Category Archives: Email Marketing

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Email Strategy Matters Even Where You Least Expect It

Leave a comment

So often we are talking about the issue of email marketing strategy when referring to somewhat larger scale email blasts to an organization’s contact list. But, email strategy extends beyond the corporate world and can have an impact in places you least expect.

Just yesterday I saw this scenario unfold and I thought it was worth highlighting…

A very good friend is running an American Idol pool this year (which I’m excited about!). He sent out an email to about 20 of our close friends explaining the format to them (you basically pick a team of 4 who you think will last the longest and then each week you submit who you think will be eliminated), the various deadlines, and a request to forward the email to other people who may be interested in joining.

It is this last objective that I am going to focus on.

It makes sense that he suggested that people forward the message to their friends, families, co-workers, etc. After all, the more people who join the pool, the bigger the prize. This request to forward the email is actually a ‘strong call to action’ because it clearly tells the recipient what to do next.

The problem was that my friend accidentally forgot to put the cost of joining the pool. So, anyone who received the forwarded email (and who hadn’t spoken to him directly in the past to know the cost) would be left wondering how much it costs. Is it $1000, $100, $10, etc? This is fundamentally one of the most information pieces of information someone would need when deciding whether they want to join or not and it was left out. This causes a big communication breakdown and ultimately a roadblock for more people to signup.

Now what happens is anyone who received the forwarded email has to either respond to the person who forwarded it and ask a follow-up question or respond directly to the person running it (who smartly put their email address in the message) to get more information. Since people will often chose the least laboring approach, many may just dismiss the email and therefore not join the pool (which is opposite of the original desired outcome), even though if it included all the information they may have joined.

This really does serve as a great example of how leaving out the smallest detail can really cause one of your primary email objectives to fail.

Once I brought this to his attention, he sent out a follow-up email the next day. The follow-up email had the price in it, but did not include a copy of the original message or a re-cap of what was said previously. This is a whole other issue because now anyone who gets this follow-up email has two messages: One with all the core information and one with the price. Having two messages that they need to pair together on their own will severely hurt results because now you are asking the recipient to do extra work in order to take your desired action.

What he really needed to do was send out a follow-up email addressing the information he left out, but include the original message or re-state all the information. This way the recipient has everything laid out in one organized email that answers all their questions.

Even though this year’s American Idol pool will not be as big because of a serious flaw in the email strategy that will hurt registrations, I’m still excited about it!

Email Marketing

BlueTie Launches New Postmaster Site

Leave a comment

One of the things Elite Email prides itself on as an ESP (email service provider) is our relationship with ISPs.

We know and trust them. They know and trust us.

It is these relationships that ultimately benefit our customers and their customers through enhanced interaction and trust.

One thing that many major ISPs are coming to realize is that having a section of their website devoted to the “Postmaster” is incredibly helpful. This way the ISP can clearly communicate their policies, error codes, requirements, and the best way to contact them.

As anyone will tell you, the key to any good relationship is communication and by publishing a ‘postmaster’ page, the ISP communicates with the world not just the select few ISPs that are already in contact with them.

I mention all of this because BlueTie recently launched a new Postmaster page: http://postmaster.bluetie.com/

Many people may not recognize the “BlueTie” name, but most will recognize one of their largest domains, Excite.com.

I’m sure that soon all ISPs will have a page like this to communicate their mailing policies.

Business Blunders, Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Chrysler Dealership Breaks Key Email Marketing Rule

Leave a comment

One thing I always tell people is that their email marketing campaign should have a mix of pictures and text. The worst thing you can do is send out an email that is largely just one big picture because these days most email programs (web-based and desktop-based) disable (ie. Turn-off) images by default.

Here is an example of an email that I just received from my car dealership:

columbo_chrysler_email

What do you think about that email?

Needless to say, I can’t see this email achieving any of their objectives since most people probably would not click to download the entire message after opening up and seeing it was blank.

In addition, the likelihood of this email going to junk/spam is higher (it actually went to my junk folder) because there is no legitimate content. Everything is hidden in the image, so when contact-based spam filters skew towards the sides of caution, they will most surely raise a red flag at this email.

When I choose to display images, it ended up displaying a dreadfully long flyer.

I get the feeling they took a print flyer and sent it out, which is hardly the best course of action.

This surely isn’t the reason the car industry is struggling, but maybe with better marketing they’d sell more cars!

Email Marketing

Excellent Example of Timely Email Marketing Campaign as Balloon Flies Over Colorado

Leave a comment

One thing that is great about email marketing is that it allows you to be very timely.

Unlike with traditional print flyers where you have to get your flyer designed, then printed, then packaged for mailing, with email it’s just point, click, send. There is no massive lead time, no waiting for ink to dry, no stuffing into envelopes, no driving to the post office, no walking door-to-door … and, since you’re not using paper it’s also more eco-friendly (and everyone loves an organization that goes green!).

Yesterday, I saw a truly excellent example that highlights this big benefit and really showcases just how quickly a business can blast out an incredibly relevant and timely email to their customers.

While millions of TV viewers were watching as a giant Mylar balloon flew through the air in Colorado apparently carrying a 6 year-old boy (see video on CNN), one of our customers that runs a “Home Safety” store was busy preparing an email blast.

The email featured a summary of the story essentially with the tag line “how safe is your home?” The email then went on to showcase several new products.

While this customer’s email was probably going to send out anyway, the fact that they were able to make a quick last-minute adjustment to include a current event literally as it was happening, makes it a much more effective email when it lands in his recipient’s inboxes. After all, some people may not have heard the story yet and it was their ‘home safety’ email that broke the news.

Being timely in your email marketing campaigns can really take your newsletter to the next level.

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Canada’s New Anti-Spam Legislation is Facing Some Opposition

Leave a comment

As email became an integral part of our daily lives, so did the issue of spam. One thing that everyone at Elite Email is always monitoring are the new spam laws being implemented in various countries. The most popular of the laws is the Can-Spam Act, which was signed into law by George W. Bush on December 16, 2003 (Wikipedia). It has been amended since then and remains a key regulator of email marketing activities in the United States and also largely establishes a benchmark for email marketing regulations.

In Canada, Bill C-27 (A.K.A. the “Electronic Commerce Protection Act”) was introduced last spring (by Industry Minister Tony Clement) and has steadily made its way through the legislative process. The Standing Committee on Industry is likely to conduct it’s ‘clause by clause’ review this week.

The proposed law has similar limits to the laws already in place in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

There are, however, a growing number of business groups who have mounted attacks against the proposed law claiming that it will create new barriers to doing business online in Canada.

While the final rules in the law remain to be seen, Canadian’s have been down a similar road before with the “Do Not Call List”. The original proposal of the Do-Not-Call List was so gutted by the time it was passed that the end result is that the majority of telemarketing calls are still perfectly legal, even though there is a huge amount of numbers on the do-not-call list.

Since all of our Elite Email clients are sending permission-based messages adhering to email marketing best practices, this new legislation will likely not affect us. But, as always, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this as the story develops.

Company News, Email Marketing

Tucows Launches New Feedback Loop

Leave a comment

Tucows, the third third largest wholesale domain registrar (through its wholesale division known as OpenSRS) has  just launched a new feedback loop program.

Everyone at Elite Email feels this is great news because it allows for much greater and instant communication between mail box providers and ESPs.  With better communication I firmly believe that both the receiver and sender benefit. Tucows joins a long list of other ISPs who provide feedback loops. While many people may not be familiar with Tucows, it is worth noting that it has registered more than 8 million domains and hosts millions of inboxes. 

I’m sure most major ISPs that don’t already operate feedback loops (or “FBL” for those that want to use the cool industry lingo!) will start doing so in the near future.

Business Blunders, Email Marketing

Proof & Test Links in your Email Marketing Campaigns

Leave a comment

One of the first things I always tell a client is that it is so important to thoroughly review your email marketing campaign before pressing send. Check it for spelling mistakes, broken images (no one likes those little red X’s!), incorrect links and anything else that could be wrong.

Even big national brands seem to still be making mistakes.

Just this week Air Miles, a huge rewards program in Canada, sent out an email apologizing because a link to a coupon did not work properly in a previous email. This link was actually for a partner company announcing new locations.

I’m sure they weren’t very happy when they got absolutely no one redeeming the coupon! And, the whole situation could have been avoided if someone would have just tested the links. I bet it would have taken less than 30 seconds to check every link in the email, but it seems no one did their due diligence on that. Opps…!

I also think it’s amusing that it took them an entire week to realize and correct their mistake.

The subject line of their email was: COUPON CORRECTION – New locations! Visit and receive 25 reward miles

Air Miles Email Marketing Campaign

 

It must be a rough week for Air Miles because even now when I clicked on the link in their email marketing campaign, I landed at their website only to find this:

 

Screenshot of Air Miles Website

 

Sheesh!

 

I can’t stress this enough, check your links, make sure they work, and keep your website online. It’s that simple.

Email Marketing

Gmails Adopts List-Unsubscribe Feature

Leave a comment

A couple weeks ago Gmail announced on their blog that they would be supporting the list-unsubscribe header element that allows people to actually unsubscribe from a mailing list automatically.

This is a good solid step by a major email provider to help permission email marketers. Hotmail was the first one out of the gates to support this functionality that allows end-users to click an unsubscribe button/link right in the email interface that communicates back to the sender.

I’ve long been a supporter of this feature since I think it helps boost communication between ESPs and ISPs/email-providers without forcing people to click the ‘spam’ button, which could damage a sender’s reputation.

We always tell all of our customers that we do not tolerate spam in any way and that means that their mailings must not produce spam complaints. But, we have seen time and time again where someone who has double opted-in to receive email from one of our customers later decides to start marking the message as spam when they don’t want to get it anymore. In the studies we’ve conducted, the reasoning for this is that it’s a whole lot easier to click that big spam button at the top of the interface, than to unsubscribe. (Personally, I’m not sure why scrolling to the bottom of email and clicking the unsubscribe link is that laboring, but, on the other hand, I do respect the laziness!)

Supporting the list-unsubscribe header helps to combat this because it build the unsubscribe option right into the interface. So, the ideal goal is that instead of marking the message as spam (assuming it comes from a legitimate source), you could just as easily unsubscribe.

The problem with Gmails current deployment is that they still haven’t made it that easy to find the unsubscribe link in their interface. I think they will ultimately give it a more prominent position once they hear some positive feedback from the industry and their users. Until then, we can still celebrate a baby step in the right direction!

All Elite Email customers are already taking advantage of the list-unsubscribe option, so there is nothing that must be done to ensure you get this benefit.

Email Marketing, Online Marketing

Las Vegas Marketers Love Email

Leave a comment

At the moment, I am on a plane heading back from a week long excursion to Las Vegas.

My entire body hurts, my liver may never forgive me, and many of the moments of the past week are very hazy. But, one thing I did take note of and somehow manage to remember, is that every place I went to in Sin City asked for my email address.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that has been to Vegas that in addition to being a gambling Mecca, it is also a marketing machine. Amongst all the lights, glitz and glamour, every patron to my favourite city on earth is exposed to more marketing impressions than you could ever imagine. Every square inch of the city that can be advertising something, is advertising something!

So, it’s no wonder that the town seems to have jumped at the opportunity to aggressively use email marketing.

When signing up for my players card at the various hotels (YAY, getting comp’ed!), I assured myself of getting weekly emails inviting me back to their properties with various incentives.

Whenever my wife or I made a purchase at a store, we assured ourselves of getting email catalogues right to our inbox.

With the economy the way it is, and Vegas really getting hit hard (although I did many plenty of donations to their economy!) email marketing is a great way for all these businesses to market effectively and affordably.

After all, it may not be financially feasible for every one of these stores to spend tons of money printing catalogues, flyers and other promotional material to mail it out to everyone that has ever shopped at their store. But, with email messages costing a fraction of a penny, the sky is the limit, which is a marketers dream.

I should note that not everyone has adopted email marketing. I did head to a strip club with some buddies and not one stripper asked for my email address…maybe they’ll get on the bandwagon soon! =)