Inbox delivery and your list

Did you know that your subscribers play a significant role in your ability to get your emails delivered to the inbox? 

The Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) decide whether or not to accept your email based on your sending reputation.  A component of what the likes of Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail and the others look at in determining your sending reputation is what your subscribers think of you.  And that opinion is made up of multiple factors. 

• Do they know you? 
• Are they expecting to receive messages from you? 
• Are they engaged with the content?
• Do they care about or want this email at all?

If the subscriber doesn’t care about your mail, then chances are your open rates and click rates are very low.  And that means your mail is more likely to go to the junk or bulk folder.   If the subscribers don’t want the mail (unsolicited or irrelevant) they’re going to report it as spam.  When an ISP gets too many of those “this is spam” reports about your mail, they’re going to block it or filter it.

Looking for an Email Service Provider?

If you are in the process of evaluating email service providers, keep in mind the strength of the ESP.  There are a lot of email service providers who are looking to win your business, not all providers are equal.  Once you have narrowed your choice down to the final two or three, you need to look at the financial strength of those organizations.  The last thing you want to have happen is that the organization that you choose is struggling financially. 

If they are financially challenged, they will tend to cut customer support staff as well as product development.  This is fine if you are self serve and don’t need support, but what about future product enhancements?  You will be stuck for a year with a company that is not innovating.

Here is what you should do.  Take a look at the ESP’s financial records.  If they are public or have filed their financial records with the SEC, they can be found at www.sec.gov.  This will give you a good indicator as to their cash flow, growth and innovation.  For those ESP’s where you do not have access to their financial records, you need to ask yourself what is the risk of aligning your own organization with a potential Titanic?

Email is last to be cut

As businesses address their own internal needs, costs begin to be reviewed, you typically start with the ‘nice to haves’ i.e. travel and office supplies.  This focus on ‘tightening the budget’ may trickle into marketing eventually.  When it does, this same philosophy applies, ‘Let’s cut the nice to haves’.   Businesses also have a tendency to cut the big items first vs. doing away with any one smaller thing….  Email plays an important yet smaller role in an overall marketing budget, thus it will be looked at on a lower priority – typically.

Then comes the measurable part…. This is where email and one to one communications stand out.  Return from email communications are measurable, and the email themselves, many times are business critical.  It is difficult to ‘cut’ budgets, however, if that budget that you are cutting is able to show a return it will be either the last thing cut, or most likely it will not be cut at all.    Why would someone cut newspaper or tv from their budget? Because they simply do not know what the return is.  But, with email they do, or they should. 

 Can you imagine Expedia cutting its email budget knowing the return they get?

Can you imagine Ulta cutting its email budget to get ‘less’ people coming back to the site after abandoning a cart?

… and the list goes on….

Email Marketing during economic downturn

In the face of increasing market pressures, companies will be tempted to use the email channel for more (and likely, ill-advised) customer acquisition efforts.  In so doing, they will run the risk of alienating prospective customers and tanking their reputation with the ISPs.  The net effect?  Lower deliverability rates for ALL of their emails (permission-based, transactional, etc.).  So be careful with your email frequency.

Pay Attention to the Subject Line

Second to the From Address, the subject line is the second most important factor in determining whether or not people open your emails. So pay attention to what works. 

So how do you optimize your subject lines?  Make sure they pass the spam test and canl get past spam filters, into email inboxes and emails opened? Here are a few tricks that will ensure your subject lines are more effective: be relevant, be appropriate and be willing to test.

Be relevant:
Relevancy goes beyond inserting the recipients name subject line, but it takes more than a name to be relevant. Leverage the information you know about your subscribers. 

Be appropriate:
Make sure your subject line reflects what’s in the email, and work for your audience. An email newsletter will do better with an informational subject line, while a slightly more sales-y subject line works better for an email promotion.

Be willing to test:
I can’t stress enough the benefit of testing your subject lines with random samples. Use A/B testing to determine your best subject line. But be clear on what your goals are: You might get a higher open rate with one subject line, but a higher conversion rate with the other.