VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for Small Business

Graymail and What It Means for Email Marketing

This article originally appeared on iMedia Connection, an online resource covering the latest and greatest in interactive marketing.

Recently, a much buzzed-about word has made its way into the collective vocabulary of online marketers everywhere: graymail.

Hotmail used the term in a recent announcement to describe unwanted – albeit legitimate – email newsletters and offers that are being labeled by consumers as spam, even though they’ve technically opted in. According to Microsoft Windows, 75 percent of email identified as spam by their users is actually unwanted graymail.

So when Hotmail declared "war on graymail," they implemented a series of tools designed to give recipients greater control over what makes it into their inbox and what doesn't.

Here at VerticalResponse, we’ve been getting a lot of questions from customers about how this might affect their emails. Read on for a list of answers to some frequently-asked graymail questions:

What does the new Hotmail inbox mean to email marketers?

Since Hotmail will display the most relevant emails in the inbox, customer engagement is key because relevant means recipients are opening and clicking.

Why is customer engagement important? Marketers that don't occupy a prized spot on the recipient’s contact list wind up in the "everything else" bucket where response times might be slower or spike at certain intervals (e.g., once a week, early morning, during lunchtime or end of business day).

In other words, this is a good time to hone in and focus on engaging your customers, versus treating email marketing as something you do just to cross it off your list. This might be a good time to take a good hard look at your content and subject lines, to see if you can make any improvements and get those response rates higher.

What should businesses do to make sure their messages are getting read by Hotmail users?

Rely on tried-and-true best email practices. Obviously, don’t contact customers who’ve unsubscribed from you. Consider asking current subscribers to add your "From address" to their address book or "safe list." You may even want to consider sending a specific email targeting Hotmail users to do this.

Are the new Hotmail settings bad for my business?

No, not if you really focus on getting your recipients engaged via great content and amazing offers they can’t refuse! In fact, anti-graymail features such as Schedule Cleanup (which enables users to automatically delete any emails that are older than a specific period of time) can potentially boost your response by displaying your email over those that have lingered and are cluttering their inboxes.

Do these settings present a new opportunity for marketers?

Yes, absolutely, and this is particularly true if you’re looking to treat your recipients like people rather than a big list that may or may not respond to what you’re offering. As long as their interest is maintained and email frequency expectations aren’t abused, you can and will use Hotmail's changes to pull far ahead of the pack.

Have you noticed any changes in your email marketing programs since Hotmail began implementing its graymail tools? 

 

Posted by Janine Popick.

Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse. Connect with her on Twitter and check out more of her iMedia Connection columns.

11 Spam Words to Avoid in Your Subject Line

An ever-popular question we get here at VR is "What words should I avoid in an email to ensure inbox delivery?" If only there was a straightforward answer to that question! As with many things email marketing related, the answer is: it depends. Sure, you know not to use pharmaceuticals like Cialis or Viagra in your subject line or email, but what about the word Free?

Before I give you a list of words to avoid there are some things to keep in mind when writing your email. First, always have someone proofread your email! A typo in a benign word can suddenly create a delivery nightmare when it transforms into the hottest new spam word. If a word in your subject line gets truncated or broken it could go to a spam folder, or even worse, cause unsubscribes.

An example I saw was the phrase "Buttons and Bows" in a long subject line. Because the subject was too long the word Button was broken in the middle and caused delivery and unsubcribe problems. In addition, a subject line is not the place to use the short words for texting, like 4U, U or even #1 .

Sometimes unsavory types want to use known spam words and try to get around delivery issues by breaking them up with spaces or disguising them. Spam filters know these tricks, so C r e d i t, C*r*e*d*i*t or CREDIT can still put your email in a spam folder. Using all caps for a word or a whole subject line can flag the email as being spam. Plus, all caps in the internet world means you're yelling, and you don't want to do that to your readers.

And now the list you were looking for:

1. Affordable
2. Apply Now
3. Additional Income/ Extra Income
4. Dear Friend
5. Free
6. Home Based/Work from Home
7. Mortgage Rates
8. Opportunity
9. Remove
10. Save $
11. Weight Loss

There are more of course, but you want to try to keep these 11 out of your subject line. Which brings up the question, "Free shipping is the number one subject line, how is Free on the spam word list?" Ah, great question! The word Free in your subject line won't put your email in a spam folder all on its own. Most spam filters use a rating system so while Free can be a trigger, if the rest of your email is good (content clean, clean HTML, good links, and good delivery system) you can expect your email to be delivered to the inbox.

To see more words to avoid, check out this list. And if you like things a bit more technical SpamAssassin has some great info, too.

We have a recorded webinar and guide, Savvy Subject Line Writing for Success, to help you create successful subject lines.

Posted by Jill Bastian

Jill Bastian is the Training and Education Manager at VerticalResponse. Connect with her on Twitter @Jillieb3.

How & Why You Need to be Added to Your Recipient's Address Book

United did something great, for once. Just kidding. But seriously, they sent out a clever email marketing campaign. Simply put, it was an email asking the recipients to add United's From Address to their address books. Why? Because if they do add you, your recipients will not only get your email in their inboxes (avoiding the junk folder), but all of your images will appear and not be stripped out of your email. Some might say "Well Janine, if the email IS going into the junk folder then how would my recipients know"?

Great point. The point is that for all of your recipients that periodically check their junk folders, they might see this and wonder why they have not been getting your emails, and take actions to make sure they do.

How can you help? Just send an email to your recipients with some simple instructions that make it easy for them to add you into their address books.  Here's how to do it using VerticalResponse:

First you need to know what email address to send and the one you'll want to give them is the "From Address" for your VerticalResponse email campaign. The From Address is automatically constructed for you based on the text you put into the "From Label" of your email campaign. The text you enter will be added to the left of the @ sign and to the right will be the VerticalResponse sending domain: "mail.vresp.com."

So let's stop here and give an example.  Let's say I'm creating a new email and my company name is Widgets, Inc.  Well I simply enter my company name into the From Label for the campaign like normal. Now when I send a test email or live email the From Address will be Widgets_Inc@mail.vresp.com. Notice characters such as commas are removed since they cannot be included in a valid email address.

Since the From Address is what you want to get added in your recipient's address book and since the From Address is tied to the text you use for your From Label, we recommend using a consistent From Label for all the campaigns you send.

Here is the email, cheers.

Questionable Expert Advice in a DM News Article

I was reading DM News, and was perplexed at an article that was published 2 weeks ago.

This particular expert had chosen a particular Nordstrom email to feature and then talked about how wonderful it was.

• She liked that it gave her shopping options.
• She loved the way the global navigation was shown.
• The main body content had a Nordstrom experience.
  
• The fonts were elegant.
• The upsell potentials were good and targeted.

While I agree with almost everything this expert says, she left out a very critical issue. The email appears to be made up of either one large image or a series of images. We know what happens if a recipient receives this and has their images turned off...the first thing they may see is the unsubscribe link.

Make sure for the holidays you use a mix of both text and graphics in your email marketing campaign.

I like the new printed format of DM News btw. Good job guys.

5 Things to Know About Using Images In Your Email

We've recently been asked a bunch of questions about using images in email so I thought this would be a good time to talk about 5 quickies to help you out.

Beware of a “good” image to text ratio - We recommend a 30/70 image to text ratio as a healthy mix for maximum deliverability. Why? If your email is image heavy you run the risk of winding up in the junk folder. I've recently been looking at a few junk folders and I'm finding that one key across multiple junk folders is image heavy emails.

Use “Alt Tags” - What is an alt tag? It's the alternative text you give your image that pops up when your image is either moused over or not displayed. Alt tags can also contain key words for some search engine results. For example, our alt tag for our VerticalResponse logo might be "VerticalResponse - Email Marketing for Small Business" so that our recipients know when they open the email and see that alt tag they know that it's us.

When you use our Media Library you can give all of your images Alt Tags.

Don’t use one large image as the sole content of your email -  If your email is made up of either only one large image or multiple images and your recipient's reader has images turned off, the first thing they'll see is your unsubscribe link.

Don’t use heavy images - Try to keep your images under 25k because if they take too long to load, your impatient recipients will likely move on to their next email. If your images are too large, use a tool like spinwave to make them “lighter” without sacrificing too much quality.

Don't forget to link your images – Make sure if you include an image you link off from it. Everyone expects to be able to get somewhere by clicking on an image.

I hope this helps, if anyone has any other ideas please share!

Creating Your Email For "Images Off"

It's tough to think about all of the things you need to do when you create your email. You want your offer to be seen but you also want your email to look great. And with those nasty email readers turning off graphics and messing around with the content of your email, you need to take care when creating them.

I was creating some emails the past few weeks here at VerticalResponse for some new pre-designed layouts (stay tuned for industry layouts BTW). I noticed there are a few things you can think about when you design your email that would be optimal for reading in many email readers when your images turned off.

Here are some tips:

• Use tables and color 
  I know using tables for your website is so 90s, but using them for email is a must if you want to preserve the layout in any of the umpteen email readers your recipients are using.  If you look at many of our pre-designed layouts in the VR Email Canvas, we use tables and have columns in colors, and with the images turned off, the formatting stays and look great.
• Name Your Images Appropriately
  Make sure your images are named correctly. If you've got your logo, name it something like "your_company_logo.gif" and remember to give it an alt tag (e.g alt="Your Company") so in the event the email reader strips out the images, your recipient may still recognize your name and know it's legit. If you've got product images, name them "my_product.jpg".
• Your Company Name and Contact Information...In Text
  Make sure when you're typing your copy, you include your company name or the name of who the email is coming from. If you've only got it in the image and you don't follow steps from above, recipients might think it's spam and unsubscribe.

Some Examples:

In this example, each area of the email is created in its own table so that if the images are turned off, it won't effect the entire layout. Even though it may not be obvious at first glance in the email below, the "In this Issue" in the far right column is in a table as well. I used color to make it blend in with the rest of the design. I also included the company name in the headline text, making it instantly recognizable even with images turned off (see below).

Email in an HTML Editor

Images Displayed

Images Off

In this next email example, you see one table with three rows. The first row contained 2 images on a black background. How? Just look at the "Images Off" example below it. The 2nd row only contained the important text about the event with one image, aligned right. The third row has the important contact information displayed prominently in text.

Email in an HTML Editor

Images Displayed

Images Off

In this final email example you can see that the company name has been repeated in the first line, just to make sure the recipient knows who this email is coming from. The far right column has interesting use of background highlight colors to delineate the different sections, but it's all part of the same table.

Email in an HTML Editor

Images Displayed

Images Off

So there you have it. Even though your email won't always display the graphics, there are still ways you can preserve the layout of it. If you've got some ideas of your own, feel free to comment and share.

I'm Fired UP About Unsubscribes!

I just got an iPhone (thanks to our Marketing Manager Patricia who texted me to tell me SF had them in stock finally, funny story) so I decided it was time to delete the uber-illions of messages I have received over the course of a long time. For those of you who don't know, I've had my "retro" phone (see pic on right) now for years. No camera, no email, nuthin' fancy. But the iPhone has pushed me over to the evil PDA side. So now that I'm going PDA, I had to clean up my act. I had over 8000 messages sitting in my inbox...yikes. I also decided to go through the hundreds of newsletters I've subscribed to over the years (or have BEEN subscribed to over the years :-() and unsubscribe from those I don't read or never signed up for.

A huge undertaking? More than I thought it would be. In total there were over 200 newsletter subscriptions, no lie. Of around 200 I was AMAZED at how many I didn't sign up for. Roughly 140 of them. Even the DMA had wh0#*d my email address out. I was even more amazed at which Email Service Providers housed these emailers. There were a few GLARING ESPs that stood out as massive harborers of spammers, I'm happy to say that of the 200, VerticalResponse only had one that I didn't sign up for. There was one serious ESP offender, I won't say their name (email me if you want it) then a host of smaller offenders. THEN there were many that, well, just went to an error page. OUCH.

Here are some bad unsubscribe practices I uncovered:

Whoever this ESP is, they house a number of companies and sent me to the unsubscribe page and having me check a box again, to unsubscribe. -->

Many made me "sign in" to my account to unsubscribe - Ouch. I don't remember a password I set 4 years ago! Just unsubscribe me!

At least 20 companies had the only option be - "Please reply to this email with the word Remove in the subject line".  Even worse, they made me then type Remove. It should already be there.

Over 30 companies directed me to a page that read: "Please fill in this information, including your email address to unsubscribe." Yeah right! This came from an email not a static web page. They should know who I am and pre-fill my info. -->

One company tried to be tricky and send me to a page that has a "Yes, send me email" or "No I don't want to receive email" with the "Yes" radio button checked!

Also can someone tell Doubleclick that yes, even though I am a customer, it would be really nice to have an unsub link in the email? You'd think they know better. I get about 3 emails a week from them.

OK, I'm fired UP! ARE YOU?? At least my new iPhone will have a shiny new inbox!

VerticalResponse Releases Q1 Email Trends Report

Here at VerticalResponse, we’re always trying to help make sense of the email marketing world. It’s a rapidly changing landscape, to be sure, which is why we’re introducing a new quarterly feature – the VerticalResponse Email Marketing Trends Report. The first installment of this series, now available in the Resources section of our website, examines open, click-through, bounce and unsubscribe rates for the first quarter of 2006.

While a number of studies track average response rates on a per-industry basis, we thought it would be useful to provide a little extra context and report on industry results according to list size as well. The end product is a report that offers data for companies in 30 different industries, segmented according to mailing campaign sizes ranging from 100 members to 1 million recipients. What’s more, we roped in our creative team to translate all those cold, hard numbers into attractive, easily digestible graphs that make processing the information a snap. To see their good work, check out the VerticalResponse Q1 2006 Email Marketing Trends Watch.

5 Quick Ways to Improve Your Delivery Rates

The number one question I get here at VerticalResponse: “How can I ensure my email reaches the inbox?”.

Here are 5 quick things you can do today to increase delivery rates and avoid nasty spam filters:

1. Get into the address book - Try adding "white-listing" instructions near the top of your email such as:
   
   To view all images and links, please add Widgets_Inc@mail.vresp.com to your address book.
    
   Of course where you see “Widgets_Inc” simply replace it with your From Label (or else you'll really confuse your readers!). Once accepted into your recipient's address book, future emails should arrive in their inbox immediately. See below how WorkZ does it.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Be wary of punctuation in your subject line – No matter how exciting your offer or announcement may be, try to keep your punctuation in check to avoid activating sensitive spam filters. Overuse of exclamation marks asterisks and dashes may lead to your email getting blocked or dumped into the junk folder. Ouch.
   
   
3. Use web-friendly fonts and colors - The bottom line is use simple and clean HTML when designing email campaigns. Using obscure fonts or intense colors might seem like a great way to set your email apart from other messages, but spammers also use that same logic. And when you're up against spam filters your outcome won't be good.  Try sticking with standard fonts such as Times, Arial and Verdana and stay away from colors like red, magenta, yellow and green. These tend to score higher than black or blue on many spam filters.
   
   
4. Beware of image-heavy emails - Many email readers have an option to hide images from  being displayed.  So when you're creating your email marketing campaign always ask yourself "how will this look if images are turned off?"  Make sure to have enough text copy above the fold so it's clear right from the start that this is an email your recipients are expecting. In addition, and very important, if the recipient has their images turned off and your entire email is one large graphic, the first thing they’ll see is your unsubscribe text and link -- ouch again. I’ve mentioned this in my previous blog here.
   
   
5. “Click here”...in moderation - Yes, I know, we all want LOTS of clicks but I'm referring to the actual text of "click here" which is also commonly seen in spam emails.  Encourage your recipients to click by mixing "Click Here" with other terms like "Read More" or "Visit Our Site".

There you have it, five quickies to help you get into the inbox. If you have more ideas please comment on this!

The Heat is On...AOL That Is

You may have read the Breaking Down The AOL/Goodmail Stir post. Well the pot has been heated up even more this week. Just a quick post on what's happening.

Organizations from MoveOn.org to Gun Owners of America, over 50 in total, are banning together in protest of what they're calling the AOL Email Tax. The protest, organized by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is called DearAOL.com and has garnered over 1500 registrants in just a week. They are protesting the quarter of a penny charge that mailers will spend to get email into the inbox, bypassing AOL's filters.

What's the real issue here? Well the organizations opposed to the Goodmail/AOL program feel large businesses stand to benefit the most as they have the budgets to cover the costs thereby making it "pay for play" situation.  It is likely that AOL will refute these claims and issue some response outlining how their relationship with Goodmail will benefit companies of all sizes (and budgets).  We'll of course update you should this information surface.

What do we say? VerticalResponse remains on the AOL Standard Whitelist as usual and your email continues to be delivered.