Adestra

Econsultancy and Adestra annual email marketing census has just been launched,  as always it will cover email marketing topics such as  Use of email services, Email marketing budgets,  ROI and effectiveness, Email Integration and Deliverability.

To take part all you will have to do is fill in the Email marketing Census 2010 survey, at the end of the survey you will also get the chance to fill in your details to get your own free copy (worth £150).

Adestra will hold a breakfast briefing in March where we will discuss the latest hot topics and best practice for email marketing for 2010, if you are interesting in taking part of that please feel  free to fill in your details on our contact us page.

Finally we would like to thank the Linus plus the team at Econsultancy and everyone else that has taken part in the 2010 Econsultancy and Adestra email marketing census, if you would like to stay up to date on these hot topics please subscribe to our RSS feed and/or newsletter to make sure that you receive the latest news.

The ability to report, track and respond to your recipients actions makes email a phenomenal and incredibly powerful marketing tool. As technology improves and reporting gets better and better, many people still rely on the “delivered” figure in their ESP to tell them how many people received their email. As important and fairly accurate this is, what if your email is going into the junk folder, or the server is not sending a bounceback?

How can you find out where your email is going?

There are other tools you can bolt on that will tell you this information. ReturnPath’s Mailbox Monitor tool is extremely powerful in telling you exactly what is going on with your email send. Simply by seeding your emails to Mailbox Monitor we at Adestra can monitor “inbox placement” for our clients so we know when their email is going to junk or going missing. Below is an example of one of our clients emails. You can then click on the email itself and find out exactly which email systems are junking or just not receiving your email.

From there, Adestra work with our clients to find out why their emails are not being delivered and advise on improving their deliverability.

To find out more about the deliverability tools we offer, please email us

Reena Mistry, Group Account Director

You don’t need to be a whiz at HTML code to create emails nowadays. Like in our platform MessageFocus there are editors that you can use to create nice looking campaigns without the hassle of learning how to bold text or change text to a specific branded colour.

But have you ever thought about learning some basic code to make your emails more enticing for your readers to open, click, reply to and convert?

Here are some easy tips to move your emails forward:-

• Do you send long or lots of infromation/offers in one email campaign?

Why not try adding anchor links so readers can click on the story they want to see.

• Are you creating the same campaign for different data segments?

Use dynamic content to create targetted messages at a click of a button. This will send the correct information from your database to the recipient.

• Who is Mr  ?

Why not add some personalisation code so if a field is blank within your data show a default or another field.

• Want to personalise your subject line?

Adding a recipient’s first name or company name within a subject line could intrigue to open to find out more.

Want to know how to do these tricks? Contact our support team on how add these onto your campaign or email our training department and learn how to do it yourself.

Joanne Taylor, Trainer

Spam filters are the bain of any email marketers life; I am constantly getting asked, ‘why is my email getting considered as junk’.

It is harder than ever to get legitimate email messages successfully delivered, this is hardly surprising when according to Symantec 87% of emails sent in October 2009 were spam. Therefore filters are increasingly becoming more sophisticated against spam emails. It’s not just one filter the email needs to get through, there are several, gateway filters, server filters, as well as desktop client filters.

Spammers are changing their tactics constantly to get around these filters, therefore ISP’s need to change how they monitor email in order to keep their customers inboxes clean. The results being that an email may sail into the inbox one week, the same email the following week could be filtered or blocked.

The key to ensuring your email passes all spam filters is to test, set up a number of test inboxes, and test your campaign to these.  An email may pass the spam filter in one email client but not in another, due to different spam rules.

Encourage your recipients to add your from address/domain to their safe senders list, to guarantee entry into their inboxes, it will also mean that images will be automatically downloaded too.

Make it easy for your recipient to unsubscribe from your emails, as it is far better they unsubscribe from your mailings rather than marking the email as spam.

Ensure all unsubscribe requests are adhered to as quickly as possible, if not instantly, also don’t repeatedly send to bounced email addresses, if ISP’s see you constantly trying to deliver to dead email address, this is going to have a negative effect on your deliverability.

99% of the time when I get asked ‘why is my email getting considered as junk’ the reason is content based. Be this the subject line, from name, main body content, link reputation, image to text ratio etc etc.

Tools such as ReturnPaths Campaign Preview and Mailbox Monitor make it easier in distinguishing if and why your email has been marked as spam.

Things to avoid when creating your email campaign are:-

• Subject Line – avoiding using CAPS, quotations marks, exclamation marks, dollar signs, plus spammy words such as discount.

• Main Body – consider the image to text ratio, using 100% images is a common spamming technique to get past content filters. Some words on their own or in conjunction with others can cause spam implications, try to avoid words such as, no obligations, no risk, money back guarantee, free offer / trail / application / access. In addition consider where you links are going, if you have a link in your email linking to a website which has been blacklisted this could cause your email to be classed as spam.

If you are having problems getting your email into the inbox, please contact us on moreinfo@adestra.com or speak to your Strategy Consultant.

Jenna Lovell, Client Strategy Executive

I had a meeting recently with a client who were looking to improve their unsubscribe process after feedback recentlyreceived from their customers highlighted the fact that some were receiving communications that were not of interest to them. With a big push in list growth a while back, the need to manage the relevance of their emails was soon seen as a high requirement.

I was actually impressed that the client came to me with the need to evaluate their whole unsubscribe process, too often the unsubscribe process is seen as a negative thing and doesn’t get the attention it requires but it is important; after all, who wants to speak to someone who doesn’t want to listen?

Now when it comes to why people unsubscribe the reasons are never straight forward, there can be numerous factors as to why someone may want to unsubscribe, not just because they don’t want to receive messages from you. This is where the preference centre comes in.  Adestra have seen that when a preference centre option is offered unsubscribe rates drop significantly.

A preference centre is a way for subscribers to pick what titles, what type of communication (events, marketing, newsletters for example) and what 3^rd party emails they want to receive. It overcomes the problem of just offering a global opt-out and also gives them the chance to opt in to titles that they may not have previously been aware off; a method of cross-promoting titles. It can also act as ‘an update your details’ form, a great way to capture updated details, especially useful if you are segmenting data based on demographics or work information.

Adestra’s preference centre functionality can automatically manage all this. When clicking through from an email to update their details, a subscriber can automatically see what they are opted in to receive, as well as what they may be missing out on. Once they have amended their details and submitted, their contact information will automatically be updated, meaning no manual work is required from you. The form can also be hosted elsewhere, on your website for example, so subscribers always have a chance to update their details.

Ultimately a preference centre is a way of keeping your customers engaged and allows them to just receive the emails they want to receive; something that us email marketers keep going on about.

To find out more about  this please contact your account manager or email us

Andrew Abram, Client Strategy Consultant

Do not reply to the email. If you do, you validate your email address to the ’spammers’ and this will ensure that you receive more of it.

Do not open any attachments to the spam email. These could contain malicious viruses etc. that could render your machine useless.

The safest thing to do, with any spam email, is to block the sender and DELETE the email.

Jim Ellis, Client Services Manager

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

We all know that we need to test and segment our email campaigns, but why? With the economy as is, it is even more important to start sending emails that are relevant to your customer base to increase your ROI (return on investment)

Testing has become a lot easier and quicker to do, and MessageFocus (Adestra’s Email Marketing Platform) can randomly split your lists automatically! All you need to decide is what you want measure and how you will measure success (Opens, Clicks, Conversions)?

Below is a small list of options that you can test;

• From Name
• Subject line
• Links
• Copy
• Personalised content versus non personalised content
• Discount versus free postage

Make sure you have a control cell and that you are only testing one element at a time, this way you will know exactly what you did to increase response. therefore launch your campaigns at the same time. You don’t want the time or day of the launch to influence results (unless that is what you are testing).
For more information on the what, where, when and how of testing, contact your strategy consultant, or if you are not a client of Adestra please email us on moreinfo@adestra.com

Jo Taylor, Trainer

It’s very apparent that there has been a year on year increase in the number of emails appearing in your Inbox. According to the DMA, there has been around a 25% increase of emails* sent since the same time last year. We all know that we can’t improve our results just by sending more email. The key is getting your email noticed and opened in everyone’s busy Inboxes.

So how can you get your email noticed? The three key factors in getting your email opened are:

• The Sender Name (or From Name)
  This is your calling card, telling the recipient who the email is coming from. Make sure it is recognisable and consistent. One client of ours always has their company name as the sender name, but adds to this when sending a particular offer or type of communication, e.g. newsletter and offers. If your sender name is a person, will the recipient recognise who that person is? Think about when you receive a marketing email from a person, do you want to open it?

• The Subject Line
  A vague subject line may increase the number of opens, but how many of those will click through to your website? Or, indeed, how many of those will mark you as SPAM? Use your subject line in conjunction with your sender name to give clear information about what is in the email.

• The Preview Pane
  Have a think about the layout of the top part of your email and how it will display in the recipient’s Preview Pane. If this is mainly images, with images turned off this will just look like a puzzle of missing images and alternative text. Put your key message and key “incentive to open” in the top left hand corner. People will then be able to see what to expect when they download the images and are more encouraged to do so.

Other factors that you should take into account are time of send, quality of the email and most importantly relevance and value.

If you have any questions or would like some examples of what has worked well, please email us at strategy@adestra.com

Reena Mistry, Group Account Director

*DMA National Email Benchmarking report Q2 2008

Clients are always asking about using Forward to a Friend or Colleague (FTAF) to grow their lists and collect more subscribers.  There has also been a lot of debate over the effectiveness of FTAF in list growth and whether it works or not.

What FTAF does achieve is that it can be effective in reaching like-minded people to your subscriber and spreading the word about what you have to say. So, answering our Clients’ questions, what are the best practice guidelines for sending emails through a FTAF form?

• First and foremost, people who have been sent an email by a friend through a FTAF facility are not automatically new subscribers for you to email.  In order for you to email them again, they need to opt-in to receive your communications.

• Think about the email that is sent using the FTAF.  Ensure that the email gives the new recipient the ability to subscribe to your communications from that email, otherwise what’s the point in sending the email?

• Ensure that the person receiving the email knows where the email has come from, otherwise it may be dismissed as SPAM.  Perhaps allow the sender to add a personal message or ensure the sender’s name, and intention, are in the subject line to avoid confusion.

Finally, do remember that all the normal email best practice guidelines still apply.

To find out more about FTAF functionality email us at strategy@adestra.com

Reena Mistry

Group Account Director