A recent survey of more than 180 marketers from around Europe found that many don’t understand if their email is really making into the inbox or if it is being junked or lost in space. Email marketing firm Return Path shows that marketers have not been quite diligent in making good on the definition of delivered.
It looks like 39% think that if the email didn’t bounce and was sent just fine, it was also delivered. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the report, Return Path states:
[–] Email marketers generally know that hitting “send” is not enough to ensure messages actually reach the inbox and appear in subscriber’s inboxes as they intended (called “rendering”). The majority of survey respondents (61%) believe that some messages may be blocked by ISPs.
Marketers tend to be most concerned about the largest ISPs, like BT, Free.fr, Neuf, Orange and T-Online, but the truth is that nearly every ISP, from the largest to the smallest, employs filtering technology to protect their customers from spam messages.
However, more than one in three email marketing managers are woefully ignorant of this reality–26% say they do not believe messages get blocked at all and 12% just didn’t know.
If that email was coming to my inbox, we have firewall filters, spam filters we can set up at individual account level, and of course we also have the delete key. As Sonia Simone writes at Copyblogger, this happens because most bulk email marketing is just plain selfish.
Indeed I’ve seen it all, from titles in all caps screaming at me–no doubt the brilliant idea of someone who thought it would break through the clutter–to tricky html that freezes my Lotus Notes mail (note to all marketers that do that, test your email with different systems, don’t assume).
Email is such a personal thing, still. In many cases it’s still the place where most work gets done in organizations–sacred territory. Even when you obtain permission to send messages, if they’re not relevant and valuable over time, you’re out.
I send a monthly email newsletter and read each and every request to unsubscribe to get a better idea of the reasons why–in some cases people move on to other responsibilities and don’t need your information anymore, for example.
In other cases, your email is boring–it’s all about you and not about how the reader will be smarter, better, more effective from reading it. People are smarter these day, they use email services like Otherinbox, which will allow you to have disposable email addresses–a nice cure for spammers.
What’s the solution?
Writing a non-sucky email would be a good start. Take for example that of Colleen Wainwright–when you sign up, you’re directed to more resources immediately, I checked out the one for small business owners.
Having a nice offer helps–something unique, useful, that people cannot get elsewhere. To get noticed in the first place, you’d need to make it through the various spam filters–even the human ones–and get out of the bulk box.
When you get into the inbox, what makes people read your email? It depends.
- For many it could be brevity–a good example of that is the McKinsey Newsletter with one main article per email. Good design helps, but keep it clean.
- For others, especially really busy people, it could be your ability to edit and filter content for them. A good example of that is the SmartBrief newsletters, which are the work of solid editors.
MarketingProfs offers a range of email newsletters–from the more content-centric, to the more offer-centric. What else? What’s your experience?
My questions to you:
- Are you doing email marketing? If so, what has worked for you?
- And conversely, what email marketing tactics have worked on you?
- Can you share some examples of email newsletters you like and why?
From my experience, the one absolute in email marketing is that there are no such thing as “best practices”. Instead, think “guiding principles”. What works for one audience may not work for another. Testing never ends because your audience never remains stagnant.
One guiding principle that I advice clients on is to have an objective with each email regardless of if its a one-off message or a regularly occurring newsletter. From this objective, create an actionable that guides the recipient to taking a desired action. Did it work? The metrics should be in place to measure success.
Oh and yeah…you better know how the various ISPs work with your email delivery platform. Assumptions of delivery can be deadly…you know what they say about assumptions.
The ISP information is critical, you’re quite correct, Chris. Good of you to be the first one to comment.
One way to find out if the email delivers and people are engaged is to utilize surveys and polls and then plan to share the information with your readers.
I enjoy e-mail newsletters, like the Smart Briefs, which act as a portal for information, from all across the web, grouped by themes & targetted to my interests.
Chris Brogan’s NML Connect newsletter also takes a portal approach, covering “articles, ideas, and advice” from all over the world of new marketing.
As you note, MarketingProfs opt-in newsletters (such as Get to the Point newsletters) are another great example of e-mail newsletters that work, mainly because of the compressed “point” at the end of each article summary, which gives readers some actionable lesson for the day.
In all these cases, the e-mail newsletters make me wiser somehow and do it quickly & entertainly (as the Get to the Point newsletters do), or save me time (the SmartBrief & NML Connect approach), by tracking down informative links for me.
Good email list hygiene is key. If your email addresses are inaccurate, invalid, or out dated, chances are your already off to a bad start.
Deliverable emails are a must and the solution must start at the quality of your data.
I have used Anchor Computer’s verify and append services for my clients customer base. They collect data at the point of sale and need to verify & append phone data, postal addresses and opt-in emails to complete their marketing database. Their opt-in email process ensures compliance with Can-Spam laws. I have found that the deliverability and therefore our ROI was significantly higher.
Try them out…. http://www.e-append.com
Best,
Tina
Tina, you make an invaluable addition. Can’t say enough about the importance of good data hygiene. And far too many organizations don’t put in the time to make sure their lists are deduped and current.
My experience is that if you’re not managing your email list data and performing maintenance at least once a week (once every other week if your list is small), then you’re setting yourself up for ineffectiveness.
Valeria:
What topic are you *not* well-versed in? Ha ha. Wonderful post. I tweeted this out from my personal (@djwaldow) and work (@blueskyfactory) twitter accounts today as a great reminder. I have a few questions/points:
1. I was a bit confused by this quote from Return Path, “largest ISPs, like BT, Free.fr, Neuf, Orange and T-Online…” Did they mean to say small? I’ve never heard of those ISPs and I work in the industry.
2. I LOVE your statement, “Writing a non-sucky email would be a good start.” I think the issue with this is that many marketers forget about their audience when crafting an email. It doesn’t matter what the (email) marketer wants to send. What is important is what the subscriber wants to read. This is why testing and proper segmentation is so key.
3. (Plug for using an Email Service Provider). Too often marketers try to “do” email all on their own. Why? Because it’s “easy and cheap.” But we all know, nothing is really easy and cheap, right? If you want to do smart, strategic email marketing, you should consider working with those that think, live, breath (and sometimes EAT) email. There are ESPs and consulting folks who do this stuff for a living. Some of the independents I’d recommend are Jason Baer of Convince and Convert (of course you know Jay), Tamara Gielen, and Jeanne Jennings. Plenty of others, but that is just a start. Many solid ESPs too…
That’s all I’ve got (for now). Thanks again for exposing MP readers to this. Great stuff.
dj
–
DJ Waldow
Director of Community at Blue Sky Factory
@djwaldow
Thank you, Valeria, both for the shout-out (all hail non-sucky emailing, and long may it reign!) and for the excellent overview.
The longer I’m at this wacky game of communication, the more I’m adopting the philosophy (or trying to) of “Always Be Awesome.” Maybe you could half-a** it in the old world of marketing, but them days is gone…thank goodness.
And to echo several other commenters, “Always Be Awesome” might just as easily be applied to the task of list hygiene, etc. I love the DIY ethic, but if you find yourself in over your head, seek help in the awesome department, either via an email service provider or just a solid friend who’ll tell you when you’re going off the rails.
@Peg – is you enjoy Chris Brogan’s newsletter, you might also check out the one produced by BeeLine Labs. I find useful (as in actionable) stories and links I had overlooked every time.
@Tina – having a reliable and scrubbed database is key. You could have the perfect newsletter and it would be all for nothing if it didn’t reach the intended people. Thank you for the tip.
@Chris – love the new form of disappointment = ineffectiveness. Well done!
@DJ – in my previous job I used to be very involved in the whole marketing cycle, which included direct response. Some weeks we used to have 3 concurrent campaigns going in different markets. Now I look at email more as a tool to create an overall program and in future posts I could probably talk about how it all integrates to social media. Your question: I quoted from the report without comment – the survey was conducted in Europe so that might be the reason for the discrepancy. We know that the US is the place where marketing is most sophisticated (and mature). Thank you for the recommendations – right now we am doing our own writing and design as it was more important to get started and build a baseline than to make it perfect. Now we’re taking it to the next level. I do believe in the kaizen philosophy.
@Colleen – your newsletter is interesting and different. What I like about it is that I could not get that same information and tone somewhere else – that is valuable. “Always be Awesome” is hard, especially when you’re stretched, I can tell from someone who’s lived it. Many tell me the tales of when they had big budgets, the good old times. I must have missed them entirely as I cannot recall a time when there were funds aplenty and we didn’t have to make choices.
As Valeria points out in her last comment on her post the report mentioned here has an EMEA focus. Specifically BT (British Telecom, Orange (France Telecom) and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) are the previously state owned telephone operators in the three largest European markets, although their footprint will be much larger than their country of origin, that’s the nature of the European market at least.
Whilst the Global ISP’s are indeed important in Europe we have many home grown ISP’s as well (indeed BT’s infrastructure is run by Yahoo).
Marketers should consider these and other ISP’s when monitoring their inbox delivery especially in EMEA where lists will be made up of many diverse domains, that really was a key point in the research.
Thank you for the further clarification, Richard. I should have given you guys the heads up I was posting about the report.
Great article and comments. It’s all about content and relevance. Plain and simple – thanks for posting!
Valeria – nice post! Thanks for referencing the Return Path study.
Bottom line: email marketers have to know how to read their reports! When the report says, “delivered” – it’s up to the marketer to know that this means “didn’t bounce” and not “reached the inbox.” The latter metric is available in many cases, if marketers ask/demand it.
Reaching the inbox is the first and largest response driver in the email marketing toolkit. Marketers must have this data to succeed.
Oh, and once you reach the inbox, you better be relevant
THANKS
Stephanie
@StephanieSAM
stephanie.miller@returnpath.net
Nice summary. The point about list management is critical – as someone has already mentioned in thier comment here, there seems to be more of a set of accepted guidelines for email marketing rather than a concrete best practises, because the variables are so big. Making sure your list is clean is a key way to avoiding spamming and making sure you don’t get blacklisted. I’m trying to put together a new business that helps people with their email marketing through good email template design and guidance on techniques