‘Best Practices’ Articles

A Feed Back Loop (FBL) is a direct data feed that is sent to an email sender when the recipient presses the “Junk” or “Spam” button. The benefit is that the email sender can clean their subscriber data, allowing them to maintain their reputation with Internet Service Providers.

What triggers (flags) cause ISPs to block your email? Sometimes it’s a dirty list containing non-deliverable addresses. Other times it’s the ratio of spam complaints from that domain, which can include false positives.

Here are the grades for ISP’s where legitimate messages were flagged and determined to be false positives: Yahoo! gets an A, Hotmail B, AOL C, and Gmail scores the lowest with a D.

Some techniques to avoid false positives are:

• Don’t use words, terms, or phrases in the subject line or message that trigger spam filters
• Understand domain-specific user interfaces to request address book entry. Here are some examples.
• Manage list hygiene to ensure messages are not sent to unknown domains. (Admail.net’s system catches these and purges from your list member file)

As always–be aware of your list.

Don’t be intimidated by Search Engine Optimization (SEO); there are a lot of tools to guide you through the process.

Search engines organize and prioritize over 5.5 billion web pages that compete for the internet users’ attention. The focus is certainly on providing a much richer end searcher experience. The site with unique content, that’s easy to use, with good navigational elements will get high quality links. If users can complete the desired task; add to cart, enroll in class, subscribe to newsletter, etc., they will be satisfied and come back.

Companies need a website that is rich in keywords and phrases. These keywords and phrases get people to your site, by means of search engines that find your keywords. SEO leverages Search Engines’ desire to display most relevant pages that match users’ target keywords. Research also shows 26% of searchers use two word searches, followed by 23% using one word and 21% three word search. The following sites can help you determine your industries keywords and phrases, with up to date research. (more…)

Why not open your web site to customer involvement? The best results come from making customer interaction part of your overall marketing strategy.

What word of mouth does for selling a product or service, online interaction is doing … just on a larger platform. The online environment is part of the consumer’s life now and we want to enhance this social connectivity. Increasing customer engagement will cultivate a community that is passionate about your product, service or company.

Here are a few of the interaction benefits…

• Improves your company’s image
• You gleam consumer feedback
• Your web site will be more customer friendly
• Shoppers pay attention to reviews and comments to guide their purchasing decisions
• Customer clickthrough rates will rise
• The amount of time a customer is on your site will increase

These benefits lead to increased sales
Reviews and comments are the most common forms of customer involvement. Other methods includes polls, contests that invite participation, blogs, pictures and video.

What about negative reviews…
These reviews can be a gift. Think of them as an early warning system to spot problems with your product or service. They add credibility to all the reviews on the site. If every review is a glowing testimonial the consumer will suspect that the feedback is fake or only favorable comments are posted.

You will need software or human filters that block inappropriate, profane or untrue posts. It is just part of doing online commerce. Another useful control is to require site visitors to register before they post. With these defenses in place, you’ll see the benefits of customer interaction.

Customers are talking about companies online, so you might as well be part of the dialogue.

Use a Free Offer to Engage Your Customer

When you give something away for free on your web site like coupons, whitepapers, case studies, a PDF, a free download or something printable, why not ask for their email address and permission to send to them?

To do this… include an opt-in form on a page where visitors have to go first, before they get to the “free offer” page. Try to get them to double-opt in if you can. Be sure to communicate the benefits of what you’ll be sending them and tell them how often you’ll be emailing them.

It’s a great way to build your email list.

Following are Can-Spam Compliance Rules bullet points. To read the entire bill, click here.

• Make sure each piece of information in the header is accurate, true, and not misleading.
• Include an opt-out link and honor opt-out and unsubscribe requests with in 30 days. (Admail.net automatically handles this for you in real time)
• Include your physical business address. (Admail.net has included this option on the “Review Your Email” page.
  Check the box and it will automatically insert the mailing address you gave when you registered. One click and you are in compliance.)
• Don’t send email from or through any computer to which you don’t have access or user permission.

Here are some guidelines Admail.net users must follow:

• Don’t send to harvested email addresses.
• Don’t use automated means to guess email addresses.
• Don’t send email that contains misleading, deceptive, or fraudulent header information or content.
• Don’t continue to send email to someone who opted out or unsubscribed from your mailing list. (Admail’s Remove Link handles this automatically. If your list member contacts you by phone, fax or email you will need to remove them manually in List Builder. Select “Your List”, now at the “Manage List Members” page search for that list member and click the red remove icon.)
• Don’t share or transfer to anyone the email address of someone who opted out or unsubscribed from your mailing list.

NEED HELP? Call admail.net to speak with customer support @ 1-800-479-6233.

Is your email delivery mission critical? Is your customer base super sensitive? Improve in box delivery with our Audited Sender Program.

Admail.net has a Audited Sender Program. Our program was created to mirror current internet standards for email accreditation. With tougher compliance issues, high reputation standards are required to become accredited. Being accepted into admail.net Audited Sender Program is a big step to improving your reputation as an email sender with your customer base and with major ISP’s and Blacklist Groups. (more…)