VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

Snacks, Lemonade, and Peas: Why First Impressions Matter

It can often be difficult to stand out in an endless list of unopened inbox emails. An online marketing company recently sent an email with the following subject line: "Snacks, Lemonade, and Peas: Event Tips, and Beyond." Why is this particular subject line so attractive?

First of all, who doesn't love snacks and lemonade? And, while not everyone loves peas, they can certainly appreciate their nutritional value. Second of all, the email was sent at 12:19 PM, just around the time when our stomachs start grumbling and we're ready for lunch. The company applied two clever tactics, they used the right verbiage and they did it at the perfect time. They spoke to our subconscious appetites and yelled who wants snacks, lemonade, and peas?!

What can we take from this encounter with Snacks, Lemonade, and Peas in the inbox?

1. First impressions still count! In a fast paced environment of reality tv, tabloids, and twitter, we have become accustomed to being entertained, excited, and drawn in with a hook. Although we may not always have something exciting to offer, we can still offer it in an interesting way. Use attractive verbiage, find clever ways of phrasing a subject line, and be unique! 

2. Keep it above the fold. As often as we hear the phrase "you can't judge a book by its cover" the truth is, we all do, whether or not we are aware of the fact. Within seconds of seeing a subject line, title, or opening sentence of a blog post or email we decide whether or not to continue reading. So, make your first few lines count. Deliver your call to action, purpose, or message above the fold (upper half of the page). Don't make readers dig for the goods because 9 times out of 10, they won't.

3. Ask yourself, would I read this? We rely on first impressions to help us quickly determine whether or not we will find something useful and interesting much in the same way we watch a movie because of its preview or buy a magazine for its cover. There is limited time and space to draw in customers. Put yourself in the shoes of your readers and ask yourself, would I find this enticing?

4. Timing is everything. When sending an email, timing can have a huge impact on open and click rates. Perform a split test or examine the reporting on your last few sends to determine the times when your emails have the highest open and click rates. Like the marketing website did with snacks, lemonade, and peas at lunchtime, coordinate subject lines and timing to optimize open rates even further.

We can spend hours creating interesting content and incredible offers but if our readers never get past the subject line, our efforts become futile. In an age where everything is animated from billboards to buttons, we have to compete to captivate our audience from the start. The first few seconds of introduction determine whether our users will remain engaged or make a dash for the delete button.

Learn more about Salesforce reporting! Learn how you can use your customer data to send relevant, timely and exciting messages with VerticalResponse. Sign-up for our weekly VerticalResponse for Salesforce live demonstration, Wednesdays at 10 AM PDT.

Savannah Stewart is the Partner Marketing Coordinator at VerticalResponse and blogs here about all things related to marketing and B2B communication. Connect with her on Twitter at @savannahstewart.

Think All Customers Love Fancy Graphics and Images? Think Again.

It can be fun and visually appealing to create and design emails with fancy images, elaborate tables and pretty buttons, but do customers respond positively? Not always. Particularly in B2B communications, many email recipients are more likely to respond to text emails.

Why do text emails deliver good results?

1. They tend to be more direct and to the point making busy B2B customers more likely to read the content and respond.
2. Calls to action and links are more apparent in text emails. The visual distractions presented in graphical emails may take attention from key email points.
3. Text emails are more personal and professional and give off a less "mass email" feel.

The VR for AppEx team recently conducted a test with its B2B audience to see if customers were more likely to respond and interact with a graphical email (containing images and graphics) or a text email. The results may surprise you!

Text example on the left, image email on the right.

 

 

We found the text email had both higher open and click rates!

Curious whether your customers will respond better to graphical or text email messages?

Use the VR for AppExchange reporting tools to test the two types of emails. Split your list in two, send one list the graphical email and the other group the text email to measure differences in open and click rates. Remember, you can only track opens with HTML emails so be sure to keep the HTML version in the mostly text email. It's also a good idea to adhere to the 20% images and 80% text rule. You can do this by including a button or two along with your company logo for branding. Happy testing!

Check out our online guide on Designing Your Email for Delivery & Response or view our How To Do Everything Salesforce page for more guides and resources.

Want more? Attend our weekly VR for AppExchange live demonstration, Wednesdays at 10AM Pacific.

So, What's a Good Email Open Rate?

Whether you're generating a report for your boss, measuring return on investment o r tracking recipient activity, when it comes to analyzing email marketing efforts many of us find ourselves asking the question "What's a good open rate?" The quick and easy answer is open rates between 15%-30% are considered average. In truth, open rates tend to fluctuate based on send time and send date and vary with industry, list size, messaging and many other variables. 

As an example, email messages related to marketing and acquisition typically have lower open and click rates than editorial or non-profit messages. Similarly, emails sent from within the travel industry tend to have higher open rates than those from the retail industry.

What does this mean for your business? There really is no magic number to achieve when it comes to open rates. The best method for finding a good open rate for your emails is to monitor your own previous and current rates and take steps to improve upon those numbers. More importantly, click rates can be an even stronger indication of customer engagement. Click rates should also be monitored and improved upon. They indicate that a recipient has not only opened your email but that they are also also interested in the content you've sent them.

Steps you can take to improve open and click rates:

• Personalize Campaigns - Creating a personal, one-on-one dialogue will make your emails more welcomed by recipients. Example: Include the recipient's name in the greeting of your email. Check out our video tutorial on how to personalize emails or visit our VR for AppEx tutorials site for more tips!

• Use Customer Data - Previous behavior or past purchases can be used to send targeted emails and appealing messages. Examples: Send a specific message to customers who recently purchased a certain product to promote a similar product on sale. Or, offer your most frequent or highest-value customers a special premium (free shipping, zero setup fees, etc.) as a thank-you for their valued business.
  
  
• Send Timely Follow-ups - Send messages to recipients while your brand is fresh in their mind and interest is high. Example: Quickly follow-up with individuals who have recently visited your website or registered for a newsletter.

• Test, Test, and Test Again- Test send times, subject lines, link types and email template designs to find those that deliver the best click and open rates for your type of business and audience. Example: Perform a split test to measure open rates of two differing subject lines.

Related Posts:

Yep, Subject Lines Are Still Crucial to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Get Higher Open & Click Rates with Pre-Header Links

Secrets to Email Campaign Success

Top 10 Things to Test to Put Your Email on the Top 10 List!

Top 10 Things to Test to Put Your Email on the Top 10 List!

To stick with the "10" theme for VR's 10th birthday this month, here are 10 things you can test in your email to make it better than ever.

1. From Name: The most effective From Name is what your recipients recognize you by or expect to hear from. Not sure what that is? TEST IT!
2. Subject Line: Send 10% of your mailing list one subject line, and another 10% a different subject line. Then, look at which subject line performs better and send the remaining 80% the more successful subject line. Easy as pie!
3. Pre-Header: Your pre-header should support or complement your subject line. For example, your subject line tells your recipients you're having a sale (Get 50% Off for a Limited Time Only) and your pre-header explains to the recipient what items are on sale (Save on Designer Jeans & Jackets).
   
4. Headline: Your headline should clearly explain what your email is about and what’s in it for the recipient.
5. How You State Your Offer: Are you promoting a half off sale? 50% off? Buy One Get One FREE? The way you say it can affect the success – so make sure to test it before you go full throttle!
6. Button vs. Text Link: At VR we have found people like to click on buttons more than text links in our emails and newsletters. Click here to easily create and add buttons to your emails and see if it's the same for you.
   
7. Color of Your Button/CTA: If you get the VR for AppExchange Newsletter, you may have noticed a change in the button color. That’s because we tested our button color to optimize click rates! Test your button color and see what color your recipient's eye is more drawn to.
   
8. Placement of Call to Action: Test where you put your Call to Action in your email and/or how many you include. Your click-through rate will help you determine what worked and what didn’t.
9. Images: Test how many images you have, where you put them and what images you use. Remember to always use alt-text too!
10. Testimonials: Test to see if customer testimonials help your emails perform better. If not, use the space for something that’s more effective!
    

You can also, check out one of our guides: 10 Email Creation Tips or visit our How To Do Everything page for more. Good luck and let us know what works!

Related Posts:

Email Delivery: Understanding Response Rates
Email Resolutions You Can Keep
Subject Lines Are Still Crucial to a Successful Email Campaign

Introducing The VR Happy Holidays Webinar Series

We recently did a VerticalResponse Blue Ribbon Webinar Series, and it was so much fun that we decided to do another one. Apropos for the season, we're announcing our first ever VerticalResponse Holiday Webinar Series. Our marketing team put this together to get you set up for successful email marketing this holiday season & beyond.  

Here's the upcoming Lineup: 

1. Subject Line Savvy for the Holiday Season: 
   Thurs., Oct 28, 2010 10:00 AM - 10:30 AM PDT 
2. Put the Jingle in Your Holiday Email - Get Holiday Ready:
   Thurs., Oct 28, 2010 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT
3. Secrets to Holiday Postcard Marketing Success:
   Thurs., Nov 4, 2010 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
4. Have a "Tweet" Holiday: Social Media for the Holiday Season:
   Thurs., Nov 4, 2010 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT
5. Don't Let the Grinch Steal Your Emails - Get them Delivered this Season
   Thurs., Nov 11, 2010 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

View the rest of the schedule and sign up for a free webinar today!

Email Delivery: 6 Tips for Delivering B2B Email

Our own Email Delivery Manager Kiersti Esparza, shares her insights about how to get your email delivered to businesses. 

Businesses that sell their products or services to other businesses could have it a bit more difficult when it comes to getting messages delivered. Email Service Providers (ESP's) like VerticalResponse maintain great relationships with the ISP's to ensure consumer email gets delivered. However, individual businesses can add other hurdles for your messages to get past.

Breaking It Up Can Help

Some businesses, usually larger ones, might begin to get suspicious about email getting through their doors when they see multiple messages that contain the same content. They're likely to think it's bulk marketing email and perhaps block it or use some sort of filtering mechanism. One way to test this is to segment your list into a smaller campaign and see if sending smaller chunks of email gets you a better response.

Getting Rid of "Dear"

Another big impact to B2B delivery is starting your email with “Dear” as a salutation.  You might try forgoing your salutation altogether because while they are polite, they aren’t really necessary in email.  The biggest problem with using the word “Dear” is that it can be flagged specifically in SpamAssassin and other filters as well and businesses may be using that tool.

Calm It Down

Be tempered in your content design.  Avoid using font sizes that are too big for your headlines.  Be conservative and only bump a headline up a font size or two, and highlight it with bold.  Don’t use unusual background or font colors.  Filters also flag this fancy formatting as a trait associated with bulk marketing email.  

Clean Code

Make sure the HTML coding is clean since poorly formatted HTML could result in emails being bulk foldered or blocked.  Never use MS Word to design your email because when you copy and paste from MS Word there are additional characters that get automatically inserted. As a result it's flagged as sloppy code and can get filtered.

Don’t code your emails using Cascading Style Sheets or CSS. MS Outlook 2007 does not render CSS and neither will the newer version of Outlook 2010. Your email will look messy and unprofessional not to mention get filtered.

Active Links

Make sure your links are active since broken or improperly entered links could cause filtering.  Also, make sure your links don’t end with .php – this has been shown to cause message filtering.  Just designate a new link for that page that doesn’t have that .php and you will be fine.

A Healthy Balance

Balance Text and Images. Spam filters look for image-only email messages. If you embed your text and graphics into one single image, you risk your message going straight to the junk folder.  And since most email clients suppress images by default – if your email is one big image it will like open as a blank email with no call to action. Even worse, the first thing your recipients might see is your unsubscribe message. Ouch.

If you intend to send a text-only message, design it as a text only message from the start. If you design your message as text in an HTML document, this could also cause issues since filters will see the email unevenly weighted between html content and text content causing potential filtering.

Even if you're not building your email for business to business, these are all good ideas for consumer driven emails as well.

Related Post from The VR Marketing Blog: Email Delivery: Authentication, Reputation and Feedback Loops, What It All Means.

Businesses that sell their products or services to other businesses could have it a bit more difficult when it comes to getting messages delivered. Email Service Providers (ESP's) like VerticalResponse maintain great relationships with the ISP's to ensure consumer email gets delivered. However, individual businesses can add other hurdles for your messages to get past.

Breaking It Up Can Help

Some businesses, usually larger ones, might begin to get suspicious about email getting through their doors when they see multiple messages that contain the same content. They're likely to think it's bulk marketing email and perhaps block it or use some sort of filtering mechanism. One way to test this is to segment your list into a smaller campaign and see if sending smaller chunks of email gets you a better response.

Getting Rid of "Dear"

Another big impact to B2B delivery is starting your email with “Dear” as a salutation.  You might try forgoing your salutation altogether because while they are polite, they aren’t really necessary in email.  The biggest problem with using the word “Dear” is that it can be flagged specifically in SpamAssassin and other filters as well and businesses may be using that tool.

Calm It Down

Be tempered in your content design.  Avoid using font sizes that are too big for your headlines.  Be conservative and only bump a headline up a font size or two, and highlight it with bold.  Don’t use unusual background or font colors.  Filters also flag this fancy formatting as a trait associated with bulk marketing email.  

Clean Code

Make sure the HTML coding is clean since poorly formatted HTML could result in emails being bulk foldered or blocked.  Never use MS Word to design your email because when you copy and paste from MS Word there are additional characters that get automatically inserted. As a result it's flagged as sloppy code and can get filtered.

Don’t code your emails using Cascading Style Sheets or CSS. MS Outlook 2007 does not render CSS and neither will the newer version of Outlook 2010. Your email will look messy and unprofessional not to mention get filtered.

Active Links

Make sure your links are active since broken or improperly entered links could cause filtering.  Also, make sure your links don’t end with .php – this has been shown to cause message filtering.  Just designate a new link for that page that doesn’t have that .php and you will be fine.

A Healthy Balance

Balance Text and Images. Spam filters look for image-only email messages. If you embed your text and graphics into one single image, you risk your message going straight to the junk folder.  And since most email clients suppress images by default – if your email is one big image it will like open as a blank email with no call to action. Even worse, the first thing your recipients might see is your unsubscribe message. Ouch.

If you intend to send a text-only message, design it as a text only message from the start. If you design your message as text in an HTML document, this could also cause issues since filters will see the email unevenly weighted between html content and text content causing potential filtering.

Even if you're not building your email for business to business, these are all good ideas for consumer driven emails as well.

Related Post from The VR Marketing Blog: Email Delivery: Authentication, Reputation and Feedback Loops, What It All Means.

What You Need to Know About Email Delivery

Email Delivery sounds pretty simple:  you create an email, hit send, and then mighty wizards transport that email to your recipients through the use of hand-crafted cables and powerful laser beams.  What more is there to it than that?

As anyone who has sent more than a few pieces of commercial email knows, there is much more to it than that.  Nothing has a bigger impact on the bottom line of an email campaign than seeing that email delivered properly and then opened by as large a range of recipients as possible. 

This leads to two questions: what does VerticalResponse do to ensure email is delivered?  And what can you do to ensure your email is getting in front of as many recipients as possible? 

Let's take a look at both these questions.

What Does VerticalResponse do to Ensure Excellent Delivery?

We Use Authentication Protocols

As our CEO Janine Popick points out in the VR Marketing Blog today, we authenticate client email through the use of the four major authentication protocols: SPF (Sender Policy Framework), Sender-ID, DomainKeys and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). With SPF and Sender-ID we have published records that state our mail domains are allowed to send email on behalf of our own IP Addresses. With DomainKeys and DKIM we sign each email with a key that the recipient server can then use to verify that we actually sent the email.

Authentication is an increasingly important component in email delivery, as email service providers can be confident that fully authenticated mail is not a scam or phishing scheme of some sort.  And VerticalResponse is one of the only providers in our space that utilizes all four of the major protocols for clients by default.

Be sure to take a look at Janine’s article if you want to learn more about authentication.

We Use Feedback Loops

We have feedback loops set-up with every single ISP that is known to offer one. This means if someone clicks Report Spam at Hotmail, that Hotmail trusts us to take action on the complaint. It also means that when someone clicks such a button at a participating an ISP (like Hotmail), VerticalResponse users don’t have to worry they’ll accidentally send mail to that person again as we automatically unsubscribe recipients who treat your mail in this way from your list.

Each ISP has their own threshold regarding how many complaints are allowed.  If you near this threshold or go over it, we will reach out and help you get to the root of the problem.

We Automate Bounce / Unsubscribe Processing

By automating this process (like many of our competitors), we ensure no users can abuse our IP Addresses by ignoring bounces and unsubscribes. This also helps us keep an excellent reputation.

Most service providers take their bounce messages very seriously and do not like it when someone continues to send email to addresses that provider says no longer exist.  Ignoring bounces can lead to mail not being delivered.  And, of course, ignoring unsubscribes is illegal according to the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act. 

We’re Anti-Spam

Everyone says they’re anti-spam, but we really, really mean it. We respond to and investigate every single complaint that comes in to our abuse desk, we quickly deal with clients who receive complaints (before they start causing delivery problems), and we even look over every email our clients launch to make sure nothing suspicious or fraudulent can make it out the door. This keeps complaints to a minimum, which is a big part of maintaining a strong reputation for our IP Addresses.  And a stronger reputation for us means a higher delivery rate for you, since your mail is being sent out through our IP Addresses.

What Can You Do To Help Ensure Excellent Delivery?

Keep Your List Healthy

Be sure everyone on your list has specifically requested info from or about your company. Also make sure you’re not mailing previously unsubscribed or bounced addresses (as I noted above). That went out of style a long time ago.

And remember that permission is not forever.  If someone gave you their business card at a tradeshow two years ago, it’s not a good idea to send them their first email today.  Don’t wait more than a month or so to mail a new contact, otherwise large segments of your list will begin to forget their interaction with your company.  This will lead to a lower open rate and cause some people to unwittingly report your email as spam.

Design With Delivery in Mind

Don’t just put a big image together in Illustrator and think you’re good to go. Make sure the email is easy to read (consider paragraph length and fonts), that images are being used only to enhance the HTML / text content (not as the sole content), and that the email is something that the subscriber would expect to receive based upon their sign-up.

If you use one our email creation tools - like the Canvas - then you’re probably just fine here.  However, if you write your own HTML you’ll need to make sure it’s validated and that you’re using code that is supported by all the various email clients out there (email clients are not as capable as web browsers when it comes to rendering HTML).  Check out my article from several months ago on HTML you should avoid.

Treat Subscribers with Respect

Don’t mail subscribers too often and clutter their inbox with mail they don’t want. Set expectations at the time of sign-up: “This is what we’re going to send you. And we’re going to send it to you this often.” Also try to maintain a relationship with the subscriber. Don’t mail them sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails. How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I would say twice a week to once every two months is a good range to keep in mind, depending on the type of messages you're sending out.

Have any thoughts or questions?  Let us know in the comments.

Digging Into Deliverability

Sending one-off emails is pretty easy - I mean, anyone with a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account can send a message.  However, making sure that your message gets to hundreds or even thousands of in boxes at a time, well, that can be a bit of a balancing act.

Did you know that VerticalResponse has a team dedicated exclusively to email delivery?  It's true!  They manage our relationships with the ISPs, and keep a constant watch on email delivery to ensure that even the smallest issue is dealt with immediately.  What's even more impressive is that they keep track of all of the latest regulations and trends relating to email; I don't know if any of your have tried to read through the CAN-SPAM act in its entirety, but I'm here to tell you that it's no page-turner like Harry Potter.

Everyone says that they're anti-spam, but VerticalResponse really means it.  Really, we do!  We respond to and investigate every complaint that comes into our abuse desk, and we quickly deal with accounts that receive complaints before there are deliverability issues.

Most emails sent via VerticalResponse gets a once-over by us, as well.  Why?  We're checking to make sure that it doesn't contain anything suspicious or fraudulent.  This helps us maintain our stellar reputation with the ISPs (and you thought we were just because we're nosey!)

In the same spirit of keeping our reputation clean with the ISPs, we have a feedback loop with every internet and email service provider known to offer one.  That may not seem that impressive, but I assure you, we're not dishing with them about the latest episode of Gossip Girl.  It means that if someone with, let's say, a Hotmail account,clicks on their "Report Spam" button in an email that is sent using VerticalResponse, that provider trusts us to take action on the complaint if needed.  After all, each provider sets their own standards for the number and type of complaints that are allowed.  This way, we can make sure that all of our customers meet their standards.  Pretty cool, right?

We also process all bounces and unsubscribes, which means that no one can abuse our IP addresses by mailing to people who have opted out of their emails.  This all happens automatically, but the lists are available to download in case you are curious (or even better - perhaps you'd like to woo your unsubscribes back into the fold with a direct mail campaign?)

Now, I realize that, depending on your job function, email deliverability may not be your highest priority.  The good news is that VerticalResponse takes the steps outlined above to provide you with great deliverability, which means your email messages have the best chance of getting into the inbox.  That frees you up to figure out new ways to build your list and increase opens.

Has all this talk of deliverability got your interest piqued?  We recommend Deliverability.com for the latest on, well, deliverability!

Jess Greene-Pierson, Marketing Programs Manager

When Competitors Stretch the Truth

We got word from a customer that reps from another email marketing company have been saying a few things while selling against VerticalResponse that were, well, just not true.  The company will remain nameless, but let's just say their company shares the same initials as a certain big-headed alien with a sweet tooth for Reese's Pieces.  So, we thought we'd shine a light on some of the misinformation they are sharing with their prospects and customers.

We get it, it's a competitive world, and we like these guys a lot, but if they're going to share information about us, we'd just like them to get the facts right. So here are a few things they mentioned and our response...

*Disclaimer: Although we're posting the exact quotes, we've changed the company's name to Reese's Pieces.

"Reese's Pieces trusts you, the marketer, with all bounces and unsubscribes.  VerticalResponse quarantines this data and does not allow access to it.  Therefore, there is no way to then run reports off of these key metrics."

I can think of 3 ways to get this data within the VR app, but here's the quick and dirty way:

1) Go into the Reports tab

2) Scroll down to the pre-built VR Email History reports

3) Click on "Contacts: Bounced", "Contacts: Unsubscribed", "Leads: Bounced" and "Leads: Unsubscribed"

Et voila!  You have a complete list of all your Bounces and Unsubscribes.

"You have one "from" address with VerticalResponse. So when you want your reps to maintain that one-to-one relationship with their prospects, forget about it. Your from address would be creative@mail.vresp.com, so your prospect might not know who that is. With a reply address of vresp.com and a domain of YourCompanyName, the ISP’s may think that you are phishing and blacklist you or send you to the spam filter."

Each email sent through VerticalResponse can have a different "reply-to" email address, and the user simply specifies the "reply-to" prior to launching the email campaign. So, if your org is sending out multiple email campaigns, you can specify a different "reply-to" email for each of the emails.

VerticalResponse emails are sent through the domain mail.vresp.com but there are actually a few reasons for it. VR authenticates all emails using SPF, Sender-ID and DomainKeys. If we allowed users to "spoof" the domain, we wouldn't be able to send fully authenticated emails for those users. Authenticating emails is a general practice and not doing so can greatly compromise email deliverability. We've chosen "vresp.com" since it doesn't include any branding and recipients will not recognize that domain and associate it with our long domain of verticalresponse.com. So, if your "From" label is "Widgets", the recipients of your email would see the sender as "Widgets <widgets@mail.vresp.com>".

We do have a few users who use their own domain. This requires some work on both our end and the user's end (mainly, registering the IPs we use with your domain's name). We do this the right way and the emails remain fully authenticated.

"Lastly, you have to send your list to VerticalResponse prior to every send to get their approval and this process can take up to 24 hours."

We are currently the only Email Service Provider who manually screens emails (not lists) before they are mailed. We screen to make sure our clients' emails are CAN-SPAM compliant (the "From" label reflects the sender of the email, the subject line isn't misleading, the email contains the sender's postal address, etc...), We also screen to ensure that graphical emails render correctly, and most importantly, to stop unsolicited emails (such as phishing scams) from going out the door (letting these types of emails go through is the fastest way to get blacklisted, and nobody wants that).

That said, this process generally takes merely minutes, but at the very most, 2 hours, which is far from the 24 hours mentioned above.

And there you have it. Hopefully any confusing issues are settled.

Reese's Pieces, make note of this stuff and give us a shout if you need any more information.

- Chris Carpio, Product Manager