Zrinity Email Marketing Blog

Zrinity’s email systems are used by thousands of business managers and email marketers across the globe. In this particular situation Eldorado Resorts employed a team of business experts and conducted extensive research prior to choosing Zrinity. This research included word of mouth from other industry experts and an extensive investigative due diligence on the part of Eldorado.

The Eldorado Resorts’ E-Commerce Team began their search for a better email marketing system in Q4, 2007. The team’s goals were gain the feature set associated with ASP email service providers, but have complete in-house control of their business critical data.

Project Goals:
• Complete in-house control of email systems
• Reduce the complexity and of email campaign builds
• Better and more flexible integration with in-house business systems
• Decrease cost associated with email campaigns
• Increase delivery and acceptability rates
• Begin to plan behavioral email marketing campaigns

Full Eldorado Email Marketing Case Study, Email Best Practices Resources

Ask any business manager if they had the horrible choice for their flawed newspaper ad what they would choose. Not barring the fact that they would get another print for free. Would they choose an ad that is COMPLETELY blank over one where their images were blank but there was still text in the ad with the business message? Completely blank, or with text? It is a business no-brainer, but so many email marketers send email campaigns with no Alt Tags and, worse yet, no textual descriptions in addition to images. Since most email clients suppress images as a default, you are sending a blank ad message. ALWAYS use alt tags and textual descriptions in email campaigns.

It is critical that every email campaign manager get a free and independent email campaign analysis before they continue to send future email campaigns. Free Email Campaign Analysis Request

You have created what you determine to be a powerful marketing message based on a combination of images and text. The ad that was supposed to run in last week’s paper is seen in Figure 2‐1 of the full case study. Imagine for a minute there were a series of printing errors. The first error displayed only your text message without images, while the second error displayed only little red ‘X’ where you were supposed to have an image, and the text message was also left off these ads. In a nutshell, no images, no text message at all (see Figure 2‐3). Despite the fact you will get another free ad next week, which of these two errors might still generate revenue? Would you choose the ad with nothing or the one with your text message and no pictures?

• Email Campaign Design Best Practices Guide

This is old school newspaper advertising, but it applies to email as well. Placing images into an email almost always have a likelihood they will not appear in some browsers or on some screens as most email providers’ automatic settings are to block images. With no text, this is a horrible thought. Also, for B2C, Hotmail does not show Alt Tags. You have to ask for the images. So your recipients might still be a click away from even seeing your message. 5 Email is New. Business Communications is Not. However, if you also have text describing the images, both alt tags and inline text descriptions, you will generate more revenue than if you just deliver images. It is old school common business sense and we do not require a study to prove or disprove this.

• More Email Best Practices & Case Studies

Both real time and post campaign intelligence are critical to conducting successful email campaigns. Real time metrics and analysis might include server responses to campaigns such as possible delays caused by the YAHOO email servers, or other email providers. Real time analysis is critical since campaigns that have been initiated, especially those with large lists, can be paused temporarily or halted permanently while email delivery experts analyze the situation on a case by case basis. Bounce information can be analyzed real time as well as almost every metric of email delivery. The ability to collect metrics over time, is also critical. Using the Zrinity system, companies like Freewebs, can use the reporting tools to track individual users over the course of multiple campaigns over time.

A powerful capability to conduct multivariate testing gives Freewebs the ability to test multiple versions of the campaign to provide delivery and other critical metrics before the campaign is initiated. With this more advanced system, email campaign managers can actually gauge delivery metrics, and possible issues with campaigns before they initiate the campaign sends. This adds a very important tool in the layers of tools to test and deliver emails to the most appropriate recipients and servers at the right moment in time to ensure opens, reads and sales, or signups for email campaigns.

Mission Critical Goals:
• Reduce the complexity of email campaign builds
• Better integration of system with existing business systems
• Decrease time to email campaigns
• Decrease cost associated with email campaigns
• Increase delivery and acceptability rates
• Conduct proper bounce management
• Better list hygiene for more valuable lists

Full Email Case Study, Email Best Practices Resources

The Email Design Guide also covers the ability to deliver emails based upon HTML integrity. Using HTML best practices will ensure email marketers the greatest possible chance of email delivery to an inbox. Poorly constructed email campaigns, from many perspectives, HTML and just plain look and feel, will affect delivery rates AND open rates.

It is also critical that every email campaign manager get a free and independent email campaign analysis before they continue to send future email campaigns.

Some email recipient firms will block email based upon the integrity of your HTML. If there are HTML errors, your message can be stopped in its tracks. The methods described in the Email Best Practices Guide will help you determine the integrity of the HTML used in your email and avoid the perils associated with HTML errors and compatibility issues.

• Email Campaign Design Best Practices Guide
• More Email Best Practices & Case Studies
• Free Email Campaign Analysis Request

The newly released Email Design Guide will help email marketers ensure they design email campaigns so that they can be viewed by the maximum number of recipients across all email clients. From YAHOO to MSN your emails will appeaer as you wish, not as the email clients wish.

It is also highly recommended that every email marketer get a free and unbiased email campaign analysis before they continue to send future email campaigns.

Use your email metrics to determine to which email clients are the most likely to respond. Then, on your next attempt, you can send draft emails based upon recipient systems such as Gmail, AOL or Yahoo! If you aren’t ready to send a different email to each base of recipients or clients, then just try to test the emails with top clients using systems such as Yahoo! and AOL. It is too easy and inexpensive not to verify your email design. Check your HTML integrity with very inexpensive tools available through Habeas and Return Path.

• Email Campaign Design Best Practices Guide
• More Email Best Practices & Case Studies
• Free Email Campaign Analysis Request

The recently published case study for Zrinity’s email campaign management system, Campaign Intelligence, shows evidence of very high open rates, acceptability rates of over 99% and increasing revenue by over 100%. Fly Creek Cider Mill near Cooperstown New York recently co-published a case study of their results using Zrinity’s Email Campaign System and the numbers are stunning. Brenda Palmer Michaels, President of Fly Creek Cider Mill, after reviewing a detailed email campaign analysis conducted in conjunction with Zrinity delivery experts, moved the firms email campaigns into the Zrinity system, Campaign Intelligence with “Phenomenal result metrics” . . .

It is also highly recommended that every email marketer get a free and unbiased email campaign analysis before they continue to send future email campaigns.

From the study: Zrinity took the list they were already sending to and helped them clean it up. We stopped sending to bounces and quickly recovered a better sender reputation. Delivery rates went up by about 10%, open rates increased, click-throughs increased dramatically, and we achieved sales revenues 100% higher than weeks in which we conducted no campaigns. The biggest increase in revenue came within three to five business days after the campaign was sent. Spam complaints dropped to 0%.

• Read The Full Email Campaign Case Study
• Free Email Campaign Analysis Request

Avoid rich media, animated gif’s, image maps, forms, and anything that is “dynamic” in nature. Be sure to use inline CSS coding. How the HTML is viewed (Outlook for Business) Yahoo!, Google, AOL, etc. for commercial, is something to take into account. However, if you use HTML best practices, you can prepare an email for most all scenarios. Use science, not surveys or studies. Look at your viewers in your Website statistics and design for the majority of the users. Use tables and nested tables for layouts. Don’t use background images or spacer images. Test campaigns with a service such as that provided by Habeas to verify HTML integrity.

It is critical that every email campaign manager get a free and independent email campaign analysis before they continue to send future email campaigns. Free Email Campaign Analysis Request

• Email Campaign Design Best Practices Guide

For B2C, since Hotmail does not display underlines for hyperlinks, use inline CSS text‐decoration property to underline in the tag of every link where you wish to have the link underlined. Always assign colors, even if the color is black. Don’t assume the default colors will work for any email as some email providers have different default colors.

• More Email Best Practices & Case Studies

Too many times we hear about people doing yet another survey to prove their hypothesis. You don’t require a survey to determine what monitor settings people who will read your email might use! You can get the actual info by looking at actual Website reader metrics to determine exactly which monitor settings are used and how often. I call this Science over Surveys. Don’t ask people what they do! Watch them do it.

Somewhere in your Website statistics you can learn which computer monitors people use to browse your Website on any given day or month. Look at your stats to determine the most reasonable or appropriate monitor setting for your audience and then use this information to draft a message that fits nicely onto most popularly‐used monitors. It is better to use science than it is to use surveys to determine how people view your site and, ultimately, their email. Look at Figure 1, and you will see that if you plan the email for the top four monitor settings: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1280×800 and 1680×1050, then you cover over 74% of all possible viewers. Some of you might want to look at these statistics and be sure your site fits within these parameters as well.

• Email Design Guide & Check Off List

Make a sketch‐level plan, but try not to plan too much as a lot of your knowledge will come
from what you learn from email recipients’ actions. Send multiple versions of the same email
using multivariate testing. This is a more evolved method of AB testing. It uses multiple
variations of a message and other offers within the email to judge responses and then uses the
most popular version for the rest of the recipients. Keep sending the emails out fast. Learn
about the viewers with which you are not already familiar.

• More Email Best Practices & Case Studies

There’s nothing really new about sending email that wasn’t true from the days of static newspaper ads. You still have to hit the right person with the right message at the right time. The only difference is in the degree to which the rules of marketing are new.

Zrinity has compiled a list that, if followed, will allow all your email recipients the ability to view your emails no matter what system they use. This includes Outlook, America Online, Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, and others.

• Email Design Guide & Check Off List

You still have to hit the right person with the right message at the right time. You must first craft a message that matches recipient desires, needs or pain/stress points. With newspaper and TV ads, you had to guess a lot, and then do extensive and expensive surveys. Now, you can simply watch how email recipients act. Did they click through your page or buy anything? Then, you adjust your message and timing based on these metrics…

• More Email Best Practices & Case Studies

There are a number of pitfalls that organizations can encounter when it comes to email campaign delivery. Each, however, can be avoided through careful maintenance and monitoring. The four primary perils that most organizations run into and ways in which your organization can avoid them include the following:

1. Every domain, or www.abccompany.com, has a corresponding IP address which is unique to that particular site on the Internet. All email also has a corresponding IP address. Your IP address(es) are your online identity. What organizations must understand is that it is possible for anyone within a firm to get his or her organization’s IP address on a blacklist. This method used to combat SPAM essentially blocks that IP address from ever being able to deliver email to recipients, essentially rendering email campaigns a lost cause.

2. By not respecting the delivery policies set forth by recipient organizations, your organization will likely be listed as a spammer, as unfriendly or ever as a hostile email distributor. Not only will your emails end up in a SPAM folder that will likely go unopened, but you can also be removed from what is called the ‘whitelist’, a term used to represent those email distributors in good standing, and in turn added to the blacklist. It is important to note that email that is dumped into a SPAM folder does not generate notification to the sender, so any resulting reports will also be erroneous.

3. Running SPAM checks is a practice with which you want to be particular cautious. Recipient firms might think that your message is SPAM and actually mark your organization as the unfriendly sender. If you maintain your standing on a whitelist, this check will prove to be unnecessary.

4. Although a scary thought, it is possible for your competitors to spoof your email address and either use it to send SPAM or to plant spyware on your computer, turning it into a SPAM email server. This latter action will result in your IP address being blacklisted by a large number of people rather than just one, wreaking havoc on any email marketing efforts.

There are ways to avoid all the perils listed above through a couple of simple, albeit critical measures. For one, your organization will want to ensure there is a system of checks and balances in place for email dissemination. Make sure that there is only a set amount of employees, or better yet only one employee, that handles this form of communication and that they and/or he/she understands the proper protocol to keep your organization’s name (and IP address) in good standing. Second, if outsourcing this function make sure to utilize the services of an ESP that is not only bonded but can provide you with assurances against their use of practices such as running SPAM checks. A good ESP can also assure that they abide by the rules of recipient servers, eliminating the possibility of being blacklisted.

Sources: Email Best Practices, Email Marketing Systems