‘Email Marketing’ 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.

I waited with anticipation for the DM News 2007 Essential Guide to E-Mail Marketing and they did not disappoint. The guide is packed with advice from industry experts and you’ll find many articles on effective practices for reaching the consumer’s inbox–beginning with building your list, relevancy of your message, targeting consumers, your creative, higher conversion rates, and much more. All this and in time for the holiday email campaigns! You can download the guide as a PDF file right here.

Do you utilize Admail.net’s sign-up form? If not, you’re losing a great opportunity! Our sign-up form will automatically add list members to your database, while gathering pertinent information about your list members’ wants, needs and preferences.

How do you create a sign-up form that you can put on your website? Visit Sign-up Form under List Builder. This page will present you with a few things to consider before you add the sign-up form to your site.

The List Member Profile allows you to define the information you need about your list members. Check the Display box and that field shows up on your sign-up form. Check the Required box and your sign-up form will force the list member to complete that field.

Interest Groups give every list member the opportunity to select their own interests. Any Interest Group that is not flagged as ‘hidden’ will show up on your sign-up form.

Sidenote: Use profile information and interests in subsequent mailings and you’ll get better campaign results. Personalized information is great for list segmentation and targeted mailings. Targeted mailings don’t cost any more to send than a blast; a little preparation and you’re guaranteed better response rates and you’ll reduce recipient burnout.

If you have an Advantage plan or have purchased the Custom Sign-up Form feature, you can make your sign-up form look like your website. Be sure to preview your sign-up form before you go live.

Lastly, add the form to your website. Do this by following the link to “Add Sign-Up Form to Your Site” and answering a few questions. Copy the code into your site and you’re on your way to using a valuable tool to help build your business.

What happens after a new user signs up can set the tone for good customer relations. Since your key communications will be sent to your list members exclusively through email, it is very important to create a good initial experience. To help with this, Admail.net has an automated Welcome email. Visit List Builder, Sign-Up Form and scroll down to “Set up your Welcome email.”

It’s good business sense to acknowledge when someone signs up by sending a welcome email. It confirms your presence by telling the customer “Yes, we’re out here and we appreciate your interest in our company, product or service.” It is simple to set up automated emails that say, “Thanks for signing up; we look forward to sending you great stuff”. Then, send something of value immediately, like your latest newsletter or your current promotional offer.

When you send a welcome message you have another opportunity to ask the recipient to add you to their address book or contact list. When recipients add you to their approved senders list it increases your in-box deliverability rates. Here’s a good example of a welcome message:

Subject: Sign-up Confirmation

Thank you for your interest. To ensure future delivery of this email please add us to your address book.

*Windows users right click on the From address, then select “Add to Address Book.”

*Mac users hold down the control key, click on the From address, then select “Open in Address Book.”

*Yahoo users click on the “Add” icon

*Hotmail users click on “Save Address”

Thanks again,

Using Admail.net’s sign-up form, along with an email welcome message, is an effective marketing technique you can implement with very little effort. Over time, it will drive significant repeat traffic and create substantial sales potential.

Benefits of using Admail.net’s Sign-up Form

• Automatically adds each person who signed up to your list member data base.
• Better campaign results and list hygiene. We check every email address for all the things that can make for an invalid email address.
• Gather pertinent information about your list members’ wants, needs and preferences.
• Send segmented and targeted campaigns using the information you gather. How effective is sending the same email to everyone?
• Mirror the look and feel of your web site. You can customize Admail.net’s sign-up form to look like your website.
• Guarantee continued delivery to your list members. At the bottom of the sign-up survey form we ask your members to add you to their safe senders list, along with instructions.

Benefits of Using a Welcome Email

• Build good customer relations
• Thank the list member for their interest
• Opportunity to remind your list member to add you to their address book or approved contact list

How to instruct your list members to add your Admail.net sending address to their known sender list.

Want more info to ensure delivery to your members’ inbox?

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.

If you manage a web site or write for online email campaigns this article is for you. Many of our clients already have their own web site or are planning to develop one in the near future. If you’re not posting your campaigns to your web site, you are missing a great opportunity to get your message out. Go global 24-7-365.

Web writing has new challenges that media writing doesn’t have. On your web site, one of your audiences isn’t even human…search engine spiders are roaming the Web looking for keyword relevant pages to index in its’ database. Keyword density, word count on a page, meta tags, the words you use in links and other factors are meaningful to search engines. And with email, you’re writing to get past spam filters.

Your audience approaches the Web differently than print media. The reader scans email and web sites quickly for information relevant to their needs. Some sources suggest you have about 8 seconds to capture your audiences’ attention. (more…)