Adestra

If yes, you’re among a growing trend of people who are logging on and downloading their email via a mobile phone. A study conducted by MarketingSherpa indicates 64% of key decision makers access their emails on a mobile platform. This trend is further supported by the fact that 36.4 million smart phones were sold in Q1 of 2009 worldwide (Gartner.com), principally indicating a large user base capable and willing to make use of mobile email access.

At present the majority of marketers are not fully optimising their emails for cross platform devices and as a result performance is hampered. With the increase of mobile usage, content creators will increasingly need to be aware of current and future device’s limitations, namely the lack of screen real estate and resolution.

The latest Smartphone’s are getting better at handling HTML, and showing images however there are a large proportion that are still unable to do so. The rendering of such emails may mean the difference between a client reading and interacting with the email or merely deleting the email, consequently losing any chance of an interaction.

To overcome the issues discussed above, there is a function within MessageFocus allowing you to create a mobile friendly version of your email. The main benefits of which; allow key messages to be delivered without unnecessary information leading to increased levels of performance.

If you require any further advice please contact your strategy consultant or email us moreinfo@adestra.com

Why not download our guide to finding the right email marketing partner for you click here.

With the recent announcement of Adestras partnership with ReturnPath, the world’s leading email deliverability provider, I thought now would be a good time to discuss the tools we have available to you to really go the extra step to ensure your emails are getting into the inbox (and how they look once they get there).

Do you know what percentage of your emails get into the inbox?

You probably have an idea using the campaign reports available you but would it shock you if I said a recent ReturnPath study has found that 20% of legitimate email never reaches the inbox? That’s a pretty big chunk by anyone’s standards and a statistic that I don’t think you can ignore.

So, with this in mind, what can be done to ensure your data does not fall into this statistic?

By taking advantage of our Return Path tool you have the ability to fully analyse your sender reputation, check how an email displays in the inbox, run copy against the most popular SPAM filters and a whole lot more! Below are a couple of examples of the tools available to you.

Mailbox Monitor

A quick yet powerful way of checking across the board if emails are reaching the inbox, bulk folder or simply ‘going missing’. By sending to a seed list of 137 different ISPs around the globe (with multiple addresses for each ISP) you can easily see what percentage reaches the inbox. As these are real addresses this is an accurate reflection of what is happening each time you send to your list and the best thing is, if you see a problem you can get in touch with us straight away so we can start to improve things.

Campaign Preview

You probably know that email displays differently in different email clients. You’d probably like to see just how they display in each of these but certainly don’t have the time and considering the different variables involved (images on/images off, viewing in the preview pane both vertical and horizontal) this is certainly understandable. But how your email is rendering across the various clients is key to the success of your email strategy.

Campaign Preview is a way of checking all the above different options at the touch of a button (well, a selection from a list) and can quickly highlight such things as:

• Is your message getting across in the preview pane?
• Is there no message at all if images are off?
• What happens if someone’s outlook preview is horizontal yet another’s is vertical?
• What is your blackberry readership seeing?

These are just a couple of examples of what you can do with Adestra’s new deliverability tools. If you would like to find out more speak to your Strategy Consultant or Account manager to see how Adestra can help improve and maintain your reputation.

If you are not a client of Adestra please contact our sales team on 01865  24 24 25 or email us moreinfo@adestra.com

Before adopting the ‘load and blast’ technique (used widely due to the cost effectiveness of email marketing) take time out to make sure you have a communication plan that works. At Adestra I hear numerous clients saying “I want to acquire more data” this is a great objective to have, however, you need to acquire good mailable data (unless you want to see your core metrics reduce significantly). It’s better to send to responsive customers with targeted, relevant messages than to send the same message to everyone on your database.

Get the basics right …

• Targeting contacts with relevant messages from an accurate database is fundamental. Without clean, complete and accurate data, you can never be relevant and targeted despite your best intentions. Only 60% of respondents from the Email Marketing Census 2009 carry out regular list cleansing which will be one of the reasons why many respondents have experienced problems with deliverability.

• Although budgets are increasing, a worrying finding is the continual lack of ROI measurement (42% of those surveyed still don’t track it). Without accurate tracking, testing programmes cannot be measured. Without measurement, the speed at which you can improve your email marketing to the level where it is achieving ROIs of over 5 times will always be slow.

…Then look at advanced techniques

• Segmentation is moving up the agenda, but some of the more sophisticated behavioural targeting and trigger sends are still not widely adopted. Before investing in setting up these programmes ensure that your house is in order. The age-old adage of walking before you run applies.

• Integrating different databases and touch points across the company to create one customer view to power relevant multi-channel communications is a dream that is impossible if there are problems with the accuracy of your data… data in, bad data out.

Hollie Williams, Marketing Manager

Although email marketing remains one of the most cost effective marketing medium, thousands of pounds are still being lost every year in the UK online retailing sector due to failed delivery of emails.
According to our latest annual Email Census, on average 10% of email marketing budgets are still being wasted because of failed delivery. However, this is of course only an average, and whilst some marketers have excellent deliverability rates, others are experiencing extremely high levels of waste, reaching well over a quarter of their budget.

This has to be addressed. At Adestra, we believe that improving deliverability rates is fundamental to boosting companies’ bottom line and our commitment to deliverability has saved online retailers thousands of pounds. For example, as a direct result of our service, leading online gifts and gadgets retailer, I Want One Of Those (IWOOT), has seen its return on investment for email marketing soar, as its deliverability rates have increased by over 50%.

So how can marketers improve their investment in email marketing?

Establishing and then protecting your reputation is fundamental to improving your deliverability success rate. It is crucial that email marketers work to ensure complaints are kept to an absolute minimum, to avoid being blocked. It is surprisingly easy to be consigned to the blacklist. The level of complaint does not need to be substantial. (more…)

Centaur Publishing recently demonstrated that Email and Direct Mail can effectively work together in a bid to boost paid subscriptions of its weekly magazine MarketingWeek.

From the outside the campaign incorporated a free subscription period reinforced with an integrated Direct Mail and Email strategy to push the benefits (A new profile section, A Marketer2Marketer section, An updated trends section, new columnists and more) of signing up to a paid subscription.

Without knowing the finer details the campaign seemed to contain the simple process of ‘Offer’ & ‘Reminder’ as a Direct Mail Piece and Email. This can be seen in the diagram below.

The offer and reminder emails were very simple, and clear, with the benefits of why someone should take up the offer being very apparent.

Inital offer and stage 2 email

Subscribers were given the option to subscribe for the free trial by email or fax, and were also encouraged to pass the offer on to interested colleagues in a bid for Centaur to further broaden the reach of the campaign.

Once a subscriber had enrolled they received their complimentary magazines for a set period. Then when it came to the last free magazine they were informed that this would be their last unless they continued with a ‘Paid’ subscription. Anyone that did not sign up to a paid subscription was then targeted with a dual approach by Email and Direct Mail. (more…)