sample of their users take a poll which determines what the ISP should and should not be considering SPAM )

- mail sent to inactive accounts
( self explanatory )

- users for feedback and data
( again, the users of every email provider such as AOL and Gmail are the ones who determine whether or not your emails will be delivered in the future. be as transparent, honest and relevant with your subscribers as possible. )

QDOBA::
Next they showed an example of an email sent out by the mediocre burrito chain Qdoba.

Their burritos may be bland—and so is this email—but it’s for a good reason. This is actually a pretty clever email. It’s subtle. It’s not your standard marketing message with loud, abrasive imagery. It’s just text and it’s tone acts like it’s coming from a snotty co-worker-guy. But the problem is that it simply doesn’t appear to be coming from Qdoba. It’s disengaging and actually does look like SPAM, but it wouldn’t really work any other way. So can you tell why the recipients may have been confused and marked the email as SPAM?

Basically, you can’t get around identifying yourself to your subscribers. If you don’t prove you are who you are clearly, you will be marked as SPAM, which may lead to blacklisting all over the place. It’s too bad, too. I liked where they were going with the intention of this email.

SEGMENTATION::
This also touches on the fact that sending relevant messages to your subscribers will work out in spades.

Marketers have reportedly experienced a 22% higher open rate for segmented campaigns and click rates twice as high opposed to non-segmeneted campaigns. Get as much personal data on your subscribers as possible and use it to your (and their) advantage!

FREQUENCY::
There has to be a sensible balance and cadence to your sends.
A) don’t over send - if you berate your subscribers with too many emails you’ll ultimately end up annoying them to the point of unsubscribing or marking you as SPAM. limit each subscriber to no more than 3 emails a month, spreading each delivery to 10 days.
B) don’t send too infrequently - you have to stay fresh enough in your subscriber’s mind when it comes to their inbox. If your email appears to be from Random Brand X in the mind of the user, you better believe they are going to mark you as SPAM. I’d imagine one email every 2-3 months just touching base will do you more good than once a year.

ESPs::
Any ESP worth your money should have a deliverability team on hand constantly working for you to ensure you are whitelisted and your reputation is maintained. If this is not included in your monthly invoices, find a new ESP which offers this service. Word.

FINAL THOUGHTS::
I think this screenshot of a slide from the presentation sums up everything about this webinar. If you apply these 7 aspects of engagement to your email marketing campaigns, you should have a much easier time with your deliverability, open and click through rates.
Thank you to Silverpop for delivering such a compelling, informative and topical webinar. I only hope all webinars were as good as this. Much appreesh.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 23, 2010

Top o’ the Mornin’ to Ya! A St. Patty’s Day Email Recap

It’s one day after St. Patty’s Day and I accomplished everything I wanted to yesterday:

So since my liver-recovery is in full swing, I figured it’d be a great time to review some exceptional St. Patty’s Day-oriented emails. But instead of waxing poetic about why I liked each one, I’m simply going to post the screenshots of the impressive emails. There are four total. Find the below:

Simple:

Season’s 52:

Bare Escentuals:

Paul Frank:

Did you receive any awesome St. Patty’s Day emails? If so, don’t hesitate to comment!

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 18, 2010

Must Subscribe: Moosejaw, Threadless & Swell

Threadless:

Seemingly influenced by Tim & Eric, this is an obnoxious, tacky and hilarious email and I love it so. Comic sans? check. Hot pink background? you got it. Eye-catching? you bet. Well done.

Sign up for Threadless’s email list here.

Moosejaw:

Simple creative. Witty copy (FTF call to action). A very unique basis for a sale. These things amount to the email below from Moosejaw.

The main call to action is the extended 10% off sale, but there’s a subtle aspect to the sale which makes it above average and slightly interactive. Enlarge the screenshot above and see for yourself.

Sign up for Moosejaw’s email list here.

Swell:

This email struck a chord with me, mostly because it doesn’t employ some overpaid model enjoying themselves way too much while wearing the shoes. It’s just two angles of the product. That’s it. It’s simple and sweet.

Sign up for Swell’s email list here.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 08, 2010

The Hotmail / Firefox Line Break Issue Is Resolved

Have you ever come across the consistent issue of line breaks in your email design in Hotmail using Firefox?

One consistent annoyance I’ve always encountered has been testing an email in Hotmail with Firefox. For some reason, this combination of client and browser generates horizontal line breaks in emails. I never knew why… until now.

After some digging, Smith-Harmon has discovered that a simple bit of code is the purest remedy for this issue. At the top of the email (before the opening TABLE tag), make sure you include this:
<style>img {display: block;}</style>

It’s that simple. You can also accomplish the same effect if you code each image individually with the “display: block” property / value. For example:

<img src="images/header.jpg" style="display: block;" />

Kudos to Smith-Harmon for this useful shred of knowledge!

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 02, 2010

Always Test Your Unsubscribe Link

Rule of thumb: before you send any email, make sure your unsubscribe link works. It’s that simple. It may be a fairly obvious statement in regards to email marketing, yet something many overlook.

See this example below:

I received this email from Full Sail this morning and after realizing that information on their “entertainment business” degrees is irrelevant to me, I finally decided to put our relationship to rest… or so I thought. Once the very visible “unsubscribe” link was clicked, I was lead to this page:

Unsubscribe FAIL.

But this may not be Full Sail’s fault entirely. From clicking on the other links within the email, their Google URL builder states that the source is from “PasteMagazineContest”. This tells me the email was likely developed and managed by Paste Magazine as a partner / promotion deal. Shame on them both, though. For Paste not testing their email and for FullSail not providing a working unsubscribe link.

If I were FullSail, I’d get this link working ASAP as to avoid any potential SPAM complaints or even lawsuits.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Feb. 25, 2010

Using Google Docs as a QA Checklist Alternative

Yet another Google tool can be leveraged to assist your email marketing efforts. Besides BlueSkyFactory‘s genius way of using AdWords & Wonder Wheel for developing subject lines, ExactTarget recently suggested that using Google Docs goes hand in hand with quality assurance management.

If you have a Gmail account, you can start creating forms and spreadsheets here. It’s a nice alternative to Excel or Numbers mainly because you don’t have to exhaust additional computing power with running another program; the application is already in your web browser.

Here at MindComet we use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of what’s working and what’s not with all of the email campaigns we manage, but Google Docs may just add that last bit of efficiency and collaboration we’re looking for. What, if anything, do you use to track the changes and breaks with your email campaigns? Do you simply list all of the errors, or do you consolidate them in lists that you share with your co-workers?

If you don’t currently have a QA process or method, you should probably develop one, so why not start with Google Docs? It’s free, quick and convenient. ‘Nuff said.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Feb. 22, 2010

Banana Republic Unveils Interesting Enticement Call To Action

The email below from Banana Republic landed in inboxes a couple days ago and has made the rounds as a point of discussion on numerous email marketing blogs…. I can’t help but put my two cents in.

It’s a very clever (almost too clever) method of compelling users to click through via the arrow on the right side of the email’s design. Once the user clicks, the landing page displays all seven wardrobes for the ‘Chino-Week’ promotion. But was the arrow too subtle for the average BR customer to notice and click?

From what Dylan at theemailwars uncovered was that it was a gender-specific email to boot.

What do you think? Was this call to action and email in general effective or not?

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Feb. 18, 2010