What is Co-registration?
Co-registration is the process of subscribing to two or more email newsletters at once that are offered to you, usually in a promotion/contest or e-commerce setting.  In some cases the Co-Reg option is pre-checked which is a practice I find to be sleazy at best.

Co-registration takes place when two websites partner to build their respective email lists. For example, when a visitor to your website registers for your newsletter, you can offer him/her a chance to sign up for newsletters from the partnering website.

I don’t believe in co-registration
I’ve never believed in the benefits of co-Reg.  For me, the bad far out ways the good.  Especially now when people have less time and their memory of “opting-in” to some additional newsletter during a purchase or promotion just doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

With Co-Reg lists, unsubscribes tend to be very high and they also generate a large percentage of spam complaints.  Open-rates are usually dismal as well.  This is especially true when the subscriber uses AOL, Hotmail or other “free” email accounts.  The mark as spam button becomes their only measurable action.

Here are a few quotes about Co-Reg from some other email minds:
“In all seriousness, Co-Reg can be a dangerous practice in regards to reputation & deliverability. Tread very carefully indeed.” – @AndrewBonar, Email Deliverability Consultant

If Omaha Steaks did a Co-Reg subscription contest to win an iPad, vegans would subscribe. Each vegan that didn’t win would report the “winner announcement” email as spam. – @JaCaldwell, Red Pill Email Blog
(Okay before the vegans start hating on John, the same would happen if meat-eaters subscribed to win an iPad at Tofu.com.  I’m just sayin’)

And I would be remiss if I didn’t include something from the Pro Co-Reg side.  Here’s a good article from Morgan Stewart at ExactTarget that covers some of the benefits when Co-Reg is done right.

The days of the shotgun approach are over.  You should build your list from people who are interested in your company, products and/or services.  They subscribe because they perceive value. Not because of a contest Co-Reg deal with another website.

If you are looking for ideas to build your email list, there are much better options to consider.  Take a look at this post: “15 innovative ways to get more subscribers“.  Some really good ideas and examples to help you build your subscriber list.

Wait, there’s more!
As a late addition to this post I went to subscribe to the Ben & Jerry’s newsletter when I saw this at the bottom of the subscribe form. “By providing this information, you acknowledge that Ben & Jerry’s may send you information, samples or special offers we feel may be of interest to you about Ben & Jerry’s, or other carefully-selected companies. If you would like more information, please read our Privacy Policy.”

Other carefully-selected companies? REALLY! How can they possibly know what other companies I would be interested in without even asking what my interests are?  Maybe that is their problem with their email marketing.

Please take a moment to leave your comments about Co-Reg.  These are my views and while I know I’m not alone, I understand many out there have a much different view on the subject.

Cheers, Chris

Takeaway: Co-registration can help build your list, but if you don’t do it exactly right you could do major damage to your brand and sender reputation.

Other great posts by Chris!

About the Author:

Christopher Donald is currently a Partner and VP of Sales and Marketing at Inbox Group, LLC based in Dallas, where he oversees U.S. and International sales of the Inbox Group email marketing service (SaaS). Chris has worked on the front lines of internet sales and marketing since 1995 and directly in email marketing since 2000.

Website: http://www.inboxgroup.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/inboxgroup
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/inboxgroup

Jeff from Return Path emailed me this morning to tip me off to a new full court press by some industry heavyweights to combat spam, spoofing and phishing. According to the Online Trust Alliance, only 50% of leading retail companies overall have adopted SPF/SIDF or DKIM to authenticate their email. While eCommerce companies seem to be doing a better job at adopting this approach, we still have a long way to go.  That being the case, any effort (especially a strong brand joint effort) is worthy of praise and deserves some exposure.

Here’s what Return Path has to say about this new initiative…

Return Path, announced today the launch of Domain Assurance, an audit and registry service aimed at battling phishing and spoofing by enabling the widespread use of email authentication protocols. The service leverages Return Path’s relationships with the top ISPs around the world and its reach with 2,500 brand-name clients. It is currently in beta with a commercial launch planned for Q3 2010.

Domain Assurance provides companies with an audit of all email streams to determine if they are properly authenticated. Return Path’s team of email experts can then assist companies to authenticate all of their email – corporate, transactional and marketing. The company’s domains then go onto a registry and any improperly authenticated email coming from that domain can be blocked by mailbox providers with confidence. Companies that have registered will also receive immediate notification of spoofing and phishing attacks to their brands. In turn, ISPs and other mailbox providers will be able to protect their customers from phished emails pretending to be from registered companies.

Return Path has extended its current relationships with Yahoo!, Comcast and Tucows to include the use of Domain Assurance, bringing the product’s coverage at launch to almost 400 million mailboxes worldwide. In addition, Cloudmark, which provides carrier-grade messaging infrastructure and security solutions, will make the service available to its customers who service over 1 billion users worldwide. This is in addition to Return Path’s current partnerships with more than 130 ISPs and mailbox providers covering more than 1.8 billion inboxes around the world through its Certification service.

“We are huge proponents of DKIM and its application as an extra security barrier to protect our nearly 300 million Yahoo! Mail users worldwide,” said Mark Risher, Head of Product Management and Spam Czar for Yahoo! Mail. “We look forward to working with companies like Return Path to further help spread the adoption of domain keys technology across the industry and further reduce the number of spammers and phishing threats.”

“This is an important step in protecting our customers,” said Jordan Rosenwald, Manager of Anti-Abuse Technology for Comcast. “With Return Path auditing branded senders before Comcast and other mailbox providers discard unauthenticated email, we’re protecting our customers from phishing on a level and size that’s not been done before. This is an important and exciting move for the industry as a whole.”

“Making the internet easy and safe is important to Tucows and with Return Path’s Domain Assurance, an additional level of protection against phishing and spoofing can be realized. The brand owners and Return Path have taken the onus and risk out of dropping messages that are not properly DKIM signed allowing Tucows to confidently utilize DKIM and further protect our OpenSRS Hosted email customers,” said Garrick Lau, Manager, IT Security and Compliance, Tucows Inc.

“When your brand is as well-known as ours you are going to be a target for phishing attacks,” said Sal Tripi, Senior Director of Operations and Compliance, Publishers Clearing House (PCH). “If undetected, these attacks can hurt our brand reputation, make consumers wary of email and can harm our loyal customers. There are direct costs to these attacks in the form of increased customer service and loss of revenue as a result of consumer fear. Protecting our customers and improving online trust is a key initiative for PCH.”

Email authentication held out the promise of ending phishing and spoofing by giving businesses a way to identify their email and giving mailbox providers a means to block malicious email that purported to be from a well-known brand when it was not.

Unfortunately, many companies have struggled to implement the standards correctly or consistently. In turn, ISPs and other mailbox providers have been unable to unilaterally block unauthenticated email for fear that consumers would not receive wanted email.

“We want to remove the hurdles that businesses face in implementing authentication protocols so that they can fulfill their promise to improve the health of the email ecosystem,” said George Bilbrey, President, Return Path.

There is a growing subculture emerging in the email industry.   This narrow subculture is built around the role of the email deliverability consultant.  These email folk heroes often hold “silver bullets” that dramatically alleviate problems caused by poor email deliverability.  Whether it’s resolving sender reputation issues, aligning sectors of your email program to meet legal compliance, or ensuring that all technical considerations are met, these masked magicians with assistants named Tonto can help.

There seems to be a critical knowledge gap that needs to be addressed.  Often the requests to hire an industry “folk hero” (consultant) originate from a marketer who wants to fully optimize the organization’s email program.  Factors that optimize programs include, but are not limited to, list quality and data collection, increased open rates, better ROI tracking, and achieving optimal inbox placement rates.  As much as marketers might want an optimized program, they often do not fully recognize the technology challenges of getting email delivered to achieve these desired results.   When that happens, for certain organizations, it’s time for The Email Deliverability Consultant: Email’s Lone Ranger.

A marksman who gets his hands dirty
Depending on the scope of the project, these consultants offer a wide range of deliverability services, including, but not limited to a deep understanding of list quality and data collection, email authentication best practices, setting up FBLs (Feed Back Loops), bounce handling and infrastructure.  Consultants also commonly help with sourcing, installing and configuring optimal specs for both commercial and open source MTAs (Message Transfer Agents).  Frequently, the scope of the project grows into in-depth consulting on email engagement, response or retention campaigns or designing strategies that integrate complimentary marketing channels such as mobile platforms and social media.

Masters of disguise
As we know, consulting by nature is a feast or famine type career.  And often, email deliverability consultants are positioned in precarious situations and exploited by bad actors.  Suspect senders often pump consultants for information on where to find responsive email lists or, even worse, ask about revealing key contacts at Yahoo, or other ISPs.  Deliverability consultants’ clients largely come from referrals and word-of-mouth.  That said, they live by a strict moral code of conduct, because they sometimes face important ethical decisions; at times, they must choose between a paycheck and literally firing a client.

The audit process
The audit process is a “state of play” snapshot of the deliverability climate within the organization.

Usually, deliverability consultants will require answers to a set of detailed questions  and an analysis of overall infrastructure (technical setup) before any type of contract is in place.  During the audit, clients may seed consultants on different types of emails (marketing, transactional, etc) where they could begin reporting on items such as blacklist status, reputation, authentication tests, content, and inbox placement rates, etc. Consultants will then try to identify trends within the email list, such as attrition rates, opens, clicks, and sign up rates.   Some feedback is then given to the client, but deliverability consultants generally need to access additional data, such as bounce handling, FBL monitoring, send rates, and identifying email streams.

Contracts
A typical contract is somewhere between 30-90 days, with ongoing support in place.  However, most organizations are likely to add to the scope of services and have other goals in mind beyond deliverability.  These days, organizations that have prevalent stakeholders will go to great lengths to gain an edge over their competitors.  So, in many cases, an ongoing contract can grow out of the original short-term agreement.

The behemoths in our industry are companies like ReturnPath , Pivotal Veracity (Unica) and Goodmail which is widely known for certified inbox placement.  These companies collaborate extensively with established ESPs and large enterprises.  However, below I’ve listed a few other respected industry resources, the majority of which have over a decade of email deliverability experience. Each has experience with organizations that range in size from ESP startups to F500 corporations.

Takeaway: In their work as Email’s Lone Rangers, these consultants can most often treat a company’s deliverability afflictions, so that key members of the organization can hop back in the saddle without too much damage done to its sender reputation.

This article was inspired by:

• · Jaren Angerbauer, DeliveryVision
• · Andrew Bonar,Emailexpert
• · Micky Chandler, Whizardries
• · Greg Kraios, Den of Deliverability
• · Laura and Steve Atkins, Word to the Wise

“Hi-yo, Silver, away!”

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

About the Author:
Fred Tabsharani is engaged in strategic marketing initiatives for Port25 Solutions, Inc., a globally recognized email software company which serves Email Service Providers and leading enterprises. After receiving his MBA from John F. Kennedy University, Fred immersed himself into the world of email deliverability and constantly discovers new insight from thought-leaders in the email industry. He is a columnist for a few industry blogging portals and is also a member of several email based organizations including but not limited to MAAWG and the Email Experience Council. Fred’s goal is to continue honing his skills and knowledge in this space and to build timeless industry relationships that transcend business goals.

Using Outlook for Email Marketing
Email Marketing Laws
Buying or Renting an Email List
Email List Building and Growth
Email Reporting and Stats
Email HTML Creative Resources
Email Marketing Scalability and Growth
Email Marketing Support and Accountability
Email Marketing Tips & Tricks

So, you’re new to email marketing! We know how confusing that can be. Helping people get started in email marketing is why we created The eMail Guide! Have any questions? Send us an email: questions@TheeMailGuide.com or post a comment and we’ll be happy to respond!

So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get started!

Email marketing isn’t about what you send out. It’s about what you get back. Outlook or any other eMail client (using addons or plugins) just doesn’t support the reporting data which is so critical to building a winning email marketing strategy. At the most basic level, you need to know who opened your messages and Outlook can’t give you even this information.

Outlook means you have to handle list hygiene (removing unsubscribe requests and invalid addresses) manually. Don’t fool yourself into thinking this is not a lot of work because it is.

Outlook can tie up or even crash your company’s email server if you are sending out a lot of emails.

ISPs take a dim view of a lot of emails coming from one address/source. You may find your access turned off if you try to send out even just a few hundred eMails at one time. You may find your ISP shutting down your access or you might have server crashes as a result.

While there are creative templates available for Outlook, you really can’t be sure your creative design will translate on the receiver’s end as it looked on yours. An Email Service Provider provides the support to ensure your message’s creative arrives in the same condition it left. Considering Microsoft’s disregard for web standards with Outlook, this is a critical consideration.

Still don’t want to heed our advice and feel the urge to use Outlook?

Don’t put everybody in the CC field, use the BCC field. This prevents those you send to from seeing other’s addresses

• Check with your ISP to see what their outbound threashold is (the number of messages they will allow you to send out at once). This will fall somewhere between 20 – 50 addresses at a time.

• At the least if you want to go down this road, look into programs/plugins which work with Outlook for email marketing.

Knowing the basics of these laws is key to your success in email marketing. However, using a legitimate ESP will take most of that load off your shoulders since their livelihood depends on compliance. Any reputable ESP will ensure that you are provided the guidance you require to stay on the good side of the law with your email marketing campaigns.

Here are some other basic points you must follow to stay compliant with anti-spam laws in most regions:

• A valid reply (contact) address which is live and monitored.

• A propper unsubscribe address.

• Your physical address as an alternate for people to contact you at.

• Ensure your email header (subject line, from line and address) honestly represents who you are and the subject is not misleading.

Current anti-spam laws around the globe:

Asia
Australia
Canada (see also C-27 at CAUCE.org)
European Union
New Zealand
United Kingdom
United States (see also CAN-SPAM at Email Stats Center)

What’s your SPAM IQ? Take a test designed for email users here and find out!

Rule 1: You can’t legally buy an email list.
Rule 2: If someone is trying to sell you a list, refer to rule 1.

As for list rental, the only proper way is when a list owner or manager (not yourself), will send your message to their list either as a standalone message or an included advertisment.
Any other variations beyond this, fall into the realm of spam and will do your brand harm.

No Email Service Provider (ESP) will knowingly allow you to send to a list which is not permission based. In other words, you need to have a list of email addresses from people who have opted in to get email from you. You can’t buy permission.

Matt Vernhout of Thindata puts it in perspective in this video interview with The eMail Guide’s Jeff Ginsberg.

You can use your current contacts to build your own list. Send your first email to those you have established a relationship with and ask them to opt-in. When you do contact them, make sure you tell them front and centre, who you are and remind them of your relationship – which of course, is why they are getting an email from you.

Here are some more ways to help you build your email marketing list:

• Web forms: If you’ve got a website you should be asking people to sign up to your email newsletter there.

• Refer-a-friend: Include a forward to a friend link in your email newsletter and on your website. This is a great way to expose new potential subscribers to opt-in to your list.

• Social Sharing links should be included in all your emails and on your website.

• Always place a subscribe link right next to your unsubscribe link. If someone has been forwarded your message this is a golden opportunity to get them to join your mailing list. Never hide a remove or unsubscribe link in an email or shove it to the bottom. You’d rather have them unsubscribe then have them click the “report spam” button.

• Create a preference centre for your website. This automates management of accounts where your subscribers update their addresses, unsubscribe and change subscriptions. This will save you a lot of time and money.

• Offer incentives such as discount coupons or down-loadable content (white papers) to get people to sign up.

A word about postive and negative opt-ins:

• A positive opt-in is where you actually offer someone the chance to click a box to opt-in and recieve emails from you.

• A negative opt-in is where you might use your contact list to send them an email and give them the opportunity to then opt-out but, continue to send them email if they do not select to opt-out. In general, the positive opt-in method is the better way to go.

Email marketing is about building relationships and positive relationships take time and effort. The good news is that you already have relationships you’ve built and nurtured with current contacts and those contacts will form the foundation of your email marketing success.

As mentioned earlier, email clients such as Outlook don’t provide any statistical reporting. You can’t judge how effective your efforts are if you don’t know who opens your messages or who clicks through on links in them. Having this data is absolutely necessary if you want to get anything out of an email marketing strategy.

With a reputable ESP you’ll get a range of reports such as:

• Delivered: how many emails were sent out.

• Opens: how many emails were actually opened.

• Clicks: (AKA Click-Throughs or Click-Through-Rate) – how many links were clicked on.

• Bounces: a hard bounce is a non-existant address, while a soft-bounce means the email just didn’t get to the recipient that one time.

• Unsubscribes: how many people have opted to remove themselves from your list via the unsubscribe link.

• Forwards: how many email were forwarded by recipients.

• Conversions or Sales: number of those who’ve interacted or even purchased something on your website (via a link in your email).

More on metrics:
Email Stat Center
EEC Measurement Accuracy Roundtable

Most ESPs provide templates which are easy to customize for your needs. This reduces time and effort and frees up resources on your end to focus on other priorities. Anyone who’s ever dealt with an overtaxed creative department can tell you this is a life saver. If you need some creative inspiration, have a look at these eMail creative examples.

ESPs also easily support in-house creative designs as well. It’s usually a simple matter of cutting and pasting code to incorporate your creative.

You can NOT use MS Word to build HTML which is critical for creative email messages.

Coding HTML email messages is a very hard thing to do. Here are some links whic you will find helpful:

Email marketing templates
Campaign Monitor’s Guide to CSS Support in Email Clients
Template Zone

Or use a creative service to design a custom email template for you such as:
StyleCampaign

Using an Email Service Provider allows you to focus on the message and not on the technical problems of growing needs. Decide what your priorities are first before evaluating possible ESPs:

• Think ahead! Where is your list going?

• Do you see your list growing to thousands or hundreds of thousands?

• How many names you have on your list and how often you are sending to them all influences what solution may be right for you

What matters most to you regarding your email marketing needs?

• Is it throughput?

• Is it functionality/features?

• Is it data reporting?

Is the company you are thinking of working with stragetic and technical enough to get you where you want to go in the long term? You may have to try more than one vendor to see what solution fits your needs.  The eMail Guide has hundreds of eMail Service Providers listed and they all have their strengths and advantages — find a vendor who fits you and not the other way around.

The eMail Guide lists hundreds of ESPs

A good ESP can simply grow with you as your needs do. Most ESPs offer free trials and if your list is small enough, some offer a “free forever” service.

With an ESP it’s one stop shopping for both accountability and support. If you choose the in-house route, most support issues will require you to coordinate more than one department or individual to resolve the issue. This can result in “cat herding” and we all know you can’t herd cats.

We’ve complied a list of questions you should ask any Email Service Provider before you sign on the dotted line.

Scott Hardigree guides you through hiring an email marketing expert here.

• Start small and keep it simple!

• Connect with others and see what they are doing. A simple Google search for examples will bring up a lot of inspiration.

• Take a look at examples featured in industry blogs and at many Email Service Providers websites.

More helpful articles on email marketing:
What email marketers can learn from Sherlock Holmes
A good post to start with!
Glossary of email marketing terms explained in plain English
Knowing the lingo means a better comfort level and brings wisdom.
Great email marketing conversation starters
Some great talking points to get those meetings buzzing.
Using HTML to improve your click-through-rate
There’s more to it than just grapics and hyper-links.
Creating relevant email marketing campaigns
Your campaigns won’t work and your reputation will suffer if they are not relevant to your subcribers.
Never use a “no-reply” address…EVER
Your reply address should be monitored by a real person who responds to subscriber feedback.

It’s simple: I hate deliverability.
I can’t stand the word. And that is not a simple life when you are an email marketer. My skin crawls when deliverability is mentioned in the same sentence with, “one of the biggest issues” or “a big challenge in email marketing for coming years”. But hold on, I’m not “deliverophobic”. I’m not scared of the word deliverability. I’m just not pleased with how the term is used. Here is why:

Did you get the message?
Deliverability is how well your message is getting through — through to the inbox that is. Not through to your recipients heads. It combines all the issues concerning getting your messages in the inbox, nothing beyond that. And that’s the big problem.

Don’t mix it up!
The term deliverability mixes up technical problems with issues concerning common sense and marketing and that is not how it’s supposed to be. To put it simply: the technical stuff, your ESP should take care of that. But that doesn’t mean that they can guarantee the email is getting to the inbox. A part is to be done by the email marketer themselves. Those common sense and marketing issues should not only make that your message gets to the inbox, but also contribute to it getting opened, read and, if you can be so lucky, clicked.

“Interestablilty”
But what is a message in an inbox worth if it’s not being clicked and read and not contributing to your goals? Right, it’s worth nothing. I therefore would like to introduce the term “interestablilty” – making your message interesting. So interesting it moves your receivers to open your email and act on it. Mind though, this is not the same as relevance. So, what do we call the technical issues before that? Making sure the email makes it to the inbox? Let’s just call that email delivery.

More about “interestability” in my next post!

Until next time!
Jordie van Rijn

Takeaway: Getting the message through is a two part process. One part is delivering it to the inbox and the other is making your message highly interesting for the reciepent.

About the author
Jordie has more than 7 years of e-mailmarketing experience under his belt. Working at the dutch loyalty company Dunck “www.dunck.nl”, the focus on current customers and subscibers delivers a different view to marketing. Working with brands like AEGON, Cup-a-Soup, Unilever, CZ, Roche, Sport2000 and Univé. He has advised and realised many a customer life-cycle and engagement marketing concept. He spends his free time thinking about email marketing.

Email marketing is a powerful tool that enables marketers to track and trace almost every interaction with the prospect. But whether you like it or not, there are still some things that can not be measured properly. Although some reporting figures are sometimes presented as being accurate, the truth is that they are just a rough estimate of what is really happening. This article will help you get a better insight in these email marketing reporting techniques.

The viral effect reporting

Motivated by specific marketing actions or tickled by the interesting nature of an email campaign, people are often prepared to forward the email to the mailbox of new prospects. This is what we call the viral effect. Being able to measure it would be fantastic – just imagine how great it would be if you’d know how many times your email was forwarded by your contacts. And to which new specific prospects…

And yes…it is possible.

But only if you do it like this: just ask your contact to forward your email through a viral module. By using this technique, the email address of the sender will be logged, as well as the email address of the new receiver. This type of reporting will give you a precise view on the viral effect of your email campaign, telling you exactly which of your contacts forwarded the email to a new prospect. But be sure to handle the information you get from this reporting with care. Although you are in possession of the new prospect’s email address, in most jurisdictions you are not legally authorised to use it without prior consent from this new contact. In other words, you must still get the new prospect to opt-in to your list!

The viral marketing reporting myth

Even if a viral marketing module is the only correct reporting technique, IP address tracing is sometimes presented as a reliable technique to measure the viral effect. Which it isn’t.

When measuring the opened ratio of email marketing campaigns, it is possible to track the number of times an html email message was opened by a specific email address.  This technique makes it possible to define the number of opened messages and the number of unique openers. When tracing the different type of IP’s used by one e-mail address to open the same email message, you could conclude that the email was forwarded to a new contact. An IP address is normally related to one email address, so you would think that different IPs per email address are new users, thus forwarded messages. Wrong!

Some Internet Service Providers use one IP address for different internet connections. That’s why it could be perfectly possible that you have the same IP address as your neighbor. Same goes for companies: they often work with one IP address for the entire organization, making it impossible to trace forwarded messages within a company based on the IP address.

IP address tracing and opened html message tracking only give a rough estimate of what the viral effect of an email marketing campaign really is. This manner of reporting can’t be considered as being exact, but is only there to help marketers get an estimate of the effect (when they prefer not to use a viral marketing module).

Spam or deliverability reporting

One of the major concerns of email marketers is to get an opt-in message through the spam filters. Due to the continuous flow of spam messages, spam filters are becoming more strict. Email is not only filtered at ISP level, but is also facing company spam filters and personal spam filters. Different techniques used by these spam filters — from blacklisting to content analysis — make it very difficult to create the perfect spam-proof email message. The result is that opt-in emails will sometimes be considered as spam – and will be consequently blocked. Can’t we track these false positives and – like so-called bounce messages — resending them after the problem is recognized?

No…impossible.

False positives are impossible to trace. The incoming email message that is falsely detected as spam will immediately be deleted or relocated to a specific mailbox. All this is done without notification or activation of tracking mechanisms. It’s as if your email was delivered to the recipient and that he has deleted it without reading.

The only indication of an email possibly being a false positive is a low opened ratio of your e-mail campaign. You could then consider resending the email message to contacts that did not open the html email, this time with a different copy or a less complex design. But be aware that most email accounts have standard ‘no image view’ settings. The recipient decides whether he wants to get the images in the email or not. Which may prove to be a problem for opened html email reporting, since it works with an image to detect open ratios.

Nothing I can do about that?

Yes, you can. You can analyze the email message with something such as our SpamCheck – a simple and handy tool that is programmed to react like most of the standard spam filters. The interesting part is that the spam check tool will tell you exactly why your email message would have been blocked. This gives you the opportunity to adapt the content or html design of your email campaign, increasing your chances to get through spam filters considerably. Although this technique is extremely useful, it’s not 100% infallible. It simply is impossible to program a spam check with every spam filter technique on the continuously evolving market. So, only the major and most common spam filter techniques are taken into account.

You can also use inbox monitoring via third parties such as ReturnPath. This will give you a better insight in the amount of false positives and spam complaints. It will also help you to manage the reputation of your IP.

Takeaway: Reporting techniques such as viral effect reporting or deliverability reporting are used to give the closest reporting email marketers can get. Use these techniques as an indication – do not expect them to give you exact figures. Therefore it‘s important to know the nature of the metrics and the way they work.

About the author:

Kenny Van Beeck is a certified Marketing Experiments Email Marketing professional and is past president of the Belgian IAB email marketing taskforce. Hi is a common blogger and speaker in the field of email marketing. Also known as editor of the EmailGarage weekly tipmail with more than 5000 readers. As email marketing consultant he worked for several international companies such as Unilever, Thomas Cook, 3M, Microsoft, …

Jeff Ginsberg talks with Matt Vernhout, Director of Deliverability and ISP Relations, Thindata 1 to 1 at Pod Camp in Toronto.

Matt is an active blogger on everything from eMail marketing to video gaming. You can find him blogging at EmailKarma.net and of course, right here with us at The eMail Guide. He’s also very active in social and moderates The Email Marketers Club, an online community which boasts 3,700 eMail marketing professionals.

In the interview, Matt discusses some issues facing people using eMail marketing such as pushing the envelope of permission – you can’t transfer permission from one organization to another. Permission, as Matt points out, is granted directly to you and it’s not something you can purchase with a list. In fact, list rental done right means simply sending/placing an ad in someone else’s eMail list/campaign message in order to drive subscribers to your list.

Takeaway: Permission is granted directly to you. You cannot buy permission.

As outlined in Part I of Inbox Reserve, “Why Email must Reverse Engineer Social Now,” future engagement metrics and delivery patterns will be based on how subscribers’ social networks interact with a given brand.   Disclaimer: The strategies outlined below are congruent and/or complementary with advanced “opt-in” best practices.  It is safe to say that behavioral targeted messaging may not achieve the same level of granular social activity that a contemporary preference center would.

Inbox Reserve II: Socialized Subject Lines
Using fresh social data points gathered from an advanced preference center, future marketing based messaging will place your friends’ names or actions in the subject lines of emails associated with a given brand.  These personalized subject lines are a key tool for increasing your brand’s ability to engage subscribers, dramatically increase open rates and manufacture a better delivery reputation.  When you have targeted promotions that build value around this concept, connoisseurs of your brand will flock to this preference center.  Once there, they can opt-in to receive real-time notifications (or weekly digests, if they prefer) that tell them when members of their social ecosystem have taken “definitive” action involving a given brand.  Moreover, once permission is granted, subscribers will also see their friends’ images dynamically inserted into a well-designed email creative. They’ll be able to click on the images and ask their friends’ opinions of a product before making a purchase.  Here are two “plain” examples of future subject lines based on social activity within your network:

·         Real-Time-Notification: Mark from your network just purchased  Sees Candies at 30% off…

·         Weekly Digest:  14 members of your network purchased Sees Candies? Find out who!

Inbound, highly transparent subject lines of this nature are inherently credible. Their success further supports the theory that curious subscribers are also the most engaged.  Informed subscribers who choose to receive these types of messages are far more likely to engage because these notification are about your network first and the brand second.  Therefore, these subject lines seem more valuable and relevant to the subscribers.

Ever get a notification from Facebook that a certain friend of yours commented on your status?  You are much more likely to react positively to that message as opposed to a “brand first” subject line offering you a product at 30% off.   Moreover, you are less likely to click the “report spam” button because you are more loyal to the people in your network.

Reduced Spam Complaints
The most compelling reasons for brands to earn network permission from subscribers is that it dramatically reduces spam complaints.  Socialized email notifications are important because they prioritize a subscriber’s network first and the brand second. First, it’s far more palatable for a subscriber to open an email message with a friend’s name in the subject line and a friends’ picture in the creative because it creates a perception of relevance and allows for a far more customized experience. For example, if I were a subscriber and received such a message, I would probably refrain from clicking the “report spam” button because my main focus is on my network.  Secondly, personalized subject lines will cause your open rates and engagement index to skyrocket, enhancing your brand’s deliverability reputation.  ISPs will take notice of reduced spam complaints and brands will begin to see a higher inbox placement rate, resulting from more positive actions taken with this type of email.

Notifications and creatives of this nature are packed with relevancy.  Testimonials from members of a social network will influence subscribers’ purchasing decisions, which will drastically diminish the chances of a user clicking the “report spam” button.  The benefit is increased engagement, as network buddies chat about potential purchases. This leads to more delivered mail to the inbox.  Second Disclaimer: It’s important that we try not to associate this concept with Facebook page suggestions, simply because there is a monetary investment element in place here.  Members of your social network invested quality time in making a determination about a product or service and gave explicit permission to opt-in and receive exclusive messaging of this type.  So, it’s unfair to be skeptical because of earlier social media spam-related growing pains.

In Part III of Inbox Reserve, we’ll discuss the challenges brands will have in leveraging an advanced preference center and share some of the immediate benefits to any given brand; which include added credibility, reduced costs and subscriber validation.

Takeaway: Marketing emails will move from two dimensional, to three dimensional.  The dimensions include not only the brand and the subscriber, but the subscribers network as well.

About the author:

Fred Tabsharani is engaged in strategic marketing initiatives for Port25 Solutions, Inc., a globally recognized email software company which serves Email Service Providers and leading enterprises. After receiving his MBA from John F. Kennedy University, Fred immersed himself into the world of email deliverability and constantly discovers new insight from thought-leaders in the email industry. He is a columnist for a few industry blogging portals and is also a member of several email based organizations including but not limited to MAAWG and the Email Experience Council. Fred’s goal is to continue honing his skills and knowledge in this space and to build timeless industry relationships that transcend business goals.

With great features comes great responsibility.

Now any email marketing provider worth their salt will offer you personalization, and  it’s easier then ever before. Just a couple of clicks and you’ve personalized your email. ‘Wow, that was so simple. Can’t wait for the results,’ I hear you say. Well, think again, because if used incorrectly, this feature can sometimes do more harm than good.

Though most agree that email personalization is a good thing, there are varying views on how and when to use it. Some encourage you to personalize all your messages, no matter who you are sending it to . There are also voices warning that personalized emails may look like SPAM and end up in junk folders.

Now I am happy to offer my opinion, but it would only be words if not backed up with stats, right? That’s why GetResponse decided to perform a targeted analysis of personalized emails based on real user campaigns, then discuss the results with you.

We analyzed over 53, 000 unique messages sent form GetResponse accounts.  The results clearly show that emails with personalized subjects averaged 26% higher open rates and over 130% higher CTRs (click through rates) than emails without personalized subject lines. Pretty impressive at first glance!

Unfortunately, the same stats clearly show that email with personalized subject lines averaged 26% higher complaints and over 71% higher unsubscribe rates than emails without personalization. This time it doesn’t look as impressive. So are both viewpoints correct? I think I can provide some insight into these weird numbers.

Names catch the reader’s attention, no doubt about it. It’s clear that recipients are more likely to open and click through emails when they see their name in the subject line. They also tend to open personalized messages more often if they recognize (and trust!) the sender.

If recipients are automatically deleting emails with their name in the subject line, it’s probably because they don’t recognize the sender. Or just as bad, they might not find any interesting content in this message and decide to unsubscribe. Can you blame them? Imagine how annoying it must be to receive a message with “Dear Mick” in the subject but, absolutely nothing of interest to you in the entire message. You think someone sent it especially for you and find out it’s just another lame mass mailing. You get angry, label the message SPAM and unsubscribe from the list immediately!

You can reap the benefits of personalization AND avoid the pitfalls if you are conscientious about list hygiene and target your message content as much as possible. Use the name and/or business throughout the message, target the offers and discounts, mention previous purchases and preferences and so on. Then your recipients will know that you’re sincerely trying to give them what they need and would treat you as reliable sender.

Takeaway: Using personalization is a  powerful tool but, powerful tools must be employed correctly with skill and thoughfulness to achieve positive results.

About the author

Mick is the Key Account Manager for GetResponse Email Marketing. With over 7 years of Sales and Marketing experience Mick quickly adapted to Email when joining GetResponse in 2008. Now in charge of Business Development, Mick is the primary point of contact for new and existing customers with GetResponse. He spends the majority of his time interacting with them, understanding their needs and working to see those are met. Mick is experienced in social media and still continues to be involved in that aspect of GetResponse’s business. You’ll find him posting on the GetResponse Blog. You are also likely to run into him at any number of Email marketing conferences throughout the year.

Jeff Ginsberg, Chief Email Officer of The eMail Guide, interviews Stephanie Miller, VP, Global Market Development of Return Path at the MarketingSherpa eMail Summit 2010 in Miami.

Takeaway: Know what your inbox placement is. 20% of legitimate eMail is not reaching the inbox.

Relationships are not cheap – just ask any dating teenager. For some reason though, we often seem to forget that truth in business. Kenny Van Beeck ponders this issue as it relates to eMail marketing and the use of “noreply” addresses.

In many email marketing campaigns a noreply email address is used.
Why would you do that?

• Do you want to miss the deal of a lifetime, because they can’t reply?

• Do you want to enter the spam lists, because people didn’t want to hit the unsubscribe link?

• Don’t you want to get feedback of your readers?

• Do you want your reader to receive an automated response email on their out of office reply?

I always thought that the sole purpose of an email marketing campaign was to create response. And response is not only clicking on a link or filling in a form. It can also be contacting you by phone or replying to your emails. So don’t block it!

Sure I know why people use a noreply address. It’s easier not to respond instead off searching for a real reply within all the out of offices. What the hell, nobody said it would be easy and you can use rules to filter out those out of office messages or let your bounce management handle that.

So next time you send out your email campaign, it’s up to you. You can go for the easy way, but not the customer friendly way; or you can use a real “live” reply address and put a little effort into managing your customer relationship.

Takeaway: If you want something out of a business relationship, be prepared to put something into it.

About the author:
EmailGarage -  Kenny Van Beeck
Business Development Manager – Senior Email Marketing Consultant

Kenny Van Beeck is a certified Marketing Experiments Email Marketing professional and is past president of the Belgian IAB email marketing taskforce. Hi is a common blogger and speaker in the field of email marketing. Also known as editor of the EmailGarage weekly tipmail with more than 5000 readers. As email marketing consultant he worked for several international companies such as Unilever, Thomas Cook, 3M, Microsoft, …

• Web : http://www.emailgarage.com
• Blog : http://blog.emailgarage.com
• Twitter : http://twitter.com/emailgarage
• Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/EmailGarage/38837697150
• Linked In : http://be.linkedin.com/in/kennyvanbeeck

Reaching the inbox of your customers and prospects and generating high response are inextricably linked.

Subscribers quickly tire of irrelevant messages and will complain by clicking the “report spam” button, depressing response rates for all campaigns. The only way to improve inbox deliverability and response is to create compelling subscriber experiences.

Subscribers want email that has valuable and interesting content that promotes products they want to buy and that comes at a frequency that is neither too often nor too seldom

Focus on building a relationship
A single email can make or break a valuable customer relationship. So why are 89 % of today’s marketers still sending low-value, one-off broadcast email campaigns? It’s wiser to plan strategically and execute high-value individualized lifecycle marketing programs.

A Jupiter Research study unveiled that – despite the extra costs – engaging your audiences in more relevant communications increases net profits by an average of 18 times more than broadcast mailings. Even more important, relevance is of major influence in your email deliverability.

A Return Path study confirms this and highlights that most deliverability failures are caused by the marketer’s poor data collection habits and complaints from email recipients in response to the content and frequency of the marketer’s messages. Even the best email service provider cannot control these factors.

These factors rest in the hands of the marketer alone.

You have the data, now use it
In order to better understand your subscribers needs, you can analyze your transactional data (e.g. e-commerce sales), preference data (obtained through surveys) and behavioral data (e.g. clicks in an email).

Analysis will give you a pretty good understanding about what interests and drives email newsletter readers.

A professional email campaign management platform should provide you with plenty of data on your readers’ preferences and behavior.

Is your reputation at stake?
Marketers who believe that only the ESP (Email Service Provider / Platform) is responsible for deliverability to the inbox are wrong. The reputation of the broadcasted email is what determines inbox placement.

ESPs have no control over what kind of email gets sent, whether or not the subscribers value that email or how the marketer has collected his email addresses.

The vast majority of factors that affect inbox deliverability are about targeting the right offer, to the right subscriber, at the right frequency; data collection practices; and list quality.

Email service providers do have a ‘limited’ amount of influence, though. The infrastructure of the supplier – meaning how the servers are configured and whether or not the proper authentication and security protocols are in place – is an important factor to consider.

Email sent from improperly configured servers will be blocked by ISPs. Your service provider’s other clients can also have an impact on your deliverability. ISPs look at reputation on IP addresses as a whole – and sometimes groups of IP addresses.

So if you share an IP with marketers who engage in poor sending practices then your reputation will be tarnished, too. Check it out when you decide to work with an email service provider.

Takeaway: Make sure you know what factors affect your reputation with subscribers and act accordingly.

About the author:
EmailGarage -  Kenny Van Beeck
Business Development Manager – Senior Email Marketing Consultant

Kenny Van Beeck is a certified Marketing Experiments Email Marketing professional and is past president of the Belgian IAB email marketing taskforce. Hi is a common blogger and speaker in the field of email marketing. Also known as editor of the EmailGarage weekly tipmail with more than 5000 readers. As email marketing consultant he worked for several international companies such as Unilever, Thomas Cook, 3M, Microsoft, …

• Web : http://www.emailgarage.com
• Blog : http://blog.emailgarage.com
• Twitter : http://twitter.com/emailgarage
• Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/EmailGarage/38837697150
• Linked In : http://be.linkedin.com/in/kennyvanbeeck

Waltham, Mass. – January 13, 2010 – Unica Corporation (Nasdaq: UNCA), today announced that it has acquired privately-held Pivotal Veracity, a provider of tools that enable companies to optimize the deliverability and reputation of their digital communications, for approximately $17.8 million in cash.

“In a world where virtually all email is filtered, marketers must pay keen attention to how their digital communications are perceived and whether they reach the recipient’s inbox,” said Yuchun Lee, CEO of Unica. “We believe that email deliverability, which encompasses analysis and management of inbox placement, content rendering, and reputation management, is a mission critical technology for marketers and the entire email technology industry. Deliverability management, tightly coupled with technology that enables marketers to create the most relevant email possible, is the heart of email marketing. Acquiring Pivotal Veracity and integrating its technology into Unica’s leading marketing suite is a logical extension of our offerings.”

Lee added “Unica is already the only vendor recognized by independent analysts as a leader in enterprise marketing platforms, cross-channel campaign management, marketing resource management, and web analytics. The addition of Pivotal Veracity’s market-leading technology will further our objective to provide the most comprehensive best-of-breed SaaS and enterprise software suite to marketers and marketing services partners.”

Pivotal Veracity enables its customers to maximize email delivery effectiveness and reduce the opportunity cost of sending emails that never reach intended recipients, including those that are filtered by ISP and third party spam filter services, or end up in personal spam folders. Pivotal Veracity helps marketers ensure their emails are rendered correctly across a variety of devices, email clients, and browsers by allowing marketers to test readability before the email is sent. Pivotal Veracity also helps customers protect their corporate brands by minimizing the risk of being blacklisted, as well as ensuring that customers are actively protected by ISP and third party whitelists. Prior to the acquisition, Unica integrated Pivotal Veracity’s solutions into its enterprise and on-demand offerings; it expects to deepen that integration across both companies’ product lines and continue to sell Pivotal Veracity’s solutions on a standalone basis as well.

Pivotal Veracity was founded in 2003 and subsequently established itself as a leading email deliverability provider. In 2008, Pivotal Veracity’s email service provider (ESP) customers sent more than 15 billion marketing-related emails per month, representing a majority of emails sent by ESPs identified as market leaders in The Forrester Wave™: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q4 2009. Pivotal Veracity’s customers include Cabela’s, Cisco, Classmates.com, Digitas, Nestle, Progressive Insurance, Rapp Collins, and Sears, among many others.

Pivotal Veracity has a multi-year history of generating significant operating profit margins. The acquisition is not expected to have a material impact to Unica’s revenue in FY10 and should be neutral to slightly accretive to FY10 Non-GAAP EPS.

“We are extremely excited to become a part of Unica, a company admired not only for great technology but also for tremendous customer support and success. Our customers can continue to expect the high level of service to which they have become accustomed. Unica is also highly differentiated in its ability to optimize cross-channel marketing activities, and has a growing leadership position in online marketing,” said Deirdre Baird, CEO of Pivotal Veracity. “We look forward to contributing to Unica’s momentum in this rapidly growing market.”

Pivotal Veracity’s co-founders, Deirdre Baird and Michelle Eichner, will join Unica and guide the company’s efforts in email marketing and deliverability.

January 12, 2010 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PORT25 SOLUTIONS, INC. EXPANDS RESELLER/REFERRAL NETWORK

Ellicott City, MD-January 10th, 2009-Port25 Solutions’ software PowerMTA is omnipresent within the email industry. Its proven products are highly effective for enterprise-level digital messaging organizations and email service providers. If you want to be recognized as a savvy resource in the new age of marketing communications, Port25 Solutions’ Integrated Reseller/Referral Partner program is designed for you. Ideal candidates for it include:

• Digital marketing consultants and organizations
• Interactive marketing agencies
• Social media Influencers
• Email Technology consultants
• Email Service Providers
• Leading business software consultants
• Web designers & developers
• Email Software Sales Consultants

Current organizations benefiting from this program include established organizations who have a passion for digital messaging solutions and the ability to closely interact with industry veterans and to understand where and when the Port25 Solutions’ software product PowerMTA™ can be successfully implemented.

Members of the Port25 Solutions’ Referral Network benefit from a variety of cooperative marketing opportunities, including:

• Press releases
• Case studies
• Trade show representation
• Social Media representation
• Webinars
• Link on the Port25 Solutions partner page

By associating yourself with Port25 Solutions as an Integrated Reseller/Referrer partner program, you ensure your customers and associates are collaborating with a globally recognized organization.

To be considered for the Port25 Solutions and to learn more about our Integrated Reseller/Referral Partner program, please send an email to: partners@port25.com.

About Port25 Solutions, Inc.

PowerMTA is specialized, high performance Message Transfer Agent (MTA) software that intelligently and efficiently delivers large volumes of e-mail, allowing for maximum delivery and response. While all-purpose MTAs in use today perform a whole variety of tasks including delivering e-mail, these general solutions fall short both in regards to scalability and relevant feature sets, negatively affecting delivery rates and subsequent ROI. In contrast, PowerMTA™ was developed for this particular task, helping legitimate, permission based e-mail marketers, publishers, and service providers overcome the business and technology challenges of e-mail message delivery. Companies benefiting from PowerMTA™ include many leading email service providers, top financial institutions, major publishers, and well known consumer brands.

Contact:
Fred Tabsharani
E: ftabsharani@port25.com
T:@tabsharani
510.526.3733

I was on an email forum recently when a guy asked,

“Does anybody know if you can use animated Gifs in emails and if so how do you do it? I know that you cannot send flash, or it’s not recommended”.

If you’re just getting started with animated Gifs in email, here are the basics:

1. Can I use animated Gifs in email?

Yes. Animated Gifs play in all email clients, except for Outlook 2007 and Apple Mail 3.0.

Although animated Gifs play on the iPhone and Blackberry, playback can be slow.

2. Animated Gifs in Outlook 2007 { view Tiffany email }

Outlook 2007 only displays the first frame in a sequence. If an Outlook 07 user received the above Tiffany email, all they would see is a blank blue image (Frame 1).

Make sure your first frame is not blank and works as a stand alone image. That means no fade ins, or leaving the CTA/reveal until later frames (I’m looking at you Juicy Couture!).

3. What about Flash in email? { view Flash email }

Only Mac Mail supports Flash, so I’d give it a miss.

The only Flash email I’ve received, was from Neiman Marcus back in Jan07. They quickly switched back to animated Gifs.

4. Creating an animated Gif in Photoshop: { view tutorial }

If your using an early version of Photoshop (7.0) you can use ImageReady, here’s an animated Gif tutorial.

If your using Photoshop CS3 or 4, ImageReady has been discontinued. Most of its core features are still included. Select Window/Animation to bring up the controls (same as ImageReady so refer to above tutorial).

5. Controlling speed and playback

You can adjust the speed of an animated Gif in Photoshop, by assigning a time to each frame. So your first frame may display for 2sec, your second 0.5 sec and so on.

You can also set the number of times it plays e.g. once, 5 times or looping continuously.

6. Need more reassurance? {view early animated email}

Many top UK and US retailers, have been using animated Gifs in email for years. I’ve collected over 300, dating back to this Neiman Marcus example from Nov 06.

Here is a sample of retailers using animated Gifs in email:

Amazon, American Apparel, Anthroplolgie, Barnes & Noble, Bluefly, Clinique, Dillards, Dior, Evans, Express, Gap, Hermes, Johnnie Boden, Lands’ End, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Next, Photojojo, Saks, Selfridges, Tiffany, UrbanOutfitter and a bunch more…

7. Takeaway: Animated Gifs are widely used and play in the majority of email clients. Just take care with that first frame.

About the author

Anna Yeaman is the co-founder of Style Campaign, an email creative agency in LA. With over 4 years experience in email marketing, Anna is the design heart of the company and author of the Style Campaign Blog. Prior to founding Style Campaign, she worked in the visual effects industry.

She spends her free time daydreaming about email design and can be contacted at anna(at)stylecampaign.com.

Check out Style Campaign’s great video here!

website: http://www.stylecampaign.com
Blog: http://www.stylecampaign.com/blog
Twitter @stylecampaign