An interesting little scenario arose today… I received an email from an industry publication asking me to subscribe to its weekly newsletter. It was a well-written offer, in fact, I was tempted - until it occurred to that I was subscribed, and had unsubscribed last November.

It seems the email was sent through another company (although the from name belonged to the certain publication), so I suspect it was a list rental of sorts. However, it should have been arranged that anyone who had previously unsubscribed to the publication’s list should not be included on the rental list. Since the email was branded from the publication - this is definitely a violation of Can-Spam.

As an email marketer, I’m definitely sympathetic - things go wrong sometimes, but here’s the real kicker: I hit reply to politely let them know what had happen, only to find my email bounce back to me! Anyway, I’m feeling nice, so I won’t out the culprit. I will, however, provide a list of tips for list rentals…

Tips for List Rentals

My personal feeling is that if you can avoid renting lists, you should, renting a quality list is expensive, and you always run the risk of ticking people off. However, if you need to, there are steps you can take to get the most of your money:

1. Suppress your house file unsubscribe list from rented lists - If I’ve unsubscribed, it means I’m not interested in hearing from you. Usually, when someone is mailing to a list on your behalf, they should ask for this.
2. Ask that the list owner use its normal ‘From name’ for the email - The from name should always match the company with the relationship with subscribers to avoid spam complaints. Your brand should be introduced in the subject line.
   
3. Use a reputable list broker - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Ask about how often the list is rented out, how often it’s mailed to, how names were collected. Being perceived as a spammer (or in association with them) can hurt your brand reputation.
   
4. Make the most of your rental, ask for an opt-in - Make the primary call-to-action a request to subscribe. You could try to sell a product, and that may bring in X amount of dollars, but if you convert the rented names to join your own house list, you can sell to them time and time again.
   
5. Handle replies appropriately - It becomes a bit confusing - are subscribers replying to the list owner, or the company who is renting the list? The reality is a lot of the replies will most likely be list items: people asking to be unsubscribed, auto-replies, etc. However, some people may want to inquire about the company crafting the message. First, the reply-to address needs to be valid! Secondly, whoever is handling replies should have a clear understanding of what to do with emails. Consider adding a reply email address inside the body to help subscribers who may want to contact you directly.
   

More Canadian email news today! Ipsos published an article about Canadians thoughts and opinions towards email marketing. The article is free for subscribers, but I will touch on some of the interesting points here:

• 65% of Canadians prefer communicating via email over other methods, although on the flip side, 44% of us agree that we can hardly keep up with the amount of email that we receive.
• After two years of ‘winning the war against spam’, the volume of spam has increased 51% in 2006 to an average of 130 emails per week.
• Spam overload does have an impact on legitimate email marketing because of the fact that the lines are often blurred between the two in consumer’s minds.
• 80% of Canadian Internet users have registered with at least one website to receive permission-based email, with the typical Canadian Internet user registering with an average of slightly more than eight websites

My favourite part of the article comes here, under the subtitle “Email Marketing is Successful in Engaging Internet Users“, particularly, the article provides some insight into what consumers like to receive:

Respondents also expressed interest in receiving discounts (82%), free gifts (73%), contest offerings and tips (70% each), and interest is also relatively high in eCoupons (61%), industry news (50%) or eFlyers (49%).

And finally, what influence is email having over consumers buying and purchasing habits?

A significant minority of Canadian Internet users have forwarded a direct email they have received on to a friend or colleague (27%), purchased the advertiser’s product or service at a later date (20%), or purchased the advertiser’s product or service from the website (16%).

Ipsos comes out with interesting articles about email marketing pretty frequently - I would encourage you to sign up (for free) for Ipsos-Ideas.

Laurie Petersen posts a recap on Online Media Daily from the Email Insider Summit in Florida, discussing why relevance and measurement are the most important factors in a healthy email program.

I especially love some of the examples she gives, such as targeting pregnant women at different stages of pregnancy, and puppy owners according to the pet’s age. While finding out this information about your subscribers can seem cumbersome, and developing the strategy, content and sending at the right time may seem a lot harder than blasting off one email to your list, it truly will pay off in the long run.

Read the article…

Just a quick note to tell you the Email Experience Council has just launched a new blog, the voice of email, which, judging by its impressive list of contributors, promises to be a great source of email insight and knowledge. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on!

So lately there’s been a bit of an upheavel over hotmail’s “disappearing act.” It seems emails are being sent to hotmail, not bouncing, not landing in the junk box or inbox, just completely disappearing into thin air!

What can you do to make sure your emails are getting through to your hotmail users? Easy… Authentication! (uh… what?)

Lucky for us all, some great people are blogging about it all over the place:

• Mark Brownlow of “No man is an iland” points us to this article on The Register, which explains what’s going on with Hotmail and what you can do about it.
  
• David Baker of WhiteNoise, posts a recap of the Authentication and Online Trust Summit which includes great detail about Hotmail’s (and other ISPs) delivery procedures.
  
• Al Iverson of spam resource posts 3 Easy steps for setting up Sender ID authentication, which will vastly improve your chances of getting delivered to Hotmail.
  

See there’s nothing to worry about! And if you are using a reputable ESP to send your email out, it probably comes equipped with authentication, so no sweat! (Don’t be afraid to call and find out though)