Five New Questions You Need to Ask About Email
By Reggie Brady
Email is evolving. As you lay the groundwork for your 2008 plans here are questions that might challenge and affect your planning.
Q. How do I know if my list growth is on pace with my competitors?
A. List growth is defined as all new additions to your house file minus bounces, opt-outs and any spam complaints received from ISPs. Your bounces are the largest negative factor. Remove all hard bounces immediately and retire soft bounces after three or four separate campaigns (or move them to a separate file for periodic recontact). Research firm MarketingSherpa recently conducted a survey of several thousand marketers on net list growth. They reported consumer marketers enjoy 37 percent net list growth per year while b-to-b marketers see 22 percent annual file growth. Use those figures as a benchmark for your program.
Q. My list growth is on target. Is it simply a numbers game?
A. Absolutely not. A good list is built on quality and not quantity. Quality starts with good permission practices, a plan to build a relationship with sign-ups and an execution strategy that delivers on the intention. Examine the list sources that contribute to the make up of your list. You’ll see the best quality from email sign-up on your Web site, opt-ins collected during online checkout and those solicited by your inbound customer representatives. Hopefully, the majority of your list is made up of these sources. Addresses collected from email appending, co-registration offers and from contests and sweepstakes will not be as productive.
Don’t forget to make use of all channels available to you. If you have retail stores, be sure to capture email addresses at these locations. Your print and direct mail order forms should ask for email addresses. In the past marketers worried that email address capture on these forms would depress response. Today, many marketers find no response difference; although a few marketers still report lower results.
Another factor that improves list quality is to collect additional information about the recipient. While you do want to keep the registration process as short and easy as possible, you also need to balance that with the ability to learn more about your sign-ups. At a minimum be sure to collect first name, last name, ZIP and/or postal code. You can use this information for personalization and to match against your customer records. You’ll also benefit if you can ask one question about their interests and preferences.
Q. What’s email authentication? And why do organizations such as the DMA require all members to use this technology?
A. Today, the prevalence of spam and phishing make it important that recipients trust that the email they receive is legitimate. Authentication technology was developed as one method to fight the deluge of unsolicited commercial email and has been accepted as an industry standard. As one example, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) requires all members to authenticate.
Email authentication is an automated method to verify the identity of the sender. If your list contains ISP email addresses, you’ll want to be sure to authenticate. There are three different systems in place today: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), SenderID, and Domain Keys Identified Mail. Don’t let the technical jargon put you off.
SPF and SenderID are relatively easy to set up and free. You register at the respective services sites and list those servers (IP addresses) that send your email. Be sure to include your standard email programs, customer service emails and any other major classes of emails your company sends. You can also register IP addresses that will never send your company’s email. When an ISP receives an email from your company, it does a look-up to see whether the sending IP address matches the address that was registered for the company. If it does, your email passes the first test and you have a better chance of having your emails accepted by the ISP. If it does not, your email may either be not accepted or it may be delivered to a bulk folder. Some ISPs also include a warning at the top of an email when the sender has not been recognized.
Domain Keys Identified Mail requires additional customization of your emails. Most of the ESPs (vendors who send emails on behalf of clients) have adopted this standard.
If you want to improve the likelihood that your emails will be delivered, be sure to authenticate. For more information and help visit the DMA’s website and search on email authentication.
Q. Content filters or reputation – which is most important?
A. Most marketers do run their email campaigns through a content filter to make sure the subject line and the body of the email will not be designated as spam. Many of the ESPs systems have built-in content filters and there are also free online checkers offered online by sites such as Lyris and SiteSell. A year ago consumer and business marketers mainly relied on content filters to improve the odds their emails would be delivered.
During the past year reputation has gained traction. You have a reputation, whether you actively focus on it or not. Your reputation is essentially a rating you receive from ISPs and businesses based on your email practices. They look at areas such as your email infrastructure (including authentication), bounces (and the types of bounces), spam complaint rates, whether you are on blacklists or whitelists, and more. This helps them determine whether to accept your mail and whether it should be delivered to the primary inbox or to a bulk folder.
A Return Path study on non-delivery of emails showed that 77 percent of issues related to the sender’s reputation and that content played a role in only 23 percent.of delivery issues. So, your reputation is very important.
You can manage your reputation on your own by embracing best practices, gaining clear permission and developing a good email infrastructure. Or you can elect to work with reputation management systems such as Goodmail’s Certified Email, Return Path’s Sender Score and Habeas. There are fees associated with each of these services. They vet your practices, and if you qualify, you are designated as a trusted sender. Essentially, you are put on a super whitelist. This will improve your delivery.
Q I’ve got limited time and resources. What should I be testing?
A. It’s relatively easy to test with email. But every test takes time to set up and time to analyze. Here are four areas you should absolutely plan to test. They will make a difference to your success and your profitability.
Subject lines. You know subject lines impact open rates and you want your campaigns to be opened and read. Stand out in a cluttered inbox. This is very easy to test.
Abandoned shopping cart emails. You can re-capture up to 20 percent of lost sales by implementing a follow-up program. So, think through the logistics and rules and plan to put this in place. Once you invest the time to establish the program, it will operate on autopilot.
Frequency. I had a big surprise when I conducted an informal audit of my inbox. About 18 percent programs I receive send two or three email messages a week. There are risks associated with this strategy, particularly with the potential for higher opt-outs and spam complaints. I don’t advocate high frequency, but if you are thinking about stepping up the timing of your emails, isolate a portion of your list and send on a less frequent schedule. Monitor performance of the two groups over several months to understand the full impact.
Segmentation. Relevant communications keep your recipients interested and engaged. When you customize and tailor your program to target specific groups, you will be more successful. Too many marketers use a “one size fits all” approach to email. Don’t be overwhelmed, knowing a full segmentation strategy can be complex to set up and manage.
Instead, start with a simple approach. Key in on one demographic, geographic or behavioral variable and develop messaging and offers to support what you know about that group. That doesn’t mean that every campaign includes this targeting, but you should systematically focus on the variable over time. Then look at performance after three or four months for this group. You should see a difference and this might lay the groundwork for a more robust approach.
It’s not to late to make some changes to your email program. Think about these ideas, put plans in place, and have a successful and profitable 2008.
Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy in Norwalk, CT. You can reach her at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net.
