All Web eMail Blog

Who needs a Yahoo! ecommerce website developer anyways?!

2010-08-12T12:30:00.001-04:00

By: Brandi Pabian

Well, to be honest, you do. Industry standards are always changing, and you may fall through the cracks if you don’t stay up to date with what consumers want. Yahoo! Ecommerce website developers can help you create your desired look, feel and features as well as keep you up to date on industry standards, all of which help to increase conversion rates and thus your sales.

Ask yourself some crucial questions about your current website:

Have you looked really closely at your site lately? Does it portray your company's essence? Is it user-friendly? Are you sure about that? When is the last time you caught up on today's standard of website design? I'm sure your site is wonderful. If it wasn't, would you be making the sales that you do?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then it may be time to inquire about a Yahoo! Ecommerce store, and see if it is right for you.

The Yahoo! Store Ecommerce platform is organized and user friendly. It is easy to manage your items, maintain your pages and process your orders. As with most things in this world, there is always room for improvement! A clever, sneaky and curious website designer went behind the scenes of a simple, normal Yahoo! store and customized it to be just a bit better. More and more designers started doing the same thing and before you knew it - WOOHOO! - custom Yahoo! Stores were created. Yahoo! customized stores allow you to express your creativity, portray an individualized feeling and increases the user-friendliness of your website. In essence, a customized Yahoo! store becomes more like the individual you and your company are.

SHOW YOUR CREATIVITY
The Yahoo! Ecommerce platform is used by many world-wide. They have approximately 24 different "themes" that you can choose from when designing your own site. Now imagine that 1,000,000 people have all chosen a Yahoo! store with a standard template (you being one of them). How many people of those 1 million will choose the exact same template as yours? Most likely, it would be quite a few. Customers will get bored with seeing the same repetitious layouts on all these sites, because they want variety and personalization. Your Developer will help you express your creativity through imaginative design. The Developer can move bits and pieces of the standard templates to other areas of the store. Instead of the search box being directly under the store logo, we can move it to the upper right hand corner of the header. Instead of showing just one picture on the homepage, we can display many. Our company (yes, we have to put a plug in for us) have both graphic designers and website developers that can get the store to display your creativity.

CONVEY YOUR FEEL
Everyone is different. Every company has an essence or, "feel" about them that they try to convey. With a professional website developer, we can help you choose colors, layout and images to get the feeling your company is looking to portray. If you are a skin care company, you may want a soft, breezy, beautiful website to show an essence of beauty and cleanliness. If you are a skateboard company, you may want to show a more fun, rugged side of your personality, with darker colors mixed among bright colors. A professional website designer, along with a creative graphics designer, can get this done for you. They will personalize your site to show your customers a company that will provide them with excellent products and be attentive to their need to do business with a site they can trust. Just like having a physical store, you would want your store to portray who you are and what you do, and your website should be no different.

ADD CUSTOMIZED FEATURES
Okay, so now you have a beautiful looking site that shows your creativity and personality, but it doesn't have some of the necessary features your customers may want to use. What if you need to show more than two pictures for a product? What if the conventional way the Yahoo! store enlarges your images isn't good enough? What if you need extra text at the bottom of the site? A professional website developer can add in these extra features for you. They can also suggest additional features that, through testing, have proven to be more effective at converting sales.

STAY UP-TO-DATE ONLINE
The industry standards for building Yahoo! stores are always changing. When did you open your website? When was your last redesign? Are you sure you're using the correct coding to make the most out of your business online? Quite frankly, you run a successful online store; you have employees to run, bills to pay, inventory to order and books to keep. Do you really have the time it takes to keep up with changing technology? Probably not, but that's what designers are for. We learn, create and update today's website standards on a daily basis. That's what we get paid for and we love seeing your store successfully upgraded to the newest level.

So, by now, you should be convinced that you need a website developer for your Yahoo! store because we can customize your store to your needs, implement features that your customers need and we take off some of the pressure of being current and up to date. These are just a few of the reason why you may need a website developer for your store, so why don't you go ahead and give us a call and we can speak more directly about your needs and determine what would really make your website stand out against the world.

If you build it, will they come?

2010-08-10T12:21:00.010-04:00

By: Karl Ribas

Against popular belief and one 1989 film staring Kevin Costner, getting thousands of online shoppers to eagerly spend their hard earned money on your products and services is going to take much more than just creating a website. Granted, website development is extremely important, if not the most, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. However, there is certainly more to the e-commerce puzzle than simply creating a good looking website, and small business owners need to be aware of this.

Building a successful online presence will require utilizing a combination of online marketing channels, such as search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, email marketing, and the ever popular social media marketing to name a few. These channels, when used properly and in accordance with a company’s online business goals, can effectively generate a mass amount of traffic to a website thereby boosting online sales. How do these marketing channels work exactly? Allow me to explain.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as it is commonly referred to as, is the process of getting one’s website to rank organically in the search engines for relevant keyword phrases.

Why is ranking important?: When a business’ potential customers search on Google or Yahoo! for products and services it provides, showing at or near the top of a search engine will likely lead to an increase in website exposure, traffic, and more importantly sales.

How does SEO work?: Using a combination of on and off-page tactics, SEO marketers focus on 3 key factors: 1) getting search engine crawlers to first locate their website, 2) getting search engines to index their website, and 3) getting search engines to rank their website for a very specific set of keywords.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click, also known as PPC, is the process of creating textual listings (ads) and getting them to appear in the search engines for relevant keyword phrases.

Why is ranking important?: For exactly the same reasons as SEO, online businesses can drive targeted exposure, traffic, and revenue to their websites by simply appearing in major search engines for keywords most likely to be used by their customers.

How does PPC work?: Pay Per Click is setup very similar to traditional advertising models in that website owners must pay for the privilege of having their ad listings appear in the search engines. Costs and positioning are determined by a series of auction-style bidding parameters, as well as several uncontrollable factors. An advertiser’s primary focus is to create targeted messaging, manage multiple keyword buys, and maintain bids and costs according to one’s own budget.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is the process of sending targeted email messaging to a group of pre-qualified individuals.

Why is Email Marketing effective?: Email Marketing works because businesses are given permission from their customers and other industry followers to engage them with relevant and timely information via email, such as product updates and sales promotions. Sending targeted emails to targeted groups of buyers and followers will likely lead to an increase in additional website revenue.

How does Email Marketing work?: While using a combination of strategies and tools, email marketers have 2 primary tasks at hand: 1) creating and maintaining a subscription list of qualified subscribers, and 2) creating and sending highly relevant and visually pleasing email campaigns to subscribers.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social Media Marketing, a slightly new and different animal altogether, is the process of using social media platforms to engage both new and current customers.

Why is SMM effective?: Social Marketing is based on the same key principle that makes Email Marketing so effective by having permission to engage customers directly. Being able to connect directly with targeted groups of buyers and industry followers for free has the potential to drive traffic and sales to your website.

How does SMM work?: Social marketers traditionally begin their efforts by first deciding which social media platform to use - Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Once this has been established, social marketers will proceed with building and maintaining a community of friends and followers and then creating and publishing targeted messaging unique to each platform.

Moving forward, and to recap my original thought, simply having a website isn’t enough to exceed online. Small business owners need to be aware of this fact, and be willing to invest both time and money into some form of online marketing.

If you have questions pertaining to your business’ website marketing initiatives or would like to know how All Web Promotion can help you to achieve your online goals, please feel free to contact us. Our marketing specialists will be glad help.

All Web Email joins EMAPP and saves a puppy

2010-07-09T13:46:00.005-04:00

Every time you buy an email list... a puppy dies!

Once again, the email marketing industry has remained strong in it's efforts to convince people that don't know any better that you can not buy email lists. Last week somebody tried to get away with publishing an article titled "How to avoid getting swindled (when buying) your email lists". Like a scent hound in pursuit, John Caldwell of Red Pill Email immediately lept into action with colorful precision and clearly explained in response to the article how you can not puchase email lists. The article was ultimately pulled from the website 4 1/2 hours later with no explaination - scorned author clearly in the dog house, but not before John made a copy that you can read in full HERE.

This week marks the birth of a new organization with a mission to help fight the misconception that a list of email addresses constitutes something worth paying for. Spearheaded by the good folks at The Email Guide, the "Email Marketers Association for Puppy Protection" will continue to educate marketers tempted at the prospect of buying a list of email addresses from a shady sales people. Read more about EMAPP, watch the video of Spot the puppy on his way to the big kennel in the sky and learn how you can help save more innocent puppies by helping to stamp out the myth that you can buy an email list. CLICK HERE

In the meantime, here are five simple reasons why you cannot buy an email list.

Email marketing is permission based and you cannot buy or sell someone elses permission.
No reputable company will actually GIVE you physical posession of an email list.
An email list, like a customer list, is a company's most valuable asset and no company will sell you their most valuable asset.
Sending your message to a list of unknown email addresses is the fastest way to get ALL of your email communications blocked by the ISPs and corporate spam filters.
Every time you buy an email list... a puppy dies!

Thank you!

AllWebEmail Among the First to Adopt eec’s New Email Marketing Standards

2010-07-08T09:42:00.005-04:00

Oglesby, IL (PRWEB) July 1, 2010 -- In an effort to standardize the terms and definitions used in measuring email marketing reporting and provide consistent email metrics throughout the industry, the Email Experience Council of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA/eec) has introduced a list of eight email marketing measurement standards. AllWebEmail was among the first of two email service providers to fully adopt these new reporting standards. The other company to immediately adopt the eec’s email measurement standards is Email Transmit.

“We are delighted to be among the first to adopt these new standards and believe strongly that only when the email industry shares a common set of measurement standards will email marketers be able to compare ‘apples to apples’ when considering the performance of one service provider against another, erasing any confusion or clouding of actual results,” said Peter Roebuck, President of AllWebEmail.

One of the major hurdles that email marketers face today and in previous years is a lack of consistent standards for measuring the success of email campaigns. Email marketers are driven by measurement, but email measurement metrics are not standardized across the industry.

With no industry standards for measuring email campaigns, email marketing providers are left to define commonly used metrics like Accepted, Render and Click-through any way they chose to manipulate numbers to support their own advantage verses the needs of the actual marketer/customer.

"Since we decided to incorporate the new reporting metrics alongside our original metrics, our clients have not only enjoyed a smooth transition to the new standards but are now starting to ask smart questions about how they can use these new metrics to make more informed email marketing decisions. This has turned out to be more of a feature upgrade for our clients than a compliance upgrade for us. Bonus!" says Roebuck.

In March 2010, the DMA/eec’s Measurement Accuracy Roundtable finalized a two year effort which led to the creation of a set of standardized metrics for industry adoption. The roundtable’s primary focus was to create clearly defined definitions for each of the major measuring metrics for the sole purpose of bettering the email marketing industry as a whole.

“Industry standard metrics is so foundational that many marketers don’t even think to ask if an open is always an open or if delivered doesn’t mean reaching the inbox. AllWebEmail is leading the industry in making it very clear what each number means, and adopting standards that the industry voted to support. Their clients are the winners!” says eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable vice-chair and Return Path, Inc. VP of Global Market Development; Stephanie Miller.

Service providers that adopt and conform to the eec’s email marketing measurement standards will be given an official seal to display on their web site and marketing materials. The purpose of the seal is to alert email marketers and other industry followers of the service provider’s commitment to industry standards for fair and accurate measurement of email metrics for all. The seal provides a visual cue to website visitors, so customers and potential customers alike can identify providers using the standards easily when making vendor choices.

"I believe in this standard because it provides four main benefits to the email marketers. It improves testing validity by limiting environmental variance, improves industry benchmarking through increased data conformity, improves internal reporting for benchmarking by easing the transition between vendors and finally use of the standards will normalize data across the industry, a key assumption required for any statistical analysis", said eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable co-chair Luke Glasner of Glasner Consulting.

At the time of this release, 11 additional email service providers, including Alterian; BlueHornet; Blue Sky Factory; Bronto Software; Cooler Email; Green Arrow; Office Autopilot; Send Pepper; Silverpop; SubscriberMail; and YesMail have committed to using the eec’s new email measurement standards within the next six months. Full details about participation and an application form are available for other service providers on the eec website, http://www.emailexperience.org/.

About AllWebEmail

AllWebEmail, a division of All Web Promotion, Inc., is a leading email marketing service provider helping businesses for over 10 years to use email to effectively communicate with their customers. The company is managed by Peter Roebuck with help from partner, and brother, Michael Roebuck and has offices located in Oglesby, Illinois and Point of Rocks, Maryland.

AllWebEmail is an active member of the Email Experience Council (eec), an advocate for defining email standards and best practices, and has partnered with Return Path, Inc., a leading email deliverability authority.

For more information on AllWebEmail, their services, and role they play within the email marketing industry, please call 877-932-7766, or visit http://www.allwebemail.com/.

About the Email Experience Council (eec)

The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council is a global professional organization that strives to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and actively advocating its critical importance in business and its ROI value.

We are committed to regularly conducting a broad series of initiatives for a variety of organizations that highlight the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle and branding device. Additionally, eec members are setting the standards for email through our Member Roundtables. The members who belong to our organization are representatives of other trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners, clients and companies focused on the potential of email marketing via mobile and other digital devices. We encourage you to become part of the eec at http://www.emailexperience.org/member-center/why-join-eec.

About Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

The Direct Marketing Association (http://www.the-dma.org/) is the leading global trade association of businesses and nonprofit organizations using and supporting multichannel direct marketing tools and techniques. DMA advocates standards for responsible marketing, promotes relevance as the key to reaching consumers with desirable offers, and provides cutting-edge research, education, and networking opportunities to improve results throughout the end-to-end direct marketing process. Founded in 1917, DMA today represents companies from dozens of vertical industries in the US and 48 other nations, including nearly half of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as nonprofit organizations.

In 2009, marketers – commercial and nonprofit – spent $149.3 billion on direct marketing, which accounted for 54.3% of all ad expenditures in the United States. Measured against total US sales, these advertising expenditures generated approximately $1.783 trillion in incremental sales. In 2009, direct marketing accounted for 8.3% of total US gross domestic product. Also in 2009, there were 1.4 million direct marketing employees in the US. Their collective sales efforts directly supported 8.4 million other jobs, accounting for a total of 9.9 million US jobs.

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How we rank: Email Vendor Features & Functions Guide, 2010

2010-06-03T09:56:00.005-04:00

Email Vendor Features & Functions Guide, 2010 by Red Pill Email (John Caldwell)

All Web Email was included among 23 other email vendors in last month's in-depth review by a seasoned independent and hands-on email marketer; John Caldwell. Email vendors were asked 127 questions in 9 different categories with each of the 24 participants capabilities listed side-by-side in easy to read charts and graphs. Vendors range from small market vendors to high volume MTAs. The purpose of this guide is to provide marketers a clear, concise and independent review of email vendor features and capabilities to help them locate a new or replacement provider. View the Guide's Table of Contents HERE. Read more about the Guide and buy your copy HERE.

How All Web Email stacks up against the competition

All Web Email was listed #1...in each of the 15 'alphabetically' listed tables. Kidding aside, we were thrilled to be considered for such an in-depth review but standing side-by-side with large deep-pocket peers like Exact Target, Silverpop, PowerMTA and many others, we were anxious to see the results and secretly hoped we hadn't shot ourselves in the foot for being scrutinized in such a rigorous comparison. In the end, we are very pleased with the results. We offer clear advantages in some areas and while there is room for improvement in several categories, none of these areas affect our typical client's marketing objectives. Phew!

The guide is clearly "Features & Functions" heavy and explores virtually all technical areas of interest to email marketers. While it can't possibly highlight all of the experiences, ethics, capitalization or passion that are also considered when evaluating a new business relationship, if you've done your homework and have a relatively clear idea what your email marketing requirements are, this guide will help you arrive at a short list of contenders very quickly.

The following lists areas we do well in, and areas that we feel could stand improvement. In an environment of nearly constant change, this guide will serve as a valuable tool to All Web Email as we map out our plan for the next rounds of new features and improvements.

Our Strengths

Full service or a la carte combination of services.
Support for all commonly accepted authentication schemes.
Data and data tables (control of table and index structures, SQL queries, User-defined fields).
Strong standard deliverability & list hygiene capabilities.
Rendering tools. While not integrated into our systems, we regularly use Return Path's Campaign Preview tool to test rendering among the top email clients.
Redundant list seeding using both Return Path's Delivery Monitor and GreenArrow's Monitor programs.
Training & Support (we do offer on-site and video-on-demand support so we sold ourselves short here).
Not listed specifically in the guide as a capability or feature, but among our core and unique strengths is software customization. Our systems are 100% customizable and we specialize in providing custom solutions to marketing requirements not available "out of the box".

Our Weaknesses

No Self Service option. Although our systems support self service, we have chosen to position ourselves as an extension of our client's marketing departments rather than just the email delivery tool.
Our custom content is driven by custom field variables and not by defined sets of rules.
No support for SMS/Text messaging.
We offer automatically triggered messages based on subscription date, previous emails rendered and links clicked. However, this could be more robust.
No directly integrated support for analytics programs like Google Analytics, Omniture or Coremetrics.
No CRM Integration.
Reporting - With the steadily increasing sophistication of email marketers, the demands placed on reporting systems never end. While we're always looking for ways to enhance reporting and provide our customers with actionable data, there is always room for improvement. Last month, All Web Email officially became one of the first ESPs to fully implement the reporting standards set forth by the Email Experience Council's Email Measurement Accuracy round table. The purpose of these standards is to provide a uniform framework for the reporting of email metrics across all Email Service Providers to facilitate comparing results from multiple ESPs and results from other direct marketing activities. Click HERE to learn more about these standardized email marketing terms and definitions.

Our Next Steps

Apart from the usual ongoing improvements to infrastructure, personnel, training and education, the following software system improvements are being planned for the coming months.

Incorporate dynamic content based on statistical analysis using a third party solution like 8seconds.net or tools developed in-house.
Encrypting communications between client and server (ex. secure importing & exporting of mailing lists).
More reporting improvements...then some more.
Google Analytics integration.
Support for sending SMS messages to mobile phones.
Consider option to integrate third party suppression list.

What we learned

All Web Email deserves to be included in Red Pill Email's "Email Vendor Features & Functions Guide" based on our relative strength across many areas.
Email marketers should select their email service provider based on their capabilities and not their market share.
The other 23 ESPs reviewed will likely be using this guide as a tool to map out areas to gain some competitive advantage between now and release of the 2nd Edition of the Guide.

To see exactly how All Web Email compares with 23 other email vendors in 127 different ways across 9 areas of competence, read more about the guide and get yours HERE.

TEST RESULTS: How to choose the best subject line

2010-05-13T14:30:00.002-04:00

Nobody can read your email without first opening it, right? Your name and subject line are the only things a recipient sees while making their decision to open or delete your email. ISPs are also using user engagement metrics such as opens, clicks and forwards while making their decision to deliver your email to the recipient's inbox, bulk folder or simply ignore it. Low engagement can lead to poor deliverability.

A couple months ago we wrote an article about choosing email subjects that will convince the recipient to open it and see what's inside. You can see how we selected the subject lines by reading the original article HERE. In summary, we were using the Google Adwords Keyword and Wonder Wheel tools to help us choose words in our subject line based on actual Google search terms verses the subject line proposed by the marketing department. While we did achieve our goal of increasing the open rate, the rest of the test results were a total surprise.

Subject Lines Tested

Marketing Team: Help for your Age Spots, Melasma, Hyperpigmentation

Google Tools: Removing age spots with home remedies

Emails were delivered as an even 50/50 split to 14,000 subscribers and estimated Inbox deliverability for both tests were identical as measured by Return Path's Mailbox Monitor tool. Everything except for the subject lines was identical. Here are the Google subject line numbers.

13.25% HIGHER open rate (hurray!)
57.14% HIGHER unsubscribe rate
30.73% LOWER click through rate
43.75% FEWER orders
56.60% LOWER sales

Higher open rates don't mean better results! We got the boost in open rates we had hoped for proving the effectiveness of the Google tools, but clearly disappointed the readers due to an apparent disconnect between the subject line and the actual email body content. Not only did we send fewer people to the website but we upset many more customers enough to unsubscribe from the mailing list altogether. The lost opportunity cost of never being able to market to these unsubscribed recipients is a cost rarely taken into consideration when adding up the numbers.

Lessons learned: A subject line must support the body content of the email. Even the most seasoned marketers must TEST TEST TEST at every opportunity.

10 Secrets of Successful Email Marketing - Part II

2010-05-10T16:06:00.004-04:00

Email is one of the fastest, most cost-effective marketing techniques available today. But it has it’s own set of unique challenges that require email marketers to fight on two fronts: getting your email to the inbox and keeping the subscriber interested enough to open your emails and respond to them. On the brighter side, if you follow the 10 "secrets" below you will easily cruise ahead of your competition that pays little attention to these strategies (If you need a refresher on the first five "secrets", check them out here).

6. Make the best use of the subject line

This really could be it’s own blog post, and much has already been written on this topic - it’s that vital. The subject line is like the headline of your email and can make or break an email campaign. Keep in mind that your subscribers will scan email subjects in their inboxes to decide whether your email is worth opening. This means that the first three words of your subject line have the biggest impact, so make sure you use them and put the most important information at the beginning of the line. Ideally, your subject line should be friendly, build curiosity and promise a benefit for reading the rest of the email - but every audience is different so you should consider testing subject lines to see what works with your audience and what doesn’t. One other best practice: Try to keep subject lines between 35-55 characters to keep them from getting cut off.

I could write about subject lines all day, so let’s move on to...

7. Be attentive to email formatting

The majority of email clients are now capable of rendering HTML emails so you have full control over how the email appears in the customer’s inbox. The choice of font, text wrapping, and location of your graphical elements can lend professionalism and credibility or damage it. It's important to use an email-rendering tool that can show you exactly how your email will render in all of the top email clients, such as Gmail, Hotmail and Microsoft Outlook. This will allow you to see how your email will appear to the reader when images are blocked and where the typical "fold" is so that you can be sure to include your main message in plain view so the reader doesn't have to scroll down (or over) to see it. Just because your email looks fine on your own computer screen doesn't mean that it will look fine on your recipient's. You’ll also need to be aware of the unique restrictions of each client. For example, Outlook 7 does not allow the display of animated GIFs, so you’ll want to keep those things in mind when designing your email.

8. Keep your emails focused

Avoid trying to share too much information in a single email. If you find that your email is getting too lengthy then it’s best to make this email a teaser that would lead to the full information on a landing page or on your Web site. Subscribers expect an email to be an appropriate length and to go beyond this is to risk losing their attention. A Web site, on the other hand can present complex ideas without the risk of losing attention. No one expects to get a personal letter the length of the Sunday Newspaper.

9. Provide value upfront

Your email recipients expect to receive value from you in return for reading your messages. Whether it is a hot tip, a discount or some other special offer, you must deliver or lose your subscribers. The more value you provide, the more anticipation to receive your next email builds, and the more likely your subscriber’s loyalty will translate into increased business for your company.

10. Track everything

Tracking is probably the single best thing you can do to improve your email marketing. Knowing what elements are successful and which ones aren’t will help you to create your next email message. Here again it becomes important to use an email vendor with the latest tracking software so you can determine the open rate, deliverability, click-through rate and conversion rate for your emails. This is the only way you can determine your email marketing effectiveness and so make incremental improvements. Tracking is the direct marketer’s huge advantage over brand advertising. You will want this advantage too.

10 Secrets Of Successful Email Marketing - Part I

2010-05-10T15:48:00.009-04:00

There is no question as to the marketing viability of email: It is fast, cost-effective and you get real-time data from which you can assess and adjust your future campaigns. There is hardly any other marketing medium that comes close to email marketing for reaching the consumer directly, while allowing personalization of this communication.

However, just like every marketing medium, email has its own unique challenges - such as differentiating yourself from spammers, deliverability and getting your subscriber’s attention above the noise found in the typical inbox today. Therefore, as an email marketer you have to fight on two fronts: getting your email to the inbox and keeping the subscriber interested enough to open your emails and respond to them. On the brighter side, if you follow the 10 “secrets” below you will easily cruise ahead of your competition that pays little attention to these strategies.

1. Be in tune with your readers

Your subscribers chose to join your list because they wanted specific content from you (most likely a special offer) and they expect you to deliver that information. If the content in your email matches that expectation, then you are more likely to retain your subscribers and build a relationship with them. If you simply send emails with information you want to promote, then you will isolate your subscribers and risk losing them. Don’t believe me? Check out this article by eMarketer that shows that 41% of US Internet users threatened to stop buying from companies that send them irrelevant messages. "Room for Improvement in E-mail Opt-Outs"

2. Flash your badge

Spammers can easily imitate your emails by spoofing the from and subject lines in phishing attempts. Citibank, eBay and Wells Fargo can all attest to that. What spammers wouldn’t be privy to is your customer’s personal information. So if you fail to personalize your emails and use a generic salutation such as “Dear Subscriber,” you risk having your customers question the validity of your email, possibly even trashing it before they open it. Show your reader you know them by including their name and other information that only you would know (i.e. the last four digits of their account or a product they have bought from you). By identifying yourself to your customers and demonstrating that you know their details shared with you at signup, you can earn their trust, and therefore, their readership.

3. Use a professional email service

Like mailing packages, you can choose from free to the most expensive packaging. The real cost may be that your items do not make it to the intended address intact. The same holds true for emails: You may choose to use anything from free scripts, available online, to a professional email service provider. But if the success of your email marketing is important to you, then you would not want to gamble with unreliable email methods. You should find a company that provides the advanced features that would allow you to maximize the returns on your email marketing efforts.

4. Remember your medium

Keep in mind how the general public uses email. Email is a very personal medium and it wasn’t invented to send marketing messages. The way you write an email to a friend is different in tone to how you would write a cover letter to a company. All that to say: Readers expect a different type and style of language in an email than, say, a formal letter. If you can lighten the style of your normal company communication to be more conversational, friendly and, most importantly, helpful, then it will be easier to connect on a personal level. Don’t go overboard though: get too friendly or act like the reader is your buddy and they will see right through this and feel patronized.

5. Find a balance between promotion and content

Most likely you are using email marketing to not only brand your company and provide useful information, but also to make sales. This means that at some point you will make offers to your subscribers. The big question is: How often should you send promotional emails, compared to pure informational content? Of course, the answer to this question will depend on what you promised the customer at the time they subscribed. If your reader opted in to receive weekly specials, then there should be no guilty feeling about sending weekly promotional emails. But if you promised information, then you should be judicious in the number of purely promotional emails you send out.

There are still 5 more secrets, including some of the most important, so be sure to come back in 2 days for part II.

How to choose the best subject line

2010-02-16T13:38:00.008-05:00

(or SEO keywords, PPC ad copy!!)

Deciding the right Subject line for you email campaign can make the difference between success or failure. Your recipients will often base their decision whether to open or delete your email based solely on the subject. Just think about how you check your own email and how easy it is to hit the <Delete> button. So why do we rush from design to delivery without giving much thought to the subject line? This article should help show you how to use some easy to use tools to help you choose the best subject lines to test with. If you're not testing multiple subject lines, this should help you choose a better subject BEFORE you send your email and not the next day while you're evaluating your campaign results.

Note: Real credit for this article goes to Chistopher Penn of Blue Sky Factory who explained all of this on the Blue Sky Blog. You can view his full article here. While we are already aware of the tools discussed below, we wanted to run the same subject line analysis using data for one of our clients. We'll follow up this article with the actual results of our test.

The two tools used to help find a better subject line are Google's Wonder Wheel and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. We'll start with the Wonder Wheel tool which gives you a list of other relevant search terms based on your initial Google query. For this test, we're trying to find the best subject line for a client promoting a newsletter explaining the causes and remedies for age spots, melasma and hyperpigmentation. The original subject line chosen by the client was "Help for your Age Spots, Melasma, Hyperpigmentation" and will be used as one of the test subject lines. While melasma and hyperpigmentation are part of the newsletter content, we already knew that "age spots" was a more important keyword based on earlier research. We start the analysis by simply going to Google and performing a search for the term "age spots".

Notice the "Show options..." link just beneath your search term on the results page. Clicking this link presents some new options along the left side of the screen including the "Wonder wheel" link shown in the second image below.

When you click on the "Wonder wheel" link above, you are presented with a graphical representation of other search terms related to "age spots". From the list of 8 suggestions, the search terms "remove age spots", "fade age spots" and "age spots home remedies" are clearly relevant to the email newsletter we are trying to promote. Clicking on each of these search terms drills down a bit further suggesting other related search terms.

When we click on "remove age spots" above, we're presented with the image below suggesting eight more related search terms. Several of them stand out as related to our initial search term "age spots" and are relevant to the email newsletter. These are "remove melasma", "remove skin cancer", "remove skin spots", "remove liver spots" and "remove age spots home remedies".

Similarly, when we click on "fade age spots", we're presented with several other related search terms. We like "solutions for age spots", "fade age spots skin" and "fade melasma".

Doing this one last time for the suggested search term "age spots home remedies" leads us to the search term "melasma home remedies" which is also related to our newsletter.

Here's where things get really interesting. Including our initial search term "age spots", we've now built a list of 13 related and relevant search terms.

age spots
remove age spots
remove age spots home remedies
remove skin spots
remove melasma
remove liver spots
remove skin cancer
age spots home remedies
melasma home remedies
fade age spots
solutions for age spots
fade melasma
fade age spots skin

Let's plug these into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and rank the results by actual Google search volume and we see some clear winners.

Age spots clearly leads the pack in search volume by end users, but there is also lots of interest in removing/fading age spots and "home remedies". This leads us with a new subject line to test, "Removing age spots with home remedies", based on actual search behavior and not on guesswork by a marketing department. The new subject line also supports the content in the body of the email so we're not risking alienating our reader with body content unrelated to the subject. Once the subject lines are tested with a portion of your list and a winner is chosen, the rest of the list is sent the winning subject line.

This A/B subject line split test is still running. Check back and we'll have the results of our test and learn if in fact "Removing age spots with home remedies" actually outperforms "Help for your Age Spots, Melasma, Hyperpigmentation".

Best Practices For Email Design

2010-01-26T20:36:00.005-05:00

Business before pleasure. So goes an old adage that reminds you how you should place your obligation above the pursuit of your own gratification. The same can be said of graphic design in emails. Graphic designers, biased by their training, often place beauty above function and what works. The designs in emails that get the highest readership and response are often night and day apart from what looks good to the eyes. Many high converting emails may not win an art award but they accomplish what they were meant to do-make more sales.

Here are the six most important factors you should consider when designing your emails.

1. Do not overshadow the message with the graphics.

If your graphic design is so fancy that it causes the reader to pause and be wowed by the design, then your message will be likely to get lost. The purpose of the graphics is to help relay your message, and not compete with it. This does not mean that you want your emails to have a shabby design because this is just as harmful, but like salt which enhances the flavor of your food, too much can kill you. The purpose of the design is to make a professional first impression and lead the email recipients into the marketing message of the email and not to blunt this message.

2. Go easy with the header graphics.

Most websites would have a 'header graphic' across the top of the page which may show your company's logo and a tagline. Most email graphic designers may try to repeat this in the email itself. Now keep in mind that the preview section of the email (what the reader sees without scrolling) is the most crucial real estate for your email. If you fill this section with your company logo and graphic, then you are missing an important opportunity to pull the reader into reading the remainder of your email. The point here is that this preview section of the email should be used to convince the reader to continue reading the email. While brand recognition is important and a logo does this easily, don't make it any larger than absolutely necessary.

3. Design with graphic blockers in mind.

Keep in mind that most popular email clients such as AOL Desktop, Gmail and Outlook 2003 & 2007 block images as the default setting. This means that these clients would only see space holders or Alt tags where the images should be. (Don't forget to use ALT tags!) Of course the email recipients can choose to turn on images, but this is an extra step that you don't want to count on. What the designer must do then is create a layout, so even if the images do not show up, the message would not be adversely affected. Also keep in mind that the design elements and technology available in email is still behind that for the web and not every HTML design element is available for the email platform.

4. Avoid graphic response buttons

Your emails are sent out with a response device that usually involves a link that the reader must click to get to a website for more information or to make a purchase. If your "click here" links are replaced with graphics and the email client doesn't show these graphics then the reader cannot respond to your email. This would drastically reduce your click-through rate (CTR) since there is nothing to click on. It's best to keep all your calls to action as simple text links that would show up in both text and HTML formatted emails. This doesn't mean that graphic button cannot be used to support the text link, but the graphic buttons should not stand on their own.

5. Keep the unique email medium in mind.

Email is a unique medium quite unlike a webpage, a flyer or print ad. In order to adapt to the more popular email clients, it is wise to view your messages in these clients before sending out a campaign to your subscribers. Email clients like Microsoft Outlook can have a preview pane for viewing a portion of an email without actually opening the entire message. These preview pane areas are further limited depending on the screen size which can drastically affect how much of your message the recipient sees without scrolling down through the message.

Just as web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox & Safari render the same web page differently, each email client renders an HTML email differently. Additionally, the HTML language commands we take for granted when creating a web page don't necessarily work as intended in the HTML email client. Explaining exactly what does and does not work is beyond the scope of this article, but as a rule, keep things simple and test your copy before sending. Many email service providers, like All Web Email, have tools to help you see exactly what your email will look like in all of the top email clients, with images turned on and with images turned off. This identifies areas to fix BEFORE the message gets to your customers.

6. Remember the purpose of your email.

Keep in mind the purpose of your email when considering your design AND that you can only do the following two things in an email:

A. Share information or knowledge (Order confirmation, newsletter article, dates, reminders, etc.)

B. Guide the recipient to your webpage where you can actually sell something or gather additional information. (You can't sell anything in an email)

Since you can't sell or gather anything in an email, don't try. If you're trying to gather information or sell something, use the email opportunity to make a strong case that the recipient should click on the email link taking them to your website where you can continue the conversation. And don't forget to ask for the click using a clearly defined link that restates your value proposition. Don't simply say "Click Here". Instead use something like "Click here for your free report" or "Start enjoying now".

How To Create More Effective Calls To Action In Your Email Marketing

2009-12-04T11:09:00.005-05:00

Marketers refer to any request to a prospect to take a desired action as a 'call to action'. This includes a request to buy a product, download a report, opt-in to a subscriber list, add an item to a wish list, visit a website or call an 800 number.

Calls to action are necessary because your email readers don't intuitively know what to do based simply on the information that you provide them. As the marketer, you may think it is common sense that they should now buy your product because you told them of all its virtues, but if you don't ask for the sale you are not likely to get it. It is important therefore that you not only tell your prospects what you want them to do but do so effectively. Ideally, any call to action should be clear, direct and concise.

Here are five ways to make your calls to action as effective as possible:

1. Be clear on what you want the prospect to do.

The most common call to action you'll find in an email is the simple "click here". You may argue that you cannot get any clearer than this because you are telling the prospect to click on that link. But you need to provide more information on the results the reader can get for clicking on the link. You must therefore provide a benefit for taking the action you are asking them to take.

You must also deliver immediately on what the link promised. For example if your link says "Download here" but they are taken to a review page about the product then this introduces another step and confusion in your sales process. A download button should take the reader to a download page and a "buy now" button should take them to a sales page. The key is to make your calls to action links as self-explanatory as possible with little question about the action you want your readers to take.

2. Be careful when using call to action images.

If you use a graphic button as your call to action you can be introducing some hurdles not faced by plain text links. First, many if not most email clients, as well as some spam and virus software programs, block images by default. If your image doesn't show up in the email then it cannot be clicked.

Secondly you may have a broken or missing image link which means again that your image would not show up again. Sometimes when the image shows up the hyperlink is missing and this creates another problem because the image is not clickable.

Thirdly, avoid an image placed in with an image map because this would restrict where the reader can click leading to unpredictable results. It's always safest to stay with simple text links.

3. Provide adequate links to your website.

If your call to action links are the only link to your website then you are limiting how your readers can get to your website. Consider using live links for your domain names, products and services, blogs and other resources on your website. By sprinkling links to your website all over your email you increase the chances that your readers will click on one to get there. If you wait until the end of the email to place your call to action link, then you are hoping that all your readers will scroll to the end. You should have at least one call to action link in the 'preview pane' of the email client where the reader doesn't have to scroll to see it.

4. Highlight the text links.

Your call to action links should be like stop signs - they should be clearly visible and arrest attention. You want the links to scream "Click me!" You can do this by using bolding, bigger font sizes than the surrounding text and placing them on their own line with enough 'white space' around them. Because you want your call to action links to stand out from the rest of the email, caution should be taken that other text are not competing for attention with these links. If everything stands out then nothing would. And the blue underline text is still the most recognizable clickable link, so don't try to get very fancy here with color choices and animations.

5. Use clear and concise expressions.

Some call to action expressions like "Add to cart" have become second nature to web users. A quick review of that expression shows how powerful it is - it has a built in metaphor of shopping in a physical store and it says "buy!" Your call to action expression should also be as clear and concise such as, "Go here to read the rest of this article" or "Click here to download now!" These expressions all contain action words and what benefit the reader would get from taking that action.

If you are clear and direct about the actions you want your readers to take, then they are more likely to take those actions. So rather than hoping your subscribers would read between the lines, tell them what to do.

12 Secrets of Marketing Through Newsletters

2009-11-09T09:48:00.009-05:00

An online newsletter or Ezine can be a very effective means of promoting your business by taking advantage of the economical delivery through email. No longer do you have to think about postage and paper, but with one click of the mouse you can have your newsletter in the inboxes of thousands of subscribers. But keeping a loyal following of readers takes some planning and creativity. Below are some important tips to help you maintain a faithful subscriber base and create a successful publication.

1. Choose your newsletter name carefully. To give your newsletter a bland name such as XYZ Company Newsletter is to miss an important opportunity to brand your newsletter and make it a supporting product of your company. You should think of your newsletter as another product and give it a catchy name that tells what the newsletter is about as well. Also, be careful of giving the newsletter the name of the editor since this person may change if the company is sold, for example.

2. Provide valuable content without giving away the farm. Most likely your newsletter is a free subscription and you want to provide valuable information to your readers. What other purpose could you have for running a newsletter than to give valuable information? But at the same time if you give away everything then you can sell nothing, especially if you are in the information business.

3. Inject some personality into your newsletter. Personality doesn't belong only to the entertainment industry but very much to marketing. To be considered bland and boring is to lose your readers attention in a heartbeat. People want to be entertained even if your subject is death and taxes. This doesn't mean that your newsletter has to be 'edgy' or 'shocking' but it must create interest and hold attention.

4. Ask your readers for their preferences and opinions. The 'Dear Editor'
section of a magazine gives readers a chance to voice their own opinions. If you poll your readers to find out what they think about your newsletter in general or about one aspect of it, then you'll be better able to keep the content on target.

5. Speak the language of your target audience. Every market or group has a common jargon that helps bind and differentiate them as a group. If you use the same jargon and language as your subscribers, then you'll build community around your newsletter and they will accept you as a leader.

6. Make your promotions proportionately small compared to the normal content. A newsletter should not be a publication thinly disguised as an ad for your company. Your subscribers will soon see through this sham and unsubscribe in droves. But if you sprinkle promotions among the valuable content then you are more likely to make more sales.

7. Ask subscribers for subject ideas. Your readers opted in to receive your newsletter with certain expectations in mind. Perhaps these expectations were limited to what you promise they will get from your online publication, but they may wish that you cover some subject that you haven't shared as yet. The only way you can find out is to ask. This does not place you under any obligation to deliver, but by just asking it says that you care about your readers' needs.

8. Offer special subscriber-only promotions. Perhaps once per quarter you can offer subscriber-only specials or a free gift to say "thank you" for being a loyal subscriber. Although you may think that you are already 'giving' in every issue, remember you are trying to build a relationship that will eventually translate into more profits for your company. So lay out the red carpet and more prospects will turn into customers.

9. Pique your readers" curiosity by promoting future newsletter issues. The nightly news broadcasters are experts at this viewer engagement technique by reminding viewers about the stories that will be coming up after the commercial break. They use this strategy because it works. If you give a 'sneak peek' of topics you'll cover in upcoming issues, then subscribers will not likely forget about you.

10. Provide online access to newsletter archive. As you gain new subscribers they would want to have access to earlier issues of your online newsletter and you can also use this archive to promote your newsletter to new prospects. You are also providing valuable content for the search engines that will boost the rankings for your website.

11. Keep a record of the open and click-through rates for your emails. You may find that a certain day of the week attracts a higher readership than other days. You may also find some subject got a higher readership and all this data can help you to improve the marketing results from your newsletter.

12. Publish your newsletter in both text and HTML formats. This will give your subscribers a choice of the format they wish to receive your newsletter in. You may also choose to send a link with the HTML version of the letter in the text version for readers who want this option.

Maintaining a newsletter with fresh and valuable content takes commitment and a lot of hard work, but the rewards can be enormous for your company's visibility in its market niche.

7 Ways To Pull Your Email Marketing Out of The Dark Ages

2009-10-22T10:07:00.004-04:00

Email has been like a direct marketer's dream come true. Just think about it: no postage, instant deliverability, highest direct marketing ROI and almost instant response to your marketing message. But these clear advantages over 'snail' mail have left a lot of email marketers lulled into a state of lethargy and failing to adopt more advanced email practices.

Usually, the more expensive an advertising channel is, the more vigilant marketers are about their investment compared to other cheaper methods. Most companies have seen a high return on investment using email and have thus been less attentive to new technologies and innovations in this field. When deliverability, for example, became a growing concern, most companies responded by just sending more emails.

Whenever a marketing method is as economical and effective as email, then you can expect overuse and even abuse of the subscribers. Email marketing abuse has led to more scrupulous subscribers who guard their inboxes like their purses. Marketers who fail to adapt to this new consumer attitude will continue to see diminishing returns for their email marketing.

Marketers must therefore continually change with the market place to remain on the cutting edge of email marketing by using the latest tools and technologies if they hope to remain viable. Below are seven ways email marketers can improve their email campaigns.

1. Be proactive about deliverability. An email message that never gets read represents wasted resources. So be sure to use an ESP that employs new technologies such as Return Path that can predict deliverability issues before your campaign is sent out rather than afterward when it is too late. Many ISPs are now using email filtering programs to determine which messages should reach customer's inboxes. Customers also have the option to rate email messages as "junk" or inbox worthy. So your email reaching its destination is no guarantee that it will get read.

2. Use updated email benchmarks. Open rates and click-through rates have been the basic benchmarks for years now, but email marketers need to go beyond these gauges. Marketers need to address questions such as, "Which links in an email were clicked, how many times and by whom?" "How many subscribers forwarded your emails and where and when they used the 'Send to Friend' link in your email?" There are more data collection tools now available than just five years ago and so other email parameters can be determined. The data aggregated from these tools can be used to improve subscriber engagement and retention.

3. Use customer data to enhance segmentation and targeting. Direct marketers agree that the more they know about the demographics of their list, the easier their targeting becomes and the higher the conversion rate. The use of surveys and other subscriber profiling strategies can allow you to further refine the segmentation of your list according to user preferences and other subscriber dimensions. The more personalized an email appears to a subscriber the more likely it would be opened and read. When subscribers view your email messages as relevant to their needs then unsubscribe rates would drop.

4. Make use of email automation. An opt-in form on a website collects a visitors contact information, automatically sends them an email response, sends them follow-up emails and allows them to manage their own subscription. Automation should lead to greater efficiency in marketing, but many marketers are not using the latest tools that can free up their time for those tasks where human input is really critical. For example, subscribers can be sent marketing messages to match yearly holidays, seasons and even birthdays without further input from the marketer.

5. Make your email marketing a conversation. The success of the new Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter shows how much consumers want to be heard. They are not lacking in opinions on a host of issues, and asking them to rate and review your products or services can lead to higher responses. These reviews can also be used in your own marketing as testimonials and as evidence that you are not just talking to the consumer, but listening as well. When consumers feel like their opinions count, your company will experience an increase in customer loyalty.

6. Integrate offline marketing with your email marketing. A hard-line segmentation of offline and online marketing can prove a mistake. An offline marketing model which has worked well for your company can be integrated into your online marketing rather than abandoning the offline approach completely. Email marketing should be seen as a new way to reach the consumer - a new communication channel - rather than a whole new other world. For example, offline coupons can be translated into online coupons sent by email. You should therefore use email marketing to compliment your offline efforts not replace it.

7. Use the cumulative data collected to incrementally improve conversion. Simply having the technology at your fingertips to collect more information about your subscribers is not a reward in itself. The real reward comes from analyzing these data and responding by making the changes that will improve results from your marketing campaign. The ultimate goal should always be email optimization and customer satisfaction. This requires testing new methods, data analysis and responding to new findings. And this cycle should never end.

No longer can the email marketer rest on his laurels and feel secure in using old methods and email approaches while ignoring new consumer attitudes and innovation in email marketing. With the new tools available and the information accumulated on consumer behavior, to continue using obsolete email marketing practices is simply foolhardy.

Email Marketing - How Much Does It Cost?

2009-10-05T12:51:00.007-04:00

Email and other Internet marketing approaches have a distinct advantage over non-Internet marketing: Statistics that measure the success can be obtained easily and inexpensively. Almost every aspect of an email marketing campaign can be tracked, measured, and tested, as we discussed in an earlier blog called Tracking Your Email Campaign.

But, how can you determine how many mailers reached a physical mailbox or how many of those that did were opened and then dropped in the trash? It would be neither simple nor inexpensive to determine these things.

Just as different things in an email campaign can be tracked, there are different ways that advertisers can be charged for delivery and other services ... and different ways that the effectiveness of a campaign can be related to its cost.

The most common methods of paying for email or other Internet advertising include the following:

CPA - This stands for Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition.

PPA - Pay Per Action is another name for CPA.

PPC - This is Pay Per Click. This is also called Cost Per Click (CPC).

CPL - This stands for Cost Per Lead.

CPI - This is Cost Per Impression.

CPM - This is for Cost Per Mille (Thousand) Impressions. It can also mean Cost Per Thousand names on an email rental list.

Let's now define these various terms and how they are used.

CPA - Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition
When a recipient of your email marketing message clicks on a link in the email, this is called taking action. Whether the objective is to get more users to sign up for an email newsletter, download a white paper, or purchase a product on the web site, a conversion is tallied, when the user performs the desired action.

Perhaps it would be better to call the Cost Per Action (CPA) approach to charging Cost Per Conversion instead, since the advertiser pays for each specified action (conversion). Bear in mind, however, that in some contexts, a conversion only refers to gaining a new customer. As always, you must be aware of how a term is used.

When CPA is referred to as Cost Per Acquisition, the focus is on the fact that most offers by advertisers are about acquiring something ... typically a new customer by making a sale. The term Cost Per Acquisition is actually more specific, but not all Cost-Per-Action offers can be accurately referred to as Cost Per Acquisition.

CPA is often considered the optimal way to buy online advertising, since you only pay if the desired action takes place.

Cost Per Action (CPA) Versus Cost Per Lead (CPL)
CPA is focused on an immediate action, whether it is a sale or a newsletter signup. However, with CPL, the advertiser is paying for the contact information of an interested lead ... someone whom the marketer can engage in multiple ways ... for example, signing up for the newsletter, joining the community site, or joining a rewards program. The objective is a relationship which includes multiple sales over the long run.

Cost Per Impression (CPI) or Cost Per Mille/Thousand (CPM) Impressions
An impression is the loading of an advertisement onto a user's screen. This could happen when the user opens a marketing email that was received or when the user visits a web page that displays the ad.

Just as we discussed for click-throughs, you have to know how the value is being calculated. Does the ad server increment the count every time the ad is displayed or are reloads and other non-qualifying activities excluded from the tally?

Very simply, CPM estimates how much it costs to show an ad to one thousand viewers.

With opt-in email marketing, CPA (a click-through, for example) or simply the cost per email for delivery are more often used as the basis for charging. CPM, in this context, typically refers to the cost per 1000 names on a rented email list.

Per Per Click (PPC) / Cost Per Click (CPC)
The idea behind PPC or CPC is that an advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked. CPC is the amount of money an advertiser pays the search engine or other Internet publisher for a single click on its advertisement ... a click that brings one visitor to its website. Although these terms aren't typically used in the area of email marketing, they are included because of their extensive use in the general area of Internet marketing.

AllWebEmail.com provides a wide range of email marketing services at affordable prices.

How To Write Compelling Email Subject Lines That Boosts Your Open Rates

2009-09-23T09:59:00.006-04:00

Your email has made it through the obstacle course of spam filters, black listing organizations, and email client filters to its final destination of your subscriber's Inbox. Your email will also be one of the hundreds of commercial emails that hit Inboxes per day. The question now becomes how do you entice the reader to open and read your email?

In a way, you already know the answer to this question as you have scanned your own email Inbox to determine the emails that deserve your attention. Direct marketers often picture their prospects as standing over the garbage container sorting their mails as 'junk' versus 'read-worthy. Your subscribers are no different.

In fact, here are some subject lines from my Inbox:

Say I do with Kodak's September Newsletter!

Save up to 40% with Corel's Labor Day Sale! Ends September 7

Dive into Autumn Savings at Sam's Club

My apologies ...

c u in vegas ;-)

Thank you for your payment

4 Steps to Get Started with Facebook

Which of these emails would you open first? Most likely the more personal and less commercial email will get your vote.

Here are some tips you can use when writing your email subject line:

1. Forget your corporate speech and be personal. Write your headline as though it was from a personal friend. The more you understand your subscribers and market, the easier it will become to learn their language and resonate with your readers.

2. Build curiosity. Keep in mind that the subject line is comparable to the headline for an advertisement. Its main purpose is to get the rest of your email read. You can therefore build curiosity by using an incomplete sentence, asking a question for which the body of the email will give the answer or using a teaser such as, "You won't believe this."

3. Mention the benefit or reward for opening the email. For example, you may write, "Here's how to get your emails read every time'. The reader has to open the email in order to learn this new information. Clear benefits include how to save money, be healthier, look more attractive and whatever benefits your service or products provide.

4. Make an announcement or give news. If you have any message that is newsworthy or can be cast as such, then use a subject line to announce this news. Announcements by their very nature get attention and you want your subject lines to get attention for your email body message. An announcement could be as simple as a change you have made at your website or a special report you intend to send to your subscribers the following week.

5. Provide tips. This article provides tips on how to write effective email subject lines. One of the reasons why you are reading it is because "how to" information is usually practical versus theoretical, and promises to help you accomplish a certain task. This is the same reason why so many books are titled using "how to". If you connect your tips with solutions to the readers needs, then you'll have a winner subject line.

6. Avoid using words that trigger the spam filters. Avoid words such as "free", "buy", "opportunity", "hurry", "limited offer", "sale" and "special". Most email service providers have tools which warns you if the 'spam score' is above an unacceptable level by filtering these 'trigger' words for you. (Note: Your "Domain Reputation", i.e. yourname.com, as a commercial mailer is becoming a bigger factor at the top ISPs when considering the Inbox worthiness of your messages. Increased reliance on Reputation means ISPs will rely less on spam trigger words during their Inbox delivery decision.)

7. Avoid using ALL CAPS and exclamation points!! It is commonly accepted online that all caps suggest shouting and you don't want to shout at your readers. Exclamation points suggest the same as well and should be avoided as much as possible. A simple comparison of personal emails with spam emails will show this clear difference.

8. Keep it short. The best practice is to keep your subject line below 50 characters. Most email clients will not show subjects lines beyond this length anyway and so the reader will not be able to read your full subject line before opening the email. Also, most emails sent by a friend usually have a short subject such as "See you tomorrow?", "Thank you!" or "I got it."

You may use any one of these subject line ideas or create a combination of strategies to make an even more effective one. For example, consider this subject line:

"Who wants to learn how to write compelling subject lines?"

This subject line asks a question, suggests tips ('how to' and makes an announcement. This triple combination makes the subject line more effective than just using one element.

You have just one line to get your emails opened and a lot hangs on that line. You have to make every word count by knowing your audience interests, and getting them excited to reading your email in full.

Tracking Your Email Campaign

2009-09-09T12:45:00.003-04:00

Whether you plan to send a single email or a coordinated set of email marketing messages that share a single idea and theme, known as a campaign, you will want to know how effective it is.

Of course, as always, you need to monitor your sender reputation, to identify the problems that exist, so you can fix them. Remember that sender reputation is the key element in whether or not your emails make it to the Inbox. If they don't reach the Inbox, they cannot possibly succeed!

The messages that do reach the Inbox can be tracked, to measure their effectiveness ... several different statistics are collected and evaluated to accomplish this.

Clicking Around

When a recipient of your email marketing message takes action, by clicking on a link in the email, this is called a click-through. Only unique clicks should be counted. In other words, whether a particular user clicks once or several times, it should only be considered a single unique visitor to the web site.

Measuring the click-through rate (CTR) is one of the primary methods of tracking your email marketing success. CTR is the number of unique click-throughs divided by the number of times the message was delivered, called the number of impressions. Just multiply by 100, to get CTR as a percentage. For example, if your email was delivered 100 times and one person clicked on a link in it, the CTR would be 1%.

Sometimes, however, CTR is defined as the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions, which results in a much higher CTR, since every additional click by the same user increases the CTR. You should always make sure you know how the CTR is being calculated.

According to Wikipedia, CTR is typically much less than one percent, though personalized and targeted messages tend to result in higher rates.

Another potential factor that can skew the results is counting every email sent, rather than just those that reach the Inbox.

Opening the Door

Another important item that is tracked is the open rate, which is the number of message recipients who opened your email. This is usually expressed as a percentage of the total number of emails sent. Unfortunately, however, the rate indicates the number of emails opened from the total amount sent, not just those that were delivered to the Inbox. Additionally, this key metric cannot be calculated on text emails, but only on HTML emails.

A related metric is the number of times a link was clicked, out of the total number of opened emails, typically represented as a percentage. This is called the click-to-open rate. The worth of this number is again diminished by the fact that only HTML emails are included and the fact that it uses the total number sent, not the number that reached the Inbox. To determine the click-to-open rate, divide the number of responses (clicks) by the number of emails opened and multiply by 100, to express the result as a percentage.

Gauging the Potential with a Test Campaign

If at all possible, email marketers should first send a test campaign to a list of email addresses not in the deployment database, to determine likely response rates and how well the different elements in the message perform. Then, adjustments can be made, to increase the likelihood of a successful campaign.

How Do We Measure Success? - Converting the Recipients

Whether the objective is to get more users to sign up for an email newsletter, download a white paper, or purchase a product on the web site, a conversion is tallied, when the user performs the desired action.

The conversion rate is the number of recipients that completed a desired action in an email message compared to the total list size, represented as a percentage. To determine the conversion rate, divide the number of recipients who completed the desired action by the number of emails sent and multiply by 100.

Conversion rate is the best measure of your email campaign's success.

Next time, we'll discuss the different ways the costs associated with an email marketing campaign are determined.

All Web Email gives you all the tools and help you need to send and track successful email campaigns!

Email Marketing - Standing Out From the Crowd!

2009-08-10T12:13:00.005-04:00

I saw a newsletter the other day ... it discussed planning now for Christmas. The article went on to say that the way to generate sales via email marketing in a tough economy was to NOT do the same thing you did last year ... in other words, you have to stand out from the crowd!

Well, that doesn't just apply to Christmas sales ... it matters ALL of the time! If you don't stand out from the crowd, your email won't even get opened half the time ... or more!

According to a survey by MAAWG (I'll tell you about MAAWG in a bit), only 9% of email users consider marketing emails important. That means it is not an important part of the email experience for 91%! What this really means is that most users can easily do without email marketing. Clearly, then, you want your email to stand out, so it will get noticed!

Standing out is going to become even more important in the future, because the competition is only going to increase. The economics are undeniable: more than any other form of marketing, email marketing has the potential for very low cost and high return. In today's economic climate, this is a compelling combination!

Before we continue, I want to tell you a little about the organization that conducted the survey.

What Is MAAWG?

MAAWG stands for the "Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group". It is a global
organization that works for safe electronic messaging: legitimate messages
should get delivered and spam should get dropped. Almost one billion
mailboxes are represented, by the service providers and network operators
that are members of the group. The survey results are based on 800
interviews with ordinary consumers ... not Internet or email experts.

Standing Out!
You now know that you need to stand out from the crowd. What can you do to accomplish this?

Here are a few ideas ...

Ask Them!
Ask your subscribers what they want. This is an excellent way to segment your list. Let's say that you have two major product lines: Widgets and Gadgets. If you just ask your subscribers which they are interested in, you can then send email that is targeted to their interests.

Hook Them!
Send a series of messages that build on one another, rather than single emails. Get them interested and waiting for the next installment.

Personalize Them!
Personalize your emails, addressing the subscriber by name and presenting offers that are likely interesting to them, based on previous purchases or on preferences they have set.

Odds and Ends!
Then there are things like how the email renders in different clients, what is visible in the preview window, and the length and contents of the Subject line.

Don't Forget About Deliverability!
Remember that no matter how perfectly targeted, personalized, and intriguing your emails are, there is no value in them, if they don't make it to the Inbox!

Users clicking on the email spam button is the biggest factor for sender reputation, which, in turn, is the biggest factor for deliverability! So, continue to monitor your sender reputation and adapt when necessary, to reduce subscriber dissatisfaction, to prune inactive names or uninterested members of the list ... always maintain a good sender reputation.

The real objective here is to give your subscribers an excellent experience. They've asked to receive your marketing messages, now make sure they are glad they did.

AllWebEmail.com can help you with any and all aspects of making your emails stand out from the crowd!

Authenticate Part IV - More About DKIM

2009-07-14T14:16:00.004-04:00

This time, I'll finish the discussion on email authentication, with some additional information about DKIM, the primary cryptographic approach.

But first, let me ask you for any suggestions you may have, for future topics to be discussed in this blog. If there is something that you'd like to see covered, please leave a comment and tell me about it.

What Does DKIM Do For You?
DKIM has been called an enabling technology, because it enables evaluation of the trustworthiness of an entity. It does this by verifying the identity of the message signer.

An IP address has long been used as a means of identification. Its validity is based on the presumed accuracy of the underlying Internet infrastructure. However, domain-based reputation information is not built-in to the Internet infrastructure. So, another form of verification must be used.

DKIM accomplishes this with the Signing Domain Identifier (SDID) ... the signature ensures that the use of the domain identifier is legitimate and authorized. Once the sender is known, sender reputation can then help determine what to do with the message.

Defining the Operational Goals of DKIM
DKIM was designed with several operational goals in mind. Many of the functional details I talked about last time were a direct result of these design goals:

The signature should be transparent to recipients who don't support DKIM - This is important, so that pre-DKIM email is fully interoperable with DKIM-supported email. This helps simplify implementation and spread adoption.
Missing signature and verification failures will be treated the same - Again, interoperability and simplification are important ... verification failures become as transparent as pre-DKIM email.
It should be useable between any two entities - This means that adoption on the Internet can be incremental.
It will minimize additional needed infrastructure, by utilizing the existing DNS system - This will also encourage the adoption of DKIM.
It should be flexible in where it can be deployed within an organization - Although flexibility typically adds complexity, not simplification, it can still stimulate the use of a new service.

How Does DKIM Work? - Basic Signing <-> Verification
DKIM has an extensible feature set. As is usual for Internet standards, there is a core set of features and functions, which all implementations must support. This is what guarantees interoperability among implementations coming from different organizations. There are also optional features ... extensions to the basic implementation, which can be supported.

With DKIM, any domain name can be used as the SDID. Additionally, the use of the signature key can be restricted to only particular types of services, such as for a single source of email. This might be used, for example, if signing authority were to be delegated to a third-party email service.

There is considerable flexibility in which headers will be signed. Using a minimal set of headers will probably have fewer issues caused by mishandling, by intermediate mail transfer agents (MTAs). Regardless, the DKIM signer needs to explicitly list the headers that are signed.

The DKIM signature applies to both the listed header fields and to the message body. A hash of the headers and a second hash of the body are computed. The signer then encodes the information cryptographically, with a private key, and places the signature information into a newly defined message header field called DKIMSignature.

Once the message has the signature, it can be verified by any agent in the path from Sender to Receiver. The recipient of the email can verify the signature by querying the DNS for the signer's domain and retrieving the public key. This allows the receiver to verify that the message signer had possession of the appropriate private key for the SDID.

If you want to learn more about DKIM, just go to the official web site: http://www.dkim.org.

One of the documents available there served as the primary reference for this blog. The title is: DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Service Overview. The document includes an appendix that discusses the current Internet email architecture and how it works.

Authenticate Your Email - Cryptographic Solutions

2009-06-30T13:38:00.004-04:00

Earlier, I described authentication of email messages. I stated the objective of email authentication was to facilitate getting legitimate email delivered to the Inbox, while not delivering unwanted email (i.e., spam).

I also said there were two categories of solutions: those that deal with sender address forgery and cryptographic solutions.

Since most abusive email messages carry fake sender addresses, it makes sense to try and detect forgeries and then drop that email. Last time I discussed the four protocols that deal with sender address forgery:

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - Open Source, 2003, historical status.
Sender ID - From Microsoft, 2004, historical status.
Sender ID Framework - Combination of Sender ID & SPF, 2004, historical status.
Vouch by Reference (VBR) - In April of 2009, a new standards track proposal was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), called Vouch by Reference (VBR). It will be valid for six months.

There are also three cryptographic solutions, but I will only discuss the third, since it represents a combination of the first two and is an industry-wide effort that is currently on an Internet standards track:

DomainKeys - from Yahoo
Internet Identified Mail (IIM) - from Cisco
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) - Combination of DomainKeys & IIM

So, What Is DKIM Anyway?
DKIM defines a way for an organization to take responsibility for its email ... to provide a way for the recipient to verify that it came from that organization. The receiver can then decide what to do with the email.

DKIM provides a great deal of flexibility for the organization that signs the message: The organization can be the author's, the originating sending site, an intermediary, or one of their agents.

There is also flexibility in the signatures: A message can contain a single or multiple signatures, from the same or different organizations involved with the message and its transport.

Once the sender has been identified, Sender Reputation then comes into play, since this is what can then ensure delivery of the organization's email ... Or, just the reverse - the email could be dropped!

DKIM uses public-key cryptography and a domain-level digital signature. This differs from most cryptographic solutions, in that it uses a key-centric public key management approach, whereas most schemes use a certificate. With DKIM, the owner of the SDID asserts the validity of the key; with a certificate-based scheme, a trusted third-party asserts the validity of the key.

The Domain Name Service/System (DNS) acts as the key server, thus reducing the need for new infrastructure. Both the integrity of the message contents and the responsible organization can be verified.

DKIM also includes an option to publish details about an organization's email signing practices. So, for example, it could be stated that ALL email from an organization will be signed. If an unsigned message is received from the organization, the recipient could look up the organization and thus learn the unsigned message is not legitimate.

Verifying an Identity and What It Means
A given person or organization (an entity) is distinguished from all others via a set of characteristics. There are also one or more "identifiers" or names associated with an entity. DKIM uses a domain name as an identifier and calls the identifier the Signing Domain Identifier (SDID). The SDID will appear in the DKIM Signature header fields, indicated by the "d=" tag. The signing entity (the owner of the SDID) is stating they will be responsible for the message.

DKIM is intended to be a value-added feature of email ... NOT a basic function. DKIM will interoperate with unsigned email, which will be treated the same as always - it will be subjected to standard analysis and filtering.

DKIM also supports anonymous email. The author of the message can remain anonymous, while the identity of the organization is verified.

An important thing to remember about DKIM is that the only semantics inherent to a DKIM signature are that the signer is saying: "I will take responsibility for this message!"

Sender reputation then finishes the job.

Next time, I'll talk a bit more about DKIM, including its design objectives and how it is used.

Authenticate Part II - Is the Sender Address Real?

2009-06-16T10:43:00.003-04:00

Some ISPs now insist on authentication ... if you're not willing to authenticate your identity, they won't even deliver your email. Eventually all ISPs will likely want authentication. Since even spammers can authenticate their email, it isn't a complete solution. But, it's a good start - why make it easy for the spammers?

Remember that there are several protocols being used for email authentication and that the protocols fall into two categories: those that deal with sender address forgery, the topic for this blog, and cryptographic solutions, which will be discussed next time.

ICANN and IANA
Let me first clarify my earlier statement that address and domain name registrations derive from the global Internet administrative authority, ICANN. ICANN stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It was created on September 18, 1998, as part of the move to make the Internet a global resource, rather than a US-controlled resource.

Among other things, ICANN became responsible for functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). IANA is the entity that oversees global IP address allocation and root zone management for the Domain Name System (DNS).

ICANN authorizes various domain name registrars, to register Internet domain names. ICANN sets global policy for domain names and the domain registries then manage each top-level domain.

In the case of country-code domains, ICANN assigns a trustee for each top-level country-code domain. Administration and control is then delegated to that trustee, which is responsible for the policies and operation of the domain.

So, when I say that address and domain name registrations derive from the global Internet administrative authority, ICANN, I mean that authentication can determine if a particular domain name has been properly registered, through the authorized channels.

The registries have widely varying policies regarding accuracy of information. For example, the German and Canadian domains require a physical presence or other connection to the domain, whereas other registrations are completely open. This variation somewhat diminishes the value of authenticating a domain.

Determining If a Sender Address Is a Forgery
Since most abusive email messages carry fake sender addresses, it makes sense to try and detect sender address forgery. Let's look at the three primary protocols that were proposed for this function in the past.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - Open Source
This open-source protocol was written mostly by Weng Wong, who combined two existing sender authentication protocols in 2003, to create Sender Permitted From, which was later renamed Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

Caller ID for Email - From Microsoft
In February, 2004, Microsoft published a draft entitled: Caller ID for E-Mail - The Next Step to Deterring Spam. I have also seen it referred to as Sender ID, as has the Sender ID Framework, discussed next. Regardless, it didn't last very long (see below), so I won't take up any more space discussing it.

Sender ID Framework (SIDF) - Combination of Sender ID & SPF
Later in 2004, Caller ID for Email was merged with SPF, to create the Sender ID Framework (SIDF). Microsoft included Sender ID framework in Hotmail, Exchange, and Outlook in 2005. It is used primarily with Microsoft products.

Standardizing the Protocols
In 2006, a total of four proposals documenting two approaches for authenticating the sender ID were submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as Experimental Protocols. The community was invited to observe and comment on the success or failure of the approaches during the two years following publication. The objective was to build a consensus as to the best approach for a single Internet standard.

In February of 2009, all four were relegated to Historic Status, since consensus could never be reached on a final standard, largely due to licensing issues.

What this really means is that email service companies are forced to support multiple protocols, if they want to be all-inclusive.

Vouch by Reference (VBR) - The New Guy on the Block
In April of 2009 a new standards track proposal was submitted, called Vouch by Reference (VBR). Perhaps this one will succeed where the others have failed and become the Internet standard.

How Do You Authenticate the Sender?
Though the objective in all cases is to determine if a sending address is a forgery, the protocols each work a bit differently.

As an example, SIDF checks the IP address of the server that sent the email against a list of servers, which are authorized by the domain owner to send email.

VBR, on the other hand, permits independent third parties to certify the owner of a domain name that is associated with received mail. The certification can happen either within the email handling service or by end-user software.

VBR is a two-part protocol:

First, the sender adds VBR information to the email message. This info includes a list of domain certification services that will vouch for the email traffic.
Secondly, the receiver will query one or more of the certification services for information about the identity associated with the message. DNS is used to distribute the certification information.

Next time, we'll talk about the cryptographic solutions, most notably Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which combines some of the features of two other proposals, from Yahoo and Cisco Systems. DKIM is currently undergoing standardization, by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Authenticate! Don't Make Everyone Wonder If It's Really You!

2009-06-04T14:13:00.003-04:00

According to an article published by the New York Times in March of 2009, 94 % of all email sent is spam!!! Barracuda Networks has estimated that in 2008, spam accounted for between 90 and 95 percent of the total email. They also expect it to increase slightly in 2009. Protecting subscribers from spam is an ongoing challenge that continually changes - it is a true "moving target".

Early attempts at controlling spam focused on filtering out bad email. Unfortunately, every improvement on the anti-spam side resulted in a new approach on the spammer side. Filtering out spam has never been more than partially successful. It results in both false negatives and false positives. So, some spam still gets delivered and some good email gets dropped!

Currently, a two-pronged effort is evolving: authentication and reputation. Authentication identifies the author of the email and reputation provides a means of assessing their trustworthiness.

In an earlier blog, we talked about how important sender reputation is, in getting your email to the Inbox. We discussed some of things that can hurt or help your sender reputation, such as the number of complaints or the number of times your email is opened and scrolled through.

For the next few blogs, we will focus on email authentication and on the different approaches to accomplishing it. Authenticating or signing an email can (almost) prove you are who you say you are. It can also improve your sender reputation.

The objective of email authentication is to help prevent spam from reaching the Inbox, while at the same time allowing desirable email to get there. It's analogous to a router's access control list: drop unwanted traffic, while allowing desirable traffic.

What Is Email Authentication?
In this and the next two or three blogs, the term authentication uses the definition put forth by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) in March 2008. The document was entitled, Trust in Email Begins with Authentication.

Authentication is a technology for determining any of the following:

That an identifier is being employed by, and for, the organization (the identity) that it belongs to.
That a specific IP Address is being used by the organization it is assigned to.
That a domain name is being used by the organization that registered it.
That address and domain name registrations derive from the global Internet administrative authority, ICANN.

Authentication can prove who you are ... but, it can't say anything about what you are: Mainly ... are you trustworthy? This part takes an outside authority. In this case, sender reputation serves as the outside authority.

Why Does Outside Authority Matter?
As an example, if you were to print a drivers license for whatever state you happened to be in ... and a police officer pulled you over for speeding, you would probably go to jail, when he saw your fake drivers license. If, however, the license were actually issued and printed by the DMV of the state, then you would likely just get a ticket ... or maybe just a warning.

The difference is the backing authority: It says you have the required driving skills, an address where you can be found ... it implies that you are likely trustworthy, where the self-issued drivers license does NOT!

This is what authentication, when combined with a good sender reputation, implies to the ISPs who must deliver bulk commercial email, while at the same time NOT deliver spam. This is a difficult road to walk ... one the spammers are constantly digging up!

Establishing Standards
Whenever there is a networking problem to solve, everyone benefits if a common solution can be found ... a standard, if you will, for everyone to follow. There are standards organizations that exist to develop, document and publish such standards. Once a standard is finally complete, things get much easier. Customers can select products from different manufacturers and, if the standard was followed, the products will all work together properly. This is a good thing!

Unfortunately, there have almost always been competing solutions ... competing standards being developed. It doesn't matter what aspect of networking or the Internet we are talking about, there are often multiple "standards" being developed by (typically) competing companies. Clearly, there is a market share advantage to developing a protocol that is later adopted as THE Internet Standard!

Often, when various competing proposals are presented to a standards board, the final standard adopted is a blend of hopefully the best parts of the different proposals.

Today, there are several protocols being used for email authentication.

Most abusive email messages carry fake sender addresses. There are three protocols that deal with sender address forgery:

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - Open Source
Sender ID - From Microsoft
Sender ID Framework - Combination of Sender ID & SPF

There are also three cryptographic solutions:

DomainKeys - from Yahoo
Internet Identified Mail (IIM) - from Cisco
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) - Combination of DomainKeys & IIM

Next time, we'll start talking about how these protocols work.

Don't Rent an Email List ... It's a Waste of Money!

2009-05-21T11:52:00.007-04:00

In an earlier blog, we discussed how to assemble a quality email list ... one that is more likely to lead to sales! We said that of the four methods of gathering the list (confirmed opt-in, unconfirmed opt-in, opt-out, and purchasing a list), buying it was NEVER a good idea!

Let's now discuss WHY it's never a good idea to buy an email list ...

First of all and most importantly: It doesn't work!

Where Do the Lists Come From? - List Brokers
List brokers provide lists of names, with contact info. There may also be various bits of demographic information, such as age or sex. Purchased lists are a common source of names for catalogues and many promotional offers. Often, the list broker is really just serving as a middleman, between the list owner and the potential buyer or renter.

More Isn't Necessarily Better!
Though purchasing a list is a quick way to grow the size of your mail list, it won't grow a Quality list ... which means it won't necessarily improve your sales at all! And, it could possibly hurt!

Even if there are hundreds of thousands of subscribers in your file, if most of them aren't opening, reading and clicking on your emails, what good is it?

In general, once a name ends up on a list, if that user never opts-out, the name stays on the list and messages continue to be sent to it. But, a recent action by CBSSports.com went completely against this norm.

CBSSports.com sent out a series of emails asking subscribers to reconfirm they wanted to be on the mailing list. If a subscriber didn't respond within a certain period of time, the name was removed from the list. Although the list became considerably shorter, their response rate actually grew!

Remember that both consistently unopened/unread emails and, even more, clicks on the Spam button will hurt your sender reputation and, therefore, your ability to get email to the Inbox. The members of a purchased list are highly likely to fall almost entirely into these categories.

Ill-gotten Gains
It is never considered acceptable to send messages to email address that have been harvested on the Internet ... without permission ... or that are being guessed at, by only changing one letter at a time, in what is called a dictionary attack.

Another negative for purchased lists is that there is no way you can guarantee the list you buy will not have such names on it. Sending to such addresses will hurt your sender reputation.

Confirming Consent
It is important to have the consent of the receiver, before you send them emails. If you don't have this, your email can end up in the spam folder ... and we all know what that does to your sender reputation!

There are developing standards that explicitly define the acceptable ways to confirm consent. For example, a box is checked for one of several types of opt-ins ... or, a box isn't UNchecked for a pre-selected option in a signup form.

One thing is certain, however, and that is that the members of a purchased mail list will rarely feel they have given permission for any email they receive ... perhaps they only checked the box, because that was a requirement for entering a contest and they really liked the prize! Or, maybe they didn't notice the pre-checked box, when they were registering for something else. Whatever the reason, they aren't interested and they don't want the "information"!

These recipients are as likely to hit the spam button as anything else.

A similar situation is the assumed permission taken by a vendor, when someone places an order. The buyer is added to a mail list for promotions, though no consent was given. An incredible 31% of all vendors observed in one study by Return Path did this, with no mention of it during checkout. Another 5% mentioned the promotional emails, but gave no way to opt-out.

Purchased Lists - It Just Doesn't Work!
In November, All Web Email sent a previously tested and proven successful email offer to a rented list of 10,000 names, on three separate dates. The email also included either a 15% or a 20% discount offer.

The offer was for a high-end skin care product and the rented list contained generic "Health & Beauty" email addresses. The list came from a reputable opt-in list vendor ... one who mentioned client names like National Geographic, AT & T and Microsoft, to justify their rather pricey rental charge.

Earlier, the same email had been sent to confirmed subscribers and significant sales resulted. However, with three separate mailings to the rented list, the total sales were zero ... $00.00!

A fourth mailing had been planned, but simply wasn't worth the effort, even considering there would be no additional expense!

Remember that quality mail lists really are worth more ... the best quality lists are smaller, but they result in more sales! Although AllWebEmail.com won't sell you an email list, we will help you manage and grow your lists.

The Sender Must Render for the Spender!

2009-05-06T21:16:00.008-04:00

Let's start by defining what is meant by "rendering" the email. Next, we'll talk about why it's important that it be properly rendered and why it frequently isn't! And, finally, we'll discuss how you can deal with the problems in rendering email.

Defining "Rendering"
Rendering is the conversion of a high-level object-based description into a graphical image, for display. Artistic rendering is the process of creating a work of art. In email marketing, it is the process of creating a work of advertising art.

Most marketing emails today are a combination of text and graphics that are displayed in an email, using HyperText Markup Language (HTML). In other words, they are web pages.

Why It Matters
A common approach for creating a marketing email is to start with a graphic (i.e., JPG, PSD or GIF file) that is a "mockup" of the actual email to be created. Then, a web designer translates the visual image to HTML. Finally, the HTML is rendered when the email is opened.

The final step, rendering, is what can turn your piece of art into a piece of trash, headed straight for the Deleted Items folder or worse: the Spam folder!

If a receiver opens an email you sent and he or she is greeted with an email "mess", the odds are high that the next key hit will be the Delete key.

Why It's Often NOT Displayed Correctly
It sounds simple enough: use a reduced/restricted set of HTML code and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so the page displays correctly, no matter what email client is used.

Unfortunately, it isn't at all simple. The state of HTML for email is where the web page was a few years back: At that time, every web browser displayed the page a bit differently. In some cases, functionality would be "broken" in certain web browsers.

This is the case with email clients today: Some things will just not look right, when viewed with certain email clients. But, it's even worse, because there are many more email clients than there were web browsers, so there's even more variations.

Some ISP filters strip out some HTML to avoid potentially harmful HTML, thereby possibly reducing the content to a mass of text.

CSS describes the look and formatting of a document. It separates the document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from the document presentation, including things like colors, fonts, and layout. This provides more flexibility and control in the specification and, therefore, more consistency in the appearance.

Calls to External CSS are not supported by all email clients. Severely limited subsets of CSS within the HTML section are supported by all email clients, as well as limited subsets of Inline CSS.

So, How Do You Deal with This Problem?
Every email you send out must first be previewed, as it will look in at least the major email clients and with images both on and off. These are the conditions under which your email will be viewed by those who are most important: your customers and their potential audience.

In addition to making sure the overall appearance of your email is acceptable, you need to correct spelling, broken links, and invalid HTML code, as these are triggers for ISP spam filters. Secondly, consideration must be given to how the email renders in a reader-sized limited view or preview pane, as most people use that glimpse to decide if they will continue reading or most importantly "Click Through" to the landing page.

Continue to view and fix, until every major email client can see an acceptable view of your email ... remember that this represents you and your company to the recipient.

All Web Email can make sure that all of your emails are properly rendered in virtually every email client ... and that your emails are error free. Please see their design services for more detail.

All Web Email validates each of your campaign emails with Return Path's Campaign Preview, which shows 41 different email client views, representing over 90% of the mailboxes out there!

Don't Let a Spam Trap Byte You!

2009-04-29T14:06:00.004-04:00

As mentioned earlier, too many spam trap hits is one of the things that can affect your sender reputation. And, of course, sender reputation is the single most important item for getting your emails to the Inbox.

A study by Return Path found that IP addresses categorized as legitimate servers, but with even one spam trap hit, saw their delivered rate plunge to 38%. This is as compared to a legitimate server with no spam trap hits, which typically sees a delivered rate of 58%.

So, what is a spam trap or spamtrap, as it is also sometimes written?
It is exactly what it sounds like: It is an email account that was set up to trap spam ... it was created specifically to catch senders who harvest email addresses and/or attempt a dictionary attack, in which addresses are just made up, to see what doesn't bounce. A spam trap is an address that has never signed up to receive any email so, by definition, any email sent to such an address is spam.

How are spam traps created?
There are a couple of ways ... sometimes ISPs simply reactivate dead accounts. In other cases, they are new accounts, created solely for this purpose.

If you have these addresses in your lists, then either you are not properly pruning the lists or, if you purchased a list (NOT recommended), questionable practices were used to build it. Another way these email addresses can get on a list is when a subscriber makes a typo, when signing up.

What are the weaknesses of spam traps?
If a spammer discovers that a particular email address is being used as a spam trap, that party could send very large amounts of spam to that address. The spammer could also subscribe the address to any legitimate mail lists, that aren't double opt-in.

If a spammer uses a spam trap address as the sender addresses, any replies will be sent to the spam trap address. The replier is then also labeled a spammer.

If a spammer puts a spam trap address, along with many others in the TO or CC line, then if any of the receivers Reply to All on the message, the replying address will be considered spamming too.

Finally, a spam trap addresses is often shown in search pages like Google's, so anyone can write to it and this email will also be considered spam.

These actions give the spammer some control over the determination of what is considered "bulk unsolicited e-mail" by the anti-spam system.

How do you get rid of them, once they're on a list?
You want to remove spam trap addresses as soon as you can, but you don't want to inadvertently remove legitimate email addresses.

You must establish a policy for how many times you will send to a particular address, without at least getting an open response from it. Regularly remove addresses that reach this count.

The less often you send mail to a list, the more likely it is to harbor spam traps, as old addresses get converted into trap addresses.

Email addresses that are created by ISPs as spam traps need to be identified, if possible ... one approach is to send email to new (non-double opt-in) addresses, using a special IP address for a few days and then monitor the IP address for spam trap hits. There are a few sources of public spam trap data, such as the Spam Cop blacklist and Microsoft's SNDS service.

If no spam trap hits occur, the addresses can then be safely merged into your other mail lists.

So, how do you keep spam traps off your lists?
The best way is to only use confirmed or double opt-in. If you never send to an email address that doesn't confirm they want to receive your emails, then you will never send to a spam trap.

Whether you use confirmed opt-in or not, All Web Email can help you avoid spam traps.

How Do You Achieve Relevancy?

2009-04-15T13:43:00.006-04:00

Every marketing email includes a "call to action"... perhaps, to click-through to the web site and purchase something. A message that is "relevant" to a particular receiver is far more likely to encourage the recipient to read the content and respond to that call to action.

The importance of relevance in marketing emails keeps cropping up over and over! So, what does it mean? And, how can you put it into your emails?

Simply put, relevance is what makes your email worth opening and reading ... it makes your message interesting, instead of boring ... it separates your emails from those that might be considered Spam.

You achieve relevance by segmenting your mail list and personalizing the content for each segment. If you do this well, your email will likely be seen as relevant.

Let's now talk about list segmentation and personalization - the keys to relevance.

List Segmentation
I have also seen list segmentation referred to as "demassification". Whichever you call it, it refers to dividing a mail list into multiple subgroups, based on some combination of attributes. Rather than sending a mass email to everyone on the list, you can now send targeted messages to each subgroup.

Much of the information used for segmenting the mail list comes from the initial signup process and the information requested then. Some of it comes from a subscriber's online history.

If you don't already have the data needed to segment your mail list, you can use surveys, polls or response forms to gather it.

Once you have the data, items used for segmentation might be any of the following, as well as many others:

How was the email address acquired? Did the recipient buy something on the web site or did they just sign up for the special offers? If they bought something, what was it?
What did the receiver do with previous emails? Did they open them and click-through to the web site? Did they buy something? Did they just hit the Delete key?
Behavioral tracking of your email campaign means monitoring the links that recipients click on in the email. You can then analyze this information to determine what is being read and what is ignored and adjust accordingly.
Similarly, clickstream tracking monitors visitors' pathways through your website. What web pages have they visited? What online papers have they read? This information can also help you target the interests of the recipient. Both behavioral tracking of your email campaign and clickstream tracking let you re-evaluate any subscriber information gathered earlier and possibly see if their needs have changed.
Demographics - Things as simple as female versus male or the age of the recipient can be useful. Obviously the sensitivity and the security of any information gathered must be carefully weighed against the value of the information, for targeting purposes.
Preferences - Making it easy for a user to set their preferences and change them at any time also makes it easier for you to personalize what you send.

Personalization
Now that you have segmented your mail list, you can target your emails to each segment. That is, you can personalize your messages for the recipients in each subgroup. The ideal result would be an email message that appears to have been created only for the recipient.

Personalization techniques at its simplest should at least include adding the recipient's name in the subject line or message body. If the subscriber has purchased previously, the email can mention that purchase and suggest possible companion products. If the recipient recently downloaded a white paper, the message could offer a product or service that is related to the topic ... or provide a link to another document on the same or a similar topic.

The truly important thing about personalized messages is that they can help build a relationship between the marketer and the recipient ... that can lead to consumer loyalty ... and that, in turn, can lead to ongoing sales!

AllWebEmail.com has the expertise necessary to help you make your email Relevant!