Big Data Strategies for Email Marketing

Leveraging  data is nothing new – it’s core to the practice of marketing. What the  big data initiative means for email marketers is access to the data they  have wanted for years. The goal is to be smarter marketers,  providing a more relevant and meaningful experience to the subscriber. Big data can enhance  your capabilities with a newfound wealth of information.

Targeted, meaningful interactions

It is the data, not the intuition, that makes marketing programmes  successful. Being relevant is something we have discussed as an industry  since its inception. We prefer not to batch and blast; instead, we  strive to create unique and optimal engagements with the customer to  drive desirable behaviors. And it is the ability to leverage data in  order to make informed decisions and drive relevant offers that helps to  achieve that reality.


Find the offers that drive ROI

Email marketers have been running tests, comparing results and measuring  lift and incremental behaviour since before email marketing was a  channel. This is a practice which direct mailers really perfected –  largely because of the increasing costs to print and mail offers, but  whatever the reason it drove significant relevance. With the flexibility  of email, these tests are easier and more effective


Keep striving for greater gains

We’ve come a long way from the days when marketers could say “I waste  half my advertising dollars, I just don’t know which half.” Advances in  cross-channel tracking and reporting enable email marketers to build  detailed reports for follow-up. Still, most of these reports have been  limited: either in detail or timescale. For example, a detailed report  is given about a specific mailing or programme, but only aggregate-level  data is available over a quarter or entire year. This has long been a  reality of data storage limitations associated with system performance,  and that is one big challenge which the big data effort is addressing.  The ability to store, process and analyse mounds of information is  making many reporting geeks extremely happy.

Shun Purchasing email list

Marketing has become a mainstay part of business. Email marketing has grown exponentially for the past couple of years. Companies try to reach out to their potential customers with their services and products through email market campaign. In order to do this, they require a bulky email list to reach the maximum number of targeted customers.

There are different ways in which one can procure this email list:

Purchasing email list: There are numerous third party vendors who lend email lists to the companies. These vendors sell collection of email addresses of particular segment of people to any business or individual who pays the fees. 

Renting email list: This is similar to the purchase list except the fact that the seller holds the ownership and the control. 

Generating an opt-in/permission-based/subscribed email list:
 This kind of email list comprises either of following:

·         Customers who have joined recently

·         People who have opted, chosen and agreed to receive emails directly from you

·         Subscribed/signed up through an online sign-up form on your website or your             landing page.

Purchasing an email list has a huge downside. It may prove detrimental in the long run. Here are few reasons why not to purchase email list:

Drop in your sender score
Purchased lists possibly have high hard bounces and spam reports, inflicting disorder on your sender score (Score tracked by Return Path that rates the reputation of outgoing email server IP address on a scale of 0-100).
Dip in your sender score would surely and severely lower your chances of landing in recipient’s inboxes despite your so called non-spam inbox optimized future emails.

Could get you blacklisted
Purchased list usage implies non compliance to the ISP and email client guidelines.

Experienced marketers are aware that purchased email list is not only illegally procured and web scrapped breaching federal CAN-SPAM laws, but also created by websites that do swap email addresses or download user’s address book. In each of these cases, the purchased lists often generate really high hard bounces and get flagged as spam by recipients. Consequently, you will soon be noticed by ISP filters, getting blocked or blacklisted for sure; and instead of reaching customer’s inbox, you will reside in his spam folder.

Certain Email service providers take aid from organizations that combat email SPAM. These organizations plant spam traps or honey-pots so that the dubious list sellers can carry out their unethical practices by collecting these email addresses. Your purchased lists can contain such spam traps or defunct email addresses that may land you to a terrific destination (email blacklist), finding it difficult to come back on track. The brand will lose its sheen. Thereon, it is definitely going to hamper your delivery results as you risked your company’s reputation and rebuilding it would be consuming your resources heavily. Many corporate domains use spam reporting services that identify emails from blacklisted entities and block them. Now that rings an alarm for B2B companies!

 Usage of purchased lists banned by reputed email marketing vendors
Reputable companies, using email marketing software, will always assert on opt-in list usage and disallow usage of purchased list. You might have to use an illegitimate service already on blacklist block lists if at all you have to use the Purchase list.
And sharing IPs with blacklisted senders is bound to get ill reputation to your company and misplaced landing in customers’ mailboxes.

Recipients on purchase list may not know you
Be careful while buying a list from a vendor that is termed as opt-in. How can the term ‘opt-in’ imply to be given to others? The name says all.
If the customers have opted to receive email from the vendor, you are by no means entitled to send emails to them for a simple reason that they haven’t opted to receive email from you yet. And since there is no positive nexus with the customers they may either mark your email as SPAM or delete it.


Email addresses of low quality

Email addresses obtained from trade fairs, online form filling etc. are usually forged email addresses. When asked, many people give away false email addresses mostly to prevent flooding of their genuine inboxes with such commercial emails. When you buy an email list, you probably buy numerous defunct and unused email addresses.

A list seller has to make his business so he will certainly not be selling the list to merely you but to various other buyers. The list bought by you must have been bought by other vendors and businesses as well. These companies would also be emailing the recipients whose email addresses are listed in the purchased list. It may happen that the companies or people who have bought this list have already landed in the recipients’ mailboxes before your landing. And your landing time can turn out to be the recipient’s threshold limit of reading and dealing with unwanted commercial emails. As a result the recipient is more likely to ignore your email and report it as spam. So the purchase list does guarantee poor deliverability.

Low Response rate
 How does it feel receiving an email in inbox from an unknown company? It’s irksome, isn’t it? Similarly, it can irk the recipients, who haven't opted in to receive email from you. Surely you don’t want to be one of a kind. If at all you feel the need to send emails to non opt-in recipients because you believe that your products or services are apt for them, then your email should carry some weighted content and provide value, not interrupt them with a barrage of marketing messages and risk your relationship with potential customers and in turn your business. But this might be a short term win.

Permission-based emails will carry out the campaigning more effectively than those on purchased lists.

Impact of Gmail Tabs on your Email Marketing

Impact of Gmail Tabs on your Email Marketing

It has almost been a year since Gmail introduced the new tabbed inbox, objectively stating that the user would be able to control the inbox rather than the other way round.

From a user’s perspective, this is surely a great improvement. Instead of getting the bulk of your email in one single inbox and missing out on some awesome promotions (because these might disappear in the junk folder), the user is able to classify or segregate his/her emails.

On the contrary from email marketer’s perspective, it sounded a panic bell because the first thought that pops in mind is the dip in open rates.

What one needs to understand is with this tabs feature, Google is not trying to stop promotional email; rather they want a cut of the action. The fact that Google has put its new email like Ads in the promotional tab means they want, intend and indeed need users to go to the promotional tab.

The initial research by NetGains Technologies, considering only a few weeks’ worth of opens, projected that open rates took a hit. Later, after considering months’ worth of various kind of engagement data, precisely 2.9 million emails, 0.49 million opens, 0.42 million clicks, and 43.5 K unsubscribes to figure out how Gmail’s tabs are affecting open rates, the conclusion is that Gmail’s tabbed inbox is working as intended and Open rates have definitely taken a plunge of 1% from 13% to 12 %.

Open Rate Change after Gmail Tabs’ launch

Opens

This data represents a 25-week period from May to October.

Open rate change w.r.t other Email Service Providers

Opens from Gmail subscribers have fallen off nearly twice as much as any other Email service providers like yahoo, hotmail etc.

Reversely, during holidays, the user’s inbox gets inundated with emails especially the promotional emails. Most of the users unsubscribe during these periods. This practice has been reduced by Gmail users ever since the tabs have been introduced.

Gmail’s opens are down, the click rate is neutral, but unsubscribes haven’t gone up.

Too early to conclude

At first glance, it looks like the introduction of the tabbed inbox caused a considerable decrease in the number of Gmail opens but there are non-supporters, which include Gmail apps on mobile, popular clients such as Apple Mail and desktop/webmail clients that import Gmail messages, such as Outlook and Yahoo.

Moreover, at this point there is no clarity about:

·         What percentage of users around the world now have access to Gmail Tabs on either the Web interface or a Gmail mobile app?

·         How many Gmail users may have turned off  or disabled or removed Tabs and gone back to other inbox formats, such as Priority or an unfiltered inbox

Open rates do provide a view of email marketing campaign impact. However, open rates are not strong and sole indicator of commercial success and they are not directly proportional to conversion at all. To really understand if your activity has been impacted check your conversion and revenue metrics, look at whether the revenue per Gmail subscriber per month changes.

If you can’t check your revenue then check your click rate. Some email platforms provide a report out of the box to segment campaign performance by domain.

Ultimately, the effect Gmail’s new inbox has on your email marketing depends on the relationship you have with your subscribers.

We’re beginning to see changes in Gmail subscriber engagement, but it's not clear yet how much of this is being driven by Tabs.

For Short term, promotional emails may be opened less, but for long term, it would prove to be win-win for both Gmail users and marketers.

Related Links

• Overview
• Warm up period
• Sample Mailer Design
• Common Email Marketing Mistakes
• Email Deliverability Best Practices
• Best practices for Bulk Mail

• Promotional Mailing
• Transactional Mailing
• Bulk Mailing

Best practices for bulk mail senders and postmasters when sending to Yahoo/gmail

Description

This article provides general guidelines for postmasters who plan to send email to Yahoo/gmail customers.

Resolution

The mission of any ESP is to deliver messages that users want to receive, and filter out messages they don't want. The simplest way to ensure that your messages are delivered, then, is to avoid looking like a spammer. Below are a few suggestions on how to do so.
Send email only to those that want it. Spammers write to many people who don't want their mail, so our anti-spam filters are designed to identify that behavior. To avoid being perceived as a spammer, use an opt-in method of subscription for your mailing list. Better yet, utilize a confirmed opt-in process where subscribers actively verify their intent to receive your mailings by clicking on a confirmation email before being added to your list.
Use email authentication such as DKIM. This will help us identify that the email is legitimately from you and, if you sign all your email, it will help us identify forgeries, too. In addition, using dedicated domains for different mail streams (e.g., transactional messages vs. marketing emails) is also a recommended practice. DKIM.org is a good resource for information about DKIM.
Segregate your mail streams by IP addresses and/or domains since Yahoo! Mail keeps reputation data about each IP address and domain you send from. For example, by segmenting the mail stream that delivers marketing mail from another that sends transactional messages, you make it easier for Yahoo! Mail to determine and assign each mail stream's reputation.
Consistently manage your lists by paying attention to hard and soft bounces as well as inactive recipients. Persistent emails to these addresses are a surefire way to get your connections deferred. If your messages are being blocked, look closely at any SMTP Reply Codes our mail servers are returning to you and be sure you're addressing the problem.

• Don't retry 5xx messages. If we reject a message with a 5xx error, we will not accept it anytime soon. Retrying the message wastes both our resources and makes you appear to have a dirty list.
• Do retry 4xx messages. If we send a 4xx error, this is a temporary error and we encourage you to try sending the message at a later time.
• Do refresh your list periodically. Consider removing or sending a reconfirmation email to inactive subscribers, i.e., users who have not opened or clicked on your emails for a period of time. Sending your mail to users who are not reading them, or who may even mark them as "spam," will almost certainly hurt your delivery metrics and reputation.

Enroll in our feedback loop. If you are signing your emails with DKIM or DomainKeys, our Complaint Feedback Loop program can help you track your spam complaint rates and keep them in check.

Respect the user's mailbox

• If a customer entrusts an email address to you during a transaction or for a particular newsletter, they do not expect to receive unrelated messages, such as extraneous marketing emails, in the process. Adding email addresses to other lists without their explicit opt-in is a guaranteed way to lose a customer's trust.
• Honor the frequency of the list's intent. If customers believe they are signing up for a monthly newsletter but they start receiving messages on a weekly basis, such a practice will likely prompt users to label your messages as spam.

Use a consistent "From:" header address. Your domain name is an important element of your brand. Using it consistently helps us and your recipients to distinguish your email from spam. Additionally, using a static From: address helps users who have set up filters to route messages to a specific folder.

Pay attention to your email's content

• Test your email's look and feel with image placeholders. Many users won't see images in your email by default.
• Link to domains, not IP addresses. The Yahoo! Mail client warns users that IP address links are dangerous.
• Use standard ports. The Yahoo! Mail client warns users that links containing ports are dangerous.
• Don't include HTML forms in emails. The Yahoo! Mail client warns users that submitting forms in email can be dangerous.
• Don't include Javascript in emails. The javascript is stripped out and will not run.
• Don't include embedded objects in emails (like flash or ActiveX). The objects are stripped and will not run.

Honor unsubscribe requests as fast as you honor subscribe requests. When a user unsubscribes, they don't want to receive that mail anymore. Promptly removing them from the list should help prevent users from marking your messages as spam in the future.
Be CAN-SPAM compliant. Regardless of where in the world you're sending your mail, make sure that you adhere to the requirements stipulated by the CAN-SPAM Act.
Publish reverse DNS (PTR) records for your sending IPs. If there is no reverse DNS entry for your IP address, or if it looks like a dynamically-assigned IP instead of a static mail server, Yahoo! is more likely to downgrade its sending reputation.
Secure your mail servers. Ensure your mail servers are not open to abuse. If your servers act as "open proxies" or "relays," spammers may attempt to send their own mail from your systems. Keep your software up to date with the latest security patches, and always filter user-generated content before sending it out, to help prevent spammers from using your resources and tarnishing your reputation.
Use common-sense settings. While we have not published guidelines for numbers of connections you can concurrently use, we ask that you treat our resources with respect. The more you take, the fewer there are for others, which may force us to defer your connections.

More @
eMail Marketing Services 

Email marketing mistakes that lead to unsubscribes

Growing a high-quality mailing list can be a expensive, time-consuming effort, but countless companies take the pain for a simple reason: email marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow a business.
Building a mailing list is only half the battle. The other half: keeping subscribers happy!
Unfortunately, it's extremely easy to make mistakes that drive subscribers away. Here are four of the most common such mistakes.
1. Sending too many emails.
There can easily be too much of a good thing when it comes to email and many companies bombard their subscribers with far more emails than those subscribers expected. This can quickly lead to subscriber attrition.
How to Address
Remember that with email, it's possible to do more with less. Instead of worrying about communicating with subscribers more frequently, focus on making sure each communication packs a punch when it comes to value. Content should be insightful, and calls-to-action should be compelling.
2. Not respecting preferences.
If sending too many emails is one of the best ways to lose subscribers, but not respecting their preferences is one of the best ways to drive them away angry. Important preferences that should always be adhered to include list selections, frequency settings and formatting choices.
How to Address
In many cases, preference violations are a result of poorly-implemented subscriber management systems. As such, it's important to thoroughly test your system on a periodic basis to ensure that preferences are being captured properly and that the systems being used to deliver emails are aware of them.
3. Lack of perceived relevance.
Even if you're sending emails to subscribers at the right frequency and you're respecting their preferences, your emails could be falling far short of expectations if subscribers don't see the emails as being relevant. And irrelevance will eventually lead to one thing: unsubscribes.
How to Address
There are a number of ways to increasing the likelihood that you're delivering relevant emails that are more likely to be of interest to subscribers. Several are:

• Manually soliciting feedback from subscribers to ensure you're in tune with their needs.
• Collecting more granular explicit preference options that allow better subscriber segmentation.
• Tracking open rates and using them to determine which subscribers should receive certain emails.

4. Inconsistency.
If your emails lack consistent branding and their source is not immediately apparent, there's a greater probability that some subscribers may not understand why they've received an email, leading to an unsubscribe.
How to Address
At a minimum, use the same sender name and email wherever possible to reduce the likelihood of confusion about the source of your emails. And, if possible, develop email templates that use consistent visual branding.

To read more articles: EMail Marketing Services

Why is my email going to the spam folder?

Why is my email going to the spam folder?
How to improve your email delivery.

With any email service & any set of subscribers you will always have some mail end up in the spam folder.  Every receiving ISP is using different spam filtering techniques and some ISP’s utilize some pretty crazy ideas to combat spam.  So you will undoubtedly have some mail filtered at some point during sending email campaigns.

The good news is that it is not something you should dread or worry about.  By following some pretty simple concepts you can dramatically reduce the chance of email being filtered.

Things you can do to improve your email delivery:

1. Don’t use your email address for the “from” email address.
   If you send a email that is “from” your email (let’s say test@abccorp.com) and you send it to a subscriber with the email (test@ abccorp.com) it will most certainly be marked as spam as the “from” and the “to” is the same.
2. Pay attention to the spam filter testing before sending.
   This is an option on the summary step of create campaign.  It will let you know if it spots any major issues with your email that could affect delivery.
3. Don’t send a single graphic/image
   Sending an email that only contains a graphic is a sure-fire way to have delivery issues.  You should take the time to design an email with text and graphics.  Not just a single image.
4. Don’t use a free email address as your “from” email
   Instead of using your free/personal email address such as @hotmail.com or @gmail.com you should use an email address for the company or organization for which you are sending email.
5. Test different subjects & email contents
   Content does play a major role in filtering email.  Avoid using all caps, spammy sounding content, etc.. By testing different subjects and email contents you can test responses & delivery.
6. Pay attention to your links in your email
   Spam filters check the URLS that you are linking to. If you link to a domain that has a poor reputation you will be penalized. Additionally you should avoid linking to URL’s that contain folders with 1-2 characters (such as domain.com/e/something/ or domain.com/es/) as some filters will count that as a negative thing.
7. Don’t include links that use link shortening services
   Your links should be full links to the real URL.  You could experience delivery issues using shortened links from link shortening services.
8. Take the time to code your HTML correctly
   Improper HTML tags, broken tags, etc.. could reduce your email delivery.
9. Remove inactive subscribers
   Delete your old & inactive subscribers.  Subscriber engagement plays a big role in email delivery.  By focusing on your active subscribers you can increase your overall delivery.
10. Send using a consistent “from” email address
    We do not suggest changing your “from” details often.  Keeping it consistent can help build your reputation.
11. Never include Javascript, form code, or video within your email
    This is an absolute way to get filtered.  If you wish to have video upload to youtube and link.
12. Avoid copying anything directly from Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc..
    When you paste content directly from these applications additional characters (that you do not want) will be automatically added.
13. Don’t test using the same phrase as your subject and email contents.   If you send an email with a very similar subject and message body it will likely be filtered as spam.  (example would be having the subject set to “this is a test” with the body set to “this is a test”)

Be sure to keep in mind that your primary focus should be on maintaining a healthy list of subscribers, sending content that they truly want, engaging your subscribers, and encouraging them to interact with your campaign.  If you keep your focus on these items great delivery will follow.

To read more articles you can visit:  NetGains - eMail Marketing Services