Starting Email Marketing and Your First Email Campaing (CH01)

Introduction

In recent years email marketing has really taken off with more businesses trying it than ever before. The reason for this is that more businesses are realizing that they can get just as much done through email as they have been through other avenues. In fact, email marketing campaigns are becoming more and more lucrative all the time. Many experts believe that in the future that most, if not all, effective marketing campaigns will take place through email.

Many businesses are choosing to try it out for one simple reason, and that is because it is cost effective. Instead of spending big bucks on advertisements in papers and spots on television or flyers to post in relevant spots, businesses can send out an email to their target audiences and let them know all about their product, service, or event.

Doesn't it make more sense to do this, which can be virtually free, when data shows that it works just as well as other marketing methods? Many businesses are leery of email advertising when they first find out but soon find that this is the way to drive their business.

Another reason that many people are trying their hand at email marketing is because they can be more focused in their marketing efforts. A lot of businesses have a hard time getting to just their target audience, making their work count. Email allows for the business to contact their target audience directly with no middle man. So, in addition to being most cost effective the business can get their intended message or information to the consumer much more directly.

Yet one more benefit to email marketing is that it is more personal. Consumers respond to what is familiar and personal and when you are marketing by email you can be much more personal than if you place an advertisement in a newspaper or have a commercial on television. You can address customers and potential customers by name and you are coming right to them to deliver the information that you want them to have.

Consumers respond to this as they feel like they are receiving individualized attention. This perceived individualized attention is what makes people want to buy, visit a location, or attend an event and that is what good marketing is all about.

"Remember the number one rule of sales: it's easier to sell to current customers than to sell to new customers.  The first sale is always the hardest.  You should concentrate on building a legion of repeat customers and email marketing can help you do that." 

 We are living in a time where more people get their news from the computer than they do from the television or the newspaper. Many other people get all of their entertainment from the computer, so why not send marketing through the means of communication that a growing portion of the population is the most comfortable with?

With more and more people getting online all the time and using it for all of their needs, it simply makes sense to start incorporating email into marketing campaigns as eventually this will be the marketing plan of choice for those that want to succeed.

With the huge impact that email marketing has made on web marketing, there is no reason to turn away from this potential money-making avenue. Still we have to understand and know how and when to use email, as well as when not to use it. This is crucial as it decides whether we'll make or break this money-making machine.

Just being as web surfers, we send out emails to our friends and companies most of the time. We will also check our mailboxes everyday for incoming emails. Email is seen here as effective ways by which you can maintain your relationship with people you know. From the marketer's point of view, email is a fantastic opportunity to establish good relationships with prospects and existing customers. As marketers, we can build this important relationship with customers by engaging in constant conversations. It is only during such conversations that we will be able to know and understand what are their buying patterns and preferences. We will be able to assess what is known in marketing language as "consumer behavior". With such data accumulated on hand, we can do a little more research and fine-tune our product or service and customer service, in order to achieve email marketing success.

Using email, we are able to inform customers and prospects about our new and latest products or services and all the offers, bonuses, freebies and discounts that we will be offering. What better way to make this announcement other than via email that is, as you know, cheap and fast. With the help of technological innovation, you can place your offers, bonuses, freebies and discounts in your email message and link them to your sales note is that your message has to be compelling, providing a valid reason and strong motivation for the prospect to click on the link.

Where speed is concerned, we know that there is no other medium that is able to make transmissions any faster than email. Email is via electronic technology and this is another reason why online marketers revel in this innovation. It works speedily, and is easily the best communication medium for the purpose of providing and maintaining customer relationships.

Complaints can be easily tracked and resolved almost instantly when incoming mails are checked regularly. Special requests from customers or prospects can also be easily acceded to by a simple click. Additional information about the product or service can also be relayed instantly via email. These efforts can be best rewarded only through email marketing.

We may think that the interest of the prospect may not be constant sometimes in any circumstance. Email dispels this perception. Email is one place where the marketer can sustain the interest of the prospect effectively. Placing the offer link in various places of the email message works wonders. This is tantamount to restating your offers to capture and remind the prospect of your offers. Simply, the reason is because we know that people read emails very quickly without digesting them! They scroll the messages without really paying attention to your words. So locating the offer link at multiple places often helps in this respect.

Email marketing helps online marketers in many ways. For any marketing campaign to succeed, it is imperative to have follow-up done regularly. We know that email is relatively inexpensive. All types of customers are important to marketers. Mailings received earlier must be followed up diligently. Surely no marketer would want to lose any of these customers who are precious to the bottom line. With the inexpensiveness of email, it makes sense to do follow-up diligently. Corporate marketers will endorse the fact that the email is really an effective tool to boost attendance for conferences. Of course, we do not forget that via email, people are always able to do last-minute registrations for any event without any fuss.

Email marketing will help online marketers to increase sales orders, retain customers, and importantly, to build much better relationships with customers. It is the only marketing medium that is not only fast and effective, but also cheap and inexpensive. Online marketers will be able to bathe in email marketing success.

A brief History of Email Marketing

Email marketing has a long history. It has been used since the mid-nineties when the Internet was still in its infancy. Marketers quickly grasped the importance of this channel and started using email in a more sophisticated way. They realized that emails could have personalized greetings, they could be scheduled, they could be measured more accurately, and subject line testing was discovered as a great way to boost response rates. However, the email marketing tools of the past were still mainly focused on consumer applications, where a one-time email can immediately influence a purchase.

Email marketing has its roots in the direct marketing industry, they were the people who filled your postbox to the brim with pamphlets offering to sell your house or fix your drain. This junk mail is what would now be considered spam in the digital age. At the advent of the Internet and email, people began to envisage a remarkably cheaper and logistically simpler marketing strategy. The first true form of electronic advertising arose in the late 1980's on bulletin boards, the precursors to the Internet. Bulletin boards were basically a rudimentary form of a modern online forum. It did not take long for the first electronic marketing campaign to begin; it took less than 8 months from the inception of the ARPAnet bulletin board to be precise.  It was a natural progression, beginning with individuals advertising and selling electronics of their own designs to other enthusiasts. In 1987 the first corporation took advantage of the new electronic medium to great success. Email marketing was originally the domain of high tech companies as their audience was predominantly technically minded people. By this point, the exponential proliferation of desktop computers and greater access to the Internet fueled email marketing's growth to the point that it took over from traditional direct marketing by 1995.  

Historically, software to facilitate the sending of mass emails arose very quickly from the labs of large universities as they realized the implications of having to enter hundred if not thousands of email addresses manually. The first automated emailing script released to the public was also one of the first open source projects focusing on non-scientific software, it was released by MIT in 1982. The script was a rudimentary loop that read every email address from a file and sent an email containing the contents of another file. With greater corporate interest in the 1990's, the software had to advance to allow for better control of contact lists, better reporting for an email campaign and support for scheduling. One of the main requirements by corporates was ease of use. The original mass email systems were, like all other applications of the time, text based. This meant that users had to call complicated instructions from the command line which was unintuitive and frustratingly easy to mess up. Even though Windows had been in production since 1985, it was only in 1991 that the first fully graphical enterprise email messaging system was released. The system boasted a list of rudimentary features that are still core to successful email messaging systems such as bounce reports and customization of campaigns. Because of its massive popularity as the primary communication passage for companies, email marketing software has evolved at a constant rate to include better support for customised emails, HTML styling, templates, reporting and ease of use.

Web based email systems like TouchBasePro were an inevitable evolution as the world logged on to the Internet and as the software as a service model evolved. One of the fundamental changes that occurred in email marketing services during the 1990's was the depth of reporting, from simple lists of received and bounced emails to in depth reports detailing every email's activities in graphical and understandable reports. Reporting has become a key factor in the usefulness of an email marketing service as it allows corporates to track the success of a campaign as well as quantifying a return from the investment into the campaign. The aesthetics used in campaigns has changed fundamentally, from the first text only campaigns to vivid graphical presentations that grab an ever more rushed and callus email viewers' attention. The radical influx of spam has led legitimate email messaging companies to develop methods to facilitate conscious registration of a subscriber as well as always giving that subscriber the option to unsubscribe. The use of registration forms has enhanced companies understanding of their client base by posing additional questions on the form. Understanding your client base is considered one of the most valuable marketing tools available and with advanced services such as TouchBasePro targeted marketing to certain demographics is easy and painless. With the evolution of email marketing unrelenting, the focus on getting relevant content to customers that care is the primary field of improvement in the industry today.

Types of Email Marketing

There are three broad types of email marketing, each one with its own characteristics.....

Postcard Emails.  These are simple, brief announcements that you may want to make informing potential customers of a special offer. These types of emails should be easy for the recipient to scan in a few seconds and have a clear message. A postcard email will usually be restricted to a single call-to-action or have a 'click here' command with a link to the website to potential new customers. If you have a number of titles, the postcard email would be used to promote one title in the single email and will need to be targeted to the correct prospects. Past subscribers, people responding to competitions or website registrants will be a starting area to target.

Postcard emails can also be used to renew subscribers. They can be timed to be delivered to subscribers at set stages in their subscription to promote a renewal.

Email Newsletters.  The primary purpose of an email newsletter is to build on the relationship with your customers. This should result in an increase in sales, but the focus should be on providing relevant, useful content that subscribers might be interested in. This will keep you in contact with your subscribers and show as a benefit for subscribing. If you have an opt-in option for newsletters for potential customers, then the newsletters become a way of acquiring new subscribers by including a special offer and details of how to subscribe.  Newsletters do not always have to be about the magazine directly. For example, a magazine can send a newsletter providing information on an event and how to apply for tickets. The tickets may not even be handled by the publishers, but this will give subscribers the feeling that they are given first hand information from the magazine which will build your relationship with them.

Catalogue Emails.  A catalogue based email is fairly self explanatory, being an electronic version of a print brochure listing particular products, with the primary goal to encourage customers to purchase. This type of email marketing can be used by fulfillment bureau and affiliates to advertise titles from a range of clients in one email. The email can be titled so that it gives the impression that it is from one publisher, but also offers ifferent titles as alternatives. An example of this is shown in Appendix 1 as used by Dovetail as a Father's Day campaign. The email offers titles from a range of clients, but is addressed from BBC Magazines as this will be directed to a customer that has a link with a BBC title.

Email Marketing Features

The basic functionality of email marketing platforms are described below.

List & contact management

Before sending an email campaign, you need a list to send it to. All email marketing platforms require a database of contact records and a way to import, export, and manage these records. Segmentation is critical in email performance, and some platforms are able to segment based on both “who you are” (your contact profile) and “what you do” (your response activity). For example, you may want to send a follow-up email on contacts in NY State who linked on your last message. It’s important to be able to easily search your database to fill each mailing list.

Message creation

Message creation may be done via templates, WYSIWYG or HTML editors, or by uploading copying or uploading files designed externally. For beginners, some platforms provide message creation wizards that take you step by step, through the process. Not all WYSIWYG editors are the same, so make sure you are comfortable with the feature. For example, how it handles images can have a big impact on creation time. The ability to rapidly create campaigns by copying and modifying previous messages can be a big time saver.

Deliverability

A great message and a quality list don’t guarantee good results. To engage, marketers must get their emails into prospects’ in-boxes, and most email marketing vendors use an opt-in system to ensure deliverability rates in the high 90s. Make sure your vendor maintains strong relationships with the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) so that opted-in emails are not interpreted as spam. As email volume increases, deliverability gains in importance.

Autoresponders

Autoresponders (sometimes called triggers) are marketing sequences designed to build relationships with prospects. For example, an introductory email may be followed day 2 with a product overview, and on subsequent days a product review, a testimonial, and finally, an offer. Most email marketing platforms today offer some form of an Autoresponder. More sophisticated functionality enables Autoresponders to be triggered not just by a signup form, but by behavioral responses (e.g., a click, or download).

Web form & landing page generation

At a minimum, your email marketing platform should enable you to create HTML code to be placed on your web site that allows customers to subscribe to your email list. Basic systems may offer only a single sign-up form but most marketers need to manage multiple forms. Higher-end platforms allow marketers to create forms and landing pages as destinations for email recipients. The ability to create forms and landing pages without getting your web development team involved provides the flexibility most marketers seek.

Reporting & Analytics

One of the most valuable aspects of email marketing is its measurability. All email marketing platforms will provide basic measures including list size, open rate, link rate. Higher end reporting includes unsubscribe rate, spam complaints, and rejection rate. Marketers often find value in platforms that measure list quality and growth over time, aggregate metrics across various lists and segments, and social media measurement such as campaign “likes”, “followers” and “Tweets”.

CRM Integration. For many years, email marketing operated in its own marketing silo. “Leads” were either undefined or sent to sales teams as Excel files of campaign “linkers”. Today, the trend is for email marketing lists to be integrated directly with sales CRM data so that a sales rep can see an individual prospect’s email marketing activity directly within the CRM system. Salesforce.com is the leading CRM system for email marketing vendors. Microsoft Dynamics is also gaining popularity.

Advantages of Email Marketing

For many organizations, email marketing has become an entrenched part of the marketing mix. Because email marketing is suited to virtually all organizations, from a 1-person independent consultant, to a small business, to a Fortune 500 company, the market potential is enormous and the user base continues to expand rapidly. More than 100 companies currently offer hosted email marketing solutions. The term, ‘hosted’ means the software is managed centrally (hosted) by the vendor, and customers are given login passwords in order to access the software. There is no installation or maintenance required as in traditional ‘installed’ software. Users of email marketing software can do everything from importing and managing contact data, to designing and launching campaigns, to tracking results. The hosted software model is sometimes referred to in the investment community as software-as-a-service (SaaS).

This White Paper examines the benefits and functionality of email marketing software, as well as the growth of the email marketing industry. We estimate current market penetration and anticipated growth rates for the industry as a whole, and also highlight some key considerations in selecting an appropriate email marketing vendor.

E-mail marketing has the highest ROI effectiveness rating of any direct marketing medium. Most marketers agree that e-mail has excellent cost efficiency and on a cost per response basis, e-mail marketing is ranked number one. In the table below e-mail has twice the ROI impact as direct mail.

Why email marketing has has grown to become a billion dollar plus industry with more than 100 vendors offering a wide variety of solutions? Anyone who uses email can understand why it is the quintessential communication tool. With email as an effective medium, there are a multitude of benefits to email marketing.

·         IT’S LOW BUDGET

According to recent reports, email marketing is 20 times more cost effective than direct mail − in some cases costing less than a penny each! Wow! Think about how many clients you could reach for a mere one hundred dollars! It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that you could double or even triple the return on your email marketing investment in one campaign! Can you afford NOT to devote a few dollars to email marketing every day?

·         IT’S EFFECTIVE

We know that every business is unique and has its reasons for spending exorbitant amounts of money on direct mail, or print and TV ads. However, whether email marketing is a priority for your business or not, the statistics don’t lie. Email is the most cost-efficient marketing tool available today. Not only is it affordable, but the response rate of opt-in email is 50 times greater than advertising and 5 times greater than direct mail! But rather than take our word for it, let’s look at the stats:

1.       The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reported that email marketing generated an $43.52 in 2009 for every dollar spent. Non-email Internet marketing delivered $19.94 in 2008.

2.       According to DMA Interactive survey results - email is the best online tool for increasing web traffic and customers to web sites and storefronts, according to 54% of small businesses surveyed.

·         IT’S IMMEDIATE

If you’ve ever organized a media or TV campaign, you know how time-consuming it can be and how difficult it is to measure. Email marketing generates rapid responses and leaves a digital footprint that can be measured instantaneously. In addition to standard metrics such as open, click through and delivery rates, leading Email Service Providers (ESPs) provide tools to measure sales, conversions, file downloads, event registrations, newsletter subscriptions, social bookmarking − just about anything you can do online!

·         IT’S TARGETED

Forget about “spray and pray” advertising campaigns that try to reach everyone with the same pitch. Let’s be honest, not everyone is a potential customer and that’s ok. But somewhere out there the ideal prospects are waiting to hear about your products or services and your mission is to reach them as quickly as possible. Of course, you have to identify them first!

Email marketing is one of the most efficient tools for managing contacts and creating targeted lists. In just a few clicks, you can segment your contacts using a variety of criteria, such as demographics, purchasing history, or interests. In that way you can tailor your messages and product offers to the individuals most likely to respond.

·         IT’S EASY

Creating an email marketing message is almost as simple as writing an email. Major ESPs (like GetResponse, mailchimp and many others) provide all the necessary tools and materials such as professional HTML templates, web forms, auto responders or follow-up messages, and list segmentation and targeting capabilities, as well as automatic tracking and reporting. You don’t need any special knowledge or skills except one: crafting messages that are well written, relevant, and explain your product’s benefits clearly and concisely. After all, your messages are your brand, so you need to make a positive impression.

·         IT’S AUTOMATIC

If you have too much free time and need more tasks to perform, do not read this section! If you need more time to focus on your business, think about how autopilot works in a plane. You just input the settings and autopilot does the rest. Well, email marketing has a tool called an “autoresponder” that’s like “autopilot” for campaigns! For instance, if you want to send a campaign message out on particular days after someone sign up to your newsletter you just create the messages and schedule the delivery from your Email Service Provider account − and all your messages will be sent out on time, automatically. This is important not only to save you time and money, but it’s crucial to stay in touch with your customers. According to the stats, only 10% of subscribers purchase after the first email contact. Usually it takes up to 4 or 5 contacts before subscribers purchase. So even though you can automate your messages, it’s up to you to “keep the ball rolling”!

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The Growth of Email Marketing

To understand the rapid growth of the email marketing industry, we must first observe that the use of the Internet continues to penetrate the US, reaching over 77% of the population in 20101, and email is the number 1 use of the Internet. According to the non-profit Pew Research Center, more than 90% of Internet users between 18 and 72 said they send and receive email, making it the top online activity, ahead of search engine use.2 Email is not only pervasive in Internet usage, it’s also the dominant method of business communication. According to a 2011 study done by the Marketing Agency, Merkle3, email is the preferred method of commercial communication by 74% of all online adults, beating phone, social networking sites, and text messaging by wide margins. The same study shows that 30% of total email time was devoted to commercial emails (versus personal), compared to only 17% in 2005.

The increased use of mobile and smart phones also bodes well for email. According to a Nielsen report released in August 2010, email usage makes up a42% of all mobile action, while time spent on social networks makes up only about 10%of the total.

As email marketing usage grew, so did the practice of “spamming” (i.e., unsolicited bulk messages sent indiscriminately). Spam filters were developed to reduce the amount of spam reaching an individual’s computer, and this presented a significant obstacle for email marketers. However, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003,4 which delineates compliance requirements against spamming, proved to be a boon for hosted email marketers, as the software facilitates compliance with features such as opt-out, tracking of opted-out users, and spam evaluation testing for email campaigns.

The Size of the Hosted Email Marketing Industry

Estimates of the size of the email marketing industry vary widely. Forrester Research estimated 2009 email marketing vendor revenue to be $1.2 billion. This estimate may be conservative. Based on US Census numbers and a review of more than 50 email marketing vendors, Marketing Growth Strategies, LLC, estimates a total market size of $1.5 billion for 2010 and an annual growth rate of 20% to reach $2.6 billion in 3 years6. Table 1 below shows the numbers of businesses by employee size and our estimate of the penetration of hosted email marketing vendors for each category. 

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Choosing the Right Subject Line Length

A subject line is often the first opportunity an email marketer has to capture a consumer’s attention. Multiple analyses conducted by Epsilon have shown that the subject line is the most important factor in driving overall response, from initial open and click to eventual conversion. In more than 20 multivariate tests with Epsilon clients — using statistical methods to systematically vary creative content, placement and design to establish the winning combination, or “super email” — the subject line is almost always the factor most responsible for triggering opens and clicks. Common sense also underscores the vital importance of the subject line; it is one of the few factors consumers consider when deciding whether to open an email.


Despite the widely acknowledged importance of subject lines, companies often don’t test their effectiveness. They spend little time thinking about and testing subject lines, compared to the time and resources devoted to creative development, even though significantly more people will see a subject line than its accompanying creative.


Much has been written on one particular aspect of subject lines: the length. Most research on this topic concludes that shorter subject lines are better.

Other studies claim that longer subject lines work best. New research conducted by Epsilon confirms that shorter subject lines generally outperform longer ones but also quantifies the relationship between subject line lengths (SLL) and open and click rates. Additionally, the Epsilon findings discussed here suggest that word order and selection are vitally important considerations in subject line effectiveness.


This white paper reviews new research on the relationship between SLL and response, and proposes a framework for evaluating SLL as it relates to email marketing efforts.


Why is SLL Important?

In its 2007 Email Benchmark Guide, Marketing Sherpa concludes, “When it comes to subject lines, shorter is better. It’s as close to a universal rule of the

Internet that simple messages that can be instantly digested are the best way to take advantage of our short digital attention span.”  However, the superiority of shorter subject lines isn’t solely a function of consumers’ busy lives and short attention spans. In fact, SLL is often predetermined by technical constraints.


Always remember that Email Service provider domains often limit the number of subject line characters displayed by default in the inbox.


AOL, which is responsible for approximately 22% of the U.S. email market, limits subject lines to roughly 38 characters.


Yahoo!, with 21% of U.S. email, has an approximate limit of 47 characters per subject line.


Hotmail, which has 14% of the U.S. email market, uses word wrap to display subject lines on multiple lines, allowing approximately 45 characters per line.



 If you’re aware that a substantial number of your supporters may be reading your emails on a mobile device, consider condensing your subject lines even shorter. Some mobile devices (iPhone, for example) can show most of the characters in a subject line, while others (such as the BlackBerry) tend to show fewer than 10. In these cases the “from” line may be more important for getting recipients to open your email.


Therefore, 57% of U.S. email recipients see only the fi rst 38 to 47 characters of a subject line when making the decision to open an email. Additionally, the growing reliance on mobile devices — and their smaller screens that display even fewer characters —affects this trend as well.


Subject Lines: Beyond Length

Consider the following subject line couplet:

Subject line 1:

“This weekend only at your local Acme Store, special savings on Ladies Apparel!”


Subject line 2:

“Special savings on Ladies Apparel at your local Acme Store this weekend only!”


These two fictitious subject lines are identical in length but differ greatly from a functional perspective.

The first subject line follows a time>brand>benefit > category structure.

The second follows a benefit>category>brand>time structure.


In all likelihood, these two subject lines would not perform the same. But without knowing the brand and the audience, a marketer would be challenged to predict which would perform better. This scenario illustrates how word order and word choice can trump absolute length.


Another example:

Subject line 1:

“Last chance to order for Valentine’s Day is this Wednesday, Order Now”


Subject line 2:

“Only 48 hours to order for guaranteed Valentines Day delivery”


Subject line 2 is shorter and uses a numeral in the subject line (a widely accepted best practice), yet subject line 1 provided a 23% lift in sales for the florist that sent it. Why? It may be due to the absolute deadline (“this Wednesday”) versus the relative deadline (“only 48 hours”) in the second subject line.


Also, subject line 2 adopts the point of view of the company (48 hours from when message was sent, not 48 hours from when the subject line was opened), versus the point of view of the recipient. Thus, the first subject line may have been less confusing to the consumer. Finally, the fi rst subject line referred to the holiday earlier in the subject line than the second subject line and used the ultimatum “last chance.” This example highlights two points: first, subject lines can have an enormous impact on a company’s bottom line, not just their open rate; second, subject line testing is difficult.


A final example:


Subject line 1:

“U.S. May Face Shortage of General Surgeons”


Subject line 2:

“4/29/2008: U.S. May Face Shortage of General Surgeons”


The only difference between these two subject lines is the date at the beginning of subject line 2. In this case, subject line 2 performed slightly better in terms of opens and clicks. Simply put, sometimes a longer subject line is justifi ed by an element that increases response. Other examples of this phenomenon are the inclusion of brand messaging or personalization in the subject line.


Exceptions to the Rule

According to MailChimp, an email service provider specializing in smaller clients, “The general rule of thumb in email marketing is to keep your subject line to 50 characters or less.... The exception was for highly targeted audiences where the reader apparently appreciated the additional information in the subject line.” One email program that qualifi es as MailChimp’s exception to the rule is the Kimberly-Clark brand GoodNites®, which markets products for children with bedwetting challenges.10 Over the past year, GoodNites has averaged a whopping 94 characters for its subject lines—2 to 3 times longer what is commonly accepted as a “best practice.” Longer subject lines simply perform better for the brand, with SLL correlating to a unique open rate and total click-through rate of .47 and .53, respectively—high correlations by marketing standards. In fact, in 14 of 22 (64%) recent A/B or A/B/C subject line

tests, the longer subject line performed better, regardless of subject line content.


One tactic that GoodNites employs in its subject lines is the use of lists, as in the example: “4 Bedwetting Causes, Parents Helping Parents, Valuable Coupon and More!” In GoodNites’ case, the extra information afforded by the longer subject line helps GoodNites reach a wide variety of consumers who are at various points in their relationship with the brand.


Ellen Watson, the member of Kimberly-Clark’s Media and Relationship Marketing team who manages the newsletter, says, “Someone who is just starting to confront the issue of bedwetting might be searching for advice and information, whereas someone loyal to the product would be more interested in coupons or special offers, and a highly engaged member of our online community might be interested in hearing stories from other parents. Our longer subject lines can speak to all these consumers at once.” Also, GoodNites’ extensive use of compound subject lines with short, pithy statements allows the subject line to be digested at multiple intervals, independent of the subject line’s appearance in the Consumer’s inbox.


In terms of domain limitations, an AOL consumer might see the GoodNites subject line as “4 Bedwetting Causes, Parents Helping P,” whereas a Yahoo! consumer would see “4 Bedwetting Causes, Parents Helping Parents, Valu.” Although the subject line would be incomplete in both inboxes, it still holds meaning. For even higher response potential, GoodNites should test the order of subject line elements, given that not all elements will be visible from the inbox. Given that most U.S. consumers see only the first 40 characters or so of a subject line, marketers should be careful to construct the subject line in such a way as to include the most vital information first.

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Email Deliver, Email Open and Email Clicks

Email Delivery

The first challenge for any email marketer is to ensure that their message actually makes it into a recipient's inbox. Constant obstacles - ISP
blacklisting, unused mailboxes, corporate firewalls and personal email
filters - threaten both the deliverability of emails and your company's
reputation. Even the smallest blip in your accountability could affect your
campaign. Plus, a 'one size fits all' approach simply will not work; each
local country has its own set of challenges. In China, for instance, any
large email broadcast (more than 5,000 addresses) results in automatic
blocking by ISPs.

It is important to do all you can to prevent being blocked by the recipient.
Consider some of the following techniques to help strengthen your reputation
and ensure maximum email deliverability.

1. ISP blocks are the biggest causes of email failures. Not only do you need
an approach to avoid being blacklisted, you also need a clear whitelisting
strategy.

a. Check your bounce reports. If you are constantly being blocked by the
same ISPs, then it's likely that you have been blacklisted 

b. Read the ISP's spam policy, which is generally posted on its website.

c. Submit a whitelisting request to the relevant contact to exempt your
emails from blocking filters.

d. Keep communication channels open with ISPs and respond to their feedback
promptly.

e. Ensure that you are able to demonstrate best practise through permission
based marketing, relevant and valuable content, and an effective unsubscribe
process.

f. Test content against up to date content filters

g. Use multiple email servers and IP addresses to prevent being perceived as
a bulk emailer.


2. Prevent blacklisting on personal and corporate inboxes. Your reports may
show a high delivery rate, but your email may have been quarantined at a
corporate level or gone straight to junk in a personal mailbox.

a. Include your brand in the sender address and subject line to clearly show
from whom the email has been sent and why the recipient should open it.

b. Always add a clear unsubscribe link and ask users their reasons for
Unsubscribing.

c. Encourage users to add you to their safe sender list. 

d. Set a frequency strategy for contact management and test it by sending
relevant messages.

 

3. Work with specialist companies, such as Return Path and GoodMail, who can
advise you on:

a. Implementing accurate testing processes across all email clients and
devices;

b. Maintaining a positive mail server reputation;

c. Minimizing the amount of email going into junk folders.




Email Opens

Open rates are notoriously impossible to report accurately. As an email open
is not triggered until an image is downloaded from the sender's web server,
only HTML emails with images enabled will be recorded as opens. On the
flipside, emails displayed in a preview pane with images enabled will count
as an open even if the recipient does not read or click to open the email.
It is increasingly difficult to gain accurate reporting for the following
reasons:

* Offline email reading

* ISPs and Outlook 2007 disabling images by default

* Text emails

* Mobile email reading

* Preview panes

* Inconsistency of reporting between different email service providers

* Optimized email design for mobiles

 
Here are some ideas to help you increase your open rate:

1. Use sender addresses that are recognizable and consistent.

2. Experiment with your subject lines. Try including a call to action or
some key content teasers. If you're undecided, run A/B tests to see what
works the best.

3. Calculate the optimum sending day/time for your audience or database
through testing and tracking and monitor it over time. In our statistics,
while overall open rates have remained static, there is a marked decline in
Friday open rates. 

4. Reports on click through rates seem to back up this statistic, so we have
reduced the amount of email we send on a Friday and continue to monitor
trends.

5. Use the preview pane to your advantage. Many people will see a preview of
your email before deciding whether to open it, ignore it or delete it. If
the top third of the email contains compelling content such as a key point
or call to action, you have more chance to entice a reader to open it.
Experiment with pre-headers - the clickable links at the top of an email.

6. Set a strategy for handling dormant emails. Remove anyone who has not
opened an email over a set period of time.

7. Offer unsubscribe with options to receive more relevant emails.


Email Clicks

Most email marketing campaigns include a call to action, which is initiated
by a trackable click. For this reason, click through rates (CTRs) have
become one of the accepted currencies by which to measure the success of
email marketing. They are also one of the most accurate metrics available.
It is important to note that CTRs can vary depending on a number of factors,
including:

1. List recency and data hygiene. The more recent the email data, the better
the response is likely to be. It is important to track performance by email
account. The likelihood of a contact responding to an email if they haven't
registered as an open or click over the last two years is slim. You have
very little to lose by removing these contacts from your database or at
least separating them from your main database while attempting to re-engage
with them via specific campaigns.

If you have been asking for unsubscribe reasons, then you can now use this
data. Whilst many of the email addresses may be inactive, some of your
contacts will simply have "emotionally" unsubscribed because they are not
seeing the value in the emails you are sending them. Tracking and removing
non-responding contacts is part of our list management strategy and we have
seen a marked improvement in performance as a result.


2. Targeting. We have found that by combining demographic segmentation with
behavioural data, it is possible to obtain a much higher return on data,
thus achieving more with less. Consider the following: Who would be most
interested by your offer and does  this match your target audience? It is
good practice to check your response expectations against the target
audience: it is far more challenging to elicit response from a CIO than from
an IT helpdesk executive.

3. Incentives. Incentives will undoubtedly increase the quantity of respondents, but how will they affect quality? For a B2B market or specialist product, incentivisation should be treated with caution. Our most effective incentives are white papers or e-books. We have offered iPhones, cameras and other gadgets in certain campaigns that favour quantity over quality. Using them to generate highly qualified interest is less successful, unless you want to create a warm call base for follow-up telemarketing. As always, realistic expectations are essential.


4. Creative. While we have not yet discovered the holy grail of optimizing
email creative, we do have some tricks that work best for us: 

a. Repeat your main point at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the
email.

b. Add in a pre-header, as in Fig. 4, and get the call to action in the
first line of text to help maximize clicks from the preview pane.

c. Use multiple links to provide a greater opportunity for response and to
highlight the key points.

d. Keep the email short and clean. Long paragraphs can be placed on the
landing pages. Bullet points, white space, bite-sized sections and strong
images are easier on the eye and encourage more clicks.

e. Optimize creative for different email clients and mobile devices. A
recent survey of our database revealed that 50% of respondents use their
mobile device to read email.


f. Add links to all images and include snapshots of the white papers,
e-books or other incentive being promoted.

g. Avoid Flash within the creative - not everyone has Flash enabled and it
will have a negative effect on deliverability .

h. If you need to use words such as "Free" then embed them within images to
avoid triggering spam filters.

i. Ensure that the message of the email is clear even with images turned
off.

 
5. Frequency. What is the optimal number of times to email? When are the
frequency benefits replaced by data fatigue issues? We suggest capping
repeat broadcasts at three per month, and ensure that the creative messaging
makes it clear that this is part of a series of emails. 

a. Consider your overall marketing communications: Where else may the
contacts have been exposed to your campaign?

 
Advertising in different mediums: online, TV, outdoor, print

* PR/news articles

* Exhibitions

* Direct mail

b. Integrate the brand. Research shows that people are more likely to take
action after they have seen a message a number of times. While we do not
encourage saturation via one tactic, we do encourage increasing the
opportunity for your audience to see your message across a number of media.

 

Social Networking/Viral/Search

By making your email marketing campaigns search and social friendly, you can
extend your reach. Social networking is now one of the most frequently used
forms of viral marketing with LinkedIn and Twitter updates linking back to
micro sites, articles and marketing campaigns. In theory, your database
contacts have networks with similar personal or professional interests.
These networks should be seen as an extension of your database, but with
greater value as the sharer is a friend/peer rather than a marketer. Sharing
to these networks should be facilitated. The age old marketing rule still
applies: content is king. If your content has perceived value, then it is
likely to be passed on. The image below shows how one of our e-book
campaigns for Canon was shared on the O2 Australia fan page on Facebook.

We have plenty of similar examples for campaigns with compelling content. In
order to facilitate social sharing, we have started to add 'Share this'
functionality on our thank you pages, post registration.

Read More...

How to Design the HTML of Email Newsletter

How HTML Email Works

Before you can start designing, coding and sending HTML emails, you need to know how it works and what tools you’ll need. Here’s some background information that every email designer and marketer should know.

The Multipart/Alternative MIME format
The most important thing to know about HTML email is that you can’t just attach an HTML file and a bunch of images to a message and click sends. Most of the time, your recipients’ email applications will break all the paths to your image files by moving your images into temporary folders on your hard drive. And you can’t just paste all your code into your email application, either. Most email apps send messages in plain-text format by default, so the HTML won’t render. Your recipients would just see all that raw source code, instead of the pretty email that’s supposed to show up. You need to send HTML email from your server in Multipart-Alternative MIME format. That means your mail transfer agent bundles your HTML code, plus a plain-text version of the message, together into one email.

That way, if a recipient can’t view your beautiful HTML email, the good old plain-text version of your message is automagically displayed. It’s kind of a nerdy gobbledy-geek thing, which is why a lot of people mess it up when they try to send HTML email themselves. You either need to program a script to send email in multipart-alternative MIME format, or just use an outside vendor (like MailChimp) to deliver email for you.

Image files in HTML email
Embedding images and photos into messages is the #1 reason people want to send HTML email. The proper way to handle images in HTML email is to host them on a web server, then pull them into your HTML email, using absolute paths in your code. Basically, you can’t send the graphics along with your message. You host the graphics on a web server, and then the code in your HTML email downloads them whenever the message is opened. Incidentally, that’s how open tracking works. You place a tiny, invisible graphic into the email, and then track when it’s downloaded. This is why open tracking only works in HTML email—not plain-text—and why the new email applications that block images by
default (to protect your privacy) can screw up your open-rate stats.

Tip: When you’re coding image tags in HTML email, do this:
<img src=”http://www.yourserver.com/email/images/logo.gif”>
and NOT this:
<img src=”images/logo.gif”>

But if you use any good email broadcaster then you will find that they have built-in email designer, we host your graphics on our server for you—for free. No need to FTP files anywhere or codes any image tags.

Free hosting services

You really need your own server to host images for your HTML email. Don’t try hosting images on a free “image hosting service,” because those websites often put scripts in place to prevent you from linking to them in emails (they can’t handle all the traffic).  

And since you get what you pay for in that regard, free image hosting services tend to be pretty unreliable under heavy traffic conditions. Also, spammers use free image hosting services all the time to cover their tracks. So if you don’t want to look like a spammer, use your own web server. Email-marketing services like MailChimp have built-in image hosting capabilities.

Delivering HTML email

Lots of newbies make the mistake of setting up forwarding lists, or CC’ing copies of a message to all their customers. This causes all kinds of problems— especially when a customer clicks replies all. First of all, there’s no way to do any kind of individual tracking or personalization when they CC a big group like that. And most importantly, it just looks unprofessional and impersonal when recipients can see your entire list of other recipients.

That’s why when an email-marketing system like MailChimp sends your campaign, we take your message and send it one at a time to each recipient on your list (really, really fast). Unlike your work computer linked to your local ISP—which probably has a standard monthly bandwidth limit— email-marketing vendors use dedicated mail servers that are capable of sending hundreds of thousands of emails per hour.

Other factors to consider when delivering HTML email campaigns:

• If you send from your own server: Your ISP may throttle your outgoing emails or shut down your account if you send too much too fast. They may also shut you down if you exceed your monthly bandwidth limit.

• Email firewalls and ISPs that receive your emails don’t like receiving tons of emails from one single IP address at once (unless they normally receive tons of emails from that IP). So if you only send occasional email campaigns from your IP, you may want to throttle your delivery or spread them across multiple IPs, to avoid accidental blocking. Email-marketing services usually split your campaign into pieces and send it out over lots of different IP addresses.

• If you send emails from your desktop email program, chances are you’re connecting through your local ISP. If you don’t have a dedicated IP address set up with your ISP, you’re probably sending emails from a dynamic IP address. ISPs and spam filters don’t like receiving lots of emails from a dynamic IP address, because it looks like a hijacked home computer. If you’re not using an email-marketing vendor like MailChimp, you should always send from a dedicated IP address.

Designing and Coding

Now that you have a basic understanding of how HTML email campaigns work and how you should deliver them, let’s talk about designing and coding them (the fun part).

Here are the tools you’ll need to succeed at coding HTML emails

1. A design application, like Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver or Illustrator. Use these tools to lay out your template and slice out your graphics, like your company logo and product photos. We’re partial to Fireworks, but to each his own. 

2. A good, pure HTML/Text editor, like BBEdit and TextWrangler for the Mac, or HomeSite and NoteTab Pro for the PC. You could use WYSIWYG style tools to generate HTML, like Microsoft FrontPage, or maybe Adobe GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver. But they have their disadvantages. 

WYSIWYGs very often throw in gobs of junk into your code (FYI, Microsoft says the extra code is to help with “round tripping,” which means you can export from Word to Powerpoint to HTML, then back again, without losing anything). All this extra code usually ends up just breaking things or setting off spam filters. There are some WYSIWYGs out there that generate clean code, but we’ve found those are a bit too perfect, because they’re designed for web pages and not HTML email (so they don’t know all the things you have to rig in your code). If you want to do HTML email correctly, you should learn to code HTML from scratch with a good text editor.

3. Your own web server, to host all your images and archives. You should create a folder on your website for email newsletters. This is where you’ll store images, then point to them with absolute paths in your HTML code. 

You might also want a folder on your website to store archived newsletters. When we started out, we created a folder on our website called, /monkey wrench/ and then kept campaigns under subfolders named by /date/ to store each campaign. Use your own organization style—just be sure to come up with a system and process for archiving, so that each newsletter isn’t a chore to publish.

Nowadays we don’t even bother, because we use MailChimp’s built-in archive functionality. It’ll save a copy of every campaign you send from our system. You can build a page on your website called “Newsletter Archives” and paste a little code snippet from MailChimp. We’ll keep your page updated with your most recent campaigns. Saves so much time. 

4. An FTP program, like Fetch for the Mac, or CuteFTP for PCs. When you design your mail and slice out all your graphics, you’ll use FTP to move those files from your computer to the server.

5. A test machine (or two), loaded with as many different email applications and accounts as possible. You’ll want to check your HTML email designs under lots of different scenarios. Unlike web design, where you only have to check your work in a small handful of browsers, there are tons of email applications out there, and they all handle HTML email differently.

If you use MailChimp, you our Inbox Inspector tool will do all the testing for you.

Tip: You can use MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector to get screenshots of your work in all the major email programs and webmail clients, to see if your CSS is breaking. Saves a lot of time and hassle.

Design guidelines

Here are some pointers for designing your email. Early warning: If you’re a seasoned web designer, you won’t be happy with all the compromises and hacks you’ll have to make when designing for email applications. 

Set your width to about 500-600 pixels.

If you’ve ever worked on a website, you’re probably used to designing pages to fit in 800x600 pixel resolution screens, or maybe even 1024x768. But that won’t work when you design HTML email. Most recipients will be looking at your email through their preview pane, which is usually a small portion of their available screen. A width less than 600 pixels is safe for most programs.

Simple layouts and tables work best.

You wouldn’t believe all the different ways email applications garble up HTML email. Keep your email designs nice and simple. Avoid complicated layouts, too many embedded tables, and tables with too many rows and columns. A simple two-column table with a row across the top is about as complex as you can get. Lots of email applications don’t cooperate when you code tables with colspans, which are table cells that span across multiple columns. One application that’s particularly finicky when it comes to tables (and just about everything else) is Lotus

 Notes. If you’re working on an email layout and find the tables are getting complex, and you have to code too many colspans, you might think about chopping it up into separate tables. For instance, we almost always use separate tables for the header, body and footer of our emails. Better to go with more simple tables, than one big complex table.

If you’re a CSS master, you’re probably rolling your eyes in disdain with all this “tables” talk. But trust us—you’re not going to be able to use all that cool, timesaving CSS stuff in your HTML emails. DIVs and CSS positioning don’t work. We’ll cover that later in this guide.

Special Considerations for Webmail Services

A lot of your recipients will be checking their email in their web browser, Such as with Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail or Gmail. Since they’re viewing email in Browsers, there are certain things you need to know when you code your HTML emails:

• They’ll strip out your <HTML>, <HEAD>, and <BODY> tags, in order to keep your code from interfering with their web pages. That means... 

• Any background colors you specify in your <BODY> tag will be lost. So wrap your entire email inside a larger, 100% wide table, and set a background color to that table.

• Any CSS that you place inside the <HEAD> tags will be lost. So don’t try to link to CSS files hosted on your server. Use embedded CSS instead, and make sure it’s below the <BODY> tag. If you’re a web designer, that’ll make you feel kind of dirty because that’s not exactly the proper place to put embedded CSS. But no worries—it’ll work. If you just can’t stomach

That, use inline CSS. 

• Some webmail clients are starting to strip even the most basic CSS, even if it’s embedded below the BODY tag (like we described above). We think it’s because they don’t want any of your CSS interfering with their CSS, or maybe because they’re using so much JavaScript and AJAX technology, stuff just gets buggy. Keep that in mind, and do lots of testing.

CSS in HTML email

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a godsend for websites, but don’t put too much faith in it with HTML email. For instance, you shouldn’t expect DIVs to work. And definitely stay away from CSS positioning. Won’t work. 

If you’re a CSS-standards freak, you’re going to hate yourself after coding HTML email.

You’ll have to rely on old-fashioned <TABLES> for your layouts in HTML email, and only use CSS for simple font formatting and colors. Always design your CSS to “fail gracefully.” That means if someone took away your CSS, your design and content would still display decently. Before you send your HTML email, delete the CSS and see what it looks like. Did you have tiny text that is now gigantic, and blowing out your tables?

CSS is especially touchy if you’re using a WYSIWYG to design your HTML email, because WYSIWYGs insert all kinds of crazy CSS and DIVs by default. It’s one of the drawbacks of WYSIWYGs for HTML email. It may help you get things coded, but you still have to understand HTML enough to go back and remove some of the code, so things won’t break in email applications. You might as well code by hand. Using Microsoft Word to generate HTML is even worse than using WYSIWYGs.  Word adds so much code behind the scenes, it’s unbelievable. Don’t do it. Learn to code HTML, or use our built-in HTML email designer.

You can deliver HTML emails with Flash in them, but most recipients won’t be able to view them. Not unless they’re using an email program that uses a browser to render their HTML email. Most anti-virus applications block the code used to embed Flash movies, and they block JavaScript, ActiveX, and even background music files. All that stuff has been used in the past to spread viruses, so it’s commonly blocked now. 

The best solution is to point emails to landing pages. If you’ve got a great animation or movie to show to your recipients, just send a simple, intriguing GIF or JPEG graphic in your HTML email, and then link it to a landing page on your website with the animation in it. Same goes for JavaScript, ActiveX and movie files. Anti-virus applications block them from running. 

So fancy rollover or pop-up navigation and streaming videos aren’t going to work either.

Background colors

Remember when we told you about how browser-based email services (like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail) strip out your <HTML>, <HEAD>, and <BODY> tags? That’s what you need to remember when coding your background colors and images. You normally specify that stuff in your <BODY> tag, but you can’t rely on that with HTML email. You’ll need to create a big, 

100% wide table wrap around your email. Set your background color in that table, and use some CELLPADDING as needed. If you’re into CSS, you might be tempted to use a <DIV> instead. But we’ve seen DIVs break quite frequently in email applications, so we don’t recommend them.

 Anatomy of a Good HTML Email Newsletter

1. Your company name in the From field. Recipients should recognize who the email is from instantly. It can’t be deceptive in any way (duh). If a recipient has to strain his brain to remember who you are, he’ll click “This is spam” instead of opening.

2. A relevant subject line (don’t be spammy), with your company or newsletter name in it. So they instantly know who the email is from, and what it’s about (hence, subject line).

3. The To field of your email should be personalized to the recipient’s name, not their email address. MailChimp lets you merge recipient names into this field, if you have it in your database. You would insert *|FNAME|* *|LNAME|*, for example. Check out our merge tag cheat sheet for more Info

4. A one-click opt-out link that removes people from your list immediately. Consider placing it at the top of your email as well as in the footer, so that people who want off your list can easily find it (instead of clicking their “Junk” button). If you use MailChimp’s Managed List functionality, you would use our *|UNSUB|* tag to generate your unsubscribe link (it’s required in every email you send from our system). Any recipient who clicks it will be instantly removed from your list. If you use our built-in HTML email templates, we insert that link into the footer for you.

5. In addition to your opt-out link, you might also include a link in your header for recipients to “View this email in your browser.” Point it to an archived version of your email on your server. This helps if the email was forwarded to friends, and got mangled along the way. MailChimp automatically keeps an archived version of all your campaigns on our server. You can just use our *|ARCHIVE|* tag in your emails to link to yours. If you use our built-in HTML email templates, we automatically place this link at the top of all your emails.

6. Your valid, physical mailing address (P.O. boxes aren’t good enough), and as much contact information as possible. The more contact information you provide, the more reputable your email will look.

7. Bonus: It’s a really good idea to also include some kind of reminder text, like “You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website.” People forget opting-in to lists, and they get a little trigger-happy with the “This is spam” button. That can get you reported to the major ISPs, so you want to prevent it. Also, in the rare case that a recipient reports you to an anti- spam organization, having this reminder text can make the difference between a server admin blacklisting you forever, or contacting you for further explanation. If you use our built-in email templates, MailChimp automatically inserts that reminder text into your email footer.

The Art Of Plain-text email

Don’t forget your plain-text email. You need it for people who can’t (or won’t) view HTML. Sometimes the plain-text version of your email is the one that gets displayed if your recipient checks email on a mobile device. 

If you don’t take the time to create the plain-text version of your HTML email, you’ll just look like a lazy spammer (spam filters will penalize you for only sending HTML). When you send a campaign in MailChimp, you’ll need to create both versions of your message (HTML & Plain-text). Then we bundle them together in multipart format and send them off. Your recipients’ email applications decide which version to display.

There’s definitely an art to constructing your plain-text email. You can’t just use the same text from your HTML email. It has to be formatted just right, so the best way to do it is to build it from scratch, or copy paste the content from your HTML email, then reformat it heavily. Here are some tips for your plain-text emails:

1. Use a plain-text editor, like Text Wrangler for the Mac, or Windows Notepad. Don’t use something like Microsoft Word, because it won’t give you the kind of raw text files you need. You need an application that gives no formatting whatsoever.

2. If you’re using MailChimp, just click the button that says Copy text from HTML version, and we’ll take care of it for you. 

3. By default, some email applications start to wrap your plain-text messages at about 60 characters or so. That’s not really a big deal to most people. Just let your text wrap wherever their email programs want it to. 

But if you have content that you absolutely do not want to wrap unexpectedly (like in the middle of a hyperlink), one nice little trick is to type a letter 60 times across the top of your message, and use that as your “ruler.” As your content approaches the end of that ruler, hit your return key and hard wrap the line. Again, this is only if you want very strict formatting.

4. People don’t read email. They scan email. Especially plain-text email. So make it really easy to find important information with bullet points and visual markers (see screenshot below). 

5. You can’t code a clickable link with plain-text email. You just have to type out the entire URL. Some email applications will make it clickable automatically. Others won’t.

We’ve noticed that a lot of people spend so much of their time on the HTML version of their message that they’re too drained to work on the plain-text email (we’re guilty of that ourselves). So they either ignore it, or they slap in some junk, or they cheat a little and type in something like, “Evidently, you can’t view HTML email, so visit this URL in your browser to see our newsletter in all its glory.” We think this is a big mistake. So don’t put all your energy into the HTML version of your email. Save some love for your plain-text message too. If you find yourself spending so much time coding HTML that you’re too pooped to make a plain-text email, you should consider setting up one re-usable template that you can just select, and fill with content every campaign. No need to reinvent the wheel for every campaign. 

Tip: When you set up a managed list in MailChimp, you have the option to let my users choose plain-text only when they fill in your opt-in form. MailChimp will automatically deliver only the plain-text formatted email to them when you send your campaigns.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Here are some of the most common mistakes people make when coding HTML emails:

1. Not coding absolute paths to images. Remember, attaching graphics and using relative paths won’t work. You need to host the images on your server, then link to them in your code.

2. Using JavaScript, or ActiveX, or embedding movies. That stuff just doesn’t work in HTML email.

3. Getting overly ambitious with designs. Designing HTML email isn’t just like designing web pages. You can’t have all the CSS-positioning, DIVs, DHTML, and complex, embedded tables like you can in web pages.

4. Forgetting—or refusing—to include an opt-out link. It’s stupid and unprofessional not to allow recipients to unsubscribe from your list. Oh yeah, it’s illegal, too. Be sure to read and understand the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

5. Linking to an external CSS file. You usually put CSS code in between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags of web pages, right? But browser based email applications (like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail) strip <HEAD> and <BODY> tags from HTML email. Embed your CSS below the <BODY> tag.

6. Letting your permission “grow cold.” If you’ve been collecting opt-ins at your website like a good email marketer, but you haven’t sent an email in several months, your subscribers have forgotten all about you. So when they receive a full-blown email newsletter from you out of the blue, they’re going to click their “This is spam button” in their email application. Don’t let your permission grow cold. Send occasional emails. If you’ve been collecting emails for years, and you’re only just now sending your first email to everyone, you should send a little re-invitation to your list. Something like, “A long time ago, you subscribed to my email list. Well, I’ve finally got some time to start sending my cool newsletter, and I want to make sure you still want to receive it. Click here to sign up.” At the very least, send an email and place some kind of text at the top that reminds them of where and when they opted in. People usually forget about opting in to something after six months or so. 

7. Sending to a list without permission. This is the worst offense. Lots of innocent marketers who mean well commit this heinous crime. Here are some common ways legitimate marketers can inadvertently become known as evil spammers:

• Getting an email list from a tradeshow. “But I’m exhibiting there, and the tradeshow host said it would be okay, and when people purchased tickets, the fine print said that we could email them, and...” Nope. You’re spamming. Don’t do it. If they didn’t give you permission to email them, they didn’t opt-in to your list. 

If they didn’t opt-in, you’re spamming. Even if you can legally send them email marketing, those recipients are more likely to report you for spamming them. Then you’ll get blacklisted. Plus, your company will look really slimy. If a tradeshow host is collecting email addresses, then they should be doing the emailing.

• Getting a list of fellow members from some trade organization. Just because they joined a club, and the club posted contact information so everyone could keep in touch with each other, it doesn’t mean each member gives you permission to send them newsletters and offers. If you sent them a personal greeting from your own email account, they probably wouldn’t mind. That’s what the organization’s member list is for. But add them to a list and send them a huge email newsletter, and you’ll be reported for spamming.

• Say you go to events and swap business cards. The business cards just get thrown into a “prospects” pile. Years later, you get an intern to finally type all the contact info from those cards into a database. Then, one day out of the blue, you send a big, fat email newsletter to everyone. As if they actually want to hear from you. Trust us, they don’t.

• Fish bowl of business cards. Similar to the example above, but you hold an event and collect business cards in a fishbowl to win a door prize. The people who dropped their business card into the bowl wanted the shirt you’re giving away—they didn’t opt-in to your list.

8. Using a WYSIWYG to code your HTML. WYSIWYGs are notorious for generating absolutely horrible HTML. They insert so much junk code, it’s unbelievable. Even the ones that generate “clean” code don’t know how to rig things to work in email applications (like sticking your embedded CSS below the <BODY> tag). To code HTML email properly, you need to learn a little HTML. It’s really not that hard. Plus, you can download free HTML email templates at our website. 

9. Forgetting to test thoroughly. When you send HTML email, you’ve really got to test it in as many email applications you can. Then you have to test on different operating systems. Then different ISPs (we’ll explain shortly). If you keep things simple, and build a rock solid, thoroughly tested template for each newsletter, you won’t have to test so much. But you should always send at least a few campaigns to yourself before sending it out to your entire list.

10. Sending nothing but a big, gigantic graphic as the HTML email. Sigh, that’s what spammers do. And since most email programs block images by default, what do you think your recipients see when (if) they open your email? Many spam filters will block your email if you don’t have a healthy balance of images and text.

Designing Around Spam Filters

A guide to email-newsletter design wouldn’t be complete without a section on spam filters. You have to design your emails a certain way if you want your messages to make it past them. But you can’t go overboard, either.

Spam filters can smell fear. If you try too hard, they know it, and they attack. So just be cool, act normal, and don’t make any obvious mistakes. Before getting into the nitty-gritty design tips, you need to know how all the various anti-spam mechanisms out there work. Once you get an overall understanding of how they work, designing around them will be easier.

Bayesian Filtering

This is one of the most important ones to learn about, since it’s installed in so many email applications these days (like Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple Mail). Bayesian filters work by watching users classify email as junk (such as when they click this is spam button).  It reads the junk mail, compares it to other emails you called junk, and looks for common traits in the subject line, the content, the hyperlinks, the sender, etc. Over time, ayesian filters learn to scan for those traits in every email message you receive. Every time they find something that looks spammy, they assign a score to it. For instance, using “Click here!” might get you 0.7 points. Using bright red fonts might get you 2 points. Including the word “mortgage” might get you 1 point, but using the word “Viagra” will get you 5 points. Once an email exceeds some threshold (set by the user), the email is classified as spam and thrown into the junk folder. It’s amazing how many different things Bayesian filters look for. To read some, check out our blog about funny Spam Assassin criteria.

Remember, MailChimp comes with a spam filter checker (look for the Inbox Inspector under your Account tab) that’ll tell you exactly what your email’s spam score is, and what you need to change if you want to improve your chances with spam filters.

Blacklists

A while back, some server admins got angry at all the junk mail they received. So they started to track the IP addresses of the servers that sent them spam, and put them on blacklists. Anytime they received email from a server on their blacklist, it was deleted immediately. It worked pretty well. So they started to share their lists with other server admins. And other admins started to add on to those blacklists. Pretty soon, the blacklists

got very, very big. Large ISPs started to sync up with them. If you send spammy emails, you could end up on one of these blacklists. Once you make it on to a blacklist, good luck getting off. This is why you need to make sure you only send to recipients who gave you verifiable permission to email them, and you need to have proof that each one of them opted in to your list, such as through a double opt-in system.

Email Firewalls

Managing email servers (and incoming spam, viruses, and phishing attacks) can be a lot of work. So large corporations usually install email firewalls (Google the terms “Barracuda Firewall” or “Postini” for some examples) to handle their incoming email. Think of them as spam filters on top of spam filters. They’re big, heavy-duty gatekeepers, and they’re not friendly at all. They often use a combination of Bayesian-style/adaptive filters, community reporting, blackhole lists, and a little bit of proprietary magic pixie dust to keep spam out of the company. Most of the time, when your email’s not getting through to a larger company, it’s their firewall. You can think of these firewalls as kind of Xenophobic and paranoid. They’re all twitchy, and tend to ask questions like, Okay, is this sender new to me? Why is he sending copies of the same, exact email, to a bunch of people in our company? Spammers do that kind of stuff. Hmmm, how long has their server been around? Can I really trust this sender?

Spam firewalls are usually only a problem when you first start sending campaigns to a big client. You’ll experience some deliverability issues in the beginning, because you’re new. They’ll eventually learn to let you through. To expedite things, you may have to ask the IT people in charge of the firewall to whitelist your IP Addresses (or the IP address of your email service provider). 

Challenge/Response Filters

These are more common among at-home recipients. When you send email to someone with a challenge/response filter, here’s what happens: If you’re not already in that person’s buddy list or address book, then you’re considered a stranger to him. And if you’re a stranger, you could be a spammer. 

So their challenge/response filter sends you an automatic reply with a question that you have to answer, or some link you have to click (this is to prove you’re a human, and not a spambot). Here’s an example of a typical challenge/response reply, from Spamarrest, a popular vendor:

Remember that you have to be whitelisted if you want your emails to get through. So when people fill out your opt-in forms on your website, ask them to “please add our email address to your address book.” Use your opt-in process as a way to set expectations and get white listed up front. Whenever you send a newsletter, make sure the reply-to address is valid, and that a human checks it after each campaign. You can expect to receive a couple auto-replies like this after every campaign you send. 

Whenever we send our MailChimp Monkeywrench newsletter, we get about half a dozen of these autoreplies. We have to manually click each one of them if we want the email to get delivered.

Tactics for Avoiding Spam Filters

So now you know how a lot of anti-spam systems work. You really have to think like a spam filter when you design your emails. Just like you think like a search engine when you design web pages. Spam filters read your emails and look for similarities with known spam. You don’t want to do things that’ll get you accidentally thrown into the junk folder. And the best way to learn what NOT to do is:

1. Open up your junk email folder.
2. Look through all that spam you got. Really read it. Look at how they design things, and look at how they write their copy. Notice all the similarities?
3. Now, don’t do what they do.

To be more specific, here’s some stuff to avoid:

• Don’t use bright red fonts or go crazy with colors, styles and formatting.
• Don’t yell with lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!
• DON’T YELL WITH ALL CAPS
• Don’t use spammy words like “mortgage” and “Viagra”
• Don’t say “free” or “click here!” or “click here now!” or “act now!” or “limited time!”(be especially careful of your unsubscribe link, where you might say something like, “click here to unsubscribe.”)
• If you use a WYSIWYG to code your HTML email, make sure the HTML code is clean. WYSIWYGs often throw in useless code that’s invisible to the user, but spam filters look at it and think you’re a sloppy spammer. 
• Bad HTML in general can get you spam filtered. Missing table tags, content below the closing </HTML> tag, or empty <TITLE></TITLE> tags will get your message thrown into the junk folder. Don’t get sloppy with that code. Note: the empty <TITLE> information is very common if you use WYSIWYGs. They throw that in by default, and expect that you go back and fill it in. Don’t forget to go back and give the document a title.
• Don’t use dummy text in your message, even if you’re sending a test campaign. Spam filters get suspicious of all that “lorem ipsum” stuff. When sending test campaigns, use content that’s as real as possible. Don’t type in one paragraph, then copy-paste it ten times. Spam filters notice all the duplicate content.
• Don’t use the word “test” in your subject line.
• Don’t get too creative with your spelling, because the spammers do that all the time (how many m0rtg4g3 ref1nanc3 spam messages are in your inbox right now?
• Don’t make an HTML email that’s just a bunch of pretty graphics. You need some text in your message, too. Otherwise, the spam filters will have nothing to read, and will think your message is junk.
• Don’t send the HTML email by itself. Always include that plain-text alternative message.

Testing and Troubleshooting Your Email Designs

After you’ve finally figured out how to design and code your first HTML email template (and, of course, your plain-text alternative version), don’t just plop in your content and start sending campaigns. Test your template first to make sure it’ll work in all the different email applications out there. Once you’ve found all the little bugs, and your template is rock-solid, you can start sending.

Hey web Designers: Emails aren’t the same as web pages!

If you’re a web designer, you’re probably used to testing web pages in a few different browsers, like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Mac’s Safari. And you’re probably familiar with a few annoying inconsistencies between all the browsers, and you have a couple hacks to make things look right. For email design, multiply all that by ten. There are tons of email applications out there that you need to test on, and they all render HTML email in their own annoying ways. Do you need to test every single newsletter across every single application every single time you send? Of course not. Just set up a good, simple, solid template and test it as much as possible. Then all you have to do is swap out content. Here are some tips for testing your email designs.

Testing in different email applications

In the past, the only way to test your campaign was to set up a bunch of accounts at all the major ISPs, set up some test computers with different operating systems and email programs, and sends test campaigns to them. It would take hours to do all this, and it really took all the fun out of email marketing.

That’s another reason why we created our Inbox Inspector tool. You build your campaign, click one button, and we’ll generate screenshots of how your campaign is going to look in every major email program. We’ll even tell you if any of the major spam filters and email firewalls will block your message, and why. We’ll point out what content you need to fix in order to not get blocked. We’ll check for typos and HTML coding errors. If you prefer to test your campaigns yourself, here are some email applications you should install, and what to look for:

AOL

AOL takes spam very seriously. So check to make sure your emails don’t get filtered. Also, notice their report spam button. You’ve got to make sure your emails look relevant, or people will click that button (even if they opted in to your list). AOL 9 has a tiny preview pane. It’s about 194 pixels wide, so make sure that your branding shows up okay under those circumstances. If your email is too wide, and your logo is right-aligned, your recipients will never see it, and they may never realize who sent it.

Apple Mail

This is Apple’s free email application. You get a nice big preview pane here, and they don’t do much image blocking at all (yet). Images seem to be blocked only if an email ends up in its junk folder. Apple Mail comes with its own spam filtering system that “learns,” so you should test your emails for any deliverability issues.

Microsoft Entourage for Mac

Kind of like Microsoft Outlook, but for the Mac (it comes with Mac Office). Their HTML email support is fine, but we noticed in earlier versions of Entourage, if you send an email in HTML format, but it consists of nothing but text and hyperlinks (no graphics or tables), then the links actually display their URL next to them. Kind of odd. But if the email actually contains a graphic or table, then the links work as coded. The issue seems to be fixed in the latest version of Entourage.

Microsoft Outlook 2003

Outlook 2003 has better spam protection, so watch whether or not your emails get filtered. Also, this one’s got three vertical panes, so your emails have less room in the preview area.

Microsoft Outlook 2000

There are lots of business users who haven’t upgraded to Outlook 2003 yet. This version of Outlook predates all the vicious worms, spam and viruses that we’re used to now, so more of your emails with flash and videos will actually work here. Don’t let it build your confidence—that fancy stuff won’t work in other programs.

Microsoft Outlook Express

This is the free version of Microsoft Outlook, installed on all Windows machines. Used mostly by at-home recipients. Not really many HTML email issues, besides the usual “block images by default” feature that’s on just about every email application these days.

Microsoft Outlook 2007

For Outlook 2007, Microsoft switched from using Internet Explorer (a web browser) to render HTML email to using Microsoft Word (a text editor). Obviously, HTML email would render a lot better in a browser than Microsoft Word, so this is kind of a bummer. Microsoft said this was because they wanted their customers to have more control over editing HTML email.  Here’s what you need to know about Outlook 2007: Background images won’t work, most CSS won’t work, flash definitely won’t work, no forms, and no animated GIFs.

Lotus Notes 6.5.3 and 6.5.4

If lots of your recipients work at very large companies, you’ll need to check your emails in Lotus Notes. This is probably the most frustrating email application out there. It does the strangest things. You’ll need to keep your layouts very simple. Even still, Lotus will find a way to mess things up. There are even big differences between Lotus Notes 6.5.3, vs. 6.5.4.

Eudora 6.2

Eudora has good, predictable HTML email support.

Mozilla Thunderbird

A free email application that’s gaining in popularity. Does some odd things with alt-text and image blocking, but for the most part supports HTML email well. Thunderbird 1.5 has a feature that tries to detect “scams,” where they look for hyperlinks that claim to point to a website, but the code actually links you somewhere else. If it detects a potential scam, you get a warning across the top of the message, saying “Thunderbird thinks this message is a scam.” You can click the “Not a scam” button if it was a false alarm. It’s a nice idea, but it seems to give lots of false positives, especially when you use click tracking in your emails (all your links will point to a redirect script, in order to track clicks). We don’t think it’s much of a problem, as long as your emails look nice and professional.

Testing in browser-based email services

You might want to set up accounts with all the browser-based email services. They’re usually free, so it’s easy to set up lots of test accounts. You especially want to look at how browser-based services alter your HTML and CSS. 

Also, since these services are used by bazillions of people, their anti-spam filters are set really high. We listed them below in order of most-to-least popularity (according to a recent survey across all MailChimp managed lists). When you set up your test accounts with these services, leave their junk mail filter settings to “default.” It really pays to test on these accounts before sending your campaign.

Yahoo!Mail

Pretty aggressive anti-spam filters (understandably). Other than that, they do the typical browser-based email stuff, like stripping your BODY and HEAD tags.

Yahoo!Mail Beta

A much richer browser interface, with a preview pane. So far, support for HTML email looks great. 

Hotmail

Similar issues as Yahoo!Mail, where BODY and HEAD tags are stripped, so background colors and embedded CSS are lost. At one time, Hotmail was “expiring” hyperlinks in emails that were open for five minutes or longer. 

Gmail

Extremely aggressive spam filters. And very, very little CSS support. It strips embedded CSS, (even if you keep the CSS out of the <HEAD> tag). It also strips every “class” code that it finds (such as in <span class=”header”>). To get CSS to work in Gmail, you’ll need to use inline styles. Otherwise, your fonts will default to Arial, colored black, and about 13 pixels in size. If your fonts don’t adhere to their CSS rules, check to see if they end up blowing out your tables cells, or wrapping in weird ways. 

Tips

1. Check Different ISPs, too.

If possible, check your emails when they’re sent through different ISPs. Different email servers will alter your messages before they even get to the recipient’s email application. For instance, some ISPs use email servers that will strip any content below a line in your email that starts with a period (we know, weird). We’ve been surprised at how differently email looks when checked in Outlook 2003, but received through Comcast, Bellsouth and Earthlink.

2. Send tests to friends and co-workers.

If you can’t set up a few test computers, keep your designs really simple, and send each campaign to a few friends or colleagues. Just ask them to let you know if anything looks funny or broken. 

3. Or just use MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector.

If you choose to set up your own test machine, and all those test accounts with the different ISPs, you could easily spend a couple grand. If you also want to check your campaigns against the big server firewalls (like IronPort, MessageLabs, and Postini), it’ll cost you several thousand dollars just to get started. If you’ve got the money, go for it. But who has the time to maintain all that stuff?

You can save yourself a ton of time and money by using our Inbox Inspector. We’ll generate detailed screenshots of your campaign in all the major email programs, and we’ll tell you if spam filters are likely to block your campaign, as well as what you need to change if you want to get through. 

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