Rant on Unsolicited E-newsletters

Little did she know when she sent me her UNSOLICITED NEWSLETTER what she’d be in for!  It came with this little disclaimer:

You are receiving this email because you’ve done business with (name redacted to protect the guilty) or attended a networking event (NAWBO, eWomen,Heart Link) or are involved in the same organizations as (name redacted) and at one point, you sent her an email or gave her your business card. You’re welcome to unsubscribe (see below) but we hope you will stay on our list.

Inquiring minds want to know how I handled this:

“Undelivered” Email

According to MediaPost, even when people opt in to your email list, 3.3% is sent to a “junk” or “bulk” email folder and 17.4% is not delivered at all. Not delivered at all?  Where’d it go?

Making sense of your email reports

If you’re using an email service/listserve, ask how they calculate the “delivered” rate.  Why? Because a rate upwards of 90% may be giving you a false sense of  success.

According to the MediaPost report, in most cases the “delivered” metric is simply assumed.  Assumed?  Yes, they take the number of messages sent through the pipe and subtract for the number that return a hard bounce (which is what happens when the email address no longer works at all).  In other words, it does not reflect how many hit the actual inbox.

This brings up the point to ask your email email service if it cleans out hard bounces immediately (mine does).

Differences when mailing to business and personal addresses

The report found that it’s more difficult to reach business addresses than personal inboxes because corporations have sophisticated security software to scrub mail deemed outside the company’s business interests (always remember that Big Brother is watching).

The good news for commercial emailers, including business professionals sending e-newsletters, is that these corporate systems are more likely to deliver messages to a junk folder as compared to consumer Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which are more likely to simply vaporize your email than send it to the junk file.

Frequent readers of my blog already know this:  whether the ISP sends your email to the inbox, junk file or vaporizes it is based on a unique recipe of your reputation as its sender and other factors like the email service/listserve you use.

For more on this, click the “CAN-SPAM” tag to the right for a complete list of articles I’ve written on the topic or download this narrated presentation: CAN-SPAM Compliance.

Here’s where the various ISPs stand in delivering commercial email all the way to the inbox:

*Source: Return Path, July 2009

It really helps to know which ISP the majority of your list uses, so that you can test your email against the filters that matter to your clientele.  What, your email provider doesn’t give you this information?  Your email provider doesn’t allow for pre-send testing?  We need to talk because mine does.

Avoid the blacklist

• Don’t ever add someone to your list without their permission
• Include a message reminding recipients to add your address to their “white list”
• Don’t bombard your list; if you told them they’d get a monthly newsletter, send no more and no less than that
• QUALITY QUALITY QUALITY content that makes recipients money or saves them time, money or effort
• Be sure the majority of your content is text, not graphics.  You need both; just don’t send email with no text

And if you’re still sending email from your own outbox, here’s information on why you should stop doing so.

Ready to consider my email platform? Please call 704-907-2811.

CAN-SPAM Clarity

The  recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision surprised me.  In it, the judges touted the “beneficial aspects” of email marketing. WOW.

“The purpose of the CAN-SPAM Act was not to stamp spam out of existence,” the court wrote. “There are beneficial aspects to commercial e-mail, even bulk messaging, that Congress wanted to preserve, if not promote.”

The court decided that the federal CAN-SPAM law doesn’t allow individual recipients to bring lawsuits. Instead, the only private parties who can sue under federal law are Internet service providers (ISPs).

Putting the ISPs in the driver’s seat means now, more than ever, you need an email service that they trust.  Do not try bulk mailing from your own inbox.

Why Outsource Newsletters & Email Campaigns?

After June’s speaking engagement, members of Charlotte Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs (CPSE) have been in touch with questions about email and newsletter marketing.  Since we ran out of time in person, this post is fourth in the series of online follow-ups.

Question: Why not just send my newsletter from my own email account?

Answer: There’s a lot more to email marketing than selecting recipients from your address book and hitting the “send” button.

"Just the facts, ma'am"

I’m proud of the email/newsletter service I offer and in answering this question I’ll identify when I’m pushing my own service so you can skip the parts labeled in blue if you want to be like Joe Friday and get “Just the Facts, ma’am.”

Administrivia

• Subscribe and unsubscribe requests — every time you send a campaign, some people are likely to want to get off the list. It may only take you a minute or two to deal with, but if you need to stop what you are doing and switch tasks, it adds up quickly. And what happens if you miss one and send to that person again? Federal CAN-
  SPAM violations can run to $11,000.

  Commercial: My service lets people unsubscribe instantly from any email they receive, and your list is updated automatically — just what CAN-SPAM envisioned.
  

• Dealing with bounced emails — For any given campaign, you might expect up to 10% of the emails to be bounced back to you. That could be hundreds or thousands of emails you need to handle somehow.

  Are they permanent bounces? Then should you remove them from your list? Or do you need to resend the email to them?

  Commercial: My service instantly removes hard bounces, and re-sends your campaigns automatically to addresses which soft bounce.

• Dealing with spam complaints — Sometimes people forget that they signed up for your emails, and hit the spam button. No one wants to defend themselves against the feds in a CAN-SPAM matter.

Commercial: My system instantly removes people from your list as soon as they make a spam complaint, ensuring they do not receive any more email.

Improve your deliverability

Your email campaign can only succeed if your recipients are actually able to read it. When you subscribe to my service to send your campaigns you’ve entrusted a powerful ally.

• Commercial: Whitelisting and feedback loops — My service has relationships with major Internet Service Providerss like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo! and many more.  This means our mail servers are recognized as legitimate senders of bulk email, so your campaigns have a much greater chance of being delivered.

• Commercial: Monitoring of blacklists — We continually check blacklisting services to make sure our servers are not being listed, something which is time consuming and complex to do for your own servers.

• Commercial: Specialized network of mail servers — our mail servers optimize email delivery for particular recipient mail systems, throttling the speed of delivery to match acceptable levels for each system.

You’d be hard pressed to do these with regular email:

• Personalization — Use custom fields to adapt your emails for individual subscribers
• Segmentation — Send focused emails to subsets of your full lists
• Powerful import and export — Easily get your subscriber lists into and out of the system at any time
• Archive your campaigns — Easily display your previous campaigns on your website

Focus on your customers, not on your technology

Sure, you can use your own email client and deal with unsubscribe requests and bounces from bad emails all day. But wouldn’t you rather use an email service provider that lets you avoid the mundane administrative work and concentrate on serving your customers better?

Question: What’s this service got to do with you as a ghostwriter?

That depends on you.  If you want to use my service and write your own content, go for it. At least you’ll get the advantages discussed above (and a great custom template).

If you want my help, it can range from editing your work to developing an editorial calendar, integrating newsletters and email campaigns with your blog and marketing strategies.  Or, I can simply write your content from source material you provide.

Let’s talk about your skills and needs.  You want to be free to focus on the aspects of your business that can’t or shouldn’t be outsourced.  If you’re not a Business Person who writes like an English Major, you can hire someone who is.

Speaking on Newsletters

This week I speak to the Carolina Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs on a favorite topic:  Newsletters and CAN-SPAM.

I plan to start with a primer on the scary compliance stuff and then discuss how professionals can build their newsletter subscription list (as well as subcriptions to blogs, ezines, etc) with a solid CONTENT strategy, including article marketing.

I’d appreciate any advance questions you think I should plan to address in my talk.

I’m also interested in any research on this topic, whether your own or someone else’s.

Thanks in advance.

e-Newsletters: Track Them, You Must

The first week of the month is popular for publishing newsletters.  I publish the first week.  So with the June flurry largely passed, here’s food for thought before firing off your July edition.

"Do it, you must!"

In a study reported on MediaPost on email marketing (which isn’t exactly newsletter campaigns, but sufficiently related), roughly 18% of marketers admitted they were NOT tracking campaign performance.  Stunning.

Marketers that do not track normal site conversions

• Don’t know how      42.86%
• Don’t have budget     4.76
• Don’t have time        14.29
• Other                           38.08

Newsletter metrics

Of course I wish you were using my service, since it provides exquisitely detailed reporting, but no matter.  If you’re using an off-the-shelf provider, start with what you can track and pay attention.

How’s your open rate over time?  What about subscriber base?

Do specific topics generate a higher click-through rate?  A higher unsubscribe or forward rate?

Clients ask, I answer

Yesterday a client called for my input.  She wants to move her ad-sponsored printed newsletter clients over to an ad-sponsored blog and wanted to check her logic with me.  She asked why I bother to publish both a blog and a newsletter.

Answer: I want to make it easy for clients and prospects to hear from me.  My audience ranges from the tech-savvy  to the tech-impaired,  so whether they stream my blog to a reader or hit a blog post I’ve tweeted or look at the monthly newsletter in their inbox (and click through to the blog, or not) I’m doing the hard work so that they can skim what they need and move on with their lives.

This works for me because I’m *good enough* with technology, I have a sales and marketing background, and I love writing, a lucky combination.  Few people, including my client, have the same mix of strengths and preferences, so my advice to her and anyone else is to go with your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

This might mean hiring a ghostwriter, but should never mean publishing an off-the-shelf newsletter.  Realtors can get away with recycled articles like carpet cleaning tips and how to stage a house for showings, but I can’t think of a profession besides theirs that should even consider it.

Goal-driven newsletters

From time to time I have tactical goals, like drumming up attendance for a speaking engagement, but my overall publishing goal (blog and newsletter) is client acquisition and retention.  I want to keep my services and expertise top of mind.  Someday, someone will remember I’m a Business Person who writes like an English Major and engage me.

Staying top of mind is also why I publish free blog/newsletter topics for clients and prospects in the industries I know best: financial services, consulting, services and environmental.  I exercise the “give to get” philosophy that feeding professionals ideas for their publishing endeavors will someday yield a harvest for me.

Whether your goal is converting readers to a seminar series or a sit-down session, you need to start with that goal,  figure out how to make it happen, and how to track what’s happening along the way.  With rare exception you’ll need to make corrections to your current path that will bring you to your goal.  But if you don’t know you’re off course, you can’t get back on track.

Unless you’re a statistician, analysis isn’t the sexiest thing you’ll do with your day.  But to quote Yoda, “Do it, you must.”  Feel free to reach out if you want my feedback.

Shorten those Subject Lines

Before you hit “send” on that fabulous newsletter remember, email domains often limit the number of subject line characters they display in the inbox*:

Shorter is Better

• AOL, (approximately 22% of the U.S. email market) limits subject lines to roughly 38 characters
• Yahoo!, (with 21% of U.S. email)  is at 47 characters
• Hotmail, (14% of the U.S. email market) uses word wrap to display subject lines on multiple lines, but still just 45 characters per line

Bottom line:  go for the lowest common denominator (38 characters).

Here’s a wrinkle: Considering the growing reliance on mobile devices, with smaller screens, think  even shorter!

If you’re a Twitter-er, you’re probably getting used to truncating…I know I am.

*As reported in MediaPost, 2009

Your Reputation as a Spammer

You think you’ve properly built a subscriber list of folks who OPTED IN to receive your e-newsletter.  Turns out, that’s not good enough.  Your email might still wind up in the SPAM file.

Recipients determine who's a SPAMMER

Lyris, Inc.’s 2008 analysis showed one out of every four permission-based email messages sent to U.S.-based Internet Service Providers (ISPs) lands in the junk mail folder.

What’s up?  While results vary by the filter policy of each ISP (such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AIM, etc), the report says it’s the sender’s reputation driving 25% of messages to the SPAM folder.

How do you earn the right reputation?

• Craft a compelling message.
• Don’t bombard your list — send no more often than your recipients bargained for.
• Make it easy for people to find the “Unsubscribe” button.  If it’s easier to hit “SPAM” than “Unsubscribe” you’ll get a reputation as a spammer on ISPs’ scorecards.

Stefan Pollard, Lyris email marketing expert, points out that “The definition of spam has moved beyond the legal requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act to include any message that is unrecognized, unexpected or unwanted... This puts the onus on senders to make their messages recognized, expected and wanted.  Until they do, invited email will continue to be delivered to the bulk folder.”

Spam filter trigger words:

Act Now!                     Free!                               50% off!         While Supplies last

Click Here                  Call now!                       Earn $             Why pay more?

Discount!                   You’re a Winner!        Credit               Serious Cash

Weight                        Opportunity                 Compare         Double Your Income

Removes                   Collect                           Amazing           Work from Home

Offer                           As Seen On…                Click Here         “Stop” or “Stops”

Buy Direct                Loans                            Buy Direct         Satisfaction Guaranteed

Subscribe               All Natural                    Winner                Avoid Bankruptcy

Promise You         Cash                                Easy Terms       Special Promotion

Get Paid                 Great offer                     One time             Guarantee, Guaranteed

Join millions       No cost, No fees          Order Now         Online Marketing

Please Read        Don’t Delete                   Save up to          Time Limited

Problems with promotional email

In a study by Merkle, “View from the Inbox,” 2009, the main reasons subscribers choose to opt out of email programs, are perceived irrelevance (75%) and sending too frequently (73%).

Promotional emails were deemed the most  intrusive. Solution?  Make your newsletter informative, not promotional.

Merkle reported that 20% of those receiving e-newsletters thought they were worthy of reading, and received, on average,about eight newsletters each month.  That’s a heap of competition for YOUR customers’ attention.

Your reputation intact

If you can’t do the job in house, pay a good ghostwriter/copywriter.  You’ll offset by the fees with savings to your reputation with customers and ISPs.

When you decide to outsource, be sure you hire someone who not only can cut a phrase and punctuate, but also who knows your firm/industry.  That is, unless you really want to bring a writer up the learning curve(!)

Pardon my plug to consider my turnkey newsletter service. When you go to the trouble of communicating with customers, track results so you know what’s working and what’s not.  My service includes custom templates with analytics that can tell you details like who opened what link in what browser.

Speaking engagement

At the kind invitation of the Carolinas Professinal Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs, I’ll be speaking on CAN-SPAM and e-newsletters June 18.  Hope to see you there.

Field Organizations Run Amok

Jordan Ayan at Media Post offered good advice on how to work WITH field organizations on e-Newsletters.

Mr Ayan defined “field organizations” as divisions, salesmen, distributors, franchisees, etc., and noted that many of them send email campaigns with little control or input from the parent organization.

I’ve been on both sides of this equation. Working for the parent organization that owns the brand, I know everyone in the field thinks they’re a marketing genius and corporate/home office is just there to get in the way.  Working for the field organization I know how long it can take corporate know-it-alls to get out of their never-ending meetings and get something done (for a change)!

Give a little, get a little

Here’s what Mr Ayan suggested would encourage field organizations’ marketing initiatives while mitigating the “collateral damage” (including CAN-SPAM violations) they can cause:

1.  Let field organizations know your objective is not to shut them down, but to understand what is working, to facilitate implementation of best email practices across the organization, and perhaps even to provide some tools to make doing the job easier.

2.  Audit their list practices. In some cases, the lists field organizations have built are far superior to anything a corporate entity can do because of their proximity to the customer. In other cases, it could be a CAN-SPAM nightmare waiting to happen. This is especially true if they are operating without an effective opt-out process, or worse yet, with no opt-out process at all.

3.  Determine if you can facilitate the email process. The key word here is facilitate, not control. If a field organization feels that you are trying to control them, they will start trying to figure out all the ways to work around you. However, if you make it easier for them to do something that they have already found is effective, you may find that you have a large fan base.

How about it, readers?  No matter which side of the fence you’re on, what works well and what’s a bust?  Do tell.

SPAM “Arms Race”

Confession:  I’m an NPR junkie.  I get a real return on my taxpayer dollar (for once).

Ukraine, World Spam Capitol?

Yesterday they ran All Tech Considered focused on SPAM, which is mushrooming across all media, including mobile phones.

In this segment, Omar Gallaga of the Austin American-Statesman said most email (in volume) is SPAM, but the American ISPs have gotten pretty good at scrubbing it before it hits our inboxes.

But the bad news is that the spammers have set up camps abroad, notably Ukraine, where risk of prosecution is about nil. Spammers constantly adapt to anti-spam efforts.  All Tech Considered ran a story-within-the-story interviewing a computer security expert who said “From my perspective, it seems … kind of like the arms race of the Cold War era. We built more bombs. They built more bombs. We built bigger bombs. They build bigger bombs.”

Why this matters to emailers like YOU

Corporate web servers are starting to use “reputation scoring,” which looks at sender, time it’s sent, whether it’s a trusted source aligned with a real person, and other indicators of wholesomeness.  This is why it’s so important to send e-newsletters and other digital media ONLY to people who signed up for it.

Mr Gallaga also discussed “Bacn” which is email that might be useful to you but that is not generated by a real person.

Bacn bests Spam

An e-newsletter or social network notification, like who’s following you on Twitter, are examples of Bacn.

The rise in Bacn led to the development of a service called “other inbox“  which separates Bacn from real-people email.  With other inbox  you can open that notice from your bank when it suits YOU, instead of having it glare from your inbox while you’re trying to do the work that generates the check that pays the overdraft.

I want to know who’s using other inbox, which is apparently included with gmail right now.  In your case, does it intuit the Bacn from the real-people-email? Tell me a funny story about what went into your other inbox.

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