First of all a HUGE apologies for the technical issues we were having with the MarketingSherpa webinar last week. Thanks so much for your patience, we're still converting the webinar, it comes in a weird format and most of us here are on macs. Take the bad with the good I guess. As promised, we parsed out the Q&A that we didn't get to and we've answered them here.
I also want to thank Anne Holland and Stephan Tornquist for their amazing and insightful email marketing information. I know we picked up a few pointers here at VR. Don't forget to check out the full-blown report and also if you're going to be in Miami in March, check out their Email Marketing Summit. We'll be there!
Enjoy...
Q: I have about 38,000 subscribers in my list. 12.7% click through rate and 25% open rate. Is that below average?
A: You might want to check out the VerticalResponse Trends report. We tracked all rates by list size and industry. A quick glance shows that you’ve got a very nice click through rate, great job!
Q: Any thoughts on subject line content. What works better straightforward or creative approach?
A: You may want to see a few blog posts about subject lines here. Since many readers cut off subject lines at 35-40 characters you don’t have a ton of room to play with. That said, include the most important information at the beginning, that is, the information your recipient is going to be most excited about.
Q: As a PR agency, my email campaigns have influenced my client's expectations for press releases. They now want interactive Social Media Releases (a la Shift Communications/Edelman's StoryCrafter) -- PLUS the eye candy of email marketing. SMRs have similar properties to targeted email marketing plus support of RSS, Technorati tags, DiggIt ,etc. Have you tracked this trend specifically or the trend toward need of more interactive buttons inside the email?
A: Most of our VR users have not adopted SMRs quite yet. For those of you who do PR and don’t know what a Social Media Release is check it out. It’s seems like it's another way for writers and publishers to get important facts about a piece of news as well as search engines finding the news. In fact we’re just starting to figure out how this plays into our own marketing.
Q: Can we add someone who's ordered a product on our site to our list without them opting in as long as we give them an opt-out option when they receive our email?
A: Technically the answer is yes, it isn’t against the law to do so. However we always recommend that an opt-in list is far more responsive than an opt-out list. Another option would be to add them to a list and send them an opt-in email with a link to an opt-in form, then mail them only after they confirm.
Q: Do filtered emails show up a bounced emails?
A: No, filtered emails do not show up as bounced emails because the email actually did make it though the ISP and also made it through into a “box” (trash, junk, spam) even if it wasn’t the inbox.
Q: Would you recommend sending audio files in email?
A: Audio files really depend on the receiving mail client and type of recipient. If you are sending to a Internet savvy audience it's likely that they are capable of receiving audio files correctly. However, if you are sending to a not-so savvy audience, they may not be equipped to receive an audio file if they do not have the proper downloads installed.
Q: For event promotions, is it better to have important copy all in the email as a way to induce click rate or leave part of the copy info for the landing page? We have been putting all info including seminar description, agenda and speaker info on the email to attract registrants. Is this the wrong approach?
A: Not necessarily. This is a great test actually. If you can divide your list in half why not try both? One caveat, if the speaker is the catch, you’ll want to include their information in the body and maybe even the subject line.
Q: For someone with a brand new website, how different are the new subscription numbers?
A: It all depends on how much traffic you’re getting to your site and where you’ve placed your forms. If your forms are prominent on your home page as well as your sub-pages you can expect a much higher increase in subscribers than if you bury it on your “about us” page. It’s also a great test, try different placements on your pages to see where you’re going to get the best rate of subscription.
Q: How can you find out if you are on a Public Blacklist?
A: You’ll need to get your sending IP Address, usually found in the headers of the email you’re sending. Then go to rbls.org, type in the sending server's IP address, and you’ll be shown all of the lists your sending server may or may not be on.
Q: Where is the best place to find out what our reputation is? And, if there are issues, how can we clean it up?
A: First find out if you’re on any blacklists. If you are you can attempt to contact the blacklist owner and plead your case. Some may take you off but you’ll be on a short leash for a while. Others won’t answer you and you may be out of luck. VR takes this very seriously and we work pretty hard on keeping all of our IPs off of blacklists.
Q: How much is too much for graphics within an email?
A: A mix of text and graphics is really the way to go due to email readers potentially stripping out your graphics. Should you use graphics? You bet. However we recommend your email in general shouldn’t exceed 30-40 kb to keep it under the filter’s radar. If your email is too large it might get filtered as well.
Q: How often should we be sending email newsletters to our customers? Is there specific information that should be included in every newsletter email to our customers? We typically send out monthly email newsletters.
A: This is really a business decision for you. When your recipients opted in you may have set their expectations for how often you’d be mailing them. If you didn’t, you might want to going forward. “Monthly News”, “Weekly Specials” are a few examples. However, if you wanted to test your frequency and increase your mailing to 2x a month, then you’ll want to look at your response rates over a bit of time. If you find that your unsubscribes are increasing and your opens and clicks are decreasing as a direct result, go back to monthly.
Q: Is there a specific number of fields in an online form that is typical or expected ie - don't have more than 5 fields?
A: There is no hard and fast rule here, it all depends on your offering and why you’d need the data. We’ve done a few tests and decreased the amount of information we ask for. As a result we saw a pretty significant increase in those who fully complete the form. If you want to test this just add another field or take one away and see if there is a change over the course of a month.
Q: Open rate tracking - how is it possible to track open rates with default graphics suppression? Outlook 2003 blocks graphics by default until user clicks on 'allow download' --- how do we check open rates in this situation? Not possible?
A: Open rate tracking has been declining because of this exact reason. We’ve been recommending to our users to do your best to get into your recipient’s address books. This way your emails goes directly into the inbox with graphics displayed. We also stress to really analyze clicks as a real statistic instead of opens.
Q: What are some of the best ways / strategies to build an opt-in email list?
A: We’ve got some great strategies for restaurants, realtors and everyone else here. Check them out they’re pretty creative.
Q: What are the most used email programs for testing purposes?
A: I’m assuming you’re talking about ISPs email readers. Try Outlook, Yahoo!, AOL, Comcast, MSN, Hotmail, Gmail and Earthlink. This should cover you.
Q: What successful methods have you used for gauging response besides raw stats?
A: If you’ve highlighted a product or article did you sell more of those products? Did your information get picked up and linked to from other websites? Do people mention they saw your email? Did you get a new customer or reader from someone who got forwarded your email? I’m sure there are more but those are a few to start with.
Q: What was the name of the service that a marketer can send their test emails to, to increase the chances of getting it into the inbox to business customers?
A: The SenderScore Certified Program "certifies" a list of approved mail servers (IP addresses). They then provide this list to ISPs and/or corporate domains so they can identify legitimate incoming email. As a reseller VerticalResponse maintains specific IP addresses that within this list.
Q: Is it allowed per CAN-Spam to send an email asking people to opt-in to your newsletters? I thought this was not allowed.
A: Under CAN-SPAM it is allowed to send people an email asking them to opt-in to your list. If you do this, our recommendation is that you only email to those that have opted in going forward.
Q: What is "harvested email"?
A: An email that has been harvested means that it’s “stolen” from a web page, a form, a list, or simply “guessing” at what the logical email would be. Many spammers harvest email addresses which is probably how many of us receive spam.
Q: You suggest a mix of text and picture, but all major retailers (eddie bauer, gap, fossil, etc.) use just 1 big picture. Why don't they use more text? Why shouldn't we emulate them?
A: Lots of larger companies have amazing creative departments that do a really great job at making things look pretty. What these creative people don’t always know is that their email is going to wind up in the junk folder. Creating for email is very different than creating for a web page or even print. Lots of small businesses that don’t follow what the big guys do, get their mail delivered a heck of a lot better.
Q: Regarding your postcards, when can we personalize post cards with customer's names like we can with the emails?
A: Great question. We’ll be sliding that into the queue for this year, I’m just not sure when.
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