VerticalResponse - Articles & Reports

Best Practices for Designing a Survey

admin — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:23:17 -0700

In a perfect world, you’d know exactly what your customers want and could serve it right up to them without hesitation. Unfortunately, things don’t quite work this way, so you’ve got to use the tools you have available to find out more about your customers. And there’s no better tool for this purpose than a survey.

A well-written and formatted survey will generate high response rates and provide you with quality information that can be used to improve just about any aspect of your business. In this White Paper, we’ll examine some best practices you can use to build a great survey

Determine Your Objectives

The first step in designing a survey is to consider what kind of information you hope to glean from the survey and how you intend to put this information to use. Knowing your objectives will make it far easier to write your questions, decide which people you need to target, and to take action with the results. A few very broad based survey objectives might be to:

Better understand how customers feel about your sales process. Was the process easy for them? Were they satisfied with the delivery of the product? What factors led to their making a purchase with you? Would they purchase from you again? If yes or no, then why?

Find any pain points in your relationship with your customer. Have they contacted you for support? How did they do so? Were they happy with that support? Are they happy with the available training and information you provide them? Why do they love you? Why are they leaving you for another vendor?

Learn how they feel about your products. Are they satisfied with your product? How do they use it? Do they have suggestions for improvement? What kind of future enhancements interest them? Have they tried other vendors who provide similar products?

Again, these are very broad objectives, but they should give you an idea of the kind of information you can gather through the use of a survey.

Target Your Survey

Once you’ve decided why you’re doing the survey, you should determine your target audience. Putting your survey in front of the right people is key to getting a high response rate and getting the info you need. Knowing your audience will also make it easier to write your questions.

Who are the respondents? You’ll want to think about which customers, users or prospects you need to hear from to get the information you need. Should the survey only be to customers who made a purchase on your website? Or should it go to everyone who’s made a purchase with you through any means? It depends, of course, on the kind of information you hope to collect from the survey.

What are their experiences? As you narrow down the target audience for your survey, consider what kind of interaction they’ve had with your company, as you should try to limit your questions to those they can answer based on that previous experience. As an example, in a survey about interaction on your website, a question about your phone support would likely be out of place (even if it’s relevant to some of the respondents).

Create Your Questions

Now that you know both your goals and who you intend to target with your survey, you’re ready to create your questions. Remember that in order to collect enough feedback to get a valid sample for your survey, it’s important to get a high enough response rate and ensure that respondents complete your questionnaire. The clarity and conciseness of your questions, questionnaire length, number of items per page, and the way you group your questions can all contribute to a better experience for the respondent. This will lead to a higher completion rate and increase the likelihood that people will choose to take your future surveys.

Make sure each question is clear & concise. Keep your questions as short as possible without making them so short that they’re hard to understand. If each question on a page begins with the same phrase, considering using that phrase as the beginning text on the page so that it doesn’t have to be repeated as part of each question. Introductory text that asks, “How likely is it that…” can be followed by questions like “you would use our service again?” or “you would recommend us to a friend?”

There should be no ambiguity around what a question means. If a question is complex in some way, you should provide a brief explanation or provide some clarifying examples within the question itself (in parentheses). Be sure to use terms that will be familiar to your respondent, and avoid technical jargon.

Be careful with acronyms. Don’t use acronyms without an explanation of what the acronym means. If you use an acronym several times, spell it out the first time and place the acronym in parentheses. If I was creating a survey that asked my respondents several questions about their ISP, I’d want to write my first question as “Which Internet Service Provider (ISP) do you currently use?” I could then follow-up with questions like “Are you happy with your ISP?”

Avoid stating questions in the negative. It can be confusing if a phrase is negative and the respondent has to say, “yes,” in order to confirm that negative statement.

Make sure your questions & answers are mutually exclusive. If you have different categories of content, make sure they are distinct from one another. This can also refer to answers that use numerical ranges. For example, a question that asks the age of your respondent should not have overlapping answers like 18-24, 24-30, 30-38, 38-45. Then the 24, 40, and 38 year olds wouldn’t know which group to choose. The answers should instead be written as 18-24, 25-30, 31-38, 39-45, etc.

Be sure not to ask leading questions that suggest a certain answer to your respondents. An example of this would be to state a conclusion in the question and then ask for feedback (“We just redesigned our website to become a leading destination…”). If you present a list of options which allow the respondent to select one or more, be sure that the most common or important items do not appear at the top of that list. A possible way to group such options without bias would be to list them alphabetically.

It’s important that you feel confident the respondents will understand your questions and be able to give you their honest answers. If you are not sure that all respondents will be able to answer each question, be sure to include ‘N/A’ or “Don’t Know” as options. If you ask sensitive questions like age or income range, offer ‘Prefer Not to State’ as an option.

Organize Your Questions

Start with interesting questions to get your respondents immediately engaged in your survey. Then proceed on to specific question areas. If you’re surveying your respondents on a topic that involved a series of steps, try to have the questions mirror that process. I.e., for a training survey, start with questions about registration, then proceed to instructor quality and course content.

You can also group the sections of your survey according to topic. For example, in a Post-Event survey, questions could be grouped by Vendor Exhibits, Program Content and Location. Each section should have a bolded name so the respondents know where they are in the process.

Adjust the Length of Your Survey

There is a fine line between collecting answers on a whole range of interesting topics and generating survey fatigue for your respondents, which could result in them quitting your survey mid-stream. If a survey takes longer than an average of 15 to 20 minutes to complete, then it may be too long (though that doesn’t mean a survey can never be longer than 20 minutes).

And even though you want to keep your survey reasonably short, you should never trade clarity for time if you have to choose between them. If you can’t get clear and actionable information from your survey because you only asked vague questions, then it doesn’t matter how many people complete the survey since the data you’ll have collected won’t be all that useful.

This can also relate to the number of questions per page. Here the trade-off is between the necessity of scrolling on a single page that includes numerous questions and the number of pages a respondent must click-through to complete the survey. If you are using the same rating scale for a group of related subjects, then you could create a single question that allows multiple ratings instead of writing separate questions for each one. Such a Multiple-Rating question would look like the sample below:

That said, you want to be careful about using too many multiple-rating questions, as longer ones (or numerous such questions) can look intimidating to a respondent.

If you follow these best practices, your survey will provide you much higher value - as I noted at the beginning of this document, a well-written and formatted survey will generate high response rates and give you access to great information that you can use to improve just about any aspect of your business.

If you need further help creating your survey, please check out our survey demo & tutorial page. Also take a look at our white paper on Analyzing Your Survey Results.

10 Marketing Resolutions for 2008

admin — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:55:11 -0800

It's that time of year again when we all list our New Years resolutions. Lose 10 lbs, get to work early, call your Mom every week. We know, we all have them. Sometimes they seem too hard, even though we know we should. Here is a list of 10 achievable resolutions all businesses should focus on in the New Year, if you're not already ahead of the game. If you are, consider yourself a pro and do everything 20% better!

Use a Calendar

Google has a great one where you can use alerts to remind you to write copy and send communications. Bonus? You can also share it with others so that they know exactly when you're planning to launch a campaign.

Publish a Blog

Yes, even if you already have a website you should also host a blog. It's another way the search engines can pick you up; you establish yourself as an expert in your industry; you give a "voice" to your business; and you can get your readers' insight into how they feel about you or your company through comments they make.

It's not an overnight success, but when it starts to take off it can be incredibly beneficial. A few ways to ensure success are to make sure you flag categories on your posts or tag them for search engines; and backlink to your own site from your most popular keywords in your posts. Check out TypePad or WordPress, two great blogging platforms that are very cost-effective and easy to set up.

Get 5 Testimonials

Get your best customers to give you quotes and use them everywhere. Include them on any outbound communications, in your email newsletters, on your site and in your store. They are one of the most powerful forms of marketing you have. We have a store near us that prints off huge posters of their customers wearing their clothing and hangs them in the window along with their history of being a customer. Benefit? The customers tell all their friends to go check out their big picture and shop at the store. These people are your influencers, use them.

Get People Talking

Have a "wow" factor. Give free samples, throw a free gift into the customer shipment, call your customers to see how they liked their service, send a birthday greeting. Whatever it is, get your word of mouth campaign going! A few great examples that have found success:

Doctors calling the night after a procedure to see how things are going.
Retailers throw something fun into your online shipment orders or shopping bags.
Restaurants give a few cookies at the end of the meal.
Consultants give your first 2 hours of time free.

Shake it Up

Pick one customer-facing thing you do and change it drastically. Change your entire look of your website, repaint your store, start a monthly club, change your advertising message, change your uniforms, heck even change your "hold" music. Just do something different in the coming year that you've always wanted to do. 2008 is your year.

Host an Event

If you've got a retail location, host an after-hours sale or an event to celebrate your best customers, the New Year or your anniversary party. Make sure you do enough marketing in-store and outside your location to get the number of people you want there.

If you are an expert in your field host a "lunch and learn" or a networking event. Again, make sure you do marketing to your own list as well as potentially renting a list for a postal mailing to get people there. If your work is online, host a webinar. Note: most of these have a 50-60% attendee rate.

Advertise

Make a list of 5 of your competitors OR 5 other businesses in your local area and look at where they advertise. Then finally answer that pesky ad sales person and choose somewhere you've never advertised before. Then do it! Caveat: don't just do it once and think it will never work, if it's in your budget, do it 4-6 times before you decide to stop it.

Do a Customer Survey

Send an email and ask 10 questions about your customers' experience with you. Give a 5 point rating: Excellent, Good, Neutral, Poor, Very Bad. Be ready for the good, bad and the ugly, and you'll learn what your customers like and what they don't. Then you can make changes.

Make sure you send to a statistically valid sample and get a good sampling back. You don't want to make changes based on just 1-2 remarks. Make sure you announce your changes to all of your customers in an email campaign. Everyone wins!

Collect Email Addresses

Put an opt-in form on every page of your site or blog, or link to it on every page with "Newsletter Sign Up." Put an exit pop-up window with the opt-in form when someone leaves your domain. Ask for your customer's information at your counter; input it daily into a spreadsheet or better yet a contact management system. However you collect email addresses, send a welcome email to them with a thank-you offer. Use VerticalResponse to collect email addresses for free!

Analyze

Use Google Analytics to track your website visits. Get to know where your traffic is coming from and how good it is. Then make changes to your site, or your marketing materials.

Hopefully you're doing some of these already. It's tough to run a business and constantly come up with new ideas to market... so I hope this list sparks some new ideas. Happy 2008!

Welcome New Employees with Open Arms

oranuj — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 09:00:00 -0800

Column by Janine Popick, Inc.com "Women in Business"
January 2008

Here's how you can make new employees feel like part of the family the first day they walk in.

It's never been harder to attract great employees than it is now, but in my opinion it's never been easy either. Getting a job is not as hard as it used to be, and potential employees have a ton of options. So when you finally hire someone, it's important to make him/her feel part of the family fast — with a capital F.

Maybe it's because I'm a girl, or maybe because I'm a Virgo, but in the seven years since I started VerticalResponse, I have felt it is extremely important to make sure new employees feel welcome and were completely set up when they arrived on their first day.

I remember one of my "first days on the job," I showed up to work and my office space was set up Cagney and Lacey style with no divider. That would have been fine, however my officemate was a "loud talker" and even carried on multiple conference calls a day, with just him (and me) in the room. (If you do this, pick up the phone and talk please). I couldn't work my computer (it was a PC) so I asked if I could have a Mac. My boss gave me his credit card and said, "Walk down the street and get yourself a computer."

Wow, I was on my own.

So when I started this company, I decided I would be the one who went to the office supply store to buy pens, a pen holder, business card holder, floor mat, and garbage can. I'd work off of my "new hire" list. I'd also walk to the chair store down the street and actually sit in the chair to make sure it would be ok. When our new employee started, I would take them around our tiny office and introduce them to everyone along with walking them through their job function.

After we started growing and it became someone else's job to set up a new employee, I was relieved to find that the same "new hire" list was being used and that work areas were being set up properly. New employees were being introduced to others and the training process had begun. I have to admit I was a bit worried that my welcome wagon might get watered down.

Then I had one employee who sent me this email entitled "Great First Week!"

Hi Janine,
I wanted to let you know that I had a great first week and I'm glad to be aboard! I'm impressed by the little things — e.g. everything was set up for me from the phone and computer to pens and post-it notes. (I love the MacBook Pro - what a relief after years of PC/MS slavery.) Best of all, the people I've met so far are friendly, helpful, and funny. Plus, I love the beer and wine stocked fridge - excellent! Anyway - just thought you might be curious about what the new guy thinks.

Cheers, - Bryan

So even though these things might not seem like a lot to you, think about the major life-changing decision your new employee just made.

Now, why not make them feel like they made the best decision of their lives to come and work for you?

Retail Ready for the Holidays

admin — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:57:34 -0800

Tips for Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

If you are a retailer then you know how hectic and competitive direct marketing campaigns and offers to consumers can be during the holiday season. According to analyst firm Forrester, US Consumers will spend $33 billion during the 2007 holiday season and online spending will increase 21% over 2006. To help you prepare for the busiest time of the year, we’ve compiled some ideas to get you thinking and acting now so you can start building more mindshare (and wallet share) with shoppers. Although most of these tips are aimed at driving traffic for retailers, either online or in stores, the concepts can be adapted to just about any industry.

Here are some things to consider for building your holiday email marketing campaigns:

Calendar Out Your Activities

Consider the starting and ending points in your seasonal offers and break down your campaigns into 3 areas:

Phase 1

Early Bird Specials: Drive revenue earlier in the season and reach out to your loyal shoppers, or anyone that purchased from you during the same period last year. You can count on these customers to build momentum and maximize revenue opportunities early. You also want to reward these loyal shoppers by providing them something in return. Early bird offers may include: extra 10% off, free gift with purchase while supplies last, or buy two get one free on certain products. Remember that you are more likely to have the merchandise on hand earlier in the season to accommodate these types of offers for customers. If you wait until mid December, you may find it more challenging to fulfill requests.

2007 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, NRF/BIG Research

Phase 2

Mid-Season Favorites: According to Shop.org 4 out of 11 of the largest revenue days for the holiday season occurred December 12th through December 16th last year. During this phase you are right in the thick of competition for getting your message in front of your customers. When free shipping upgrades become standard, what offers will help you stand out? Creating emails that specialize in promotions by price range or by recipient can be viewed as timesavers and worth opening. Shoppers are feeling the frenzy and they are in need of ideas to simplify their purchasing decisions. If you are concerned you are hitting your list too often, try sending a postcard with a special promo code to break through the email clutter.

Heading toward your final phase of the season, pay attention and communicate some important dates for meeting stated service levels. Email your shoppers to let them know the last day you can accept orders and still guarantee delivery for a specific holiday.

Phase 3

Last Minute Deals: Reach out to procrastinators with guaranteed deliveries, free shipping or gift-wrapping options. This is the point in the season that you want to evaluate your inventory and promote items that will be more difficult to sell after the New Year. You may also want to begin promoting your return policy on sale or clearance items. Gift cards or gift certificates always make a great last minute offer to drive traffic to store locations or online.

Managing Email and Order Flow:

80% of your clicks come within one day of an email campaign being sent. Bearing this response statistic in mind, you can project when you want to potentially reach out to your recipients again. Or you may want to segment your list if your fulfillment and operations department needs to stagger the demand and processing of orders.

Guarantee Shipping

Decide on the date when you’ll guarantee shipping before a holiday. Call your shipper to see when they’re guaranteeing delivery, then pad this by a day or two so you won’t have negative customer service issues in the event that a shipment isn’t made on time. Use this date in your email marketing campaigns, as it gets closer to the looming deadline.

Retail Locations

If you’re staying open late to capitalize on the suggestion above, make sure you heavily market this option in your emails. If you have the online resources, you could allow customers to purchase online and then pick up in store.

Include Forward to a Friend Link

It’s often times forgotten, but you might pick up a few new customers from your current loyal ones just by asking for their referral.

Host Your Emails on a Web Page

There is going to be so much email flying around the next few months you might see an increase in recipients’ spam filters stripping out images. If you include a link that says “Click Here to View This Email in a Browser” any recipients that are having issues can view your email as a web page.

Another solution is to be mindful of the alternative text you give your images, this is the text that pops up when your image is either moused over or not displayed. For example, an alt tag for an image of a holiday gift basket might be “Holiday Gift Baskets under $30” - so that your recipients still understand the offer and are enticed to click to view the hosted version of the email or click to accept the images.

It’s not too early to get your holiday schedule nailed down. It will be one less thing you have to think about. Now there will be one less than a million!

2007 Third Annual
Holiday Email Consumer
Survey, Return Path

Subject Lines for the Holidays

Subject lines are arguably the most important part of an email marketing campaign. It’s the equivalent of the “outer envelope” of a direct mail campaign. If it doesn’t catch the eye of your recipient and doesn’t convey the right message, then you’ve lost a potential sale.

Here is a listing of some generic subject lines you can use as a starting point for your own business. First let’s start off with the basics...

Subject Line 101 – The Basics

Stick to 40-50 characters - Most email readers have the default set so that anything beyond 40 characters in the subject line will not display.
Don’t repeat your from label; it’s a waste of space. Remember, you’ve got only 40 characters to grab their attention.
Don’t use all caps – Not only is this akin to screaming at your recipient, email readers may filter it into the junk folder.
Don’t overuse punctuation – Because this technique is often used by spammers, excessive use of punctuation can be filtered.
Don’t abuse the word “Free” – See above.

2007 Third Annual
Holiday Email Consumer
Survey, Return Path

Subject Line Examples:

Help Needed!

FREE SHIPPING + The Gifting Event: Great gifts for everyone AND YOU!
Too many caps, too long, too much punctuation, weird spacing.
Your Holiday Offer is Here + Men’s Outerwear
There is no offer.

Real Subject Lines We Like!

{FIRST_NAME}, 2 days to enjoy holiday cards on us
Handmade French Truffles 2006
Remember, Save 20% Site-wide at Frontgate.com
Full-size authentic arcade games-just like you remember

Generic Subject Lines We Like

Buy one, get two widgets
Gift baskets under $45
Gifts under $20 No S and H
Holiday Daily: widgets under $20
Customer faves under $30
[Gift Certificate] $25 egift sent immediately
Buy before Nov 30 get 20% off
Order by 12/22 for on time holiday delivery
Buy a widget 10% goes to a cancer cure
Stocking Stuffer Alert-Get a $5 gift card with purchase
Invitation: Wine in-store Saturday the 22nd
Last minute shoppers: Open until 9pm

Subject Lines for Salons or Day Spas for the Holidays

Get Party-Ready Now - $35 for Mani/Pedi
Holiday Rejuvenate - Spiced Scented Massage
Last minute shoppers: $35 Mani/Pedi day (this is for a gift certificate)
$20-$50 Gift baskets in stock

Subject Lines for Restaurants for the Holidays

Have {COMPANY_NAME}’s holiday party with us
Appetizers for you and 9 friends on us
Last minute: Give a $50 gift card this season
Take a shopping break, come in for a drink
Bring this coupon in for a free appetizer with purchase
Shop at Sally’s and get a drink at Harry’s

Subject Lines for Wineries

Book now - 10 dates left for holiday parties
Wine clubs: The gift that gives all year long
Trio of wine under $50 with gift pack and card
40% holiday discount for wine club members
Discounts and Free S&H for wine members
2005 Cab with our gift of Riedel wine glasses

Take the time to really think about your subject line. Even better? Before you send your email campaign, why not take a smaller part of your list and test TWO subject lines sending two different emails. Since most of your response is going to come within a day, you’ll be able to tell what your winning subject line is.

Download this Article in PDF fomat

Working With Your Friends

oranuj — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:00:00 -0700

Column by Janine Popick, Inc.com "Women in Business"
November 2007

Put up boundaries before your friends get too cozy being the boss's buddy.

Have you ever hired a friend? Someone you may have worked with in the past? We all do it, and for good reason: We trust them and we think they'll do a good job. Otherwise we wouldn't do it, right?

Then a great thing happens. Your company grows and you find yourself working with new people you don't have a previous relationship with... a sign of good times! But what happens when your relationship with your "Friend from the Past" (FFTP) changes from business to personal, and they don't follow?

Have any of these scenarios ever happen to you?

Your FFTP, who reports to you, is talking to a colleague and tries to get what they want by playing the "I know the boss" card, or "Do you know how important this is to the boss?"
Your FFTP talks to you around work colleagues in a disrespectful way. When you confront them about it:
- YOU: "I would never talk to my John Ex-Boss like you talk to me."
- FFTP: "You didn't have a past with them."
Your FFTP starts going down memory lane, mentioning past good times in a business setting. These are personal memories that appear to connect you two together more closely than you connect with other colleagues.

What makes an FFTP think he/she can skate smoothly over the lines of business and make it personal?

People always want to feel important and if they can represent themselves that way because of a personal connection with you, you bet they will. In my experience, it's a rare occasion that they don't, especially when they can get something out of it that will help them in one way or another.

What do you do?

You confront him/her, one-on-one: You need to communicate that it's not fair to peers in the company to use a personal relationship to get farther. If that doesn't work...
You "out" him/her: I'm not saying in a crowded room, but you need to let others in the company know you don't tolerate this behavior and that they should not be treated differently because of a history. If that doesn't work...
You fire him/her: It's not the best case, but the longer that you have the FFTP hanging around, the more it will appear to others in your company that you accept how he/she treats you. Then others might jump on the bandwagon, which is the last thing you want.

I've worked with friends in the past, sometimes with great success, and other times not so much. What I have learned (the hard way) is to put up boundaries when it relates to business — and do it quickly.

Am I saying don't have personal relationships with those you work with? Absolutely not. Some of my best friends are people I work with today. They realize that business is business.

That's why they're friends for life.

VerticalResponse, Email Delivery and You - A Handy Guide

admin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:24:45 -0700

Delivering email seems pretty straightforward, right? You upload a mailing list, create an email, hit send, and then mighty wizards transport that email to your recipients through the use of ancient, handcrafted cables and powerful laser beams. What more could you possibly need to know about this process? As it turns out, loads more.

There are a number of factors that determine whether an email, especially a bulk email, gets a response from its recipients. What are those factors? I’m glad you asked!

Let’s start by looking at the journey an email goes on to reach its intended recipient. In order for an email to be properly delivered, it must pass through one or more “gates”, each of which has the power to deny that email passage and stop it from continuing on its way.

The Email “Gates”

Gate #1 – The Internet Service Provider (Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, etc.)

Getting through this gate is all about the reputation of your sending IP Address. This reputation is determined through a number of factors:

Do you get complaints?
Complaints come in through a variety of sources: the Report Spam button at an ISP, through a blacklist, or directly to the abuse desk of your own service provider (like VerticalResponse). A complaint rate as low as 1%, or sometimes even lower, can have an impact on your delivery.

Do you hit spam trap addresses?
Spam traps are addresses that are never used to sign-up for email or have been deactivated by the host ISP after a long period of inactivity. These addresses are often placed on web sites in order to tempt spammers to harvest them (nothing a spammer likes more than a big, juicy email just innocently sitting around on a webpage, waiting to be plucked), which makes it easier to find and stop mail sent by said spammers. A purchased or rented mailing list may contain traps.

How high are your unknown user rates?
Having a lot of unknown users on your list (read: a lot of bad addresses) is a sign to a recipient ISP that you have poor mailing practices. Does this mean there’s a problem if you see a high bounce rate following a single email campaign? Not at all. But if you regularly see bounce rates approaching 10% or higher, then something isn’t quite right and you’re more likely to encounter problems seeing your good addresses delivered.

Gate #2 – The Corporate Domain

“Corporate domain” refers to a domain belonging to an organization like VerticalResponse, Salesforce.com, or any other business that uses an internal System Administrator or process to handle their computer and email issues. Obviously, an email going to a Yahoo or Hotmail address wouldn’t have to deal with this gate, but there are hundreds of thousands of smaller domains that do fall under this category.

Many Sys Admins employ blacklists in order to keep spam out of their networks, so one of the best ways to ensure delivery to a corporate domain is to stay off of commonly used blacklists. Now, what’s a blacklist exactly?

A blacklist is a database of IP Addresses (and sometimes domains) that have been used, or may have been used, to send spam. These lists are used by recipient servers to stop mail from the listed IP Addresses (or sometimes domains) from getting through.

There are literally hundreds of publicly available blacklists at a Sys Admin’s disposal. Some of them are large, effective and very popular (like Spamhaus and SpamCop) and some of them are small, use questionable methods to create listings, and are hardly used by anyone (I’ll avoid referencing any of those so as not to hurt their feelings). Each blacklist provider has their own methodology for determining which IP Addresses should be listed and which listed IP Addresses can be removed if requested.

In addition to these publicly available blacklists, some companies use their own private, internal blacklists that are only put to use for their domain or domains. These are not public, so the only way to know you’re listed is to send mail to the recipient domain in question and see if you receive a bounce error saying you’re listed. If you are listed, you have to try and track down their Sys Admins and request removal.

Staying off blacklists is mostly all about one thing, and that one thing is not getting complaints. The best way to not get complaints is to only mail people who’ve specifically requested information from or about your company. As luck would have it, this is exactly what VerticalResponse requires of our clients.

Gate #3 – The Spam Filter

Even if your IP Address has a good reputation and you haven’t been receiving complaints, there is still one final gate through which your email must pass: the spam filter. Email Service Providers like Yahoo have their own filters and individual corporations usually use an outside filter (like Postini or SpamAssassin). Each filter is different in its own way, but there are still some general issues to consider to help you avoid seeing mail filtered to the spam folder:

Reputation
Spam filters provided by Internet Service Providers consider reputation not only when allowing your email through the main gate, but also when determining whether your email should be filtered or go into the inbox. Your reputation may be good enough to reach this point, but bad enough to get you filtered if your content is really spammy looking. In reverse, a good reputation can also help you overcome some spammy content (but it all depends on the situation and the content involved).

Content
This one is obvious and is all about making sure your email doesn’t look like spam. At one point, not looking like spam mostly just meant not using “gotcha” words and phrases like “Free Loan Just for You and Family!” or “Open This Right Now!” or “$5000 dollars, free inside for you my best friend!” Now it can also mean not sending image only / image heavy emails (as 50% of spam is image only at this point) and making sure your HTML code is properly formatted and clean.

What Does VerticalResponse Do to Ensure Excellent Delivery?

We’re Anti-Spam
Everyone says they’re anti-spam, but we really, really mean it. We respond to and investigate every single complaint that comes in to our abuse desk, we quickly deal with clients who receive complaints (before they start causing delivery problems), and we even look over every email our clients launch to make sure nothing suspicious or fraudulent can make it out the door. This keeps complaints to a minimum, which is a big part of maintaining a strong reputation for our IP Addresses.

We Automate Bounce / Unsubscribe Processing
By automating this process (like many of our competitors), we ensure no users can abuse our IP Addresses by ignoring bounces and unsubscribes. This also helps us keep an excellent reputation.

We Use Feedback Loops
We have feedback loops set-up with every single ISP that is known to offer one. This means if someone clicks Report Spam at Hotmail, that Hotmail trusts us to take action on the complaint. It also means that when someone clicks such a button at a participating an ISP (like Hotmail), VerticalResponse users don’t have to worry they’ll accidentally send mail to that person again as we automatically unsubscribe recipients who treat a client’s email in this way from that client’s list.

We Use Authentication Protocols
We authenticate client email through the use of the three currently major authentication protocols: SPF (Sender Policy Framework), Sender-ID and DomainKeys. With SPF and Sender-ID we have published records that state our mail domains are allowed to send email on behalf of our own IP Addresses. With DomainKeys we sign each email with a key that the recipient server can then use to verify that we actually sent the email. These are a very important part of maintaining a good sending infrastructure.

What Can You Do to Help Ensure Excellent Delivery and Response?

Keep a Clean Mailing List
Be sure everyone on the mailing list has specifically requested info from or about your company. Also make sure you’re not mailing previously unsubscribed or bounced addresses. That went out of style a long time ago.

Treat Subscribers with Respect
Don’t mail subscribers too often and clutter their inbox with mail they don’t want. Set expectations at the time of sign-up: “This is what we’re going to send you. And we’re going to send it to you this often.” Also try to maintain a relationship with the subscriber. Don’t mail them sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails. How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I would say once a week to once a month is a good range to keep in mind.

Design With Delivery in Mind
Don’t just put a big image together in Illustrator and think you’re good to go. Make sure the email is easy to read (consider paragraph length and fonts), that images are being used only to enhance the HTML / text content (not as the sole content), and that the email is something that the subscriber would expect to receive based upon their sign-up.

Umpteen Ways to Build Your Email List

admin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:07:49 -0700

Getting permission to send someone an email is probably the toughest, yet one of the most important, things you can do. Why is it so tough? Because you have to gain your potential recipient’s trust, that’s why. They need to feel comfortable that you won’t abuse their valuable and personal information.

You’re aware of how much email you receive on a daily basis and how infuriating it can be when you receive one that is unsolicited. It’s exactly like those telemarketers that never ask you if you have a minute to listen to them when they call during dinner, or the faxes you never asked for that come in and waste your paper.

Developing an email list can be quite a challenge. The two most important things you need to strive for are size and quality. How can you build your list while maintaining the overall good quality? Here a few ideas that will help you start.

Form it Up!

The first thing you must do immediately, right now, stop reading...place a registration form prominently on your website and promote it heavily. Start driving people who visit your site directly to the registration form and you’ll be amazed at how many people will end up filling it in.

How it works - Most Email Service Providers (ESPs) provide an easy-to-use form-building tool. This tool walks you through a series of steps enabling you to create your own form that you can customize to fit your look and feel. The best part? It just takes a few minutes to create. Once you’ve built your form to collect email addresses you will be provided with the HTML code to put on your site. Simply give this code to your hosting company or web designer to include on your home page and sub-pages. Put it on as many pages as you can so you’ll have a better chance of capturing that email address. Some forms are free to use and others charge you monthly to host your data depending on how large your list is, so be sure you know up front what costs, if any, you’ll incur.

Don’t Pry

Collect only the information you need for registration and basic analysis and leave it at that until you’ve developed more of a relationship with them. Requesting sensitive information such as age and phone numbers can deter people from completing the registration process. Will you be sending your recipients something by postal mail in the future? If so, you’ll need to ask for their postal address. If you only want to know where they live you might at least want to ask for zip code. Then you can do a look up on the cities in which they reside. At the very least you’ll want email address and first name, in the event you’ll personalize your email (i.e. Dear Jane).

Also beware of the laws. If you do collect information make sure you know exactly what you can do with it. There are not only laws for anti spam, but also telemarketing and fax laws as well.

Guarantee Privacy

These days, people live in fear of having private information exposed. Assure your website visitors that you’re not a business who harvests email addresses for unscrupulous purposes. Put your money where your mouth is and prominently display your privacy policy and contact information prominently on your site. If you don’t have one, get one, fast. You’ll be surprised at how many visitors go to your privacy policy page to make sure you’re a real entity.

Leverage the Web

Once you’ve highlighted the newsletter and registration form on your site the next step for you is to research other places on the Internet where you can advertise your newsletter. Remember, you can advertise your product or service, but why not treat your newsletter like a product or service too? Here are some ideas you can implement to grow your email list.

Complimentary Sites – What other sites do your visitors go to? It’s easier to find out than you think. If you’re ranked as a highly visited site on the web, the traffic ranking site Alexa will tell you. Simply go to: www.alexa.com, type in your site URL see where/if you come up in the rankings of all website traffic. If your site is “ranked” you’ll be able to review the list of other sites your users visit. Identify them, visit them and see if they have advertising or barter opportunities for your product or newsletter sign up.

Pop-up Windows - Pop-up windows can be very effective if done correctly. We’re not talking about those annoying advertising pop-ups that display all over your computer screen and are impossible to get rid of. We’re talking about a simple small unobtrusive pop-up window that appears when someone is about to leave your site. For example, if you are selling a product from your site, after your customer purchases from you why not use a pop-up window with your opt-in form highlighting the value they’ll get if they sign up for your email? You’ll be amazed at how many people will add their email address to your list. If you don’t ask for it, you won’t get it.

Conversely if you’re not selling a product or service you can still take advantage of using a pop-up a window whether they enter OR leave your site with your form on it. Just remember, some percentage of your visitors will have a pop-up blocker activated with their browser so those visitors won’t see be able to see them.

Newsletter Barter – We know you don’t want to think your recipients read other newsletters and visit other sites, but they do! Try to find these newsletters or emails that your potential readers might enjoy. Then contact the owner of site to see if they would be interested in bartering space. The definition of bartering is simply trading advertising space with another company within their emails or on their website. In a barter situation you would simply give the site owner your website address (URL) specifically to the page where you have your opt-in form and copy that outlines the benefits of receiving your email. If you’re just starting out building your list and you don’t have that many email addresses, you can additionally offer to put their link on your site. This can end up working very well, so identify those and make contact with them to get your offering in their emails. Then sit back and watch your list grow!

Online Retailers Ask!

If you are an online retailer you can collect email addresses in a number of ways.

You can ask for permission to email your customers during the purchase process with a checkbox opting them in.
You can ask for permission to email your customers after they’ve purchased.

In the latter (#2) you might want to ask for permission after a customer has purchased by directing them to your confirmation page. If they’ve just had a positive experience purchasing from you, chances are that a good portion of them will sign up for your “special offers” and they’ll remember they gave you permission and your response rate should be higher.

Obtaining Permission Offline

If you have an offline business like a retail shop, a spa, salon, restaurant or doctor’s office, there are many ways to get permission to email your customers. Compared to ads in newspapers, direct mail, or telemarketing, email marketing can be very cost-effective. Here are a few ideas for getting email addresses from your visitors:

Fishbowls – If you have a counter or checkout stand try placing a fishbowl and offer something your customers could win for free for giving you their business card. If your customers aren’t in the business card carrying type, then print out some sign-up forms and put them near the fishbowl. Fishbowl not your thing? Get an acrylic ballot box with a sign up form attached and place it prominently at your counter.

Sign-up Book – If neither fishbowls or acrylic boxes aren’t right for your business, place a fancy registration book prominently near or on your checkout counter and have people register their postal and email addresses in the book to get special offers and announcements. Then daily or weekly, input those addresses into your contact manager or directly into your Email Service Provider account. Immediately send a welcome email thanking them for joining your list and describe the benefits of getting your email.

Kiosks - More and more retailers are installing kiosks that enable you to collect email addresses electronically. The great thing about a kiosk is that when it’s not being used for people registering for your emails you can use it to display advertisements about products that visitors may not have seen. Kiosks can be pretty elaborate but they can also be as simple as a computer near the checkout with your site on the screen and your opt-in form displayed prominently.

Snail Mail

You may find that you have a great list of postal addresses for your customers or prospects but you lack email addresses for them. Wouldn’t it be great to have a choice whether to use email, direct mail or telemarketing to communicate with your recipients?

One interesting tactic that we’ve seen from customers is to send recipients a postcard (that’s right a good old fashioned snail mail postcard) to tell them about the benefits of giving out their email address. You can either ask them to call you, or direct them to a web page where you outline the benefits of them joining with their email address and include your opt-in form. Give them an incentive to join such as a discount or something free. This generally works at motivating someone to join. (Just like the Don, make him an offer he don’t refuse.) By the way, we’ve found that this can be a very effective way to change your direct mail recipients into email recipients saving you direct mail costs in the long run.

Telemarketing

Many businesses have had existing lists long before email became so prevalent. And you may have postal information on them but you may also have phone information on them. Wouldn’t it be great to get email addresses for these prospects and customers so that you can easily and more cost-effectively communicate to them?

“Update your information” campaign – Your telemarketing campaign could revolve around an information update. Simply ask your customers if they’d mind updating their information with you on the phone. Refer to their postal address (if you have it so they know you are who you say your are), then ask if they’d mind getting email offers from you instead of postal mailings. If they’re your customers you’ve got a better chance at getting this information then if they’re prospects.

You’ll get some amount of people declining because perhaps they get enough email or perhaps they just don’t trust that you are who you say your are. Don’t be offended, you’ll get some percentage of people that do give you this information and it’s better than not having any, right?

If you’ve got a larger list it might be tough for you to call them in-house. Outsourcing this task might make more sense. If you’ve got a list of a few hundred, set aside some time each day to make 10 calls. You might be surprised at what you’ll get.

Once you build your list and start communicating to your recipients remember: you made a promise to them about what you would send them when they joined. Try to avoid straying from that promise, it’s all about trust in the end. If you do stray you will have a greater chance of losing them and you’ll spend your time patching your reputation instead of growing your list.

Testing Your Way to a Better Email Marketing Campaign

admin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:57:25 -0700

Testing can be an important part of your email marketing strategy. A simple tweak in your email campaign could squeeze in some additional clicks, opens or even added revenue! Here are some ideas for each part of this rule that can hopefully help you garner better results.

Get “Control” Of the Situation

What is a “control”? It’s you putting a stake in the ground regarding what you think will work for your audience OR using what you have commonly used to date as a benchmark. You can’t really determine if any changes you make to your campaign in your test are having an effect unless you have a comparison baseline. That’s where the control message comes in; it’s a handy reference point that allows you to evaluate those “tweaks” you made in your campaign.

So take your best stab at developing your creative, copy, offer and messaging and always test against that control email. Once you’ve beaten your control, that is, garnered a better result, the new email becomes the control.

Test Your List

A good way to test your list is to simply divide your mailing list into different segments, send each group a different email, and determine which one got the better response. This usually works best with larger lists (over 1000); smaller lists may have a sample size too small to be statistically valid. Either way it doesn’t hurt to try.

Test Small, Roll Big!

If you’re fortunate enough to have a larger list of 10,000 or more, consider reserving 20 percent of the total addresses for testing purposes. If a particular tactic yielded great results with this group, then you can feel confident rolling it out to the remaining 80 percent of your mailing list. Feel like being a cowboy? Test a new offer to your entire list and compare it with the previous mailing. Yeehah!

Test Different Variables Within Your Email

When you try a new idea, make sure it contrasts with the wording, theme or style of your control email – it’s the only way to really determine what works and what doesn’t work. The key here is to get them clicking. With so many different variables you can test, here are just a few:

Offer – Your offer is very important so let’s get it right. Once you have your list segments in order try some different offers to your list. Try to get the offer in the subject line if you can.

Test a hard sell (Buy now $29.95) vs. soft sell (include content around your offer).
Test pricing – 29.95 vs. 39.95.
Test varying discount levels – 20% vs. 30% off.
Test a free offer such as a offering a free product with purchase vs. no free product.
Test free shipping vs. discount.
One product vs. multiple products.
Test a multi-step approach – Free Trial vs. hard sell.

Look and feel – You’ve built a “control” based on your brand and what you are trying to accomplish. Since a good portion of your response is based on your creative, you can learn by testing specific variables within your email as it relates to your general look.

Colors and fonts – Try not to stray TOO far from your branded image but if you’re looking to boost response do a test, see if it works. (Keep in mind filtering rules from Creating your Email.)
Mail format - Test text vs. HTML, long vs. short form or columns vs. vertical layout.
Length of message – Include the entire message in the email or just a small teaser with a link to the rest of the information.
Degree of personalization - Test no personalization vs. personalized name.
Subject line – Your subject line, as I’ve mentioned, is one of the most important parts of your email. If it doesn’t get opened you don’t get your desired results. So go ahead and test within the subject line to increase your open rates. If you can, get your list of those who did not open your email, and send another one with a different subject line.
Test your offer wording – 20% discount and complimentary shipping vs. Complimentary shipping and 20% discount.
Test the word “free” vs. Complimentary to do a “filter” test.
Different article headlines from your newsletter – 5 Tips – How to Grow Tomatoes vs. Growing Tomatoes – Your Guide

Test Your Mailing Days

The day of the week and even the time of day when an email is received can have a significant effect on the response. Does your audience consist largely of people with desk jobs who check email throughout the day, or do they check personal accounts in the evening hours? Are your clients located in one region of the country or spread across several time zones?

The impact of timing will vary according to the target market for each company, so there’s no hard-and-fast rule. The only way you can determine what’s best for your audience is to supplement common sense with trial-and-error.

Test Your Frequency

This is the toughest of all to test. You really need to track how often you’re mailing and the decline of response as well a possible increase/decrease in unsubscribes.

The volume of email you send, as well as the frequency with which you mail your list affects the response. It’s generally accepted that “regular” emailing is more effective than sporadic efforts, but does regular mean twice a week or once every two weeks? It really depends on what you told your recipients when they registered. If you do test, don’t stray too far from what they expect and only test a small segment to start.

Also be aware of your frequency as it relates to bounces and unsubscribes. If you mail too sporadically, you’re likely to lose your recipient’s interest or they’ll change email addresses in the meantime and forget to inform you. If you mail too much you are likely to frustrate them. Find your balance.

Keep Testing

There’s no magic bullet with email testing, but even the seemingly smallest change could produce dramatic results. Just because email marketing is more affordable than most forms of advertising doesn’t mean you can afford to squander what you’ve invested. A well-conceived testing program is sure to improve the results of your email campaigns – and your bottom line.

Most importantly incorporate the changes one at a time. If you introduce a number of new twists to your traditional approach, there’s no reliable way to tell which one is responsible for the success or failure of the new email campaign.

Your Checklist for Choosing An ESP

admin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:50:18 -0700

Generally speaking, it’s good to have options. But occasionally, having too many alternatives can be a curse, not a blessing. When searching for an Email Service Provider (ESP), there’s no shortage of choices, but selecting the right ESP from a staggering array of candidates can be a daunting task. Here is a list of criteria you may want to start with when deciding who to choose an online Email Service Provider.

Self-examination

What are the volume and frequency of campaigns?
Do you require creative design?
What is your budget?
What metrics do you require?
Do you need a dedicated Account Manager?

Vetting out The Candidates

Get a final list of candidates
Call references
How long have they been in business?
Who is their target market?
What is their client businesses
Have they received reviews?
Type their names into Google Groups and see how many abuse complaints they have.

Service Level

Do you need a full service agency that will do it all for you?
Do you need self–service where you have access to an online tool and you do all of the work?

Trial Offers

Can you try before you buy to test deliverability as well as user functionality?

Price

Is there a set up fee?
Are there monthly recurring charges or is it a pay-per-use model?
Are there full service charges?
Do you have to pay minimums?
Can you pay by credit card?
Is there a contract needed?

Customer Service

What methods of communication does the ESP provide? Email, phone support, live chat?
Is there a dedicated Account Manager?
How long does it take customer service to respond to your inquiries or complaints?

Q & A

Is there a Q & A procedure for testing email on various browsers, computers, operating systems and email readers to guarantee your email will render properly in the greatest possible number of environments.

Features

Email Creation Options
- Are there email templates/layouts and if so what do they look like?
- Can I have a template that reflects my brand/looks like my website?
- Is there a text-only email feature?
- Can you use your own HTML code?
- Are there HTML tools so I can detect broken links?
- Is there automatic link tracking that provides click-through reporting.
- Is a “Spam Check” feature available? One that scans email content and generate reports on words or phrases that might prevent your message from passing through a spam filter.
Delivery
- List Check: Is there a scan for improperly formatted email addresses and “spam catcher” addresses is triggered to keep your list clean and your bounces low?
- ISP Relations: What is the company doing with regards to ISP relations?
- Is there an ISP relations group/person on board?
- Are they a member of the Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC)?
- Are they CAN-SPAM compliant?
- Do they require your users to follow CAN-SPAM and if so how?
- Do they support SPF or Domain Keys?
Reporting

Do they track total number sent, that is total number of emails sent, after accounting for de- duplication, unsubscribes and bounces?
Opens – how many people that get HTML email opened?
Clicks – how many recipients clicked on a link?
Bounces – How do they calculate bounces?
Unsubscribes – Do they manage the unsubscribe process and if so how?
What types of charts and reports are available?
Do they track domain performance (i.e. aol.com, yahoo.com etc.) and opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes on them?
Do they have charts that will compare campaign performance?
Do they have charts that give response curve over time?
Can I download any of my data at any time?
Do they offer a non-responder download, that is recipients who failed to click or open a message.

List Management

Is there an easy way to upload my list?
What format does it have to be in?
Do they de-duplicate my email addresses so I don’t send them more than one email in a campaign?
Do they offer a list-building tool than can put on my site to collect email addresses?
Can I have custom fields and if so, how many?
Do they offer a confirmation email after someone signs up using the form?
What do they do to protect my lists? Are their servers in a secure location?
Will I have 24/7 access to my lists?

The search for an ESP that can maximize the effectiveness of your email campaigns without breaking the budget. In a world of options it pays – in the short term and the long run – to make the right choice. Getting answers to the previous questions will help you find the best match for your business.

Six Tips to Improve Email Delivery Rates

admin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:38:23 -0700

Use opt-in form instructions

Provide clear, step-by-step directions that indicate how subscribers can guarantee delivery of your emails straight to their inboxes. After registrants complete an opt-in form on your website and click “submit”, direct them to a page which suggests they add your email address to their address books. Then, to make the process nearly foolproof – and keep people from abandoning the task in frustration - provide specific instructions for each of the major ISPs (AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail etc.)

Use emails as reinforcement vehicles

In all of your email communications, make sure you include a line of copy – at the top of the message - reminding subscribers to add your email address to their address book. Placing this reminder at the top of the email ensures it will be read even if your content is blocked due to the users’ preference settings and gives them the opportunity to add you right then and there.

For example:
To view all images and links, please add Weekly_WorkZ_News@mail.vresp.com to your address book now.

Host your newsletter

Combine both images and text in your emails. Then, if graphics are stripped from your emails due to the recipient’s preferences, at least they are left with text they can read. If you must use an image as the dominant form of communication (we know, some graphic designers won’t have it any other way!), then insert a link at the top of the email that lets people read the message without interference.

For example:
“If you have trouble viewing this newsletter - click here for the online version.

Use the link to redirect the reader to a page where you host the newsletter. This increases the probability that your email will get read and that subscribers will add you to their address books.

Use a filter

Run your email through a spam filter before you launch your campaign. If words get caught in the filter, replace them with alternatives that will pass the test before proceeding with your mailing. This easy-to-perform trial may dramatically reduce the risk of your email being mislabeled as spam.

Meet the Challenge Response

Make sure you reply to any “challenge responses” you receive. A challenge response is an attempt to verify the sender of an email and that the administration of the list is not being mismanaged. When a challenge response is initiated, the sender will receive a message asking you to respond with a particular code. Simply enter the password; doing so marks you as a responsible emailer and may prevent the loss of a relationship. If managing these responses becomes burdensome, you might consider hiring a part-time employee to handle this task.

Market to those that want to hear from you

If you know people “double opted-in” - meaning they checked a box requesting an email and took a second step to click on a link in an email to subscribe - segment them in a separate list. Slowly, over time, add your clickers and openers to that “responsive” list. Your goal should be to transfer as many people as you can onto that list, since it will be the one with the highest response rate and the lowest complaint rate. Just because you have a prior business relationship with someone doesn’t mean they want to communicate with you via the email medium, so work diligently to manage your list so you can easily determine your core recipients.

Employing these practices will improve your message delivery, but don’t view them as a one-off solution. As with most relationships, quality email relationships grow with time and care. Reinforcement is key. So don’t be afraid to let your customers know you love them by launching a new campaign. After all, they’re only a click away.