A wise man once said, “The only constant is change.” This couldn’t be more true for the world of email. Back in the good old days, email deliverability was often determined by your subject line or spammy words used in your content. Change one or two words and “Poof!” you’re in the inbox.  Now things aren’t so simple. ISP’s no longer rely on any one single factor in determining if your email is spam or a legitimate email. 

If you put some planning into your sending patterns and communicate consistently, you will find your deliverability to be greatly improved. For more tips on building relationships with ISP’s, click here.

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There has been a lot of talk in the industry lately about the “subscriber experience.” We want to know about your opt-in process. Click here to answer our short survey and share your thoughts with us. We’ll post the results in our next issue.

Here’s the breakdown of social media tool usage from our previous survey:

Linked In 100%
Facebook 83.3%
Blogs 83.3%
Twitter 50%
Summize 50%
RSS 50%
Ning 33.3%
Delicious 33.3%
Widgets 33.3%
Digg 33.3%
MySpace 16.7%
Podcast (Audio/Video) 16.7%

Capturing customer intent can prove to be a difficult task if you do not use the right approach. I recently attended a webinar on this topic, hosted by Blue Sky Factory clients, Chris Brogan and John Stone of CrossTech Media and CrossTech Partners. Many of you may know Chris Brogan from his excellent blog, where he shares his insights as a social media expert. Chris joined John and covered how to approach this issue in “Capturing Customer Intent: Digital and Face to Face Channels.”

The purpose of the webinar was to explain how to capture customer intent from a company’s standpoint. These stages are attract, engage, transact, fulfill, support, and retain. All of the stages are equally important and Chris and John stressed the importance of communication in each stage. The key points I took away were:

• Consider content marketing and relationship marketing strategies right away.
• Build an audience intelligence solution.
• Listen across your touch points and across the web.
• Integrate your digital marketing and live event channels.

They also touched on social networking, blogging, and building strong relationships. It’s not easy to find a connected process to deal with all of these stages, but if you can get it right you have the opportunity to improve customer retention, create new opportunities, enhance service, and lower your costs.

 To view the recorded version of this webinar,  click here.

The industry sure has been atwitter lately with talk of the subscriber experience.  I recently blogged about one company that had impressed me with their subscription process.  Today, I’d like to start a two-part blog series about how you can improve your own process.  We’ll start with your opt-in page, and will continue with your welcome email next week.

Not to toot our own horn, but for both subjects, I’m going to refer to Blue Sky Factory’s new process.  We’ve just redesigned our website, and with that came an improved subscription process.  The opt-in form and welcome email were both set up through Publicaster, so Publicaster users will be able to mimic our process very easily.  You can check out our new subscription form here.  Notice that we’ve kept it simple, only requiring First Name, Last Name and Email.  Also, we’ve given four different email types in the subscription offerings, which cover the various content options available to subscribers.

To give your own opt-in page a revamp, you’ll first need to create a new opt-in form.  We’ve created a “how to” document for the Publicaster opt-in form builder.  This feature is found under the Account Manager section in Publicaster and is a simple three-step process.  The “how to” document will lead you through these three steps.  Once complete, Publicaster will give you HTML code for your new opt-in form, which you can simply paste onto your subscription page within your website.  Then, anyone that subscribes to your emails via this form will be automatically added to your specified mailing list within your Publicaster account.  How easy is that?!?  If you need help with the opt-in form builder, email us.

While integral, the form itself is just one part of the subscription page.  You’ll also need to include information about your emails and process on this page and throughout your site.  Here’s a list of best practices you should follow when creating your new subscription page:

• Put the form or a link to the form on every page of your website for maximum email capture.  Notice we have a link to our subscription page in the upper right-hand corner of every page throughout our website.

• Keep the form short and sweet.  Only ask for the information that you will really use in your email program.  Think of what information you might use later down the line to segment with.  Some choose to only ask for basics up front (email, first name, last name, zip), and then follow up later with an email asking for more information.  You can test different form lengths, but general opinion is to keep the initial form short and easy so you don’t get drop-offs.

• On the opt-in page, tell the subscriber what they can expect from your emails.  Include a content summary, promises of special offers and the frequency they can expect.  Setting expectations upfront and sticking to those will help keep your subscribers happy.  Also tell them the benefits of signing up for the email program … think “What’s in it for me (the subscriber)?”  You may also want to include a screenshot of a sample email so subscribers will know what to expect.  Check out the “What am I signing up for?” section to the left of our subscription form.  Subscribers can click on any of the four email screenshots to get an overview of the email content and frequency.

• When building the opt-in form in Publicaster, be sure to choose the Email Validation check so that the subscriber must enter an email address in the name@domain.com format.  This will prevent people from making a mistake or entering nonsense just to gain access to a sweepstakes, free whitepaper, etc.

• Set up your opt-in form to be a Notified opt-in form, whereby the subscriber will receive an automatic welcome email.  (This can also be set up through a Publicaster auto-response campaign, which is what we did.  More on this next week.)  This will also help to validate the email address, and will make your subscribers feel “welcomed” by your company.  In the welcome email, give them instructions on whitelisting your email address.  Feel free to link to our how-to whitelist page that we created for our clients to use. 

This should get you started on building your new opt-in form.  As always, feel free to contact us if you need help with anything.  Next week, we’ll go over the welcome email, and I’ll dive into the specifics of how we set ours up.  Check out the image to the right for a preview of our new welcome email.

What makes an email legitimate?  The answer is many things, but most importantly permission.  Email users have naturally become wary of keeping their inboxes clean of SPAM, but unfortunately with the constant influx of unsolicited messages, more email is considered SPAM every day. 

eMarketer recently featured a chart that shows how adults in North America determine if an email is legitimate (at right.)  Not surprisingly, the number one aspect of an email that makes it legitimate to subscribers is that they asked for it in the first place.  We say this a lot, but I want to stress that it is imperative to your sending reputation that you only send emails to true opt-in subscribers.  But this is just the first step.

The second most important factor in this study was a tie between the email address and the from name of the sender.  If subscribers don’t recognize who the email is from they are highly likely to delete the email or send it to Junk.  Unless you work for Orville Redenbacher or Walt Disney, avoid using an individual’s name for the from address and name.  Use the name of your company or organization for the best recognition.

Third place goes to the fact that they have received your email before.  The easiest way to legitimacy here is to send them a welcome email immediately after they sign up so they know to expect more in the near future.  Then follow up with consistent launches to keep with their expectations.

Of course all of these tricks won’t help if you’re not sending relevant emails to your subscribers.  The content is still very important, so make sure that you’re keeping your content in line with what you promised them from the beginning.  If your click rates start to lag, survey the subscribers to see what they would like to see more or less in the content.  Engaged subscribers are happy subscribers and as long as you keep it relevant, your path will be golden.

Most email marketers agree that their subscribers can sometimes be impulsive and unpredictable. Often at times they ignore messages or respond at large to a particular email. A lot of us don’t have a clear cut understanding of why one subscriber may take action differently than another subscriber.

 Let’s face it: the interest of your subscribers are d ifferent. If you don’t recoginize the differences you may be in danger of losing the value of your message and the attention of your subscribers. To read tips on giving your subscribers, click here.

 Don’t miss another issue of Factory Direct, our monthly newsletter. Click here to sign up.

Have you ever wondered why people are opting out of your emails? Don’t be afraid to ask! You could learn some very valuable information from sending a simple survey to your unsubscribers.

This information could help you improve your email program and retain more subscribers in the future. To learn how to stop beating yourself up about your opt-out rate and use the unsubscribers as a learning tool, read our latest article from our monthly newsletter, Factory Direct.

Proceed with caution. Having worked with databases since 1990, I know the risks and the rewards associated with using an append file. Should you want to institute this approach to increase your email list, make sure to follow some simple but extremely valuable guidelines.

Keep the append list separate from your house list until it is thoroughly cleansed and tested. Research the vendor you will use to do the append for you to find out how do they obtain their data, how do they perform a match, how often they update their files, and how do they handle bounces, unsubscribes, and complaints. Also, make sure you only send active customers to the vendor for append purposes.

Spencer Kollas has written a very extensive and informative article on this subject, Use Caution When Adding to Your List. In addition to list appends he also details the risks and rewards of email list rental.

Keep in mind the quality of your list is very important to your brand. In trying to increase the quantity of your list you can lose quality if you are not careful.

What the Changes to the CAN-SPAM Act Mean For You

Though it’s taken quite awhile, 3 years to be exact, the CAN-SPAM Act has issued a final rule, which will take effect on July 7, 2008.  Recently, I attended a webinar on the recent changes to the Act, hosted by Unsubcentral and the ESPC.  John Engler and Justin Weiss discussed the new rules in “Total Compliance: What the Changes in the CAN-SPAM Act Mean for You.”  While the changes will definitely be beneficial to the industry, there has been some confusion surrounding certain topics.

The purpose of this webinar was to dig into the new commercial email requirements, which are of particular interest to email marketers.  The webinar first discussed the birth of the CAN-SPAM Act and took listeners through a timeline, showing how we got to where we are now.  The presenters then went on to discuss the four new points of the Act, which are:

1.       Liability being attached to “persons”

2.       Multiple-sender rule

3.       Uncomplicated opt-out mechanisms

4.       Physical mailing address requirements

The presenters also discussed the guidance given by the FTC on the usage of the “forward to a friend” option and how to know if you have a compliance obligation.  This new guidance states that emailers must comply with the CAN-SPAM requirements whenever the forwarding action is induced (i.e. offering a special discount or free gift for forwarding) by the marketer.  Some marketers have been confused by this language, and the presenters gave a great explanation of who is obligated to comply and when.

One of the many questions asked was, although the new rules will not be enforced until July 7, 2008, can marketers start following them now?  The answer was, of course, yes!  Marketers are certainly allowed to get a jump start on the new compliance rules, but won’t be punished for not complying until the due date of July 7, 2008.

For a more in-depth look at what these changes mean for you, view the recorded presentation of this webinar here. As an email marketing firm, our suggestion is to learn and comply with these new regulations sooner rather than later (and of course, before July 7th).  If you have any questions about these new rulings, please contact your Account Manager or email us at bsfinfo@blueskyfactory.com.

As my birthday rolled around this year, I was anticipating an inbox full of emails extending birthday discounts, deals, perks, & more. Surprisingly, I only received one such email and the offer was nothing extraordinary. What’s a birthday girl to do? I was left puzzled as to why such a small number of businesses took advantage of this golden opportunity.

My friend Nick has a birthday around the same time. I asked him if he had received any birthday wishes from companies that he has email relationships with. Nick sent me the email below as an example of a birthday email that he was excited to receive. Golf Galaxy had collected enough information from Nick during the sign up process, or update process, that they were able to send him a birthday greeting and personalize it using his first name. By addressing Nick and sending the email on his actual birthday, they made an immediate connection with him. The fact that Nick said he would use this discount also means that Golf Galaxy is sending relevant offers.

There are a few things that Golf Galaxy could have done differently creatively. They should have used snippet text, moved the call to action above the fold, etc. However, the general look and feel of the email is clean and clear and it gets the message across (if you download all of the images and scroll down!) Aside from a few design changes, Golf Galaxy is doing a great job using the information that they have on their customers and sending them timely, relevant offers.

Remember, when collecting opt-in information, ask your customers for personal information for marketing efforts such as birthday offers. It is also a great idea to allow your customers to update their own information at any time. This way you can collect that birthday later on if you missed it during the initial opt-in. Connecting and engaging with customers will always help you increase your sales. Knowing how to do this with special offers and incentives using data you already have will only increase your email marketing ROI.