Zrinity Email Marketing Blog

In a recent article by Loren McDonald in the Email Insider was very insightful. This article explains what it calls List Churn which basically means the amount of your list that disappears every year just from simple retention. Over the course of the year Loren estimates that as much as 25% of your list vanishes each year which means that you need to grow your list by more than that amount to really grow your list. It’s like your email list inflation rate. If you don’t grow faster than inflation then you are shrinking.

This list inflation rate is termed the Hurdle Rate by Loren is estimated at ten to twenty five percent per year.

I agree with the rate on the lower end and the one thing I would add to this analysis is that rather than allowing emails to go to the point where they turn into bounces, it is possible to turn inactive email addresses into dormant ones before they get to the bounce stage. This is not easy and requires a lot more attention to detail for email managers, but will decrease the number of bounces over time as well as make for a cleaner list and higher delivery rates.

Resources: Have You Tackled Your List Churn?, Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing List Hygiene

Your online reputation is as important as your brand name is in the age of the Internet. When you fail to protect your lists and your email reputation, which, by the way, is being judged by email recipient servers, such as YAHOO, and other email integrity entities, you damage your brand name. Who are these email judges you ask. They are YAHOO, AOL, HotMail, GMAIL and hundreds of other email providers who cumulatively can do more damage to your email reputation than any other failure to protect your brand might do.

Don’t Trick Prospects Onto Your List
It is a very common procedure, and even legal, for the general Web population, to have signed up for a legitimate email notice, but also to have agreed to receive emails for all fifty businesses in a network of businesses. Even though you only intended to receive emails from company A, they are tricking onto a series of lists from those in their “network” inadvertently. It is almost the same as getting free software and if you fail to read the agreements, then you might not be aware that you agreed to get ads from the software firms network. Most of these relationships have some type of safeguard for these relationships, but far too many times they end up insulting their audience and turning people off to these purported freebees. Truly opted into lists are much more valuable than TRICKED TO OPTIN lists.

Use Double Optin Procedures
The fear that a new person on the email list will remove themselves from your list is a key factor in the fact that so many list managers will not employ double optin techniques. That is to say that when somebody signs up to receive your emails, they get an email immediately to verify that they were not signed up by another party, AND, to drive the point home that they just signed up for your email. The fact is if they do not remember signing up to get your emails just a few moments ago, they are almost certain to report your email as spam when they get the special offer in three weeks from today. It is truly better not to have these recipients on your list. It waters down your list effectiveness and damages your online brand name. A double opted in list is much more valuable and predictable as a marketing tool.

Email Past, Present & Future
Email was built as a type of file sharing system for the highly technical people on the Web, typically at a place of scientific research or a government entity. In the early days it was common for a person, or business, to piggy-back onto the Internet through some government backbone. Email servers were intended to send one message at a time from your sending email server to the recipient email server for delivery to the intended recipient.

Think of sending email server as a sending fax machine and the recipient email server as the receiving fax machine. Both ends need to work effectively for the fax to be delivered to the intended recipient. The problem is that sometimes both fax machines will report and error, such as a loss of signal or line, and it is not clear if either machine had some error, or if the signal was lost or cut off. Well, with email servers the same can be true but to a much higher degree. Email recipient machines will sometimes report to the sending email machine that an error occurred when in fact what happened was that the server encountered an error, or just believes the sending email machine is a spammer or robot of some type.

The best way for the recipient to believe that your machine is not a spammer, or other malicious code delivery, is for the recipient server to know who you are and who’s is sending the email. Your email reputation is critical to the delivery of your message to the intended recipient.

More Resources: Email Marketing Strategy, Email Marketing Best Practices, Inhouse Email Marketing Case Study

{SCIENCE NOT SURVEYS} Craft a message that matches a person’s desires, needs or pain/stress points. Did they click or buy? Adjust and evolve your message and timing based on metrics.

• Look closely at any metrics you have from similar campaigns or any previous campaigns that have a similar offer and send the next campaign with the same parameters such as time of day, subject line, etc.

{SCIENCE NOT SURVEYS} Look at your stats to determine the likely monitor settings. Draft a message that fits nicely into most used monitors. Which monitors do your Web browsers use?

• Dig further into other sources for metrics. Look at your Website analytics program and determine the most likely monitor scenario before you design your next campaign. As you can see in the Email Design Guide, our viewers mostly all have setting starting at 1024 or 1200 plus, which means we might up our total size by a few hundred pixels for our next campaign.

Make a sketch level plan but don’t try to over plan since you can learn from email recipients’ actions about their desires.

• Plan but don’t overkill. It is important to get the first campaign or the next one out quickly. Remember you can use multi-variant campaign and testing the campaigns over time to continue to evolve your email campaigns. People speak louder in their actions than they do through any survey or study about their actions.

Source: The Ultimate Email Design Guide Check-off List
People Also Read: Email Best Practices, Email Case Studies, Email Marketing Server

This tutorial walks the viewer through an actual campaign production one step at a time. Each slide shows the easy steps to take to produce your first campaign, plus the screenshots show almost every feature within the Campaign Intelligence system if you just look around where the pointers aren’t pointing. It makes for a great way for those of you who do not use the system to look around without any commitments, as well as w great tool for those of you who are in the system and need a little extra help getting your first campaign started. Click to download the email campaign tutorial.

Campaign Intelligence is also offering numerous specials until the end of June. We have options for just about everybody. Start Now: Request a new account or request a live demo.

Not sure if you can commit yet?

• Click here to see if you qualify for one free month using the system. Send a few campaigns and watch your metrics go through the roof. Request a new account

Don’t have your email list yet?

• Start collecting emails now through your Website by getting one months access free. You can add a form in a few minutes with an easy tutorial. Request new account

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• Start today, get the free first month everybody gets, then take advantage of special FastPitch Network pricing. Just join Target Inbox Best Practices and you get 50% off for your first three months with a six month contract.

Start now by requesting a live demo or request a new account here! In the comments field put a link to your FastPitch user profile that was added to Rob Thrasher’s network.

It is a pretty rare occurrence that you will achieve email campaigns that get a 99.5% delivery rate, almost 80% open rate, %0 compliant and 0% unsubscribe rate. One thing I personally learned from this case study was that no matter what the size of the list, 1,000 emails or 10M emails, the value of the list is not dependent upon the size. A fairly small list from a fairly non-technical business person turned out to be one of the most valuable lists, per email, that you are likely to find in the entirety of the Fortune 1,000 world.

The thing is that the potential of this list was about to be lost due to the fact that the small business owner, Mark Klutchko, Owner, DiscountModels.com, was not aware of the fact that there is Fortune 1,000 technology at the disposal of small businesses like his for under $1,000 per year. After his very first send, he realized that his list was worth a mint.

Using Zrinity’s Campaign Intelligence Mark realized the full potential of his list, began to utilize the metrics available and began to increase revenue after just a few campaigns and in a fraction of the time.

More Resources: Campaign Intelligence, Email Best Practices, Full Email Marketing Case Study, Military Model Aircraft

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