Persuasive e-Marketing » 2007

Archive for March, 2007

March 21st, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

Bill McCloskey, over at Media Post’s Email Insider, today posted an inspiring article about the lack of passion in the email marketing industry. Ok - maybe that doesn’t sound inspiring, but as Bill points out in the article, there are very few people who openly admit they are passionate about email marketing… As one of those “passionates”, I felt I needed to speak up and be heard!

But after trying to comment in the blog and going through a run around of sign in/sign up pages (asking me for WAY too much mandatory info), I gave up and decided to post my response right here in our own blog = makes sense since this blog is all about email! So here you go:

Surprise from Canada! I AM totally passionate about email marketing (permission-based stuff, not spam) and I’m not afraid to tell the world! And when I tell people that I’m an email marketer, it’s true I often get the occasional funny look (read: oh you’re the reason I get so much *&%%#$#^ email!) It’s at this time I immediately ask them: “I see you look a bit stressed so tell me, what’s the first thing you do when you log on to your computer every day?” And then they almost always say: “Well, ugh, I check my email”…at which time I reply: “So either you’re a masochist, or would you agree there’s a love/hate relationship in the inbox?”…at which time they agree about the love/hate reality. I then close by saying…”Well, I (read: my company, www.cardcommunications.com) send those emails you love!”

Bill, I totally agree with you ~ people do love email as long as it’s permission-based email that is timely, meaningful and relevant. Long live email!

Carolyn Gardner

Posted in Email marketing | 2 Comments »

How to not be mistaken for spam - Optimizing your code

March 21st, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

In a perfect world - only spam would make it in the junk folder. However, this is not the world we live in, and unless you are willing to dish out big dollars for an added deliverability service, you can’t really know if your emails are landing in the inbox. However, what you can do is take a proactive approach to avoiding common spam filters. Aside from the obvious word triggers, you can optimize your HTML coding to avoid triggers.

I found this comprehensive list of HTML coding triggers for email stashed deep inside my portfolio… I certainly didn’t write the list - but I’m not sure who did, so if you know who deserves credit, please let me know!

Of course if you don’t follow everything on the list, it doesn’t mean you will won’t make it to people’s inboxes - but the more you are able to optimize, the better your chances of avoiding filters.

Coding Triggers

Java Script - Do not use java script. Most filters block all messages that contain Java script. Unethical senders have been known to exploit Java script to transmit viruses and other malicious code.
Style Sheets - Do not use Style Sheets. Various email readers interpret style sheets differently. This may cause problems in the way your message is displayed to recipients. Note: If you are absolutely in love with the look and feel of style sheets, you can still do some inline CSS, but it will still create rendering problems in some email clients (Especially Lotus Notes)
Unbalanced “body” and “html” tags - Anytime you have an opening tag you need to have a corresponding closing tag.
Missing “table” closing tags
“tbody” tags - Removing all the tbody tags has no effect on the appearance of the message. They are primarily used in web page design and filters look at them as sloppy or lazy coding.
HTML message is saved as a Web Page - If the message is a ’saved as a webpage’ (through Microsoft Word for example) there will be a comment within the HTML code indicating that. This comment should be removed prior to deployment.
Remove Comments - HTML editing programs (Frontpage, Dreamweaver, etc) add unnecessary comments to the finished document. For instance, they may identify what program was used to create the message. You can recognize these comments by “ ”
Filters look at this as sloppy coding and add “spam points”.
Colour and fonts - It is always best to stay within the web safe 6×6x6 colour palette and use only standard web-safe fonts. Avoid using multiple code fonts within a message.
Thick Borders - Avoid using a border size greater than 2.
Image Tags - Some email designers use Image Tags to track open rates. Filter programs look for these and view them negatively.
Text to Image Ratios - Avoid creating messages that rely to heavily on graphics. A message with a high ratio of image to text appears as spam to many filtering programs.

Posted in Email marketing | No Comments »

Do you know what your reader cares about?

March 19th, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

You probably spend a lot of time preparing your email: getting your company messages right, sending it out according to your calendar, analyzing your results… But do you ever stop and wonder about what the reader cares about? Do they remember you? Do they want to receive the messages you are sending?

Jeanniey Mullen, posted an interesting piece on the topic, including a partial checklist:

Know what the reader expects. Your readers gave you their e-mail addresses because they were expecting something. A receipt, a whitepaper, a newsletter, or something similar. Does the next message you’ll send give them content they expect to see?
Understand most readers forget quickly. In many cases, readers signed up for your e-mail list because they wanted access to something or as an impulse opt-in. If you wait too long before contacting them, they’ll forget why you were so important. Keep this in mind when timing your next e-mail.
Where does the e-mail take the reader in the site? Knowing how deep in the site the e-mail links your readers is critical. Copy tone and content should match the destination page pretty closely. That way, the transition makes sense.
Define success metrics first. Reader interest isn’t determined by the number of e-mail messages delivered. It’s derived from the click-to-open rate. Set a target before you send so you can benchmark yourself on success (25 percent is average).
Look at the e-mail landscape. Just because it’s not a marketing e-mail doesn’t mean the reader doesn’t receive other e-mail from your company. Being cognizant of this is key to determining send frequency. It’s not about what your company’s policy is, it’s about the reader’s experience.
Check out what your competitors are sending. It may not be your company’s e-mail that turns off the reader. It could be the volume of e-mail in the category itself. If the reader subscribes to financial advice e-mail from seven companies and you all send on the same day, the recipient won’t read any of them. This isn’t your fault, unless you knew about the bottlenecked delivery. But it’s your responsibility to find out what makes sense from a broader perspective.

Read the whole article

Posted in Email marketing | 2 Comments »

Extreme Email Makeover: Campaign Monitor Edition

March 15th, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

The people over at Campaign Monitor have started “Extreme Email Makeover” series where “Dr.” Mark Wyner takes (I’m assuming) client’s emails and provides a diagnosis (About best-practices compliances). Next, he performs extreme surgery to makeover the email, followed by before and after shots in various email clients. I love it! This first patient is Teenie Tiny Tots - an online retailer selling baby stuff.

It’s as entertaining as it is informative!

Check it out…

Posted in Email marketing | No Comments »

Email Frequency - Membership Renewal

March 7th, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

card’s founder and prez, Carolyn Gardner spoke at the February CMA Ottawa luncheon last week and afterwards someone came and asked us for some resources for determining an acceptable frequency limit for membership renewal emails. I told her I would look it up and get back to her - well it’s been over a week and I can’t find anything really useful on the topic.

So I’m asking if you know a good article or case study on the topic OR if you have any personal experience with using email for membership renewals and have some info to share, please post a comment or email me (krusk(at)cardcommunications.com)

Posted in Email marketing | No Comments »

Understanding Email Metrics - We Need Standardization

March 5th, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

Jeanniey Mullen wrote in ClickZ today about how calculating email metrics differs by Email Service Provider (ESP). Check out the article: “Which Vendor is better?“

Since we started publishing quarterly trends reports in 2006, I’ve developed a big pet peeve about how every ESP seems to calculate metrics differently.

At card, we have been using two different ESPs based on each client’s needs, and recently we’ve started using a third. Shockingly, all three calculate opens and clicks differently. This makes creating our quarterly reports frustrating, because we do it according to our most popular ESP - but then we get clients from the other two calling worried about their results because they are so different than our averages.(In the most recent report however, I calculated clicks in two different ways - while it draws attention to the problem that all metrics aren’t equal, it’s still not a great solution)

I would love to see some standardization - metrics are hard enough to understand now with all the potential variables that can affect any campaign, but unless you are fully emerged in email marketing, it can be difficult to understand the differences.

The ClickZ article also states that the Email Experience Council is releasing a deliverability roundtable study about the topic.

Posted in Email marketing | No Comments »

Privacy commissioner pushes for Canadian spam legislation

March 2nd, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner is calling on the government to create anti-spam legislation, stating that “Canada is the only G8 nation without anti-spam legislation and is now cited internationally as the sixth-largest source of the nuisance and sometimes harmful e-mails”

Now I agree. Spam is definitely a major problem - both in Canada, and the rest of the world, however, I’d like to know how successful anti-spam legislation has been in other countries - my guess is not very, considering there is still billions of spam emails sent everyday.

Now don’t you think our tax dollars would be better spent educating people on spam prevention and how to recognize a phishing scam in the inbox? The problem is people are still falling for these things when they really shouldn’t be.

I’m not against anti-spam legislation - we probably should have some, (more specific than PIPEDA) but I think if people are able to avoid getting spam, and recognize it when they get it, this wouldn’t be as big a problem as it is today!

Original article from the Ottawa Sun

Posted in Email marketing | No Comments »