e-mail marketing: ensuring your message gets delivered
e-mail marketing is often unfairly associated with spam, the unsolicited junk mail that we all seem to suffer from in varying degrees. So how can a legitimate marketer help to ensure that their legitimate e-mail - and the message it contains - gets through?
If you are sending mails from your own server, it's a good idea to monitor any blacklists to see if your IP range has been added. If this is the case, you can trace this back to the ISP who listed you and find out why. Your company can sometimes be added to a blacklist via association too, if another company in the same IP 'neighbourhood' as you is considered a spammer.
You should also monitor the 'bounce rate' of your mailings. There are 'hard bounces' whereby the e-mail address is invalid and 'soft bounces' where the address is valid but your mail receives an automated reply, and may not be delivered for a number of reasons. You are bound to get a number of both kinds of bounces in any case, but monitoring these means that you can delete the bounced e-mail address from your database once you've established that it is a bad address.
It is a good idea to open accounts with a number of major ISPs. Many web users are very wary of spam, and so will sign up to newsletters and alerts through Hotmail, Yahoo and other similar web based email accounts. By opening accounts at ISPs that your target audience uses, you can pre-test your mail prior to sending out. You should also add your own web-based e-mail address to your database to enable you to monitor your campaign.
Increasingly firewalls have spam triggers built into them which will automatically label a message as spam, which is not good for your credibility. These triggers will vary but it's best to avoid obvious words that are 'spam trigger sensitive' such as "sales" and "free". Also excessive punctuation, use of capital letters and other overtly "salesy" techniques can trigger spam filters. You should monitor which words don't get through and build a database of banned words for copywriting of future mailings.
Best practice demands that you should always include a clearly marked way for users to unsubscribe from your mailing. If it isn't clear, its often easier for the user to mark your message as spam and delete it, rather than use the unsubscribe process. That way, in the future the user's company could perceive your company as a spammer and block all your messages regardless of their content.
Because e-mail mailings are more cost effective than traditional direct mail, it can be tempting to send more. This is often counter productive though, as users will simply unsubscribe, or mark messages as spam if they feel inundated. It's a far better idea to limit your mail outs, or better still, to allow users to tailor exactly what they receive from you.
One of the major advantages of the web is that you can target very effectively. Unfortunately it can also be tempting to send generic mail outs to a larger volume of people, just because you can. However, careful targeting of relevant e-mail to interested parties is the best way to boost your response rates. Frequent, irrelevant e-mail results in 'inbox apathy', and in the worst cases, your being blacklisted.
So, is there any way to guarantee that your e-mail will get through? Well, the short answer is no, but there are ways that you can increase your chances of delivery.
In the wake of the spam epidemic, 'whitelisting' has been introduced. As the name suggests, this is the opposite of blacklisting and is typically carried out with a third party with whom you become a 'bonded sender'. You then register your email list and promise to adhere to the rules. If you do not, then financial penalties are incurred. Users can also 'whitelist' your emails on an individual basis, though corporate firewalls may be able to override user settings.
Finally, making your e-mail more accessible can improve its chances of getting through. For instance, the experience engine e-newsletter detects which e-mail client that you are using and adjusts it's format accordingly to be more compatible. This isn't always foolproof however, so we also offer a text only version. And increasingly, companies are reverting to using plain text e-mails that provide a link to an HTML equivalent on a web page.
It can be daunting for a company wishing to send out direct mail via e-mail, but just as with other marketing communications, there are specialist agencies that can help. For more information or advice regarding e-mail marketing and how to avoid being labelled as spam, contact experience engine on 01992 500 990 or, given the subject matter, why not e-mail us?
