‘Tips’ Articles

The most dreaded word in the email marketing industry is “SPAM”. No tech word invites more universal hatred than this simple, but very dirty, four letter word.

If an email you send is deemed spam, it will most likely never get across to your clients. Perhaps even worse, if your message does reach their inbox, it will be an annoyance. Once your email address makes its way into a spam folder, it’s very hard to reach that potential customer ever again. Sending spam damages your company’s reputation and is against the law.

Below are guidelines taken from the Federal Trade Commission that you can follow to keep your emails in the inbox and your business out of trouble.

“Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible”

(Information re-posted from the Federal Trade Commission at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm)

At Admail.net we take these, and many other regulations, into account to maximize the deliverability of your emails and keep you out of spam folders. More importantly we make sure your messages follow all CAN-SPAM regulations to keep you out of trouble.

Visit our website (http://www.admail.net) to sign up for a free 30-day trial, or call us at 800-479-6233

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Today, consumers are using mobile devices more than ever. Since you’ve been reading most people have done something on their mobile device, either sent a text message, surfed the Internet, or checked their email. With such a large and captive audience, a big question arises; is your business addressing the needs of your mobile customers? There are many simple things you can do

to make your emails more mobile-friendly, that is, make it look better on your recipient’s mobile devices. Here are a few rules to consider when creating your emails, if you have recipients who might be reading emails on their mobile devices.

1. Don’t Make them Download the Rest of Message – Your message might get truncated if it is too big. A large file size may cause your recipient to be prompted to “download the rest of the message”. Consumers are wary of downloading messages and frankly its just a hassle, so avoid large emails or you are running the risk of them not seeing your entire message or worse, deleting it.

2. Don’t Make them Scroll – You will want to avoid having your recipient do a lot of scrolling. Attention spans are limited, especially when dealing with mobile devices. Make sure your key takeaways don’t get buried at the bottom of your message.

3. Let them Know Who You Are – Make sure you include your logo at the top of email so you’re recognized immediately. If you are a trusted brand your logo will give your message a better chance of being read. At the very least, even if the customers only glaces at your message, with your logo and name at the top, you’ll have been exposed.

4. Click To View in a Browser – You’ll want to have a link for them to click to view your message in a browser, however you might think about putting it somewhere other than at the very top of your email. Many mobile devices display the beginning of the email in the inbox so your recipients can decide if they want to click to the entire email or not. Including the link text, to view in a browser, might take up some valuable, attention grabbing, space.

5. Make Your Email Lose Weight! – Smaller devices, smaller screens, the next step to making email suitable for phones? Smaller emails. Make your emails 500-600 pixels wide.  The Admail.net Advantage Template labeled “White-Paper” is preset to 500 pixels already.

6. Let Them Call You – Include a click-to-call link if possible. The easier you make it for your recipient to contact you, the better.

7. Text Version is a Must – Make sure you have a text version of your emails in the event that your mobile recipients can only get text. Make sure you keep it short. Since emails usually have line breaks at about 60 characters and mobile devices 20 characters, you’ll want to cut back on some of your copy and direct them for more information to your website.

You want to reach all of your customers and checking email on mobile devices is only become more predominate, so follow some basic mobile guidelines and your email marketing campaign will be accessible to all of your clients, no matter how they check their inbox.

Admail’s Accu Trak delivers key information to help you determine what is or isn’t working in your campaigns. Recently I attended the Marketing Sherpa Annual Conference, during one session the presenter said: While vast amounts of information and tracking that information are available, sometimes you have to ask yourself “Do I really need it?”. Clients many times want to track every minute detail to the moment of yes, Analytic Paralysis. Just because you can think of it does not always mean you can use it. Sometimes it really boils down to having a better understanding of what is in front of you.

A prime example of this is, another seminar I recently attended with an “E-mail Marketing expert” told the audience that email marketing was getting tougher because one; Open Rates where falling and two; excess junk in recipients inboxes.

Let’s cover open rates first. The fact open rates are falling isn’t that email marketing is not working it is that the technology has changed. In 2005 Microsoft began blocking Images by default and other email software makers have since followed suit. Many of you I am sure have noticed the Load Images buttons on your email browser or, the “Problems viewing this page click here” link in email header’s.

Opens historically have been tracked by an embedded 1×1 pixel image in HTML emails. What this meant was, once an email was touched upon in a preview window or opened briefly by the recipient – a message was sent back to the sender that the email had been “Opened or Viewed” – but not necessarily read. Therefore as users migrated to the new email client software opens appeared to be  dropping. Which isn’t all bad! What it does mean is that you are now seeing a truer picture, of who is actually reading your emails. Many times people view this as a delivery issue or their email program has become ineffective which isn’t the case!

Before you throw the baby out with the bath water take a look at your click through these are true readers and they moved from the body of your email to your web site for more information.

If you really want to drill down on your ROI either use the Click Through email address to match back on your transactions or upgrade to the Admail.net Custom Fields to pass a campaign Source Code to your shopping cart, you can even tie it into your Google Analytics. But, don’t forget to ask yourself do I really need it or what am I going to do with the number once I have it. Order more widgets?

Information overload can bog you down – if sales are off over analyzing it won’t fix the problem – but a fresh approach can. I have been involved in target marketing for close to thirty years and one thing is for certain what Works – Works! I repeatedly see people and businesses get myriad in statistics that some Guru recommended.  For decades Mutual Funds and Wall Street Analysts have used the disclaimer “Past performance is not a guarantee of future results”. Don’t become a victim of Analytic Paralysis!

The second point, “excessive junk mail” you have a perfect leg up with Admail.net our robust delivery system provides you the perfect options. Send your email during the day or early evening if you are marketing to consumers. If you are working across different time zones use the Interest Groups to break out your members by time zones or use Target Filters to break up your list member by State. For tips and information visit our FAQ section on Email and Spam Blockers.

FACT:
In five seconds or less, your company’s email subject and content will determine whether a customer decides to keep your newsletter or update;  Or flag-it as SPAM.

Try to be deceptive or coy and all of your future email will be trashed. Customers want the facts and it is your responsibility to give it to them. Make the Open-or-Delete decision easy. A well thought out email strategy is a vital part of any traffic-driving effort, and we see a close connection between email frequency and the use of multiple email marketing channels and traffic.  But I am getting ahead of myself; The topic of this post, 5 Seconds You Can’t Afford To Waste!

Can your email answer these questions in two seconds or less?

Who is the e-mail from?

• Keep it familiar.

What’s in it for me?

• Keep your Subject focused.

What do you want me to do?

• A clear course of action.

ACTIONS:
Write clear, not cutesy, subject lines. State the value proposition there, and build on it in the snippet/pre-header text (the first line of text in your message).

State the Details with a clear course action in your email:
Moms (and other shoppers) want to know prices and final costs up front, both the discount and the amount of money saved, not just the percentage off. Some said they were frustrated to find out how expensive shipping was after clicking on the offer and going all the way through the checkout process. That builds distrust in your future messages.

Keep your subject focused, we all know that one of the most important parts of an email campaign is the subject line and everyone is trying to come up with the perfect one.

Here are four subject lines that you should never use in your campaigns or transactional emails. Not only do they violate best practices, but in some cases they break the law. The CAN SPAM ruling states that for any commercial email, you must have your subject line relate to the content of the email.

Subject Line #1 – Hi, My name is Paul
Subject Line #2 – I need your help, please?
Subject Line #3 – Bob, I haven’t received your shipping address yet.
Subject Line #4 – Bob, Please accept my sincerest apology.

These gimmicks to trick the recipient into opening an email are a bad idea. It may raise curiosity, however, when the recipient opens the email they’re going to feel tricked and unsubscribe or worse report your email as SPAM, because these subject lines most likely will not relate at all to the  body copy. You may trigger complaints and attract  the FTC attention for violating CAN SPAM rulings. Subject line #3 is particularly onerous; it seems like the sender is trying to get more information from the recipient. Because it’s personalized, the recipient may actually give it!

CONCLUSION:
Be clear and concise make sure your subject leads the reader to the body of your email. Keep the first portion of the email’s body easily identifiable with your company identity, brand and purpose. It is critical to provide a link to your website in the first paragraph–this lends credibility to your offer and ease of use for your customer. Remember, consumers and business professionals today are bombarded with useless misinformation. They will appreciate (and become more loyal) if you’re accurate and to the point, even if they aren’t placing an order today.

When using your Admail Email Builder Templates with Images – IE 8’s default security setting will ask you “Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely” and the answer is “No”. If you say yes the unsecured Images in your Template  (photos, logos, etc) will not load and you will find yourself stuck!  See sample screen shot below.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 just say No to security warning!