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