Tuesday, November 28, 2006

How Googlemail cramps your style

We're onto a slightly technical subject this week, but it's one to be aware of, even if you're not personally responsible for coding your emails.

The growth of Gmail, or Googlemail as it's called in the UK, throws up some interesting challenges for the email marketer. I've done an assessment of all my B2C clients' lists and Googlemail/Gmail addresses still only account for a tiny percentage, but it's growing.

There are several issues. Firstly, when a message is displayed in the recipient's inbox, Google very smartly presents a series of contextual adverts next to it. So, for example if you are a niche kitchenware company, you may find your newsletter presented alongside ads for Steamer Trading and Lakeland Limited. Nice!

Something else which tends to scare email marketers is the prospect of image blocking. This has been a problem for some time, however, and doesn't just apply to Googlemail. As I've mentioned in a previous eTip it's best not to rely too heavily on images to communicate your message. Here's a handy chart from Email Tools showing how the major email clients handle image blocking.

But it gets worse. Googlemail ignores styles. In an email, it's unwise to use styles for layout anyway. But now we're talking fonts, padding, margins and backgrounds - all potentially messed up. What's the answer? Well, I'm waiting for a talented email designer to come up with one, but for now I can see two options.

Either you turn back time to pre-1999 HTML and all the design limitations that implies, or you send your Googlemail recipients the plain text version with an invitation to view the HTML version online should they wish. Personally I'm in favour of the latter. What's worse, for your recipients to see a plain text (but readable) email, or an HTML version that looks wrong (and possibly no images displaying either)?

With email, there are no guarantees about how your message will render, and sometimes it's simply a question of settling for good old plain text.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Worst Kind of Spam

This morning I wrote another letter to the Data Protection Commissioner in Jersey to complain about unsolicited email from Play.com, a Jersey-based online retailer.

As you might expect, I get a lot of spam. My various email addresses have been out there in the public domain for so long that I see it as an occupational hazard. I get asked 'don't you get fed up with having to delete all those hundreds of 'cheap meds' emails every morning?' The answer is no, not really. But when I get non-compliant email from legitimate EU companies who should know better it's a different story.

OK, the email directive of 2003 is a bit grey in places. When is an email address a business address, and when is it private? The distinction, in the UK at least, is down to the legal status of the business - limited companies are businesses, whereas sole traders or partnerships are regarded as private individuals.

The reading of the EU directive in Jersey may be different. But the issue I have with Play.com, is that they make it impossible to opt out of their emailings. I've had several email exchanges with the company over the last two years but they are unable or unwilling to action my request. That makes their sales emails, for me, more pernicious than any amount of bot-generated spam selling dodgy pharmaceuticals.

The moral of the tale? If someone complains that your email is spam, it doesn't matter whether you agree. Don't defend yourself and don't force the recipient to jump through hoops in order to get off the list. DO apologise, DO suppress their address and do it right away. Remember the old adage about how people are quick to tell others if they've bad experience. It's the kind of negative word of mouth no-one wants, especially on the internet.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Getting your email delivered (part 2)

Deliverability is one of the toughest nuts to crack in email marketing. Time and again I get asked 'how can I make sure my emailshot gets past the spam filters?' It's a bit like the perennial question 'How can I make sure my site is number one on Google?' - the short answer is, you will never be 100% in control of this.

Rather than seeing spam filters as a challenge to be beaten, a more effective use of resources is to make sure your legitimate email is not spam, and that you're not using spammers' techniques, even inadvertently. Not only that, but don't forget the one spam filter you can't fool is the final one - the recipient.

So what can you do to prevent your email being filtered out as spam?
  1. Follow ISP guidelines. Monitoring the spam filtering policy of every ISP is a mammoth task. There are services you can subscribe to who will do this for you, although you may find that most are focused on the main US ISPs. However, there are steps you can take. For example, if your list is B2C it's likely to include a high proportion of Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL addresses, so at the very least it's worth keeping up with their policies on spam and deliverability. Test different variables, monitor results and stay up to date - as with search engines, the parameters are continuously changing as spammers find ways around them. I recently changed all the calls to action in a customer email so that there wasn't a single 'click here' and the soft bounce rate went down by a third. Coincidence? To get an idea of how the HTML of a message can affect its deliverability, see this article at Clickz.
  2. Try not to look like spam. For example, make sure your subject line is meaningful or at least recognisable - there's a fine line between 'creative and intriguing' and 'nonsensical and spammy'. The decision to open or delete typically takes less than a second. Obviously spammy words in the subject line may not prevent it entering the inbox, but the email may still end up in a recipient's trash quicker than you can say 'get your free meds here.'
  3. Adopt email authentication. ISPs are trying to block the professional spammers by only allowing through email that's from who it says it's from. This is something that is only just starting to impact in the UK, but will become increasingly important. It's a whole subject in itself though - to be covered in a future eTip!

Getting your email delivered (part 1)

One of the most important stats for any long term email marketing programme is the bounce rate. Deliverability is now the hot issue in email marketing, with much of the teeth-gnashing focused on spam filters and how to 'get around them' (a phrase I'm not wild about - I'll explain why in the next eTips.) However, there are other reasons why your email may not arrive. It's worth tackling them before sweating the big stuff. Here are three for starters:

  1. Check your data entry for accuracy. A number of my clients gather email signups in house, for example, a restaurant invites customers to fill in a signup slip when they pay their bill. Trouble is, they have to be entered onto a spreadsheet for upload. Interpreting people's handwriting and then typing addresses accurately means recognising, for example, that anything without an @ isn't a valid address, nor is file:///D:/Robin or joebloggs@btinernt.com

  2. Have a double entry system on a webpage signup. Yes, I know it's a pain to type one's address twice (or even cut and paste it) but if you're able to do this then it's worth considering. If nothing else it does mean the registrant takes longer over the email address and may be more likely to pick up on a typo. If the email service or software you are using makes it possible to validate email addresses at the point of signup, even better

  3. Provide a choice of ways for people to update their address. Some people will happily click on a customised link which says 'change your preferences' or 'update your details' whereas others will prefer to send an email. Processing the latter may seem like hard work but think of it as an opportunity to engage one-to-one with your subscribers! (Just make sure you can fulfil this before offering it)

Let's begin!

It's now nearly a year since I started my fortnightly email newsletter about email newsletters, eTips. I've been meaning to move it to blog format for some time, so here it is.