Is plain text just plain best?

I have a colleague who regularly uses email to prospect for consulting work. She sends out plain text emails, and swears by the results.

Every now and then the 'text vs HTML' debate is re-kindled. Just when is it best to send in plain text?

Let's consider the benefits:

• no worries about rendering or image blocking
  
• good delivery rate: less likely to fall foul of filters
  
• may be more likely to get read, doesn't look like a 'marketing email'
  
• the 'low tech' approach may be better received by some target audiences

But what are the cons? Here's what comes to mind:

• no way of tracking opens
  
• trackable links can be very long and in some email clients this will cause them to break
  
• with no graphical content the copy has to be excellent
  
• for some businesses the images are crucial (eg mail order clothing)
  
• lack of visual branding may make the message unmemorable

My consultant colleague only sends out small numbers of highly targeted emails, and I would guess her high success rate is down to relevance and timing, two of the most important factors in any email campaign.

For the majority of clients I still recommend HTML, but with the usual caveats: don't rely too heavily on images, include a link to a web version, offer a plain text version for those who prefer it and send your campaigns in multipart format, so that the text version is delivered if HTML can't be displayed.

Image blocking: what you can do

The other day I received an email which illustrates perfectly the problem of image blocking. Here's how it looked before and after I turned on images:

Default view - click to enlarge

With images turned on - click to enlarge

To make matters worse there was no ALT text for the images, and the link to the web version actually wasn't a live link.

A number of significant email clients now have images turned off by default: AOL, Googlemail/Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Outlook 2007 and some versions of Outlook Express, to name just a few. In most cases, the recipient is in control and can enable images if he or she wishes to - either on an email-by-email basis or by changing the setting.

So what can you do? As usual, it's damage limitation:

• Test how your HTML email appears with images turned off
  
• Add a text-based link to a web version, at the top of the email
  
• Use ALT text for all images
  
• Do not use images for important content like headlines and links
  
• Ask recipients to add you to their address book

Regarding the last point, don't assume people know how to do this. Usability research suggests that if you give people instructions on how to add addresses to their address book or trusted sender list, it greatly increases uptake (Marketing Sherpa email Benchmark Guide 2007). This might mean setting up a page on your website with basic instructions and screenshots of the major email clients.

B2B email - no permission required?

When it comes to emailing private individuals, as opposed to
businesses, the law in the UK is pretty clear. You have to have
permission. There are a number of good factsheets available
which explain what 'permission' means in this context - for
example this one from Scottish Enterprise.


But what about business-to-business? Is it really true that
anything goes? According to the law, yes. With one or two
caveats, however.

The other day I was at a business networking meeting, and
during the free exchange of business cards somebody asked
me if they could add me to their mailing list. It was a
polite request so I said yes. Then I thought about how
infrequently this happens - the courtesy of requesting
permission where none is legally required.

When a new B2B client asks about emailing to a 'grey' list
(addresses acquired from business cards, brochures or websites,
for example) I advise them to tread carefully. Firstly, if
any of those businesses are sole traders or partnerships,
then legally speaking they are treated as private individuals
and B2C regulations apply. Secondly, business relationships
are generally about more than just a quick sale. So it's
important that the tone of an email approach doesn't annoy,
and that the message really is relevant to these people.

At the moment, B2B email marketers have it easy, but it's
not always so great when you're on the receiving end. And
if enough people complain, who knows, we may end up with
an email version of corporate TPS.

Reactive email: 'I wish I'd thought of that!'

Whether or not you have a marketing plan, what do you do when other, unforeseen opportunities arise? I don't mean all those ad sales calls offering you a fantastic price on a quarter page display in the next XYZ supplement. I mean the genuine moments when you see someone else jump in and you say to yourself 'I wish I'd thought of that!'

One of the beauties of new media tools such as email, pay per click advertising and SMS messaging is its immediacy. It allows you to react to the unforeseen, to take advantage of the moment. But with the limited resources most of us have, this means planning ahead. How?

First of all, identify the relevant things that could happen, or will happen, but you don't know when. That's the principle behind obituary writing, for example. Then prepare. Emails can be designed, written and loaded into your distribution system. When the time comes, add the relevant details and send. Google Adwords can be prepared ahead of time and a mere click will send them live.

Some events are predictable and already well exploited: florists, restaurants and chocolate retailers all have Mother's Day, Easter and Christmas firmly on their calendars.

Others need a bit of forethought.

Consider the case of an arthritis charity promoting a natural, drug-free treatment. When are people going to be searching for this on the web? As soon as the next drug scare breaks. The charity could prepare for this ahead of time with pay per click ads to attract searchers to its website and a 'ten top tips' paper ready to email. The plan would be to insert the name of the drug into the ads before sending them live, and to temporarily alter the wording on the homepage email sign-up box to say 'Concerned about (drug name)? Sign up for our top ten tips on how to manage your arthritis naturally'. These two simple actions could take place within minutes and lead to hundreds of new members.

You will be able to come up with your own list of relevant events and the interest angle based on what it is you sell or promote. But here are a few examples to get you going:

Event: The first rain appears after an extended dry period. Interests/angles: umbrellas, waterproof clothing, gardening/planting seedlings, staying in with a DVD, global warming, drought aid for third world countries etc
Event: A hot summer is predicted. Interests/angles: sunscreen, holidays, room fans, barbecue equipment, car servicing, losing weight, summer clothes, global warming etc
Event: England wins the World Cup. Interests/angles: replica shirt sales, pubs, beer, footballing personalities, sports channels, football coaching & places to play, WAG fashions, escape from the footie etc

Have fun!

Get to the point: writing for skimmers (part 2)

In the last eTip I talked about how much we are influenced by the subject lines and 'from' fields when choosing to either delete or open an email.

But once your email has been opened, what then? Readers will typically give you seconds rather than minutes of their time. You need to ensure even the flightiest of skimmers gets your message. For example:

Use brief subheads

Subheadings or emboldened key words focus the reader's attention. They and can be used to either

• intrigue them into reading more, or
  
• summarise in a couple of words what that paragraph is about

Use bullet points

• bullets or numbered lists are easier to skim than long paragraphs of prose
  
• three is the magic number but certainly no more than seven

Make calls to action prominent

If there's one thing you want people to do, put it somewhere prominent in the top two inches (for those who won't scroll down) and again at the end (for those who read it all before they decide to act).

Some research I've seen suggests that graphic buttons are more likely to be clicked on than hypertext links, but that's something you should test as audiences vary.

Keep sentences & paragraphs short

Think bite-sized. Bonsai. Haiku. This needn't be an excuse for poor writing though. It's actually harder to write less - something you'll know if you've ever sweated over a subject line for half an hour!

Don't get deleted, write for skimmers

Are your emails written for skimmers?

Skimming isn't about reading quickly. Being a skimmer means you're just looking for the key points and ignoring the rest. Skimmers love a good contents page, a short abstract and quick-fire humour. They struggle with ring-bound reports, jokes that take ten minutes to get to the punchline, and novels by Henry James.

So what's my point...? The first thing email recipients skim is the inbox.

In a survey of US email users conducted by the ESPC, 80% said they report spam or delete emails without opening. 73% make that decision based on the 'from' name and 69% based on the 'subject' line.

In other words, a quick skim of the inbox is enough for most people to decide whether to delete or open.

Which means your 'from' name should be transparent, consistent and meaningful outside of your organisation. I still see plenty of genuine emails coming from 'Customer Service' or 'Sales Office' which sadly makes them indistinguishable from spam.

As for subject lines - the best practice advice is to test, test, test. Different audiences respond to different subject line strategies. And it sounds obvious, but keep an eye on subject lines currently being used by spammers and try not to look like them.

In the next eTips: making the body of your email skimmer-friendly.

What do readers look at in your email?

Did you know that people don't just click on links in an email, they click all over the page, even on blank spaces? Or that only about half the people who view an email actually make it to the end?

These are among the findings of a 2006 email Eyetracking Study carried out by Marketing Sherpa as part of its 2007 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide. Just as it sounds, eyetracking measures both how the eyes move around the screen and what they fix on. This information, together with the monitoring of mouse movements, can highlight a number of interesting issues for email marketers. This study revealed some fascinating insights, for example:

- Images are important. An email with a relevant image got double the attention than the same email without: people actually spent longer looking at the words, too.

- Although people tend to click all over the place on at HTML email, text emails focus the reader more and only the links are clicked on

- People don't read whole sentences or headlines. They read the first few words and the brain 'fills in' the rest. The same is true for paragraphs: the first is the most read. So it's worth getting to the point sooner, rather than later

The samples involved in this study were small: eyetracking is still quite a high tech, labour intensive process. And the conclusions are predictably non-committal: yes, the positioning of elements on the page affects how people interact with email. But it all comes down to trialling and testing to see what works best.

Tried and tested content ideas

In the last eTip I argued that an email newsletter should be seen as a long term marketing tool, not just a vehicle for sales messages.

That means including a good proportion of non-promotional content - some would say as much as 60%.

Which is all very well, but what if you're just selling something less than glamorous, like spare parts for washing machines, or tax advice, or plastic cups? How do you find the inspiration for engaging, interesting, valuable non-sales-related content, month after month?
Here are a few tried and tested content ideas:

• Behind the scenes: how a product is made, where it comes from, how it's transported, who's involved.
  
• Did you know: a (genuinely) interesting or useful fact
  
• Insider tip: give away your expertise for free
  
• Other readers: an example, issue or success story that readers can empathise with
  
• People & animals: recurring characters, putting faces to names, shaggy dog tales
  
• Backgrounder: putting your products or services in a wider context, how the business started
  
• Jargon buster: de-mystifying things, letting the reader into an 'inner circle', self-deprecating humour
  
• Simple competition/giveaway: something that involves people going to your website or reading your brochure can work well!

There has to be a point to your non promotional content, of course. It must have some relevance to your readers and to your products/services. (Sounds obvious, but it is possible to lose sight of this!)

You want people to read it and think 'that's interesting / enjoyable / useful enough for me to want to open and read the next newsletter.' Over a period of time you also want them to think 'these are people I respect /trust /could do business with.'

A newsletter is for life, not just for sales

Some years ago, one of my first email newsletter clients was
a mail order company selling clothing made from ethically
traded materials. I was delighted to have the chance to work
with these people as I admired their approach. There was a
genuine enthusiasm and sense of commitment about what they
were doing.

My mind was buzzing straight away about their email newsletter.
There was just so much material we could include: profiles
of the cotton farmers, features about fair trade, about the
production process, about fabric care, about the staff who
fulfilled the orders ... I knew we would never be short of
good content.

However, the business owner was only interested in one type
of content, which was basically 'buy our T-shirts:
long-sleeved £12, short-sleeved £8, new in this month:
sweats just £15...' For him, the object of the newsletter
was simply to deliver clickthroughs and thereby sales.

I felt that this was a mistake. Of course, the newsletter
should feature the products, and sales was the overall
objective. But a big part of the products' appeal was about
being made from fairly traded, natural fabrics and sold
by a small, actively involved company. An email newsletter
was the perfect vehicle to talk up those aspects of the
business, enthuse customers and encourage loyalty and advocacy.

The most successful email newsletters are the electronic
equivalent of the old days when people used to go into shops,
have a chat with the person behind the counter about their
kids, the weather, the price of fish, the new fridge he'd
had installed ... and then buy stuff. It's not just about
your products and services. It's about showcasing what's
different about your business, building a relationship,
establishing trust - altogether a solid base for sales and
referrals.

After just one newsletter, the ethical clothing client and
I parted company, and I learned an important lesson about
managing client expectations. Undoubtedly, to reap the best
returns from an email newsletter you need to commit to a
long term plan - failure to see the big picture is a wasted
opportunity.

Finding out what customers want ... and more

Each email is an opportunity to find out about your customers.

Sometimes, market research is seen as something you do when prospecting for customers. Or it's a boring section on the marketing plan or business proposal that has to be filled in.

But in fact, as any marketer will tell you, gathering 'customer insights' is a job that never ends. Don't stop finding out about people when they become a customer - that's when you have the chance to really open up a dialogue. The world's most successful brands are obsessed with finding out what makes customers tick. It's about knowing what they want, but there's more to it than that. Remember the famous quote from Henry Ford: 'If I had asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse.'

The marketer's job is to know what customers want now, and anticipate what they'll want next. Finding out what they want now is the easy bit! You can, for example:

• ask questions at the point of sign up. This doesn't have to be on the signup form itself (too many questions up front can put people off) but you could, for example, request a bit more information in the confirmation email. Or it might be useful to know whereabouts in the purchasing cycle they are, or their area of interest.
• ask directly for feedback. Even if people are reluctant to email their comments, periodic surveys, if kept short, can generate useful ongoing feedback.
• include links in the body of the email, then measure the popularity of those links. The email might include, for example, the first few lines of an article, or an invitation to download a coupon or more information, or even a link to an external website. You'll soon see which items are popular and which are not, and sometimes it's not what you're expecting.
• monitor the unsubscribe and forwarding activity. Did a particular issue generate more unsubs than usual? Perhaps the proportion of promotional content was higher than usual, or perhaps there was too much irrelevant content. A good number of forward-to-a-friends this month? Analyse what might have been the reason and look to replicate it.

The customer insights you can glean from email marketing should inform the rest of the marketing mix, although that doesn't aways happen of course, since email is too often seen as some sort of add-on to the 'real' business of marketing. But don't get me started on that!

HTML email - it's web design, but not as we know it

An HTML email is just like a web page. Except in some ways it's not. It's worth understanding the differences, even if you're not the person responsible for the design and coding of your email messages. Let me rephrase that - if you're overseeing the business of email marketing then it's essential to have a handle on the potential design issues.

The thing to always bear in mind is that the sender is never 100% in control of how the email appears to all recipients. So how can you find out how your emails will look? Some email service providers offer the ability to test how your email will render in a selection of email clients. That sort of service isn't cheap, however. There's also generally an emphasis on US-based ISPs which isn't much help to the UK email marketer. You could just as well open accounts with each of the major webmail providers and recruit a small group of testers using AOL, Entourage, Apple Mail and other common email clients.

Backgrounds and fonts
With HTML email it pays to be simple. Background images often won't get seen, and dark backgrounds can be a disaster if your pale font colour defaults to a standard black or blue, making the copy unreadable.

As with web pages, the viewer can only see specific fonts if they are installed on his or her computer. So if you use something exotic for your subheads, just be aware that it may well default to Arial or Times New Roman for many recipients.

As I've mentioned in a previous eTip, in Googlemail (or Gmail), images are turned off by default - but at least the recipient can elect to see them, whereas styles are ignored.

Layout
For a web page designer it's easy to create a fluid page that adjusts to the screen size. Some 'cool' sites even require the viewer to scroll sideways to see content. By contrast to all this design flexibility, the optimum width for an email is 600 pixels, but anything within 500 - 700 will probably be fine. This is based on the default message box width for the most common email and webmail clients when viewed on average screen sizes and resolutions.

When it comes to laying out content within your email, again I'm afraid the old ways can't be beat, and that means using tables. Although tables are no longer in favour with web designers, using styles to layout an HTML email is the proverbial recipe for disaster. Be aware that fonts can display larger than you'd like when styles are ignored, and that could break your layout with over-long rows and shifted columns.

Rich Media
It's certainly possible to add video, animations, forms and other interactive content into an HTML email. But this will inevitably attract the attention of spam filters and network administrators. Is it necessary? How about a teaser to the interactive content, accompanied by a clickthrough to see it on your website - not only is this simpler, but you can then track who clicks and thereby the popularity of the item.

The bottom line: HTML emails may not be as sophisticated as their web page cousins, but plain is the new interesting! Stick to pale backgrounds and dark fonts, and check how your email looks without styles and without images. It may not be perfect, but is it still readable? Stay within the optimum width, avoid Javascript, Flash and other fancy stuff. And test in as many different email clients as possible.

Your recipients will thank you for it, and your messages will have the very best chance of arriving intact.

How to stay out of the 'junk' folder

Bring up the subject of email in any conversation and the topic
almost always turns to spam - how much we're getting, what to do
about it, which spam filtering software is worth using, and so on.

But talk to a potential email marketer and one of the first
questions is 'how can we stop our email from being filtered
out as spam?'

The war against spam is being fought on many different levels,
from ISPs and email service providers, to network administrators
and, of course, individuals themselves. What they all have in
common is that they are trying to filter out irrelevant, unsolicited
email from disreputable sources.

So your first priority should be to ensure the domain you are
sending from hasn't been blacklisted for any reason, and that
the content of your email is relevant to the audience you're
targeting. It always irritates me to read things like 'email is
just a numbers game - the more people you send to, the more
responses you'll get', and then use that to justify a mass mailing
with the promise of a 0.1% return (or less). Only spammers think
that way - short term gains, inbox misery all round and screw the
customer!

Notice that I haven't mentioned permission. Permission is important
in both marketing and legal terms, but we're not talking about that
here. Spam filtering has little to do with marketing concepts or
even what is or isn't legal, it is simply rules-based.

In a previous eTip I talked about how you can reduce the chance of your emails being blocked. But there is something else you can do, and according to Marketing Sherpa's 2007 Benchmark Guide only 22% of email marketers actually do this: ask recipients to whitelist your 'from' address.

Better still, tell them what that means or how to do it - many people won't know, and providing instructions greatly increases uptake. Detailed information about this is freely available on the web - for example, here at SiteSell.com.

Or you could simply say 'Please add ourcompany@emaildomain.com
to your address book or contacts list, or ensure you add
emaildomain.com to your 'safe senders list', in order to receive
our emails.'

Asking people to whitelist you is a simple thing to do. It can
increase the chances of your emails getting through to those who
want to read them, reducing the 'false positives' generated by
clunky spam filtering.

Do your emails have the X-factor? Part 2

In the last eTips I talked about injecting the 'X-factor' into emails - giving them personality, making them more readable, building a rapport with the reader over time.

For example, a common technique is to feature the name and photo of the editor or writer, and have them introduce the content or comment on it. You could include feedback from readers or answer a commonly-asked question, as this can strengthen the dialogue.

Make references to the real world, anchoring the exchange in time and place - it's more evidence that the email has come from a real person, who understands the lives and concerns of its readers.

Of course, an email newsletter shouldn't consist purely of promotional content. But when you do want to sell something, how you say it makes all the difference.

Here are a couple of examples. The first is from a promotional email for a US audience. It illustrates the importance of empathy and relevance, both email marketing essentials.

BEFORE
XYZ is the leading manufacturer of free online games. We offer you great games to play, including:

• Classic titles
• Sports games
• Action titles
• Children's games

Make the most of your game time with XYZ -- check out our newest games now!

AFTER
Excited about March Madness? Stage your own online tournaments playing family and friends with Basketball Fever, free online from XYZ.

Even if you don't have hoop dreams, you'll love the games we offer:

• Tetris, the classic
• Rally Race, for action
• Match-It! , for children 3 and up

And much more!

WHAT HAPPENED?
The 'before' copy was factual but just a tad boring. Also, although you may think in terms of categories like 'classic games' and 'sports games' that doesn't mean your audience thinks that way too. Since it was due to go out in March, the 'after' version focuses on a specific game and hooks it onto a topical event ('March Madness' refers to the season ending baskbetball tournaments played each year in the USA.)

(thanks to Jeanne Jennings for this example.)

The following copy extract, introducing a new product, shows how re-ordering the information and presenting it in a more conversational way creates a more readable and compelling 'story'.

BEFORE:
Why use Screenblock?

Time spent with TV is time not spent:

• talking to the family
• taking exercise
• playing
• pretending
• creating
• learning.

Too much TV can bring:

• Overweight
• Tiredness
• Problems at school
• Shyness
• Aggression.

Screenblock protects your developing child from these dangers.

AFTER:
Do your kids watch too much TV?

You want your children to be happy and to have the best possible chances in life.

Nobody wants their kids to miss out on playing sport, making friends, having fun or doing well at whatever they're interested in And nobody imagines their kids are going to be overweight, have problems at school or be lacking in confidence.

But that's exactly what research tells us can happen to young people whose TV watching isn't regulated.

You might think you can’t do anything about it.
But now you can – with Screenblock.

WHAT HAPPENED?
Yes, bullet points are good - brief, easy to scan and read on screen. But too many bullets can induce a kind of 'bullet blindness' where some of the points are skipped entirely. Not only that, but sometimes a more conversational tone is required.

In this example, the first draft is factual, but somewhat cold and blunt. The second version talks more sympathetically to the reader, empathising with her as a parent who naturally wants the best for her child and presenting her with the solution to the problem.

Good, readable email newsletters with personality are a breed apart. But they're the ones that get read, enjoyed and acted on, month after month. From time to time I'll be commenting on the best ones I know of in my blog, so please add it to your RSS reader if you'd like to be kept updated. Also, I'm always interested to hear about any great examples you've come across.

Thank you for reading in 2006 - Happy New Year and here's to a fantastic 2007!

Do your emails have the X-factor? (part 1)

Now that email has become a standard tool for customer communications it becomes more essential than ever to make yours stand out from the same old stuff. One of the key ways to make email communications more memorable is to make them more enjoyable to read. Sounds a bit basic, doesn't it? But I wonder if sometimes we get so bogged down with making sure we've got enough calls to action, or avoiding spam filters and so forth, that we forget this simple fact.

Email newsletters need personality, the 'X-factor' that makes them compulsive reading and gets them forwarded. And for it to seem genuine, the tone of voice needs to be consistent across all email communications with the customer. It may be the personality of the brand, of your organisation, of yourself, of the editor or even of a fictional editor.

It's said that people buy from people, not from companies. Unfortunately, too many email newsletters seem to be computer-generated: consisting purely of press release copy, cut-and-paste news headlines or content resembling an internal memo or instruction manual.

It doesn't have to be this way, but getting it right is tricky. Here are a few examples of what can happen:

Being informal vs being over-familiar
WOW!! Can u believe its nearly 2007??
By all means inject some fun into your writing - after all, email is closer to a spoken conversation than to a written letter. But an overly jokey or informal style needs careful handling. It can backfire, especially if it looks like you're trying too hard. There's nothing worse than feeling talked-down-to.

Being polite vs being overly formal
Further to the last email requesting confirmation of your details on our company directory, our records show that you have not yet done so.
OK, this is a system email, not a newsletter, but the principle is the same. Read your copy out loud. How does it sound? An overly formal style can come across as pompous or even rude. The golden rule is, if you wouldn't say it, don't write it in an email.

Talking to the masses
Once again, we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the annual British Birdwatching Fair ....
Email is not a broadcast medium, it is read by one person at a time. Address the individual reader, not an audience, if you want to connect with him or her. In a way it's similar to giving a presentation: make eye contact with individuals and they will feel included, look over the top of their heads and they'll turn off.

Sloppy writing
Do you want more sales from you website. Reduce Website abandonment's
We know it's good to be concise - bullets win over long paragraphs any day. But accurate spelling, punctuation and sentence structure aren't just niceties - get it wrong and and readers stumble. Chances are they won't bother to re-read if they didn't understand it the first time.

Coming up in part 2 - copy makeovers and emails with the X-factor.

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.

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.

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.