Though the statistics look daunting, claiming that up to 50% of all email marketing goes straight to the spam box; this simply isn’t a hard and fast rule. Successful email deliverability is not a game of chance. For most reputable marketers the percentage rate of emails that do not get through is usually much lower than 50%, and some marketers claim loss percentages as low as 5%. Here are some of the email marketing best practices that have helped expert marketers get maximum email deliverability.

Get Your Email Certified

Getting your email program certified helps to greatly improve your email marketing reputation. Having certification through nearly any vendor will help with email deliverability. Once your email is certified, it makes your marketing messages appear reputable to the ISP and worthy of being delivered directly to the inbox. It will not fix all reputation issues with all ISPs but it will go a long way toward doing so. It will greatly reduce the number of times your message is blocked or filtered out.

Understand that Delivered Does Not Always Mean Delivered

Many marketers falsely believe that the amount of “delivered” emails that their broadcast system reports accounts for the number of emails that get to recipient inboxes. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t true. Many times these numbers only reflect what wasn’t sent back as undeliverable. It doesn’t mean that your email truly reached the inbox. It is vital to any email marketing strategy that marketers find out exactly how many of their emails are bypassing the spam box and hitting the inbox. You might need to put more tracking and logging into place in order to get a more accurate idea of what your actual delivery statistics are.

The Importance of Seeding Your Email Campaign

Seeding your campaigns is vital to understanding your overall email marketing program. Seeding basically means sending your email messages to “test” accounts. Because every ISP, every email software package, every operating system – and every different combination of the three – delivers and displays email messages differently, it’s important that you’re able to view your email messages on all these various platforms. An email marketing best practice is to send your message to your seed list before sending it to your general mailing list. This allows you to identify and fix any problems or issues before everyone on your mailing list sees them.

Getting a Good Sender Reputation Goes a Long Way

The key to getting in the inbox is to keep things clean and simple. When your emails receive few complaints within a given ISP and are exhibiting a decent open rate, your rate of delivery to the inbox can be astronomical. Some marketers have gotten so good at sending only highly relevant messages to highly interested subscribers that they consistently keep a 100% approval rate with most ISPs. This might not be easy to do but it is possible. It is all about keeping reputation high and potential customers satisfied.

Pay Attention to Subscribers

Internet marketers often forget who they are trying to market to. Keeping up with opens, click throughs, unsubscribes, and new subscribers is one of the most important email marketing best practices. If a certain email list segment or prospect demographic has a high level of spam complaints, then you’re better off removing the entire segment from your list. Target the audience that is most interested in what you have to say, the ones you can help the most, the segment that is going to benefit your company the most.

Keeping customers interested, making your email messages worth reading, and keeping things fresh – basically, paying attention to what your subscribers want – is the best way to guarantee better delivery rates and respectable open rates.

ISPs are not the only ones that marketers have to get through to in order to be successful at marketing email deliverability. Subscribers are important too. ISPs are actually working side by side with subscribers to better separate reputable marketing from spam (as evidenced by those little “spam” “not spam” buttons that you might have seen in your own ISP’s mail program). With so much input from customers, reputation is becoming more and more important. The number one best practice of email marketing is to keep reputation high and information relevant.

While writing email marketing copy is very similar to writing direct mail copy there are several nuances that are unique to email marketing. And, as you might have guessed, I have several tips to make these nuances work better for you and your email copywriting project.

Don’t Get Caught Up With – Or Caught Up In – Spam Filters

Unlike direct mail copywriters, email marketing copywriters have to worry about spam filters and spam folders and delivery issues. Unfortunately, I’ve seen many small business owners get so caught up in worrying about spam filters that they become absolutely paralyzed when it comes to actually writing their copy.

My suggestion is to write your email copy just like you would “regular” copy. Write it out on a pad of paper, or in your word processor. Never start writing your email copy in your email program.

And let your thoughts flow just as you normally would. Pretend you’re writing a sales letter to go out in the postal mail. After the copy is totally written, then you can go back and edit it for the spam filters.

And if you need help getting past the spam filters, be sure to download my free spam filter checklist at http://www.modernimage.com/freereports/canspam.htm

Shorter Copy Works Better

In direct mail copywriting, we always say long copy sells. The longer the copy, the more information provided, the more features and benefits that are packed in, the better the sales response.

But in email, long copy doesn’t always work. On the internet, 3 minutes is an eternity. Your prospects don’t want to spend 5, 4, or even 3 minutes reading your sales message. If your subject line draws them in, but they open the message to find 4-screens full of prose, chances are they won’t even start reading.

The purpose of your email sales copy should be to “sell the click”. You want your reader to click through to your website. Because the psychology of reading websites is different from the psychology of reading email messages, you’ll be able to provide the meat of your information on your web page.

Par down your email sales copy to as few words as possible. Identify the most important benefit of the product or service you are offering and highlight it in your message. But don’t provide all the information. Leave the reader wanting more, and use that curiosity to entice him to click through to your website.

Does Your Landing Page Message Match?

In direct mail marketing, your prospect might read your sales copy and wait hours, or even days, before checking out your website or calling your 800 number for more information. With email marketing, the time lapse between reading your email message and viewing the rest of your promotion (your web page) is virtually non-existent. Therefore, it’s critically important that you have a seamless flow between your email message and your landing page.

If the sales copy, graphics, or sales pitch in your email message does not match the sales copy, graphics or sales pitch on your landing page, your reader might assume he has clicked through to the wrong website. And he might simply leave without making a purchase.

Make sure you repeat the same elements that you used on your landing page in your email message. And make sure that you speak with the same tone of voice. Often, marketers speak informally in their email messages, and then revert to corporate speak on their web pages. Avoid this, as it leads to prospect confusion.

Use Images to Support, Not Convey

The use of graphics in email marketing is vastly different from the use of graphics in direct mail marketing. That’s because, from the readers’ perspective, viewing graphics in email is optional.

The majority of email programs, PDAs and smart phones have graphics in email turned off by default. That means that your reader will not see your graphics unless he manually goes through and changes his program setting – which many users don’t know how to do, or don’t want to do. Many email readers feel “safer” with their graphics turned off.

Unlike direct mail, the images in your email message can not be used to convey the actual message, since there is no guarantee your prospect will actually see the image. Instead, your graphics should be used as a supporting element.

It’s helpful if you write your message as a stand-alone, either on paper or in your word processor, before converting it to HTML for your email message. That way you can ensure your message makes sense and is 100% usable without relying on your graphics.

Never use graphics as your only click-through hyperlink. If you’re using a button saying “click here for more information” always include an additional text link.

And don’t forget about Alt tags. Just as in regular HTML web pages, your HTML email messages do support image Alt tags. Be sure to include Alt tags with all of your images, and make sure they are descriptive enough to be useful for your readers who aren’t viewing the actual image.

Write Your Subject Line Last

It’s true that your email message subject line parallels the headline in direct mail copywriting. And it’s also true that the headline is considered the most important element in direct mail copywriting. But I believe your email subject line is even more critical than a direct mail headline.

That’s because, with direct mail, your reader will be viewing the rest of your page as he scans your headline. You still have the opportunity to pull him into your message with the use of bullet points and graphics and subheads.

With email marketing, the majority of your readers will not be using a preview pane. You don’t have the luxury of pulling the reader into your message with other elements. The entire weight of getting your message read relies on your subject line.

Because your subject line is so crucial, it’s absolutely imperative to get it right. I’ve found it very helpful to write the subject line last. After the landing page has been developed, after the email message has been written, after all the graphics have been created, you’ll then have an abundance of information and elements to use in brainstorming subject line ideas.

While email marketing shares many similarities with direct mail copywriting, there are several aspects that are unique to email. By understanding and improving these, you’ll be able to increase your email open rates, click-throughs, and ROI.

But before you open your Microsoft Outlook and start typing away, it’s a good idea to create an overall plan for your email marketing program. Here are 7 steps to get you started.

1. Check Out Your Industry

What are others in your industry doing with their email marketing campaigns? How often are they sending email messages? Do they publish regular newsletters; do they use sequential autoresponders; are they taking advantage of transactional messages? It’s OK to go above and beyond what others in your industry are doing, but in general, you probably don’t want your email marketing program to be “less” than what others are doing. So spend a little time spying on your competition in order to create a baseline. Then brainstorm a few ideas for making your own email marketing program a few ticks better than what everyone else is doing.

2. Decide on a Format

There are basically three ways to format your email messages: straight text, HTML, or multi-part mime. And there are pros and cons to each.

Straight text is exactly what it says – just text. The major pro is that it is quick and easy to create, and everyone will be able to read your message. The biggest con is the lack of tracking that comes with text email. You won’t be able to track who opened your message; there are basically no measurements of delivery rates and open rates and clickthroughs, so you will have no idea if your email marketing program is actually working.

HTML messages can include colors and graphics and images - basically, your email message can look almost like a web page. The pros are that you can make your message look very enticing by using visual images. And you’ll be able to track (for the most part) who received your message, who opened your message, who clicked your links, etc. The downside is that not everyone can receive HTML email; those that can’t will receive a message that looks like a bunch of computer code.

Multi part MIME combines the best of both worlds. With multi part mime messages, you create 2 versions of your message – one text version and one HTML version. The best version is delivered to each reader on an individual basis. For instance, if John Smith can receive HTML email, he will automatically receive the HTML version of your email message. But if Susie Speck can’t receive HTML, she will automatically receive the text version.

The downside is that it takes longer to create multi part mime messages, since you’re creating two different versions. But the upside is that everyone can read your message since they automatically receive the message that is best for them.

3. Create a Schedule

Sending your email newsletter on a regular schedule helps in more ways than one. First, your readers will start anticipating and looking forward to receiving your information. This will help increase open rates. Once your readers are used to seeing your email coming in regularly, they are less likely to report you as a spammer. This helps increase future delivery rates. Maintaining a regular schedule also makes you look more professional, it makes it easier for you to schedule your day, and it helps position you as the expert. And that’s just good for business all-around.

4. Choose an Email Service Provider

The benefit to using an email service provider is that they will handle all the technical aspects of your email marketing program. They maintain the relationships with individual ISPs to improve your chances of deliverability; they provide the tracking and measuring statistics; the email messages are sent through their mail server, so you don’t have to worry about getting flagged by your own ISP. The handle the mailing list subscriptions and unsubscribe requests. They make it easier to stay Can-spam compliant, and just all-around make your email marketing program easier to deal with it.

We almost always recommend 1SC (www.try1sc.com) because we love their features and ease of use. But to make your email marketing program successful, you’ve got to find the email service provider that works for you; so I suggest doing some research and analyzing more than one ESP.

5. Create a Content Calendar

I like to recommend that my clients don’t get started with their email marketing campaigns until they have three newsletters’ worth of content thought out. This will help you maintain a regular publishing schedule since you won’t have to scramble at the last minute for article ideas. You might be surprised at how many content sources you already have right at your fingertips:

• Customer stories – people love reading stories, and most customers would be flattered to share their story. Just ask a few clients how they’ve used your product or service and what type of results they achieved. You’ll probably be surprised at the great stories you receive back.
• Industry news – no matter what industry you’re in, there is always something happening. Many authors and reporters will actually give you permission to print the news or articles that they’ve already written. This is a great time saver!
• Personal commentary – believe it or not, your clients and prospects do care about your opinion. Rather than just reporting dry news and statistics, why not let others know what you think about the happenings in your industry.
• Interviews – ask an industry insider 3 or 4 questions and report back his answers. It’s really a lot easier than it sounds.
• Q& A – ask your clients and readers to submit their questions and report back your own answers. If you do this on a regular basis, your readers will actually start looking for this section in your newsletter.

6. Decide How You Will Evaluate

Once you start your email marketing program, it’s important that you test it and measure it and track it. Every aspect that you measure can pinpoint an issue that might need to address. For instance, low delivery rates could mean a poor sender reputation. Low open rates could mean you’re getting caught in spam filters, or that you haven’t been providing the content that your readers are looking for. Low click through rates could mean poor body copy, or poor calls to action. You won’t be able to improve future email campaigns unless you test and track your current campaign. So you’ll need to know ahead of time how you’re going to do that.

7. Start Building Your Mailing List

You might be surprised at how many people would love to receive your email newsletter if you only asked them. Start with your current clients. While it is “technically legal” to send your current clients your email newsletter, nonetheless it’s not a good idea to add them to your mailing list without their permission. Send them a message or a postcard announcing your new newsletter, and include a link so they could subscribe to your mailing list. Or send a note with your monthly invoices reminding your clients that you’ve started a newsletter.

And then move on to your prospects. Include a mention of your newsletter in your proposals. Have a subscription form on each page of your website. And include an incentive, such as a free report or bonus coupon, to encourage your prospects to subscribe.

Once you have your plan in place, go ahead and get starting with your email marketing campaign. Don’t wait until you have a huge mailing list or tons and tons of content. Your email marketing program will grow and evolve as time goes on, but only if you get started now.

Studies show that including an animated gif in your email message can increase conversions significantly.

Resources:

Outlook 2007 Checklist

Transactional emails are any messages that are sent in response to a customer transaction – things such as payment receipts, order confirmation, shipping information, delivery updates, etc.

What’s great about transactional emails is that they get opened and read at a much higher rate than typical email messages. They also do not fall under the guidance of the CAN-Spam Act, which means you do not have to include an opt-out mechanism.

OK, that’s the good news. The bad news is that you’re probably not taking advantage of your transactional email messages. Believe it or not, there’s a high possibility that up to 74% of the emails you use to communicate with your customers and prospects are transactional messages. At least that’s what Jupiter Research concluded in their recent study.

I was a little skeptical about the 74% figure, until I really started looking at what constitutes a transactional email message. This covers everything from:

• order confirmations
• service confirmations
• shipment notifications
• reservation confirmations
• e-tickets
• inventory updates
• invoices
• payment notifications
• customer service messages
• information request messages

That’s a lot of messages!

The problem that most of us small business owners face with our transactional messages is that they are often occurring behind the scenes. These messages are typically sent by our shopping cart program or email service provider or software system. Many small business owners aren’t even aware when these messages are being sent, and they don’t realize that these messages can be changed.

Fortunately, your transactional email messages can be changed. Depending on your set up and what system you’re using, you might need to find someone with a little technical expertise to dig into the coding if you don’t feel comfortable doing that yourself.

What kind of changes should you be making?

First, check out the branding on your transactional messages. These messages are a great way to build rapport with your customers and help them develop trust in your business. Are you using a template that is consistent with the look and feel of your site design and other marketing materials? Do these messages include your own logo – or the logo of your email service provider? When your customer opens your transactional messages, he shouldn’t be jarred with an unexpected design.

What is the “from address” on your transactional messages? If you’re using an automated software program or an email service provider, your from line might be the default name in your account set up – which isn’t necessarily the name you want to use. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen suggests using the name of your company or your brand name, which will be more recognizable than an individual’s name. And, if at all possible, use no more than 25 characters in your from field so the name does not get truncated, especially in PDAs and other handheld devices, which are often used to place web-based orders.

To increase the open rates for your transactional email messages, use a personal, meaningful subject line. A subject line of “Your Confirmation” might be seen as spam (especially if it’s sent with an unrecognizable from address), while “Your Smith Bros Order Has Shipped” has a much better chance of being read.

And remember, it is acceptable to include an offer or promotion within the body of your transactional email message, as long as the majority of the message (80% is the conventional industry norm) is transactional in nature.

If your system allows for dynamic content, transactional messages are a great opportunity for cross-selling. If that’s not a possibility for you, try timeless offers such as “next order coupons” or whitepaper downloads. Why not promote your number one best selling product? Or, if you have the time and resources, you can update your transactional message template on a regular basis to promote your newly released products.

If you’re using a set-it-and-forget-it system, I would avoid including promotions that contain discounts or coupons for a particular product. Personally, I’d be quite frustrated if I just ordered the latest and greatest widget and my order confirmation contained a 25% discount on the product I just paid full price for.

Be Sure To Follow These Guidelines

Do be cautious with adding promotional content to your transactional email messages as there are a few guidelines you must follow. First, in order to be deemed a transactional message, your transactional information must be the main focus of the email and it must be at the beginning of the message. You can’t bury your transactional information within a promotional offer. You can’t “force” your customers to read your sales copy in order to find their confirmation information.

All promotional copy must come at the end of the message and ideally it should make up no more than 20% of the message. This includes headlines and copy and, yes, even graphics. Which means if your message looked like this:

it would not constitute a transactional email message and it must follow all CAN-Spam regulations.

Now, here’s the controversy…

Information request messages amount to transactional messages. Which means every time you send out a free report or a download link or a whitepaper or whatever, you are actually sending a transactional message – and since transactional messages don’t fall under the CAN-Spam Act, you don’t need to include the unsubscribe link.

I have several clients who complain about “freebie seekers” who request free reports or links to podcasts and then immediately unsubscribe from the mailing list. What are your thoughts on this? How do you handle these “freebie seekers” and do you think there is any benefit to leaving the unsubscribe link out of your free report messages?

I’d love to hear your opinion. Share it below…

But the good news, for your small business at least, is that there is a marketing tool that is still proving successful and generating high returns on investment. In fact, studies show that this particular tactic actually received an increase in 2009 marketing budgets.

And the better news is that this tool is rather easy to execute and it’s generally inexpensive. Many marketing experts claim it is the tool that produces the highest value for the dollar. This tool allows for fast message delivery and almost immediate tracking and in many instances, it can be entirely automated.

I’m referring to email marketing.

Email marketing allows you to create a bond with your existing customers and clients as well as develop a relationship with your prospects. While it’s not totally fool proof, it doesn’t require an enormous budget or extreme technical know how.

If you haven’t started an email marketing program for your small business, I highly, highly, highly (no, that’s not a typo, I really, really, really am a huge advocate of email marketing) encourage you to do so pronto!

One of the first decisions you’ll need to make when implementing your email marketing program is whether your email subscriber list will be opt-in or double opt-in. So, how do opt-in and double opt-in differ?

To give a very brief history… when email marketing first entered the scene, marketers would send messages to every email address they ever encountered. Every business card they ran across, every directory that sat on their shelves, every membership organization they joined – these all provided email addresses for their marketing lists.

Needless to say, the recipients of these email messages weren’t too pleased with this tactic, and so, to counteract the reputation of being spammers, email marketers developed opt-in marketing. As the name implies, opt-in email marketing means that the subscriber opted in, or consented to, receiving your email messages.

You can easily start your opt-in e-mail marketing strategy by first creating a database of customers that would agree to receive your e-mail notices. This can be done by asking prospects at the point of presentation (i.e. on your web site) if they would be interested in receiving e-mails to be notified of your future promotions, products, events, etc. Once your prospect says yes, you add his name and email address to your mailing list database, and the next time you send out your email promotion, he will receive your message.

Unfortunately, this tactic was soon abused. It was easy for web site visitors to submit fraudulent email addresses, or to jokingly sign their friends up for obviously unwanted mailing lists.

So the double opt-in mailing list was developed.

The double opt-in is an attempt to minimize fraud and erroneous email addresses. With double opt-in, your web site visitor enters his name and email address into your web site form; he will then receive an email message confirming that he gave you his email address. He will have to click a link within that email message in order to confirm his subscription – thus, opting into your list for the second time, or double opt-in.

There are pros and cons to both types of opt-in programs. With a single opt-in (your prospect gives you his email address only once), your mailing list will most definitely grow at a quicker rate. However, you are also likely to see more spam complaints (due to fraudulent email addresses), which can hurt your ability to send email messages in the future.

With a double opt-in program (your subscriber confirms his subscription for the second time), your list will grow slowly, since several of the new subscribers will not click the confirmation email link and thus will not be eligible to receive your future messages. However, you will receive less spam complaints, you will end up with a more responsive mailing list, and you will develop a better “sender reputation” which will improve your overall email delivery rate.

Before deciding on opt-in or double opt-in for your email marketing program, be sure to consult with your email service provider. Most providers enforce a strict opt-in rule, and several will allow only double opt-in email lists.

What do I recommend?

The email service provider that we have used for years, and continue to recommend to our clients, is 1Shopping Cart, which also operates under several trade names, such as Marketers Choice and 1Automation Wiz. If you’d like to see whether or not their program fits your needs, sign up for a free trial at www.Try1SC.com.

If you’ve ever received spam from your own email address, or if you’re not experiencing the email open rates you think you should be, it might be time to check your SPF record.

Resources:

http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html