The email year in review…

December 19th, 2006 by Kelly Rusk

I will be on holidays next week, so I wanted to get this off my chest before I go! Since testing, measuring and refining is so important in email.. I thought I’d go over some of the most talked about email trends this year (that I noticed at least)

Spam: I think would always top a list like this one - I mean as email marketers, our job heavily revolves around NOT being perceived as spam. And with the rules always changing, it’s always going to be a hot discussion topic.

Tips for avoiding being spam in the new year:
- Have an explicit opt-in: The best way to not be perceived as spam is to not be spam! Make sure all your recipients have explicitly opted-in to receive your emails (no pre-checked boxes) And even better - have a double opt-in.
- Avoid common spam triggers: ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation!! W3!rd $ymb@ls, etc.
- Code your links with caution: if you want to have a link text as “www.mywebsite.com make sure you turn off the tracking code on that link: or you could not make it to inboxes.
- Don’t send image-only campaigns - It’s a popular tactic with spammers!
Relevancy: Sending emails that are relevant to your recipients will always pay off: higher response rates and less annoyed subscribers. The trick to relevancy is of to find out what your subscribers want - either via survey or testing.

Relevancy - What to test:

Subject lines - try different types of subject lines and do some A/B testing to find out which works best with your subscriber. Your subject line is an important determinate for whether or not the email will be opened!
Content - Do your subscribers like the content they receive? Do they click through? Test your content and call to actions and see what works best!
Frequency - Maybe your subscribers love your content, but feel they receive the emails too often? Or perhaps you wait too long between emails and they forget about you in between? Try a quick poll in your email to find out how often your subscribers like to be contacted. (If you want to get sophisticated, build it into the preference centre and send emails of different frequencies depending on the subscribers chosen preference!)

Deliverability: Because really, what good is your email if it doesn’t get delivered? Always a hot topic, deliverability is extremely important - and not just knowing your email got through to the address, but knowing it landed safely in the recipients inbox. While you can never know for sure if it’s landing in inboxes, there are services that will seed your emails in many major ISPs to test whether it did or not.

Getting your emails Delivered:

The best way to ensure you are getting delivered is to ask recipients to add your email address to their safe sender list or address book. There’s no guarantee they will or not, but if you don’t ask they probably wont! Tip: provide a page that gives instructions to do this, like this.
Scrub, scrub, scrub - keep your list clean! Clean out hard bounces after every email, and soft bounces after repeating a few times. The lower your bounce rate, the less likely ISPs will block you (turning into more bounces) thinking you’re a spammer! Remember, a list cluttered with bad addresses only costs you more!
Like above, avoid spam trigger words, and practices used by spammers. HINT: Go into your spam folder, look at the spam emails, and DON’T do what they are doing!!

Hope these will help with your email program for 2007. Have a safe and happy holiday, and here’s to a new year, filled with legitimate, relevant email marketing landing in the inbox!

Posted in Email marketing |