Adestra

Getting your email campaigns past spam filters is a key concern for email marketers and at Adestra we take this seriously. Adestra and Econsultancy’s Email Marketing Industry Census 2010 found that 24% of companies now say that deliverability is a problem (compared to only 13% in 2009). More importantly, 83% of companies surveyed didn’t know what percentage of their email budget is lost through non-delivery.

Understanding what impacts your deliverability and what you can do to maintain and improve it is very important. Our Demystifying Deliverability whitepaper explains what deliverability is, and what it means for you.

Download your copy of the whitepaper today

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

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

@econsultancy have just posted an interesting article http://bit.ly/4Qz9H1 on a recent Which? report on poor customer experiences relating to product delivery. I expect that we have all, at some point in our lives had issues with delivery companies leaving things on show, damaging items in transit or having completely inflexible delivery processes.

Personally when this has happened to me I haven’t necessarily blamed the website I have used to make the purchase but ultimately they choose who to use for delivery so 9 times out of 10 the end result is that I go elsewhere next time. With so many possible suppliers for products in the modern online age any differentiator, however minor can be enough to sway me.

Brand, price and service are all equally important in gaining me as a customer initially but these standards must be maintained to keep me. Brand and price can be measured as can service post sale but do you do it? You can…

As a self confessed DIY geek I recently purchased a few items from Screwfix. I was attracted by their price, range of products and the promise of fast delivery. They delivered on all fronts but not resting on their laurels they emailed me a few days after delivery to check that I was happy with the product and the delivery service. I was also invited to review the product to share my experiences. Excellent!

Screwfix get to hear all about my delivery experience good or bad and can act accordingly, managing poor experiences or maximising the value of good experiences by enabling happy customers to become brand advocates.

As it transpired they good full marks all round and a glowing review for the product. Job done!

The same process can apply for any fulfilment be it a physical product delivery, event or service and with data fed into MessageFocus automatically the follow up campaigns need not take up resource. Speak with your commercial manager to discuss options for managing your customer experience

Rob Hunter, Group Account Director

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

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…)

More and more people are hitting the ‘report as spam’ button in webmail email clients as a alternative to clicking on the unsubscribe link in the email and the reasons for this are pretty simple:

1. Laziness – scrolling down to the bottom of your email to find your unsubscribe link can just be too much for some people and with the glaring ‘report as spam’ button, this can be the easier option.
2. Lack of trust – will the unsubscribe be a simple process or will they have to remember the login from 10 years ago. Or will the request to unsubscribe be honoured?
3. Ignorance – some people simply click the ‘report as spam’ button without actually knowing what it does.

So, how can you stop this from happening?

Traditionally, you will see the unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email, sometimes hidden in the small print and sometimes as a little link. Yes, most people will go to the bottom of the email to find the link but with the prominence of ‘report as spam’ it might be time to move break form and have an unsubscribe link at the top of your email and at the bottom.

As scary as this may seem, think about what you are saying when you do this?

1. By making it easier to unsubscribe, you’re saying that you are confident that your email is relevant to them.
2. You’re making it easier for them to choose ‘unsubscribe’ rather than report you as spam with a prominent, visible unsubscribe link. Reporting as spam means that you may not be able to deliver to that domain ever again (much worse someone opting out of your email campaigns).
3. By having two unsub links, you’re covering all bases so people who want to go to the bottom will find what they are looking for.

Of course, the best way to reduce spam reports is to send relevant email that people want to stay subscribed to, but moving the unsubscribe link is worth a try too.

Reena Mistry
Client Strategy Consultant

We all know how costly and time-consuming it can be to build your email lists.

If collecting organically, getting the balance of collecting commercially viable data without adding a huge barrier can be tricky (one for a blog topic in its own right).

Buying in data can seem like the easy way out, but there is a considerable risk of bringing in poor quality data that can negatively affect overall results and the deliverability of your campaigns as a whole. It can be a bit of a minefield but by using the right suppliers and data collection techniques you can get it right.

What do you do as an organisation to protect the quality and useful life your list? Once you have built a good list do you look after it? It’s easy to think of a list as a resource that is there to be tapped into when required. It is often overused or conversely, neglected. To maintain the life of a responsive list you need to use it consistently and use it well or 6 months later you will be asking yourself why your results are declining and you will be looking to bolster your list again

This probably sounds familiar to you. I know many of my clients experience these problems. They put all their time and effort into obtaining new data but then 6 months later find that despite their hard work the list has become unresponsive.

How can you prevent this?

There are some simple steps you can take to keep your list responsive and reduce the impact of list churn

Keep subscribers active and engaged. Empower them to distribute your content

• Manage expectations from point of signup (What will they receive? When?).
• Welcome them immediately to ‘start the conversation’ and use this message for initial ‘housekeeping’ such as add to safe senders.
• Contact them consistently as per the initial expectations. If you said it would be a monthly communication make sure you deliver (where possible without sending poor / irrelevant content).
• Your subscribers are likely to have access to many contacts working in the same field or interested in the same topics and they will know far more about their colleagues/friends than you could possibly know. Utilise this by providing opportunities to send to a friend and sign up to your services (perhaps at a discounted ‘friends referral rate’)

Reach out to inactive subscribers

• Ask them if they are still interested? If they are not perhaps you can cross promote another communication / product. Failing that, they unsubscribe but at least they leave with a good perception of your brand – perhaps you can cross promote another service on the unsub page?
• Forcing people to stay on your list will lead to ‘emotional unsubscribers’ – not good for your results. Don’t make it difficult for recipients to unsubscribe or change their preferences.
• Allow them to change their email address.
• Consider offering ‘breaks’… perhaps they are going away for a while. Allow them to suspend their email for x weeks / months to give them added confidence in your email marketing ethics whilst your competitors are seen as spammers!
• Make use of Adestra MessageFocus ‘recurring campaigns’ to contact inactive contacts with a gentle reminder that you are still there “We miss you!”

Hopefully these pointers will help, feel free to comment and let us know your thoughts and experiences.

Rob Hunter

Client Strategy Consultant