Archive for March, 2012

One of the features that comes with Email Marketing Pro, when used with your ProMail service, is open tracking. Open Tracking tells you who opened your email campaign and at what time of day.

In this article we’ll look at a few ways to interpret and use the data from your open-tracking reports.

How Does Open Tracking Work?

First, it’s important to understand how open tracking works, so that you can keep in mind the nature of the data. Our open-tracking system works like many others. We embed an invisible 1×1 pixel image in the email, which is actually a script on our email server. When the email attempts to access the image, a script runs that records the recipient’s email address, time of day, and a few other variables.

So when looking at the data, think of it as a sample set. Keep in mind that results will not show if the recipient chooses not to download pictures in their email client or if the recipient is viewing your email in plain text. One way to improve results is to include images in your email’s banner, which will entice the recipient to view images.

Open Rates By Email Recipient (The Life of an Email)

Try downloading an open-tracking report within 10-20 minutes after you send your campaign. Inevitably, there are those recipients who read your email within minutes of receiving it. What can you do with this information?

Then, download the same report maybe a week later.  You’ll see that some recipients open your email perhaps a couple of days after you send your campaign.

Then, download the report a month later. You’ll see recipients who check their email once in a blue moon, and then there are those who never opened your campaign.

So, this is interesting and valuable data. Maybe you’re the type of marketer who doesn’t want to “bother” recipients by sending too frequently, so you decide to send out a newsletter only once a month.

Well, the data shows that there are those people on your list who don’t see your email amongst all the others because they’re only checking it once a week. By the time they get to their email, you’re lost in the crowd and a good candidate for bulk deletion.

If  we have the knowledge of those recipients who aren’t viewing our campaign immediately, then we can take a different approach with them. Why not send your newsletter every month, and then follow-up articles or offers to those recipeints once a week; that way, you’ll know you stand a good chance of being somewhere near the top of the list when they get around to checking their email.

Perhaps, recipients who usually answer your email immediately would respond better to a limited-time offer…

These metrics will give you a feel, over time, for the lifespan of your email by recipient group.

Open Rates By Campaign (Brings out the scientist in you)

Seeing how many recipients open your campaign can tell you a lot about your campaign strategy, when compared to previous campaigns. These topics have received a alot of attention in the email marketing world: What’s the best way to form a subject line? What’s the best time of day to send an email? What’s the best day to send an email?

Well, you can find what works best for your audience by using open-tracking with your ProMail account.

The open-tracking data can give you a feel for what time of day recipients are viewing your email. If you notice that most open email around 12:00 PM, it may be preferable to schedule your campaign for that time of day.

Or, perhaps you notice that campaigns have better open rates when you include your brand name in the subject line, or have a short subject line. Maybe you’ve read that two-word subject lines always get better open rates and want to give it a try.

You can guage your new strategy with open rates. Experiment!

Open Rates By Device Type (Maybe Atlantic Software Doesn’t Look Like Much, But We Are The Future)

At the present, we are also able to tell what type of device a recipient is using to view your email and are working hard on using this data to compile a list of device types by time of day. In our opinion, this is the future of email marketing that will separate the sharks from the little fish.

Why will this be important information? Statistics show that more and more people use their mobile devices for email. It may be a good idea to keep frequent mobile email checkers in a separate group because they would be a good candidate for a text-only campaign and a link to a mobile-friendly web page.

Also, the statistics we’ve found show that 20% of your audience will view your campaign on a mobile device if your send it on the weekend. 20% is a rather large number of people who will respond to mobile-specific strategies. Perhaps during peak mobile times, you can engage your mobile users in liking you on Facebook, or some other simple task that’s easy to do on a mobile. Or, maybe it’s time to have a more mobile-friendly eCommerce interface for an impulse buy or two.

Open Rates By Domain

We’re also working on a report that will tell you the number of emails you have sent by domain, and the number who opened them on that domain. These are similar to reports generated by expensive consultants who’s job it is to help you stay out of the spam folder.

What the data would tell you be, for example: I sent 500 emails to Yahoo users and 75 of them opened it. Good result. Then, I sent 800 emails to GMail and 0 users opened them. Red flag. (But not time to compain to your email service provider, because it’s beyond our control.)

If, over time, you find that none of your GMail recipients open your emails, then perhaps you have an issue. Is it possible that the GMail spam filter is blocking your web address? Is it possible that the GMail postmaster thinks that you are not following his guidelines correctly?

It may be time to read the postmaster’s guideline more carefully, in regards to bulk email sending. And, also time to use your own GMail account to test what kinds of emails go into the Spam folder and what kinds do not.

As an example, we were not able to send an email to Godaddy’s inboxes when our “From” name was “Email Marketing Tips.” After much trial and error we realized that Godaddy wanted our “From” name to be two words without the word marketing in it.

Conclusion

Over time, you’ll begin to understand how to use open-tracking to develop better campaigns and better strategies. You can use this information to develop better subject lines, send at better times of days. You can segment your recipients to determine the best frequency to send to them. And, you can count on the fact that we’re studying what devices and what domains your recipients are on, so that we can better understand the future of email marketing.

There’s no better way to spend a Saturday than trying to figure out the GMail Spam filter.  Here are some emails that made it into my GMail Spam box by virtue of the fact that they “are similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.”

And, no, they’re not scam artists. These emails are from: Advance Auto Parts, MailChimp, and PCWorld to name just a few large companies whom GMail labels as spammers.

Well, if the messages are indeed not Spam (as far as my human brain can figure), then why are they in a folder labeled Spam and not in my inbox?  Your logic, Google, is that they’re similar to messages that were detected by your spam filters and suggest that I “Learn More.”

Google, perhaps it is you who need to learn more. Perhaps you need to learn the definition of “logical flaw.”

In case you’re not a programmer, a logical flaw is different from a bug, in that a bug is something that simply escaped the programmer’s notice, whereas a logical flaw is when the programmer just wasn’t thinking.

In my opinion, Google wasn’t thinking when they decided that email was a social phenomenon in the same way that search engine results and Facebook are. I think they were suffering a little too much from Facebook envy when they wrote the rules for detecting Spam.

GMail relies heavily on their end users’ responses to email. If enough of their users label Advance Auto Parts as a spammer, their logic is, “Well by golly, then I guess Advance Auto Parts is a spammer.”

Google, I agree that the Internet is a social place where it should be up to the people to decide what’s important. And, I agree that your search engine should reflect that. But, an email inbox is something deeply personal.

Why should I miss out on my Advance Auto Parts deal of the week — or on the value that email marketers work hard to add to my life — because 1,000 GMail users hit the Spam button and decide for me that their emails are similar to Spam.

I’ve been in the Internet business long enough to know that sometimes people just click a button because it’s there. And, not to insult anyone, but I would wager that there is a good percentage of individuals in the world who think that the word Spam means Trash. As long as they’ve hit a button that makes the email disappear, they’re happy.

The inbox is personal, and it is not a place for the prying eyes of your supercomputers that yearn to understand social studies and fail miserably. There’s no need for artifical intelligence here.

Google, the legal definition of Spam is unsolicited email that does not have a business name, address, and unsubscribe link. The law is very black and white.

So why do you enforce gray areas?

If an individual thinks that an email marketer is a spammer, then that’s between the email marketer and the individual.

An email recipient can write a letter or call the company if for some reason they’re on a mailing list by accident – it may have just been a bug, oversight, accidental opt-in, or an issue with an old email address being forwarded to a new one. And  I’m sure there’s a place in your spam filter to specify that Advance Auto Parts, PCWorld, and myself are not running scams or distributing malware.

Yours Truly,

Douglas, Atlantic Software

Why You Need to Manage Your Mailing List Wisely

You’re excited about marketing your product or service.

So it’s tempting to hit the send button to get your marketing email out there quickly.

Hold on there. Because in the world of email marketing, you have an “email reputation,” just as your business has a reputation that’s spread by word of mouth.

Under normal circumstance your mailing list is your gold mine — rich with leads, prospects, and current customers from your target market.  But, if you’re not careful, it can also be fool’s gold.

And if your mailing list goes unmanaged, there’s the chance you could send to recipients who have opted-out, get spam complaints from recipients and, worst case, blacklisted by a major ISP or have your business’ email account cancelled. Can you afford not to be able to email your customers?

So, protect your email reputation, and be mindful of these best practices:

Keep Your List Clean and Shiny

People cancel email accounts all the time, as soon as 6 months nowadays. So, it’s important to make sure your email list is up to date and valid. Clean it frequenty of any email addresses that may tarnish your reputation.

The reason: if you send to bad email addresses, you look like a spammer. And, if you start getting labeled a spammer, you go into the spam folder.

TIP: You can remove a lot of invalid emails using Email Validator Pro, free with your ProMail Account. Validator Pro can check your email address’ domain name to make sure there’s an actual mail server on that domain – removing any totally bogus addresses that have made it into your list.

Also:

1. Remove any addresses starting with support@ or webmaster@. The recipients at these addresses can get upset about spam.
2. Segment your list by putting current customers in one group, and leads in another group, for example. This ensures that the recipients are receiving emails relevant to them.
3. Consider deleting old email addresses altogether. Strike out the ones that never seem to give you any results and have some age to them. Concentrate on the here and now — your mailing list is a living document.

Run Checks Before each Campaign

It’s a must: check for bounces and unsubscribers before sending out a campaign.

Email Marketing Pro automatically scans your incoming email and unsubscribes recipients who have requested to be removed from your list.

Your never, ever, want to email someone who has opted out of your mailing list. Chances are, if they’ve opted out, and you accidently email them again, they will get annoyed and hit the button that says “This is SPAM.” Do you really want to be compared to canned meat?

Back Up Your Database

Your Email Marketing Pro database contains the subscriber preferences of your mailing list, so make sure to keep it backed up. You can do this under Help > Backup Database.

Strongly Consider Getting a ProMail Account

No, this isn’t just a sales pitch. We truly want our software users to enjoy worry-free mail sending, so we set up an intelligent outgoing mail system just for you. When you sign up for a ProMail with Email Marketing Pro , we act as your email sending agent.

Our mail servers are especially design to handle the complexities of sending high volumes of mail and will help you stay out of trouble.

They automatically provide email authentication (certificates that prove your identity as a mail sender), feedback loops that detect spam reports, bounce and complaint handling (fact: even the best email marketers get SPAM complaints).

The bottom line: you focus on marketing. We focus on complex world of getting commercial email delivered.

Some software companies will sell you their software and leave you on your own, offering you a free SMTP server to use with your software. That solution may last you a week or so unless you have a degree in computer science.

What they don’t tell you is that this solution can cause more harm that good depending on your sending habits and target market.

There’s a lot of know-how and management involved in sending marketing email safely and effectively, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, your mail server will get blacklisted.

And worse, your entire business identity could end up recorded in Spam Filters, and you would have to change your website address, business name, and email address just to send email again!

Our ProMail servers track who issues spam complaints, when an email bounced back, when a recipient unsubscribes. We signal you when you may need to adjust the text of your email or your strategy.

Thus, we protect your business identity, online reputation, and help you be a more effective marketer.

Ready to go Pro? See Option 2 on our upgrade page:
http://www.emailmarketingprofessional.com/upgrade.htm

In the next lesson, we’ll talk about setting up your Subscribe Form, Importing Contacts, and other ways to get email addresses so that you can add the best kind of contacts to have in your mailing list — the ones who you know for sure are interested in you have to promote.

Welcome to day 2 of ProMail+, your free email marketing certification guide.

Today’s lesson is all about how to correctly form an email marketing message in order to stay CAN-SPAM compliant. Don’t underestimate the power of a compliant marketing email.

Earn The Trust of People and Technology – They’re More Similar Than You Think

As a business owner, the last thing you want is for potential customers to hear rumors that you are not a reputable business person. By the same token, you also do not want spam filters gossiping about your email reputation, so to speak. It means a loss of business.

By staying compliant, your message is much less likely to be filtered out by spam filters, go into the recipient’s Junk folder, or be marked as spam. Once recipients start marking your messages as spam, the spam filters on their email service begin to learn not to trust your emails.

In fact, some spam filters, such as Gmail’s proprietary filter, give a lot of weight to recipients hitting the spam button. The end users are basically voting for your worthiness as a mail sender. When they hit the spam button, it’s as if they are “Un-Friending” you on Facebook. And even worse, preventing others from befriending you in the future.

Google has changed their technology a lot recently to make the internet more of a social platform, in case you haven’t noticed. Even search engine results now rely on the favoritism shown to websites by end users. Their GMail service is no different — it’s as much of a socially-driven phenomenon as voting for President.

The most critical aspects of staying CAN-SPAM compliant are to identify your business or yourself to the recipient and to allow them a way to unsubscribe from your mailing list. Always include your business address and a link to unsubscribe.

By doing this, you are putting your fingerprint in the email message. I think the metaphor speaks for itself.

Even if you are not a business and you are sending the same message to a hundred recipients, you are still technically a bulk mail sender. You should still include your name, address, and a way to unsubscribe as a way to tell the spam filters, hey remember me, I’m an OK email sender. And, yes, they will remember.

How To Add A Custom Signature in Email Marketing Pro

In Email Marketing Pro, you can add this information under Mail–>Custom Signature. There you will find a template with placeholders to add your business address and unsubscribe link. Simply replace the placeholder business name and address with your own. In the unsubscribe link, replace the email address with your own. Or, replace the entire unsubscribe link with a custom link that points to a place on your website that handles unsubscribes.

In Email Marketing Pro, you unsubscribe recipients from a list (such as a list of emails you’ve gathered from your own website). Or, Email Marketing Pro can automatically scan your incoming email and check for unsubscribers. Search the blog for “unsubscribe link” to learn how to do this.

Identify Yourself

Spam filters look for information that identifies you to the public. Spam filters are able to learn to deliver mail to the inbox, based in large part on who you are.

More importantly, people look for this information when determining what is Spam and what is not.

Your Mailing List

Always, always, always respect the recipient’s personal space enough to 1) tell them who you are and 2) tell them how NOT to receive your messages if they decide they want to opt-out and 3) (optional) remind them why they are on your mailing list.

Tomorrow, we will discuss managing your mailing list to make sure it is working for you and not against you.

Psst….Do you know what email marketing really is?

Is it SPAM? Nope.
Is it blasting advertisements to make quick sales? Nu-uh.
Is it a big waste of time? Your competitor doesn’t seem to think so. Neither do the businesses that spent 1.1 billion dollars on it last year.

Welcome to ProMail+, a free email marketing guide.

In seven quick lessons, we’ll walk through how to think about and execute email marketing, so that you can market like a pro and be a step ahead of the competition.

We hope to inspire new ideas about marketing strategy and show you the do’s and don’ts of sending email marketing messages.

If you’re totally new to email marketing, read this guide. If you’ve done email marketing before and think you know what you’re doing, read this guide.

There are mistakes to be avoided. There are opportunities to take. There are strategies that, if done well, will be an extremely cost-effective way to increase brand awareness, customer loyalty, and spread your message to all those lovely people who have email addresses.

By Lesson 7, you’ll be a certified email marketing pro, and more than ready to join our growing community of ProMail users who reap daily rewards from our email marketing technology and information.

So, let’s talk about what email marketing is and what it is not. And, most importantly, how to use email marketing to get results.

Email Marketing Defined

In its broadest sense, email marketing refers to every email sent to a potential or current customer. Every email, whether sent in bulk or not, should be considered a chance to market your brand and is a part of your identity.

Email marketing is not blasting advertisements to 100s of people with the hope of making a quick buck. Otherwise it would be called email advertising (which most think of as SPAM).

Week after week, we see businesses sending ads to recipient’s inboxes with the hope of inticing the recipient to purchase something. This strategy, which we call going for the hard sale, is fine in small doses.

However, it is not very nice, appropriate, or effective to use a hard-sale advertising strategy with recipients who are not familiar with your brand.

Nor is it smart to to use a hard-sale advertising approach every week, unless your recipients specifically requested weekly advertisements and offers.

Put Yourself In Their Shoes

For a moment, put yourself in the shoes of your email marketing recipient. He or she is sitting there, having a moment alone and checking email during their lunch break.

What do we find in that inbox?

A message from a coworker with pictures of cute kittens.
A quick hello from their sister.
A request for donations from their favorite charity.
The memo from the boss.

Their inbox, you see, is a personal space reserved for things relevant, meaningful, personal or of personal interest, confidential, familiar, business-related, and above all, timely.

Anything else is chatter and will be tuned out.

Now Remember Your Goal

Marketing is defined by the AMA as “the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships, in order to capture value from customers in return”.

The overall goal of email marketing is the same as marketing in a broad sense — to build brand awareness and loyalty.

Your process, then, should center on giving the recipient a message that creates value. Do that with good timing and you’re miles ahead of your competitor, because your brand name stays in the recipients’ “mindbox.”

Here’s An Example

As an example, let’s pretend we are the owner of a bookstore. Our customers receive a 10% off coupon if they leave us their email address.

Later that week, we’re thinking about how to market to those customers who were kind enough to leave their names and email addresses.

Well, we know that our target market likes to read, so, we decide to send them a message about the latest update to our website, which is a blog post containing unusual facts about books:

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: 10 Exciting Book Facts From Chop Suey Books

Dear Frank,

This week, we’ve been adding some pretty weird and exciting book facts to our website. Did you know…

The largest book in the world is 150 meters wide?
The most expensive book in the world is only 13 pages long?

Check out the latest interesting book facts at our website.

[INSERT BIG BUTTON HERE]

______________________________________________________________________

Now, is our recipient Frank going to think we’re annoying him with adveritsements? NO. He’s going to think, “Oh cool, isn’t that interesting. I love this bookstore.”

Yes, But I Need Sales, Now!

In this message, we’ve accomplished the goal of adding value to Frank’s life. But in a subtle way, we’ve done more than that.

1) We’ve kept it short and gotten the attention of the recipient to make them want more.
2) We’ve put our brand name in the subject line.
3) We’ve created some positive feelings.
4) We’ve included a prominent call to action, causing the recipient to interact with or respond to us.

Next, it’s up to ol’ Frank to visit the website, click on the links, see the sale ad and remember that he has a 10% off coupon to use.

By not putting the advertisement directly in the email, we’re not only just sending a message that will add value to the recipient’s life.

We’re also staying out of the recipient’s trash or spam folder. Spam filters — and email recipients — are pretty smart about filtering out advertising. So, by leaving the ad on the web page, we’re increasing the odds of staying out of the trash and in the recipient’s mindbox.

And we’re also leading Frank to the website, which is where the Buy Now button is, right?

So, it’s a win-win.

And It’s Fun For You, Too!

Isn’t it more fun and exciting for you, too, to stretch your mind and think about adding value to a person’s life, rather than trying to get them to buy something with an ad every week?

Email Marketing builds brand awareness and loyalty — when it’s done the right way — by adding value to your recipient’s lives and focusing on hard sales only 20% of the time.

So, give in order to receive. Stay in the inbox.

In the next lesson, we talk about the power of being compliant.