As a professional email marketer, it really irks me when I see companies, both small and large doing it badly.  I’ve ranted in the past about other failed e-marketing I’ve been subjected to,  and unfortunately, I suspect this won’t be the last time I do it either.  I blame the surveys.  It seems barely a week goes by when yet another survey comes out showing how fast, easy and cheap e-marketing is; that anyone wanting to survive the economy better be doing it soon.  Please, somebody stop them.

All images in email = e-marketing fail

Because of the wide variety of computer systems, email client software and human languages on the Internet; it is a practical impossibility to ensure that what you send will look the same to the reader as it does to you (even when sending plain text).  One of the most abused methods bad lazy uninformed email marketers attempt, is to create the message entirely from an image, or group of images.  Seems like a simple solution,  right?  WRONG!  While sending your email as just embedded images could make it look the same to the reader as it does to you, it does not guarantee they will ever even see it, or understand it.  In fact, it actually lessens the likelihood of it being seen.  Many spam filters consider email made up of just images to be junk and as such will block them.  Those that don’t block the message, will usually block the images themselves so that all your reader will see is red X’s where your image(s) should have been.  The image shown here is a small piece of an email I recently received from an e-marketer who clearly does not understand how email systems work.  The thing is HUGE!  I had to patch three screen shots together for you to see the entire email at once – it’s more than a foot wide and two feet long.  The only part of the email NOT made of images is the link at the bottom advertising for the company they used to send it.  All I (and probably most of the recipients) saw was a lot of red Xs alerting me that outlook had blocked the images.  What about that mess could possibly entice anyone to allow Outlook to download the pictures that it had blocked – nothing.  The sender didn’t even include alt tag descriptions to give me a hint at what I might see if I downloaded them.  Other than professional curiosity, this message gives me no reason at all to not just delete it.

Follow the rules

At first glance it appears that the sender of this gargantuan message neglected to follow any of the <sarcasm>rather clear</sarcasm> can-spam requirements – such as providing a valid postal address and a method to opt out of future mailings.  However, when we view the offending email with images turned on, we can see that they did at least try to comply, they just put all of that information within the images – where no one would ever see it.

Speak the language of your readers

Looking at this email with images turned on also reveals that the message was clearly intended for people that can read Turkish, of which I am not one.  There is one line of the message written in English “Winner of the Best International Tour Operator WTF China 2008″.  Why did they bother?  Does the fact they won an award in China make anyone want to get this message translated?  I seriously doubt it.  That also reminds me, be careful how you use abbreviations.  I don’t know what “WTF” means in Turkey or China, but I’m guessing it’s not the same thing as it means in the U.S.A.

Don’t buy generic email lists

Would you buy the New York City phone book hoping that half of one percent of everyone in it might be interested in what you have to say if you called them?  Of course not.  So why do businesses continue to pay money for lists that have addresses like “webmaster” & “info” in them?  I’ll tell you why – because they are short sighted.  They can buy a generic list of 10 million names for $50 or a targeted list of 20,000 names for $1,000. And, they know that it takes the same work up-front to send mail to all 10 million addresses as it does to send to just 20 thousand, so why not save the money and just do it?  Let me ask you this; How much is it worth to have your brand image not be that of a clueless spammer?  How much is it worth to not have your I.T. staff deal with 8 million bounced back messages? How much is it worth for your company to be able to send email every day?    I’d wager that each is worth more than $950.

Sadly, I don’t think many e-marketers realize that having email flagged as spam has a greater potential impact than just one pair of lost eyes.  Many email systems now report spam upstream to larger, shared lists of spammers – blacklists from which no mail will be accepted.  Many of these lists feed from each other, get your company on one and soon it’ll be on several.  Blacklists are one of the easiest thing to get on, but some of the hardest to get off.  Get your company on one of these blacklists and it’s not just your marketing emails that are block, it’s ALL e-mails.  Do you want to explain to your CEO that he can’t email pictures of his precious miniature yorkie’s puppies to his sister in Phoenix because you wanted to save the company $950?  I didn’t think so.

Read, read, read – then send

It seems like such obvious thing, but make sure you and someone else proofs your message (more than once) before you click “send”.  Our friends at Ragan Communications were recently reminded of this the hard way;  They sent a daily e-newsletter out twice on the same day, about 30 minutes apart.  Why?  Because the first one had “ExxonMobil”  spelled as “ExxonMobile” in the subject and in the body.  A subtle, but important difference.

You get what you pay for

It’s true, email marketing does have a lower upfront cost than many traditional forms of marketing, it does have a much shorter production time and is the only form of marketing to give such rapid and accurate results.  However, just like with Saturday night dates you really have to do things the right way.  Cheap and easy may sound like a good way to get what you want – but after the test results are in, you’ll probably wish you had taken a different approach.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Email Marketing – how NOT to do it (again)

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing – Do your homework!
2. Email Marketing – update
3. Improve Email Conversions by 20% with List Segmentation

Now I’ve decided to name names.  Hopefully they have the sense to at least have a “Google alert” set up and will read this.  If you are one of THEM, congratulations for getting here.  The messages listed below were all received within one week, Sunday midnight to Sunday midnight and arrived outside of regular business hours (CST).

• Dell Direct
  The good folks at Dell sent me two messages.  One arrived on Tuesday at 6:19 AM (not so bad) and another on Friday at 4:31 AM.  I like Dell.  I have and will use their products.  However, I am not a fan of these emails.  In my opinion, they lack focus.  I am overwhelmed by offers in multiple product lines and categories in the same e-mail.  My print preview showed them as being six pages long, that’s a lot of stuff for one email.  Try some segmentation.
• Ebay
  They sent me a message on Friday at 12:40 AM encouraging me to list my car at ebay Motors.  I use ebay pretty often, but the only car related purchase I’ve made was a new keyless remote.  So, I’m not sure why they think I should sell my car, or why they think it’s on my mind at midnight – on a Friday.
• JC Whitney
  The e-marketers at JC Whitney sent me email on both Tuesday and Friday, each at around 7:30 AM.  This is not nearly as bad as midnight, but for me – still ineffective.  The interesting thing is that while I did request a catalog nearly two years ago, I have never purchased anything from JC Whitney.  Further, I have never (to my recollection) clicked through from one of their messages.  Perhaps it’s time to clean up that list a bit.  I can guarantee your boss will not be so upset with a reduction in list size when your click-through-rate (CTR) climbs substantially after you trim the dead wood (that would be me) from your low-hanging fruit tree.
• Photobucket.com
  Just one email from Photobucket, unfortunately it was a 5:30 am wake-up call.  Even if I was interested in having a photo site do my collages for me, I’m not thinking about it at that time of the morning.
• Proflowers.com
  I really like Proflowers.  I like the products, I like the web site, love the customer service.  I have bought a lot of flowers from them.  I have even clicked through from emails to make purchases.  However, both of the messages they sent me during this particular week arrived around 6 AM.  At 6 AM, the only thing on my mind is “why did I stay up so late tweeting?” and “why is that alarm so loud?” Please keep your emails to the time of day when I am awake and within easy reach of my credit card.
• Reunion.com
  I *think* I may have some info on this site, but can not recall the last time I visited.  I have certainly never clicked-through from an email.  These marketing geniuses sent me mail on Tuesday and again Wednesday at 1:30 AM and 2:30 AM.  I can assure you that mail coming in at at 2:30 in the morning, alerting me that somebody searched for my profile, will never be clicked on by me.
• Southwest Airlines
  I have flown on your planes just once – and vowed to never do it again.  Sending me email at 5 AM telling me how great you you think are won’t change that.  Try sending me email at 10 AM telling me you realize that you have horrible customer service and that your customers are not cattle….AND that you are working to correct these problems.
• University of Phoenix
  Just one email from them, but it was at 3:38 in the morning.  Granted, there may be some people up late worrying about getting that extra $20,000/year that your TV ads tell us we’ll earn by having a higher education degree, but I’m not one of them.  I’m a busy, employed, office worker – one that needs a good six hours of sleep and you just ruined that for me.  Thanks.
• Walmart
  You keep hearing about people who actually pay for the music they download – I’ll admit it , I am one of those people.  Apparently the marketing team at Walmart thinks that because I am crazy enough to pay for music, I must also be crazy enough to be up at 2 AM on Tuesday morning to read a lengthy, ad packed email telling me all about what’s new in Walmart entertainment.  I’m not that crazy.  Message deleted.
  

In addition to the email marketing (loose use of the term) listed above, I did get a few that made a little more sense to me.

• Thompson Cigar
  I am a customer – not an aficionado.  I buy perhaps, one medium sized box approximately every six months.  Two emails a week is serious overkill for me.  I am happy that emails arrive at 9 PM, it seems to be a reasonable expectation that someone who buys cigars online might be online at that time of the day.  I definitely recommend segmenting the mailing list into groups based perhaps on frequency and dollar amount of purchase.
• TaxAct Online.
  I used this site to submit my 2007 taxes.  It was a fast, simple process.  I’ll probably use them again this year when the time rolls around.  They sent me just one email, which arrived just after 11 PM on Wednesday.  That’s not too late in the evening, but for me it is pushing the envelope of rational thinking.  I would prefer these arrived earlier in the day.

I feel compelled to give a special shout out to the people charged with sending the email newsletters at Ragan Communications.  This company earns it’s bread and butter teaching others how to communicate efficiently and effectively.  During the same one week time frame, I received 14 emails from them.  Admittedly, one of the mailings is titled “Daily Headlines” and I did subscribe to it.  Further I will admit that I did subscribe to the other mailings as well.  However, having made that disclaimer I have to say this: FOURTEEN EMAILS IN ONE WEEK!   Sorry, lost it there for a moment.  Ragan communicators – seriously, let me take a breath in between emails. When they first started to arrive, I eagerly read each one.  Now, I have a rule that moves your hard work to a folder to be skimmed when I have time to spare.  Today is Tuesday and the oldest one in the folder is from last Wednesday, there are 12 of them – 12.  Your message is being lost in the fray of a 100 other things – convince me that your weekly barrage is worth my time.  Good luck.

I have to ask; why do you continue to buy mailing lists?  E-marketers, please be more aware of where the lists you buy come from.  I wish I had kept some of the so unrelated-it’s-funny emails that I have gotten over the last few months so I could share them with you.  Alas, I have but the one that arrived this morning. The “Government Health IT Selection Committee” was kind enough to contact me today with this message: “Your position within the government IT community qualifies you to receive a complimentary subscription to Government Health IT Magazine – an exclusive publication from the publishers of Federal Computer Week.”  Yes, in my former life I owned a web design, hosting, ISP company and as such could have been called an “IT person.”  but I have never had anything to do with government or health related IT.  Additionally, for the last 18 months I have been (and hopefully will continue to be) employed as a marketing professional.  I would say this qualifies as lead generation failure.  This is why you can buy huge lists of email addresses for so little money.

As I prepared to write this, I discussed my “problem” of being woken up at all hours of the night by my smart phone going off when new email arrives with a few of my friends & co-workers.  Believe it or not, they suggested I get another email address and just not worry about it, or even worse – to tag it as spam.  I have used a fake address myself when I anticpate the company will be sending me spam.  But these are messages are not junk.  They just need some TLC, better timing and in some cases, better list management.  Just because I don’t want this stuff, does not make it universally spam.  There is a lesson here emarketers, if you don’t give your readers what they want, when they want it – you are a spammer in their eyes.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Email Marketing – update

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing – Do your homework!
2. Email Marketing – how NOT to do it (again)
3. Improve Email Conversions by 20% with List Segmentation

I’ve been getting more and more Email marketing from large companies lately.  I won’t call it spam since I have done business with each of them at some point, even though it has been a while with some of them.

I’m a bit perplexed at the delivery schedule of a few of them as they seem to be following suggestions from the pre-spam era and are sending in the middle of the night.  I have two problems with this.  First, like a lot of people,  I get my mail on a Smart Phone when not at my desk. In my case a Palm Treo 750.  Why is that a problem you ask…because whenever I get new Email, my phone it lights up and announces in a rather loud voice “You have new mail in your in box.”  Of course I could just turn it off, but being the paranoid parent of two daughters that do not live with me, I’d rather leave the phone turned on.  Besides, you never know when Terry Francona might call seeking advice for an upcoming game.  The second problem is that most mornings I have so much junk in my mailbox I really don’t have either the time or the desire to even skim their Email to see if it is of interest to me or not.

Read the Email Marketing Studies.

There are countless resources on the web to teach you everything you need to know about Email marketing.  Studies have shown that consumers are getting an average of 35 Emails a day and business recipients an average of 100.  With that much Email for your subscribers to wade through, you need to make sure yours gets to them at the best possible time.  Opinions vary regarding what day of the week or hour of the day is best.  However, in general most agree that if you are sending B2B Email, send marketing pieces so they arrive around 11 A.M. or 4 P.M., and on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.  If you are sending B2C marketing Email, then weekends are your best bet for higher open rates and Email should arrive around 9 P.M. or 11 P.M.

If you have the ability to do so, recent studies have shown a much higher engagement rate can be achieved if you get mail to your subscribers on the same day of the week and time of the day that they subscribed.

Is Your Email Message Readable?

After your recipient gets the message, can they read it?  The Email Experience Council reported that 21% of Emails they reviewed appeared completely blank when images were turned off.  Guess what?  That also means that people like me that get mail on a Smart Phone, will not see your much labored over, beautiful marketing piece either.  If your system allows, create a message that sends both a text and HTML formatted version at the same time.  This allows the readers device and software to decide.  Otherwise, create two separate lists and allow your subscribers an option to choose one or the other.  When using HTML, keep code to a minimum as spam filters tend to choke on it.

Personalized Email Campaigns.

If your process allows, you should definitely consider personalizing some aspect of your Email marketing.  However, the statistics show that personalizing the subject line and nothing else will actually decrease your open and click-through rates by about a percent.  One study showed that by just including the company name in the subject line increased the open rate 30-60%.

Test, Test and Test Again.

No matter what I say, or any of the stats studies say, this should only be used as a starting point.  You MUST do extensive A/B testing.  Test everything.  Then, test it again.  Carve out two groups from your mailing list, around 5% for each should be sufficient.  Send each a different variation of your marketing message to each and measure the results.

CAN-SPAM

All I can say here, become very familiar with the rules, and follow them.

[UPDATE:  Is it revenge, or just a GIGANTIC coincidence?  The night I posted this I had eight pieces of marketing Email arive in my mailbox.]

UPDATE:  This wasn’t the end of it, please read part two: Email Marketing Update

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Email Marketing – Do your homework!

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing – how NOT to do it (again)
2. Email Marketing – update
3. Improve Email Conversions by 20% with List Segmentation