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.

Segmentation and personalization have become a way of life for the savvy email marketer.  Many of us personalize emails with names, addresses, and customer IDs.  We often segment based on geographic location, email type preference, and even open/click rates.  But there is one type of segmentation that has been seriously under-utilized: segmentations based on website click traffic.

Campaigns that target based on website user click-stream data generate conversion rates that outperform untargeted broadcast campaigns by nearly 4 to 1, according to Jupiter Research.  Most (if not all) Internet retailers track click data on their websites, however despite having this extremely valuable data in-hand, many retailers still do not use email segmentations to target website visitors. 

I am on the email list for a particular online retailer and I happened to be browsing their site the other day.  The very next day I received an email with the subject line “Where did you go? Come on back!”  The content of the email said that they noticed that I had visited their site but left before making a purchase, so as an incentive to do so they offered me free shipping.  Simple, personal, and enticing.  Check out part of the email in the image on the right.

With all of this data at our fingertips, it is truly a waste to not take advantage.   If you know your subscribers are browsing your site, reach out to them with email.  If possible, offer them an incentive to return.  It can really mean the difference between casual browsing and conversions!

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.

Summertime is made for vacations. Whether you go for spontaneous weekend jaunts or carefully planned extended stays, vacation is always something to look forward to. Travel and tourism destination emails are valuable tools to help prospective visitors gather information about your destination. With the economy on a downturn you want to make sure your email is noticed. An AOL/Zogby Travel Survey showed that 57% of Americans will be spending less on vacation in 2008 than they did in 2007. So how are you going to lure these prospective visitors to come and vacation with you?

When promoting a travel destination you want to make sure you give your contacts time to prepare for upcoming events. These folks have signed up to receive information from you so make it count. For recipients that are planning extended vacations you have a wider window of opportunity to send relevant content. If you have not done so yet, try segmenting your list by people that travel with children versus people that do not. For instance, the season opener of a theme park might be targeted to people that travel with children. Not to say we don’t all love to ride a roller coaster when given a chance but individuals with children would be more apt to interact with that announcement than others.

One of the easiest groups of travelers to target are the weekend travelers that decide at the last minute to get out of town. If you have an event or special happening on a weekend and you want to promote that event quickly, send an email out around Wednesday before the weekend event. Also, make sure to segment and target to contacts based on geography. Only target the email to folks that are within easy driving distance of your destination. Not only does this give the recipient time to make plans to attend said event, they will be able to get there in a short amount of time.

Even though there is no tried and true day and time to send an email you must make sure if you are promoting a particular event that the recipient receives the email in plenty of time before the event to make plans to attend. I recently received an email on Sunday June 15th, Father’s Day. The offering was a listing of restaurants that were promoting Father’s Day dinner specials. Seeing as how I rarely check email on the weekend I did not receive the offer till the Monday after Father’s Day. Poor planning, as I was obviously not going to be able to act upon the offer.

Be sure to include a very visible link to a calendar of events on all your emails. If your reader is not able to plan a visit that weekend or within the near future, a link to the upcoming events will allow them to peruse what is happening and make plans accordingly.

Have a safe and fun summer.

I love lists. I couldn’t live without them. I recently moved in with my boyfriend for the first time, and he’s already making fun of all the lists I have. But really, I love them. Oh, and the feeling you get when you check an item off - priceless.

So, you can imagine my excitement when the eec announced two new lists in their Email Checklist Series that will help you get your emails out without a hitch. The two checklists are titled “Email Design” and “Code QA Testing”. These two lists were developed by the eec’s Email Design Roundtable team, and they are free all this week to download from the eec’s Whitepaper Room. So hurry and get your free copy today before it’s too late!

We at Blue Sky Factory have also developed some good lists over time that you should check out.  Interested in the do’s and don’ts of email design? Read our Email Design Guidelines here. Looking for a list of words and phrases to avoid in your subject lines? Click here and learn to avoid these Dirty Words in Disguise.  How about ways to Improve Your Email Marketing Program? Check out our ideas here. And finally, need to Grow Your Email List the right way? Click here for our suggestions.

Do you use any email checklists of your own that you’d like to share? Feel free to post them here. Or let us know if you have any ideas for more checklists we could develop that you think would be helpful to our clients.

Deliverability is always a concern for email marketers.  We do everything we can to get into our subscriber’s inboxes, including setting up authentication records, tweaking our creative and subject lines, and being diligent about maintaining a good reputation on our IP address.

Having your subscribers add your From Email Address to their whitelist is the most coveted of deliverability actions. However, it’s often the hardest to acheive. It’s become a best practice to include a request to your subscribers to whitelist your address in your emails.  However, are you sure your subscribers know how to do this? Many probably do not.

That’s why we developed our “How to Whitelist” page. You can now link to this page from your Publicaster emails and your recipients will have access to whitelisting instructions for the major ISPs.

Check out this new resource here, and feel free to use it in your Publicaster emails. Your subscribers will appreciate the help!

This week we held the third in our ongoing webinar series, Grow Your Subscriber Database.  We covered a variety of topics relating to getting new subscribers and keeping them happy, such as:

• Getting people to your site
• Getting the opt-in
• Following up with a welcome email
• Giving them options to change their preferences
• Spreading the love with viral marketing

To check out the presentation, click here.  You can also click here to view the notes.

If you didn’t make it to this session, we hope to see you next time! 

These days, our more-is-more society makes it very easy to bombard our subscribers with too much information all at once.  I receive a lot of newsletters day-to-day, but relatively few of them entice me to click through to the website because they give me everything I need right in the email itself.  Beachbody, a company that sells fitness programs and gear, uses precisely the opposite approach.

Beachbody sends a weekly newsletter that perfectly demonstrates the benefits of brevity in email.  Their newsletter is short and the articles themselves contain such a small amount of information that I am literally compelled to click to view more.  If they gave it all away in the newsletter, it would be very unlikely that I would ever make it to their website. 

They also include something that is so engaging, it begs to be shared and adopted.  They write up a short “test your IQ” quiz and then make you click through to the site to get the answers.  It gets me every time.  Not only is this engaging and interesting content-wise, but it is a highly effective way to drive subscribers to your website.  If they gave me the answers right in the email I would probably never even bother to read them, let alone click to the site.  It’s the mystery that keeps me clicking.

Think about ways that you can tighten up your emails.  Those extra clicks are fully worth it!

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.