Email Marketing is a Tool, not a Goal

Many people seem to think that they can get into email marketing and make money. Of course the people who sell email lists to unsuspecting Internet users out to make a quick buck do make a lot of money off email marketing scams. Legitimate email marketing however, is a means to an end, not the end itself.

First, you must have some reason to send email to people. Buying a list of names and emailing them will not only get you blacklisted, it will make you worse off than you were before. Your email reputation will be tarnished. Once you are on the blacklist's radar, it is harder to stay off the lists. The best way to get people to give you their email address so that you can continue to email them is to give them something valuable.

The value might be information, it might be a free download, it might be advice on how to email people. Whatever it is, they must actively want to receive this information from you. Make it easy for them to sign up. You can start blog like this one and give them RSS feeds. RSS makes it nice and easy to get content off the web, but for selling, nothing beats email.

Find out how to make a simple subscribe form and point it to a database that you manage. Most web hosting companies let you configure any number of databases like MySQL or PHP. Collecting email address via a webform is pretty easy. You can collect all sorts of information on your subscribers, but it is best to make the form short and sweet so subscribers don't feel like they are getting the third degree.

Most importantly, confirm the subscription, this protects you from signing up bogus emails, and the subscriber from having someone else who is pretending to be them from signing up. Hopefully, you will take things slowly and actually think about what you have to offer before you try marketing it to people.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Consider Ignoring AOL and Yahoo!

The two biggest contributing factors affecting email delivery are the number of failed emails that reside in your email list and the number of spam complaints you get when you send emails. ISPs like AOL and Yahoo use this data when you send bulk email, to either slow you down or halt delivery altogether. It might be better to get rid of these types of addresses from your email list altogether.

Most people have more than one email account that includes a business email, a couple of throw away accounts and maybe one well preserved email address that they only give to close friends and family. The throw away accounts are used specifically for signing up for possibly less than savory newsletters and shady email offers. I use them when I want information for which I have to register so that my good personal account and my business account don't become polluted.

Other people do this too and they use free online email accounts to manage them. If your email list contains a large number of free email addresses, Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail, maybe you are not reassuring enough on your website about how you plan to use the email addresses you collect. If there is any question about where the subscriber's email is going to end up, they will likely pull out a throw away and sign up for that. Regardless of how they got on your list, these types of addresses are going to be less responsive by default.

Free email accounts like AOL, Yahoo etc. also have pretty tight spam filters. If you are not careful, your email address may end up in the junk folder with a bunch of SPAM messages. Most users do not carefully sift their junk folders unless they are waiting for something important. These clients have a handy button that can mark every single email message in their junk folder as SPAM, which is a mark on your email reputation. Your email message simply gets lumped in with a bunch of other obvious junk, but the ISP doesn't care about that. Asking the subscriber to add your from address helps, but most people probably do take that extra step.

Even though AOL is now free, most people using AOL are the same people who have been using AOL for a long time and like it. In my experience, although there are many exceptions, the vast majority of AOL users are less savvy about the technology they are using. AOL makes it easy to label incoming email as SPAM and many people take advantage of that. Even if they requested information from you, a single lapse in memory could be a black mark on your email reputation. Signing up for the AOL feedback loop helps you keep track of the percentages of your emails that end up on the list, but it doesn't take very many complaints to slip of the AOL whitelist.

Given the fact that these types of addresses are frequently used as throw away email address and are often used by less savvy or disinterested subscribers, it may be a good idea to wean them from your list. You do not have to eliminate them altogether, but maybe raise the bar for continued inclusion based on past responsiveness. If you track click throughs or opens you can make that one of the filtering criteria for sending these types of addresses. Cutting down one AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail emails from your list may help with overall email message delivery.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Managing SPAM Emails

The other day, Terry Zink posted an excellent article on security that questions who is at fault when security is breached. Along the same vein, if you sign up for email messages and the proceed to get spam, you may be complicit in your own subsequent deluge of unwanted emails. Even though most reputable sites have some sort of email policy indicating what they will do with your email address, many may not follow it. If they fail to follow it, who really has time to go back and call them on it.

Most people have more than one email accounts. There are so many free email services online, it is silly not to take advantage of them. A maximum of three email addresses is all you need to reduce your email headaches.

Top Secret Account
Configure one email account to be your top secret account. This is one that you only give out to your most trusted and like-minded friends and family. You do not want to give this to your sister in law that constantly forwards you chain emails along with all her other contacts. This account should only be given to people who follow proper email etiquette.

Business Account
Reserve your business account to correspond with people with whom you are conducting business. This includes your customers, suppliers, banks etc. Most business transactions should be archived especially if you fall under the various privacy laws and requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley. Managing a couple of email accounts on your business email can help you distinguish between important correspondences and transaction backscatter.

Throw Away Account
Everybody who browses the Internet and finds information they cannot live without should set up one or more throw away accounts. This way, if you decide later that you can live without subscribing to a particular newsletter, or find that your account was compromised or sold to unscrupulous spammers, you can simply toss it later. You can add your sister in law to one of these too, because eventually someone will find the address on the cc list and send you junk.

By using throw away accounts, you can often pinpoint exactly who sold your email address or violated their own stated policy by sending you spam. At that point you can take appropriate steps to inform them or report them to their ISP or to black lists.

The point is, if you give your email address to someone who is likely to use it to spam you later, you are someone responsible for the spam you receive. Take care of your email addresses and you will see a lot less spam, or at least be able to deal with it easily when it occurs.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Are Most Email Messages SPAM?

After several years in the email marketing business it is easy to get jaded about email marketing. I visit with people who claim to have millions of emails, legitimately obtained and it seems impossible to me. Only the largest, most successful companies can boast of millions of customers and potential readers. It is difficult to imagine that all the people I talk to have a thousand followers, let alone ten-thousand, a hundred thousand or one million.

Throughout my day, I may see 25 to 30 emails pertaining to actual work. Requests for support or internal company correspondences. The rest could be considered spam of one form or another. First I should define spam in order to understand exactly what I am trying to say. Spam is unsolicited bulk email, UBE. Some people call it unsolicited commercial email, UCE, but I think that definition might be too narrow. There are many junk email messages with no commercial value cluttering up your inbox on a daily basis.

Unsolicited means that the email message was not asked for. There are many possible email messages that you don't ask for, but are happy, or at least satisfied, to receive. Your boss may email you with an important task, or appreciation for a job well done. A customer may email you with a request to renew his contract or provide additional work. Your sister-in-law may let you know of the birth of her healthy happy son. All these emails are unsolicited, but these types of email messages would not be considered spam.

Bulk email messages are sent to more than one person. These could be email messages forwarded to you by family and friends that include you and everybody else foolish enough to have provided an email address to these serial forwarders. If you have a lot of family or a lot of friends, chances are you will receive the same chain email message several times a day as the message makes its rounds. It is difficult to get off of these lists without offending somebody, but an attempt should be made just to save your sanity.

Companies send out bulk email messages too, for a variety of reasons; special offers, newsletters, press releases, blog updates, etc. Many of these email messages are welcome, but they are still unsolicited and bulk and would be considered spam. Even if each message includes an opt-out mechanism, a physical address, and other anti-spam provisions, they seem to flood our inbox in greater numbers than ever. When hundreds of people claim to have millions of email that they obtained legitimately, I am skeptical.

Eventually, even messages that you subscribe to and read regularly can go stale. The inbox is simply flooded with email messages you once thought you needed, but never ready. Like life itself you must filter out the stimuli that you can ignore so you can concentrate on important things. In my experience, most email messages are spam, unsolicited bulk email that I have no time for and to which I do not want to contribute.

So what is the point of this post? I guess I am just trying to define for myself what type of people I am willing to help with email marketing. Those people that are doing things the right way, the best that they know how, not those looking for a quick buck with a list they bought online in a get-rich scheme. Legitimate email markets take time to grow, but if done correctly can produce much fruit. Those are the people I want to help, unfortunately they are few and far between.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Consider the Message

Actually sitting down and creating the email message is one of the most challenging aspects of email marketing. There are many parts you must consider when creating a message that readers will read and hopefully, act upon. Writing the copy and designing the message are two major elements that should be carefully considered. Branding your message across different types of message templates will help you keep all your messages organized.

The first order of business is to decide what types of messages you are sending; newsletters, transactional emails, confirmation emails, notices, press releases, product announcements, tutorials, the list goes on. Each email type should be made to work toward establishing your brand and doing its intended job. A newsletter should inform, product releases should drive traffic, confirmation emails should confirm subscriptions.

You should send multi-part messages that contain both a plain text and HTML portion at the same time. While plain text messages typically have better deliver ability rates than their HTML counterparts, it is well established that HTML leads to higher click through and open rates. The plain text and HTML portions should say the same thing, but the HTML part must be designed to be read in a number of email clients to ensure that it looks good and will display properly. Create a template for each type of message you want to send and use those for every message of that type.

Write short but effective subject lines to separate your email from all the other emails in the recipient's inbox. The goal of the subject line is to get the reader to open the email and read the content. Subject lines should grab the readers attention and promise something valuable inside.

Design the HTML message to work, even if images are not displayed. Most email clients now block images from unknown senders. When this happens to your brilliantly crafted HTML message, it could ruin the entire effect. Most people already know not to have your entire message one big image, but smaller images and banners should be placed so the message can still be read, even if the images are not included.

Write for the reader in order to satisfy them that your message meets their needs. They provided you with their email address for a reason. Keep that reason in mind and address it with each email you send. If you do not keep the promise that made when the subscriber signed up, it will not be long before you lose them altogether.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Getting Started with Email Marketing; Part 2

After you acquire a list, actually even while it is still growing, you want to start sending email messages. You don't need to let your subscribers know there are only five other people on the list besides them, begin your marketing program right away. After all, those subscribers are going to be expecting something from you based on your schedule and if you fail to come through for them, you will lose them; not a good way to start. There are two broad categories for managing your bulk email campaigns, having someone send the emails for you or doing it yourself.

Hosted Solution
Setting up your own email server and managing your own email campaigns can be a daunting task. There are many online hosted solutions available that know how to help you get started. They typically require you to sign up for a set fee plus pay for the number of emails you addresses in your list or the number of email messages actually sent through their server.

Benefits:

• Experience sending email


• Whitelisted with various domains


• Strict opt-in and list management requirements

Drawbacks:

• You have to transfer your database or email list to them


• You may be subject to more onerous scrutiny


• High and recurring costs

In-house Solution
Bringing your email marketing in-house gives you more control over your email marketing environment. You can manage your email list, message creative, and sending server in your own network.

Benefits:

• One time costs for email marketing programs and servers


• You can keep your database list of email addresses securely in your possession


• Complete control over programs and servers if something goes wrong

Drawbacks:

• High up-front costs for email programs and servers


• Configuration lag time


• High learning curve

An objective evaluation of your skill level and email marketing needs should dictate which option you choose. In many cases using a hosted solution while you get your in-house system up and running is the best plan.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Getting Started with Email Marketing; Part 1

Email marketing should not be your sole business model, but a tool to reach your customers to whom you can sell your goods and services. Getting into email marketing as a get rich quick scheme could negatively affect your email reputation. The business model should come first and then you can think about email marketing as a legitimate email marketer. This is the first part in a series on how to start email marketing the right way. Let's assume you already have a solid good or service you need to tell people about.

The List
Acquiring a list in a legitimate manner is extremely important. Spammers are notorious for sending their messages to any email address that they get a hold of, you do not want to do the same things as spammers or you will suffer the same fate. The best way to get a list is to grow it naturally with a web form on your website that points to a database where your records are stored. Invite people who visit your site to give you their email address in exchange for a newsletter or product update.

Purchased lists are a risky alternative to growing your own. People on lists, regardless of what the list broker promises, do not opt-in to receive your messages. Even if they opt-in to receive some messages that might be like yours, they are more likely to forget and reach for their spam button the first time you send them something. If you must use a purchase list, do so carefully and try to get them to confirm participation.

Confirm Opt-in
Once they sign up it is important to confirm their subscription. This can be done in a number of ways, but by sending a confirmation email to the email address they used, you can both verify the address they used is theirs and allow them to confirm. Granted, some people may change their minds or forget about confirming their email, but a confirmed opt-in will help you in the long run maintain a clean email address list and improve your email reputation.

Honor Opt-out requests
Requests for removal should be acted on immediately through any channel through which the recipient contacts you. If they call, email a reply, or log into a web page to manage their subscriptions, once they unsubscribe, you should not send them any more email. Even though the CAN-SPAM law allows you ten days to remove someone from your list, why would you want to continue to send email to people who do not want it and risk your email reputation.

Maintain a Clean List
Remote ISPs punish you if your list contains a large percentage of previously failed emails. You want to make sure that you have a way to remove failed emails from your list right away. If even a small percentage of your emails fail, your send may be slowed down to a particular domain, or blocked altogether. Many domains maintain rigorous whitelisting, greylisting, and blacklisting procedures that can ruin an email campaign in the middle of the process.

Gather Information
When people sign up, it is a good idea to find out more about them. You have to have a balance though, most people will not want to fill out their life history just to receive your email. Try to collect a name along with the address and maybe their geographical location. You can ask for that, or try to glean that information using the IP address on which they are logging onto your site. If have a subscription management area on your website, you can ask a number of questions that will help you segment your list.

Segmenting your list helps you send more targeted information to your customers. The more you know or can find out about them, the more specialized and personalized your email messages become. Message personalization and list segmentation are what make email marketing so valuable to your growing business.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Always on Offense

Wouldn't it be great to always have the ball and always play on offense? Every few minutes you could rush or pass your way down the field and score. The score would rack up and in a 60 minute game you could have hundreds of points. Of course that wouldn't be much of a game would it, but that is the ideal scenario for email marketing. There is a problem however, a big problem, there are 11 defenders on the field with you trying to take the ball away and prevent you from scoring. Like football, you must get past the defenders in order to convert your ultimate goal.

Defensive Line Blocking
The firt obstacle in email delivery is blocking your messages. There are many reasons you message may be blocked.

• It looks spammy (or is spammy)


• The SMTP is not properly configured


• ISP sending limits


• The mail server is blacklisted

It is important to test your email campaigning ability regularly to ensure that you can continue to get your emails through to your intended recipients.

Secondary
These are the guys that intercept your email message just before you get it into the hands of the receiver - corporate IT. In order to protect company resources, the IT guy is going to set up varying levels of filtering on incoming email. BtoB emails from recognized companies typically have a better shot of getting through to the recipient. Like defensive backs, some companies perform this task better than others, filtering out spam with low incidence of false positives.

Penalties
Nothing ruins the momentum of sending a large campaign than getting flagged during a send. There are several factors that can contribute to your campaign slowing down.

• Too many emails to one domain


• Too many failed email addresses in your list


• Too many spam complaints

More legitimate email marketers are finding their delivery performance slowed down because of these factors. Without your knowing it, you could have fallen off a whitelist, greylisted, or even blacklisted depending on how badly you are penalized. The fact that every ISP has its own delivery and whitelist standard does not help, you must account for them all.

Legitimate email markerters are always playing on offense, but there is a whole other team on the field trying to prevent you from scoring. Delivering your email message is the ultimate goal, after all, nobody can open or click through to your website if the message never arrives in their inbox. Services like Delivery Monitor can help keep track of this information for you so you can zip past the defenders and get touchdowns all day long.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Remember the Victims of 9/11

I have seen very few articles, mentions, or news stories about the 7th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, so I thought I'd better write my own.

Seven years ago, at about this time of day, my wife decided to turn on the TV and watch the news, which we never do. To our amazement they were showing the World Trade Center with fire billowing out of the North Tower. At that point, nobody was really sure what was happening and it was not clear that it was anything more than a tragic accident.

I took my eyes from the TV to get ready for work when my wife witnessed the second plane hitting the South Tower - we knew then that it was deliberate. Even living out here in Wyoming, we were tense and nervous about the possibility of continued attacks. I had to leave for work, but took a radio with me so we could be updated.

When my wife called to inform me that the South Tower collapsed I could not conceive of what she was saying. She tried to tell me that the whole thing imploded and that there was nothing left, but I thought she was exaggerating. When I was able to get find a TV I saw first hand the devastation.

We prayed, we cried, we shook our fists at our unseen and cowardly enemy for doing this to our country. Through out the rest of that day we watched and listened to the events unfold. The attack on the Pentagon, the tragedy of United Flight 93, the mounting death toll at the World Trade Center.

If the media does not want to remember, that is up to them. As for me and my family, we will never forget that day. We will continue to pray for those who lost loved ones in that attack and we will continue to pray for America. There was such a surge of patriotism that gave me hope that this country was not as jaded as it seemed, but that hope faded in a little over a week - that is sad.

Tributes and sites dedicated to those who died.

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Don't forget this one from the FDNY.

FDNY Tribute

To the families of the victims of this and other terrorist attacks and to the brave men an women fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, our heartfelt prayers and thanks are with you.

3 Keys to Getting Email Delivered

It is finally football season, which means it is time for football analogies. Getting email delivered is a lot like trying to get into the endzone of your oponent. There are a lot of obstacles trying to prevent you from reaching your goal. There are three ways to help you score with your email marketing campaign.

Preparation
The preparation phase is crucial to establishing your email reputation. Building your list naturally using a confirmed opt-in mechanism will help you build a more responsive following. Your mail server must be situated properly in your domain name system zone files. Mail exchange records, SPF, records, and domain key implementation will help recipient ISPs identify your server and sets you apart from the spammers.

Planning
Each email campaign should be carefully planned. Segment the list and send your email messages in smaller chucks. Use message personalization to create highly effective emails that are specific to the recipient. It is important that you spend some time crafting and testing your message to see how it will look in a number of different email clients. Test your message against an online spam filter to ensure that your email message has a low spam score.

Execution
All the preparation and planning in the world will not avail you if you do not execute. In football the coach has a huge chart of plays, but it is up to the players to drive down the field and cut through the defense. When you deliver bulk-email there are a number of defenders trying to keep you out of your subscriber's inbox. If you prepared well and planned for as many contigencies as possible, then it is time to send your email. The defense is constantly making adjustments to close the net around your email message so it is important to know what they are doing so you can make adjustments.

In the email marketing game, your goal is to get your email messages to your subscribers. Take each step, preparation, planning, and exceution seriously and maintain your solid email reputation.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Deliverability Issues are (Mostly) not Message Related

Recently I did some testing based on complaints about failed email deliverability to some standard free email accounts (Windows Live Hotmail, AOL, Gmail, and Yahoo).

The Tests
Using a basic HTML message based on a basic template, I ran some tests. All the emails had the same innocuous subject line and were HTML messages, since it is well established that plain text email messages are highly deliverable. None of the email accounts had the sender address added to the address book to avoid the junk folder.

Message 1
HTML, no images, no links.

Message 2
HTML, web images, no links

Message 3
HTML, embedded images, no links

Message 4
HTML, no images, with links

Message 5
HTML, web images, with links

Message 6
HTML, embedded images, with links

The Results
All the messages were delivered to the inbox of all email accounts successfully except in the case of embedded images. The messages with embedded images were redirected to the junk folder in Yahoo's mail client.

Styles
In Yahoo, Windows Live Hotmail, and AOL the background color and other styles were overridden by the email client and did not display correctly. This did affect the appearance of the message where light colored links are offset by the dark background color. This occurred for all the messages to those accounts since I did not change the basic layout or style, just the images and links.

Embedded Images
In the embedded image tests, with and without links all the message were delivered to the inbox, some of the clients would display the embedded images when approved by the viewer. Yahoo put the embedded image message in the junk folder.

Web Images
In AOL and Gmail clients, web based images triggered a prompt for the user to allow the images to be displayed. Yahoo and Hotmail displayed web images automatically with no problems.

Links
The links I used were click through and unsubscribe links using an internal IP address and a non-standard port, specifically port 81. These types of links are usually suspect since some spam filters do not like IP address or alternate ports. AOL in particular used to check each link in the message as it comes in. However, none of the accounts balked at allowing an email message to the inbox with a click through link and an unsubscribe link with these elements in place.

Conclusion
This is just one small test, and is by no means definitive, but it seems to indicate that there is a small correlation between the email message itself and email delivery issues.

Other issues that do affect delivery may be:

• Dirty email lists
• Not honoring unsubscribe requests
• Improperly configured email servers
• ISP or ESP sending limitations

The best way to pinpoint where email message delivery fails is to conduct tests to the available free email accounts as in this example. Examine any bounces and errors closely to see exactly what triggered a failure. Based on this simple test, troubleshooting time might be better spent with some of these other issues rather than with the email message itself.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Do you know who's killing your email marketing?

Imagine you take a trip to your post box down the road today to pick up the mail. To your surprise, you find nothing. Not one word. All you see is just an empty hole in the wall with zip in it. Annoyance would be the prime emotion here. Maybe even a dollop of disappointment.

But what if you find out that all that airy space exists simply because the post office decided to send all your mail back? Now that would get you in a bit of a boil, wouldn't it? Frothing at the mouth, wouldn't you want to tear all those bespectacled post office workers into little
vulture-sized meat bites?

And then what if I told you that your email marketing business is going the same way? What if you suddenly learned that the email newsletters you'd subscribed to are now doing the boomerang dance? What if you're an email marketer and your subscriber isn't even getting your mail? What if he's just getting a stripped down version of it?

Is that smoke coming out of your ears?

The Wild West Lives Again!
In the Wild West the rules were simple. If I didn't like you, I'd shoot you. Email isn't dropping to the floor quite that quickly, but there is a definite pattern evolving that you should be aware of. Someone has put your email marketing on a poison drip, and by golly, if you ignore it, you're one dead puppy! Read how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are systematically working to weed out HTML mail and what you need to do to minimise your damage.

Who's Paying for Whose Fault?
Spammers are the baddies, and spammers don't care. Bandwidth can span the breadth and depth of the Grand Canyon and it won't make any difference to them. You can be sure they'll find a way to top it up with their junk. It was also obvious, even several years ago, that control of spammers was improbable. They know very well what they are doing. All they have to do is go to an offshore provider when anti-spam legislation is passed. What's to stop them? As long as there is one country in the world that will allow spammers to send their poison, they will.

Does anyone really believe that every ISP on the network is going to spend the resources to closely examine the specific content of each and every large-scale email transmission to see if it's okay or not?

The answer has to be no, since this doesn't avoid the cost of spam in the long term. It simply transfers it from a cost of bandwidth to a cost of administration.

The harder commercial email pushes, the harder the network will respond by pushing back. "Big" email is a lame duck -- and will soon be a stone cold dead one. Even with filters in place, my email account bulges with mail I didn't ask for, and would never reply to. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) on the other hand, are watching this rainstorm with increasing concern. Every day, the volume of email threatens to blow the dam, and they're not going to sit back and take it.

How an ISP's Worry Becomes Your Headache
Bandwidth costs money. The more email you get and send, the more it's costing your ISP. They can't charge you more (or may not want to charge you), and so the easiest way out is to send your email à la Elvis: Return to sender!

The biggest offender here is HTML email that clogs up the system with a reasonable amount of imagery. It's the graphics that generates business for you and me, but it's also this very factor that is clogging up the pipe. This has led several ISPs to take some very radical decisions that border on telling you what you can and cannot read.

A Growing Menace Called Filters
Filters that are easy to implement seem to beat the system, so that's the option that many ISPs consider first. In an attempt to control the traffic, they simply install cheap and nasty systems that send any mail that's considered 'spam' right back to where it came from. This seems noble until you consider the following. These filters may be stopping legitimate mail from entering your mailbox.

If mom sent you a mail with a word which the filters pick up but don't like: Bounce, bounce. It would go bouncing back! If you had the word 'search engines' in it, maybe they'd decide that word signified spam. Kaboom! It's back to where it came from. Suddenly, your business that depends on the mail getting through is being vetted by an unasked police patrol run by goons. You're not getting across to your customers, and even worse, your customers' mail may not be reaching you.

What's worse is that as an email marketer, you would tend to take for granted that you would get an "undeliverable" note when this happens. I understand it's not always true; you can send out thousands of messages and remain blissfully ignorant of their eventual fate.

Why HTML-Based Marketing Will Be Easier To Kill
Macromedia Flash went through a fashionable phase and had to be dumped in favour of good ol' HTML. HTML, while great on the web, is a pain in the neck in your inbox.

To counter this, many a software developer is seriously working out ways to have HTML-like effects within your email without the code and bandwidth that goes with it. This software, though available today, is quite expensive and not a very viable option except for larger companies. The rest of us have to contend with the inescapable fact that any email over a certain size will be treated as an HTML file and fair game for the intrepid filters to play 'shoot the ducky.'

HTML will always be bulky, and is already denied or stripped by some carriers and destination ISPs, so it will always be a hazard. Some companies and email marketers have decided they are cutting out HTML altogether. It's too much of a risk when you don't even know whether it's been dumped or stripped.

How Can You Go Past This 'Doomsday Scenario'?
Two possibilities: text and online HTML.

Text is faster, and has stood the test of time. But it's devoid of colour and formatting -- and more tedious to read. The better bet is to use HTML to link back to the website or online email newsletter. Businesses that get their customers trained to fetch their newsletter off the web will have fewer problems because they'll have few occasions when they will have to send emails out to their customers -- and then only very short notices or informative "drip feeds".

The kind of email you would then send would rarely have the kind of signature that causes the spam filters to scream. Most of these filters are weighted, and there are very few stand-alone telltales that send email into instant oblivion.

My guess is that small emails, even if numerous, will escape filter security, because it requires a certain minimum amount of text to make a spam offer. Emails, smaller than this minimum will probably not be checked at all, owing to sheer volume.

The Hero Doesn't Die In The End
The saddest part of this whole scenario is that people like you, me and a dog named Spammer are all trying to achieve the same thing -- bulk up the profits. And in doing so, we are all part of the gloomy picture. But don't despair.

Unlike you, Mr Spammer doesn't want to be traceable. You do, because you're legit. Make use of your legitimacy, and drive your customers back to your online newsletter or website.

And simultaneously drive the spam merchant out of business!

Next Step: Read more Internet Marketing and Website articles.Create your own internet marketing strategy using these tactics.

©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.Wouldn't you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com/ today and judge for yourself.

Become a Legitimate Emailer

As mentioned previously, email marketing is black and white, you either do it correctly, or you don't. There are seven things you must do to set your self apart from the email marketing wannabes.

Grow your list naturally
Sure, this is hard to do, but it will pay big dividends with establishing and maintaining your email reputation. A purchased list may have a collection of email addresses interested in what you have to offer. It may contain people who opted to receive information on whatever it is you are trying to sell. But, if they did not agree on a sign up form on your website, chances are, once you send them an email, they will not care about all that and will instintively reach for their report as spam button.

According to Direct Magazine "the Inbox providers, such as Yahoo, AOL and Gmail, all use the percentage of people who hit the "report spam" button for a particular sender as the No. 1 gage in considering whether to deliver incoming email to users' inboxes or not." If you send to a list with a high percentage of purchased emails, your spam rating is going to be higher. If you feel you must supplement your list with some purchased email addresses, consider easing them into your production list and defintately consider inviting them to opt-in before you send your first real email message.

Honor opt-outs immediately
The CAN-SPAM law gives you ten days to honor unsubscribe requests, but you want to do it immediately. Most of the people who unsubscribe or opt-out of your email message would be disappointed if they continued to receive ten more messages after they opted-out. The way the register their disappointment is by reaching for the mark as spam button, which will negatively affect your email reputation.

De-spam your message
Test all email messages before they go out, against a spam checker. Spam assasin and others offer tools that can grade the message to ensure it is not too spammy. The danger is that your message will be delivered to the junk mail box and be marked as spam in bulk. Most email clients have an option to mark all the messages in the junk folder and report them all as spam. The recipient never even sees the message, but your reputation suffers.

Personalize your message
Most bulk email marketing programs allow you to personalize your message. People like seeing email messages that are addressed to them specifically. The more you make your email message a correspondence, the more responsive they are to what you are offering. Personalizing also ensures that the content is something that interests or pertains to the recipient.

Segment your list
Tracking recipient behaviour can help you segment your list by whatever criteria you happen to collect. Segmenting allows you to send your messages in smaller chucks, making recipient ISPs happier and less likely to get on your case. Jeanne Jennings at ClickZ has an excellent series about list segmentation and all the things you can do with the information you gather.

Monitor delivery
Knowing what is going on with your messages can help you strategize your overal marketing goals. You used to never know if your email reached its destination unless you are tracking opens and click throughs, metrics which are better at showing you trends rather than actually providing you solid data on deliverability. Sign up with Delivery Monitor and find out exactly what is going on with your bulk email campaigns.

Get accredited
Finally, you should accredit your email to help the recipient know that the email you send is from a trustworthy, legtitimate email marketer. SuretyMail works directly with all the top ISPs which account for the vast majority of delivery issues. When you send accredited email, ISPs and spam blockers know that your email is legitimate. Of course you have to do all the other things we mentioned and more in order to get accredited, but you with SuretyMail you have extra assurance that your email messages are reaching the inbox.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Ride the Legitimate Email Marketing Wave

Email marketing is like riding a wave, you have to hit it just right to keep moving forward. With today's fast moving technology the wave may pass you by before you can even paddle to the starting point. Here are three tips for keeping abreast of email marketing technology.

Don't linger in the past
Just because you have been doing email marketing since 1997 doesn't mean you are still legitimate. Email marketing in the past was cutting edge and only a few people took real advantage of it. If you are still doing things the way they did them last century, you will find yourselves on the wrong side of legitimate email marketing.

Settle into the present
Now that you have caught up with the latest technology, prepare youself to ride the wave. The current best practices are what work best for legitimate email marketing. If you continue with some dinosaur technologies that you can't let go of, the wave will leave you behind. If you jump too soon toward new technology, you are headed for a wipe out.

Look to the future
While you don't want to jump on new technology too soon, you do want to look ahead to see what is coming. The government may throw up roadblocks and other obstructions at any time. Keep track of where the industry is going so you are not caught by surprise. Keep your eye on new technology, or even participate in its development.

Like a surfer, you must maintain balance as you traverse the water. Hanging ten in email marketing will ensure your continued success.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Black and White

Email marketing is black and white, you either do it correctly, or you do not. There are plenty of companies that do it "mostly" correctly, but if they miss one element, then they are not doing it right.

For example, if you have a clean, confirmed opt-in email list of highly qualified customers to which you send a newsletter once per month. You stick to your schedule, you only send the newsletter and no other promotions not previously agreed upon; in essence everything is perfect, but you fail to honor unsubscribe requests, you're doing it wrong.

If you keep the law, yet offend in one point, you are guilty of all. The judge is not the federal government, nor your IT department, the judge is the email recipient. They do not care how carefully you crafted your message or how many rules you follow, if the email is not right for them, they will judge you and send you to oblivion. If they can punish you along the way, they will do that too.

The problem of course is there is no standard. What if you honor unsubscribes within ten days, just like the CAN-SPAM act says. If you send monthly, you should not have a problem. If you send daily however, you could have a huge problem with someone who unsubscribes. You know that CAN-SPAM gives you ten days, but the recipient may not. When they see the next email message from you, they will simply reach for the report as spam button. If you get a few of those you are in trouble.

The law governing legitimate email marketers is email best practices; an ever-changing and ambiguous set of guidelines that are not set in stone. The lowest common denominator is the CAN-SPAM act of 2003, which allows you to send out spam to any email address you happen to have, one time. Some of the provisions of the law require that you:

• Include an unsubscribe method in the email message
• Honor unsubscribes within ten days
• Include your physical address in each email message

That is all there is to the CAN-SPAM act, but following the act will not keep you from being labled as a spammer. Some of the best practice guidlines admonish you to do the following as well:

• Confirm subscriptions
• Honor unsubscribe requests immediately
• Personalize your email message
• Include the email address the recipeint used to sign up in the message
• Clearly identify yourself in th email
• Do not use a no-reply in the from address

That is a small list of things that will help prevent you from being labled a spammer, but there are plenty of additional tactics you can apply to your email message to improve the responses you get to your email. Ultimately, it is the recipient who decides your fate. If you can please most of the people most of the time you should be able to effectively reach your audience.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

P.S. Please share your best practices here, the things that you do to improve your chances of making it to the inbox.

The Three Biggest Problems with Email Marketing Today

Spammers
Unsolicited Bulk Emailers are the most obvious contributors to email delivery problems. Their actions negatively impact the Internet on several levels. Each email that is sent, whether delivered or not, takes up processing time on one or more servers. This time is paid for in real dollars by domain hosts and email servers along the entire path of the email delivery cycle. Time spent dealing with spam email result in hours of lost productivity.

There are two types of spammers; those that deliberately want to damage a particular mail server by flooding it with traffic, and those that hope to cash in on someone buying whatever it is they are selling.

The first type of spammer is identified by the goofy messages they send. The subject lines do not make sense and they are obviously spam messages that most people would not read. People who leave their message preview pane on in their browser may see something offensive, or inadvertantly verify their email address through a tracking image, but they will not likely purchase anything from an email like that.

The second type of spam message is a little more sophisticated. They look like legitmate emails, and actutally offer products that many people want. Many of these spam email messages are backed by real companies trying to sell their products or services. The thing that makes the messages spam, or unsolicieted bulk email, is the fact that the recipient never asked for the email, nor consented to receive the email, explicitly or implicitly, the emails just came.

Companies who engage spammers to send UBE on their behalf should be held as accountable as the party actually sending the message. Anti-spam efforts need to focus on drying up the funds that fuel spam behavior if they want to solve the spam problem. End users also have a responsibility to recognize and refrain from buying products sent via spam email messages.

Novice Email Marketers
While not intentionally sending UBE, many novice email marketers engage in spam without even knowing it. As mentioned previously, UBE means unsolicited bulk email and to be considered spam, it must contain both the element of being unsolicited and bulk.

Unsolicited means that the email message was not asked for by the recipient. In many instances your email address is harvested off of the Internet, or guessed at through a dictionary or phonebook attack. Novice marketers who purchase a list from a list broker may or may not end up with a list of emails obtained properly. Even if the list is grown natually, the novice fails to correctly obtatin consent to send email messages.

Bulk email messages are sent en masse to several email addresses at a time. There are many ways to send a message to an entire list of addresses, some are more sophisticated than others. Basic email clients like Outlook allow users to send email using a carbon copy or blind carbon copy to everybody found in the address book. This of course is how many people receive messages from friends and family members.

Consent to receive emails is one of the major points of discussion in the email marketing community. If someone gives you an email address, it does not necessarily mean that they expect you, or want you to email them. The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 failed to address the issue of consent and allows marketers who have access to an email address to send an initial UBE as long as an opt out option is provided.

Some people think that if someone does not opt out, they are implying consent, or opting to receive the message; in the early days of the Internet they may have had a point. Thanks again to spammers, the recipient avoids the opt out option because it can verify to the email harvester that the email address is valid. Legitimate email marketers need to follow a higher standard in obtaining consent.

Failure to adopt best practices
Many email marketers fail to adopt email marketing best practices when sending email to their recipients. Even if email addresses are obtained through explicit consent, and the marketer comply with the CAN-SPAM act, the legitimate email marketer can easily be lumped in with spammers unless they adopt email marketing best practices.

Best practices include.

• Obtaining confirmed consent through a subscription confirmation process
  


• Immediately honoring unsubscribe requests
  


• Maintaining a clean email address list that is free of dead or erroneous email addresses
  


• Removing unresponsive email addresses from the list
  


• Clearly identifying from where the email is sent
  


• Adopting DKIM, SPF and other technologies
  


• Participating in discussions that drive the email marketing industry

The only way for legitimate email marketers to continue to take advantage of all that email marketing offers is to continually improve the way email marketing is done. An effective solution to spam is still in the future.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

How do Spammers Obtain Email Addresses?

Email technology is a good and useful tool for personal and business communications. However, it is being hijacked and tarnished by unscrupulous criminals called spammers. Most people in the world enjoy an email account or two. What people do not like is getting email messages that they do not want or need. This includes spam email of course, but for many people it also includes messages forward from friends and family; things like chain letters and jokes you have read a million times already. Spammers take advantage of uncareful email users who do not use common sense when emailing. The best way to stay spam free is to only give your email to those close to you.

This often backfires however, when your sister-in-law forwards something to you and includes all of her email contacts in the message. Invariably someone will cc someone else who decides to harvest your email to send you spam offers. Novice email users do not realize that their email clients automatically add people to whom they reply to their address book. This means that when your sister-in-law adds her entire email address list to a forwarded message, some of those who receive the email are spammers to whom she has fallen prey.

Separating business and personal emails is a good idea. In business, you will get a lot of spam from business related newsletters for which you sign up. It is pretty much inevitable that you'll eventually get spam to a business account. Many spammers target company address with a dictionary attack, adding all the names ever given to the front part of a company address. Invariably there is a bill@yourcompany.com at your company. Most people want to use email addresses that they remember easily, but it might be a good idea to make them a little more difficult to guess what they are. Add some numbers to the mix and many dictionary attacks will fail.

Posting your email address on a website is a surefire way to get spam. If you have a domain name, you typically have an email address posted somewhere if you want people to reach you via email. There are some handy email obfuscators available that convert your email address to html code. The email will work when clicked, but will not be noticed by the harvesting bots rummaging through your site. Contact web forms can also help eliminate company email addresses getting harvested. Your email is also listed during a whois look-up for your domain. Some domain hosting companies now offer private registration so you don't have to expose your email to the outside world. If someone needs to get a hold of you through your whois record, the hosting company will forward it to you if it seems legitimate.

The fastest way to get spam emails is to accidentally open or respond to a spam email. This will verify to the spammer that your email address is legitimate. It is difficult to tell sometimes who sent an email or where it came from. Spammers will use images to track the message to see if it is open. Even looking at the message in a preview pane will make a trackable image request back to the spammers sever. Once they verify your address is real, they will send you tons more spam, and worse yet, sell your verified email to all their spamming friends.

So what is a soul to do to prevent all this spam? There are several things you can do to eliminate, or at least minimize the dangers. - Separate your real email address from ones you use to sign up for things on the Internet. Only give this email address to close friends or relatives who understand that you don't want to get junk forwarded to you every time they get something forwarded to them.

• Set up a sign up address. This is an address that you use to sign up for offers, newletters, bank accounts, travel sites, and newsletters. Eventually, you may start getting junk to this folder, but if you are careful about the places where you sign up, you can track down and tell where the problem originated and can appeal to the perpetrator to cease. If they do not you may have to report them to a black hole list service or complain to their ISP.
• Set up some additional throw away accounts. These are email accounts for sites where you want to get information for which you have to register, but you know that by registering, you are going to get a bunch of junk. Using this type of address will let you sign up and get the information you need and then move on. You can ignore the account until you need to sign up for something else.
• Turn off the preview pane in your email client. Most of the time you can tell when a message is spam by the from address or the subject line. If you have the preview pane open however, you may end up landing on a spam email and notifying them of the fact that you are a valid address. By keeping the preview pane closed you will be able to delete all the spammy email before you start reading the valid email you receive.

Never buy from a spammer. It only takes one person to purchase a spam product and perpetuate the cycle. The only way the Internet community will stop spam is to make it unprofitable. There are many ideas about how to stop spam, none of which have been widely adopted or implemented. It will still be a few years before a comprehensive solution is agreed upon. In the meantime, you will need to protect yourself from spam as best you can by adopting the previously cited steps.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

Exploring All the Opt-Ins

Sometimes technical terms are like the menu of a coffee bar that can leave you scratching your head. The email marketing menu lists items like "opt-in," "opt-out," "single opt-in," "unconfirmed opt-in," "confirmed opt-in," and "double opt-in." Articles about mass email marketing often assume their audience is up to speed on all these terms. At Pathfinder Email Consulting, we deal with a lot of customers just breaking into the mass email marketing business, and like the novice coffee drinker, they have one simple question, "What does all this gibberish mean?" Consider this a primer.

Opt-Out
In the old days, the only option (when given an option at all) for an email message recipient was to opt-out of a list to prevent any further email message delivery. This was a standard practice for bulk email marketers, often giving rise to the perception that their email marketing practices were suspect. Eventually, illegitimate bulk email marketers began using this as a method to confirm harvested email addresses. When a batch of email messages was sent, those that opted-out were confirmed as legitimate addresses and sold to the highest bidder. The CAN-SPAM Law of 2003 is mostly criticized for leaving the opt-out option as the primary recourse for people finding themselves on a bulk email list to which they did not subscribe. An unsubscribe request is a subset of the opt-out procedure and presumes that the owner of the email address actually subscribed, or opted-in at one time. An unsubscribe opportunity should be included in every legitimate email message. Fortunately, most legitimate email marketers adopt a higher standard than just opting-out, and actually send email messages only to those who explicitly opt-in to receive an email message. Legitimate marketers also include a way to unsubscribe, and they honor all those requests in a timely manner.

Opt-In
When someone subscribes to receive an email message, such as a newsletter, they are asked to provide an email address to which the email newsletter will be delivered. Making this type of request is an explicit opt-in, or subscription, purportedly made by the owner of the email account. The subscriber has chosen the option of receiving an email newsletter, for example. The publisher has all the necessary information, namely an email address, to send the subscriber what they are asking to receive. If the subscriber is lucky, the publisher will only send the information that is requested and will not rent or sell the email address to a third party. If the publisher is lucky, the email address provided is really valid and belongs to someone who really is interested in receiving email messages. There are two main types of opt-in procedures: unconfirmed and confirmed.

Unconfirmed Opt-In
A subscription page that only asks for someone to provide an email address, but does not require verification, is an unconfirmed opt-in. Unconfirmed opt-in is also frequently called a "single opt-in," to be differentiated from the common term "double opt-in" that we address later on. Unconfirmed opt-in web forms may also request more information such as a password, or even an entire page of information via a secure site. However, they are still unconfirmed opt-ins if no verification is made. There are many obvious problems with unconfirmed opt-in subscriptions. People can sign up using someone else's email address, leading to unsolicited bulk email a.k.a. spam. These allegations are damaging to the sender's reputation, are difficult, and often time consuming to correct. There is no confirmation to the publisher as to whether the email address used is actually valid, potentially increasing the volume of undeliverable messages. It also fails to secure a commitment to the newsletter from the subscriber. People who confirm their subscriptions are more loyal and interested. They typically do not report the sender as a spammer when they are tired of the email message, but simply unsubscribe if they no longer wish to receive it.

Confirmed Opt-In
When a subscriber is asked to verify their subscription request, indicating they really do want to receive the specified publication, that is a confirmed opt-in. Typically, this is done by immediately sending the subscriber a confirmation email message, usually with a link to activate their subscription. This verifies to the publisher that the email address is valid, and it reaffirms the subscriber's commitment to receive the information requested. The confirmed opt-in is considered a best practice for mass email marketers. If the publisher follows confirmed opt-in procedures, they are more likely to use best practices in all email marketing and other business practices, which inspires confidence. A confirmed opt-in procedure also improves the overall effectiveness of the mass email marketer's list. On many websites, confirmed opt-in practices are sometimes erroneously referred to as "double opt-in." Spammers coined the term "double opt-in" to give the impression that confirming a subscription was a duplication of effort. Mass email marketers who use this term may be viewed as novices, and therefore are not really using best practices in their other email marketing efforts. The most accurate and appropriate term is confirmed opt-in.

Whether you are just getting started or are looking to brush up your email marketing vocabulary, words mean things. When you are at the coffee house, you definitely don't want to accidentally order a decaf espresso – what's the point? Make sure you are not only using the best practices available in your mass email marketing efforts; be sure to also use the correct terms to avoid any misperceptions.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting