All your effort and time has been focused on the job at hand.  Your emails will be sent out with a perfect, tested, attention grabbing subject line and content.  Because you send with consistent  formatted headers, your recipients will easily recognize you as the source of the communication.  All your messages will be personalized and segmented, relevant to the specific subscriber.  You have everything ready and you’re about to send.  BUT WAIT!  Did you forget something? – Something so important that it can make or break your entire email campaign.   Where are all these subscribers being directed to once they open your email?  Will they follow a link to a wimpy landing page with iffy information on a poorly crafted website eliciting distrust and apprehension because the landing page message they read is confusing, unrelated to your initial email that lead them in the first place,?  Or, will they “land” on a relevant landing page highlighted with a strong call to action statement with content applicable to your recent email campaign?

Yes it’s true, a landing page can make or break your well planned out, executed, email campaign.  Why spend all that time and energy on email marketing only to fall short by failing to deliver a landing page that begs to be read and used, designed to work with your campaign with a strong call to action message and useful relevant content for all your list subscribers. 

Custom design a landing page for your email subscribers so they have a clear idea of what you expect from them.  Check your work and work your page.  Make sure you:

• Test your links both in your email messages and on the landing pages.
• Create a landing page that matches the tone and theme of your email.  Your subscribers are there because they found something of value in your initial message.  Link to a landing page that communicates with the same look and feel as your email.  Don’t confused the subscriber by introducing an entire new theme and message.
• Landing pages work best by being concise and direct with a call to action that is easy for your subscribers to follow.  Clear direction will motivate your subscribers to sign up for a survey, click on link, download a PDF or sign up for a Webinar.
• Build on the trust you have cultivated with your list subscribers.  The landing page is a place for you to follow through the  promises made in your initial email. 
• Take advantage of your landing page white space; there is nothing wrong with advertising other services while you hold true to your original offer.  
• Customize your landing page message for a specific audience.  Create as many landing pages as needed to cover the offers in your email: remember the goal of a landing page is to provide your subscribers specific targeted information that is relevant  while increasing your conversions rates.  (measured by the number of subscribers performing a desired action such as downloading a PDF).
• Use the A/B split testing concept and try different web elements within your landing pages.  Are your list subscribers most likely to buy a CD if there is a sample of the song on the landing page or more likely to take action if there is only a picture of the artist

And the benefits of creating a good landing page are invaluable as they:

• Increase open and click-through rates
• Create more selling/marketing opportunities
• Define and set choices and expectations
• Offer helpful relevant content
• Create a positive brand experience
• Allows self evaluation of your campaign.

Remember, you want your email campaigns to work for you and be a good experience for your subscribers. Always use landing pages and create a positive atmosphere for your visitors by providing content that is relevant to your email campaign and offer them useful information so they can’t wait to receive your next email.  Need help creating a landing page.  Contact info@dundee.net for assistance.

Wimpy Landing Pages Can Make or Break Your Email Campaign is a post from: Mailing List Services

Mathematically subscriber list churn is calculated as a fraction or ratio, usually stated as a percentage of list members unsubscribing from your list compared to those who remain over a set period of time: i.e.  A year. Of course there are other list abandonment issues factoring into this equation other than an unsubscribed address, these include those subscribers who permanently mark your email as spam or change their email address thereby avoiding any action on their part. .

Losing opted-in subscribers can affect your web experience whether you’re a marketer or a nonprofit organization, because as you know, everything is relative.  Essentially your membership list is proportional to the volume of your sales and/or the size of your donations.  List membership is dynamic; the actual number of lost members compared to list newbie’s may be difficult to ascertain especially if your website draws a large amount of daily activity.  So how do you minimize list churn: consider the following 12-Steps.

1. Engage your readers with well-written free content.
2. Offer discounts and specials.
3. Be informative, appeal to the individual using personalization and triggered mailings.  Don’t just mail to mail.
4. Email within the guidelines of email Best Practices.
5. Provide an easy to find link on the bottom of each message to your subscribers’ profile page.
6. Maintain your website by removing outdated materials and photos.  Fix broken links.
7. Do not over mail and do not under mail. – setup a schedule and let your readers know when to expect to hear from you.
8. Always send a welcome letter when someone subscribers.
9. Send a goodbye letter with a place for comments.
10. Consider the source of your list, are your members all opted-in or obtained by other means, such as using a list broker (bought or rented), from co-registration or an email append service.
11. Keep your word, if they unsubscribe, remove them from your membership base.
12. Link to your privacy policy or include a statement about privacy in your welcome letter.

In summary list churn can affect results of any email campaign.  It can interfere with your deliverability because of the tendency of not wanting to remove the unsubscribed addresses.  ISP’s will block your mail if you continue to send and resend to inactive or closed email accounts, or if your email is delivered and never opened.  List churn costs money because it hinders growth and takes up resources.  So follow the 12-steps and reduce the list churn concern.

Does your Subscriber List have Abandonment Issues? is a post from: Mailing List Services

After someone subscribes to your email newsletter or announcement list, there are three reasons to acknowledge their new membership with a timely, well thought out welcome letter; to thank your new member for joining, set their future expectations by explaining the purpose of your email list and most importantly – to start a subscriber relationship with them.

Your sending relationship starts by actually sending a Welcome Letter, crafted to capture the attentiveness of your subscriber by reviewing and perhaps using the following suggestions:  

1. Create a good first impression: acknowledge their subscription to your newsletter
2. Make it personal, address them by their first name or email address.
3. Thank them; tell your subscriber that their membership is appreciated.
4. Focus your first contact on your subscriber: share the benefits they will be receiving as a recipient of your newsletter.
5. Set their expectations correctly; explain the intention of your newsletter along with the delivery agenda.  
6. Remind them to add your email address to their Safe Sender list, as you do not want your newsletter, announcements, articles or coupons to be marked as spam and deleted.  
7. Provide an unsubscribe method.
8. Encourage a visit to your website with a link and explain why they should visit your site now by offering them an incentive to do so.  (white paper download/discount/coupon)
9. Consider adding references and active links to your past newsletters and articles of interest
10. Include footer information with a contact email address, a link to update their profile page, your web site address and other useful tidbits that they need to know.
11.  Increase subscriber interaction by working within the lines of your social networking overall strategies by adding links to each of your active networks.  Suggest they join your twitter account or facebook page for other opportunities you offer, such as a one-day sale or webinars
12. Assure your subscribers that their information is secure and held private at all times by linking to your privacy policy.

 In summary, a Welcome Letter allows you to begin direct, personal communication with your subscriber. By greeting them by their first name (if you collected it on your sign up sheet), you can begin your email relationship on a friendly basis, authenticate their new membership and set the newsletter venue. Inform them how to change their profile page (if offered), how to provide feedback (with a working link to), remind them to add you to their Safe Sender List and how to unsubscribe.  A Welcome Letter should support your brand name, not be too wordy or overbearing, but a welcome and a thank you. 

 If you need help with Welcome Letters or have questions please contact info@dundee.net for assistance.

You Are Welcome! is a post from: Mailing List Services

1) Use sanity checks, take a moment to confirm submitted email addresses, are in fact, correct.  Verify they are technically right and are valid email addresses.  Do not assume that people will enter their correct address every time on a website subscription form.  i.e. alice@enter.aol

2) Maintain a good engagement record by identifying inactive addresses and remove them from your active mailing lists.  Inactive subscribers cannot engage your email message: if you have a habit of keeping and mailing to inactive subscriber addresses – your engagement score will be low, and consequentially a lower sender reputation will follow.

3) Make it simple for your customers to update their information (i.e. replace an email address) by including a link in your mailings to their customer profile record.

4) Confirm your list members, stay away from rented or purchased lists to avoid SPAM Traps.

5) Identify potential issues by reviewing the sender reports.  By using Lyris ListManager™ customers with Dundee Internet email list services, receive extensive reports on their mailings and memberships.  Customers can create custom reports or view the eight built in reports categories, Mailings, Members, Server Performance, Web site, Purchases, Interest and Surveys to analyze their campaigns.

6) Are you on a blacklist?  Regularly check your reputation status and the status of your ESP with the major SPAM databases by reviewing the websites of the reporting agencies such as DNSBL.com, spamhaus.org and SpamCop.  Consider using a tool such as the Email Advisor ™, compatible with most list hosting services, which includes a BlackList Monitor that analyzes all of the domains and IP addresses in the entire email message you are planning to send, including those URLs included in the content of the message.  The Email Advisor™ checks more than 300 Internet blacklists so you don’t have to.

7) Check your content for Spammy phrases and use subject lines that relate to your mailings.

Always test your messages. Your newsletters represent you, and with opt-in newsletters, the impression you make is delivered to hundreds or hundreds of thousands with a click of a mouse.  Make sure the newsletter they see is the one you intended for them to read. Send your completed message to yourself and your staff BEFORE sending it out to your entire subscriber base.

9) AND finally, recognize how your ESP handles bounce messages.  For example, Dundee Internet’s hosted list services using Lyris ListManager™ parses the textual message (SMTP response text) returned from mail servers. Response messages are broken down into a number of categories, with each requiring different behavior. Here are some of the basic categories:

• Invalid user: When ListManager™ sees a response code that corresponds to this category, the email address is put on hold server-wide immediately.
• Filtered Content: Content that trips a spam filter or has other characters that cause it to be rejected (e.g., the message size is too large).
• Technical Issues: The destination server is consistently busy or otherwise unavailable.
• Banned IP: The IP address sending the email has been banned, typically for excessive complaints or for attempting to email too many invalid users at that domain
• Transient Failures: The destination mailbox is temporarily unavailable (usually because it is full)

Thank you for reading, more blogs to follow.

Spring back from the Big Bounce; actively manage your bounces is a post from: Mailing List Services

Most senders will retain bounced back addresses to resend to them in the future, believing these bounces are likely the result of full mailboxes or misspellings.  The bounce report, depending on the technological sophistication used by your ESP, may divide these returns into categories.  A complete detailed report may allow the sender to distinguish the difference between the real reasons for the bounce from a full mailbox.  You might question the necessity of such detail – Just what are bounce categories and how do they affect your email campaigns?

The Bounce Categories

Email bounces can be either synchronous or asynchronous: the difference between them being the measured length of time for the bounce message to return to the sender.  Synchronous bounces are instantaneous as the failed delivery attempt is bounced back immediately, where an asynchronous bounce comes in awhile after the message was sent out.

The speed in which an email is returned in a bounced state is the result on how the message is intercepted.

1. An email sent to an invalid address for example, will be terminated when the receiving server identifies the address as invalid, the connection is cut and the email is returned: a synchronous bounce.
2. An asynchronous email bounce occurs when the receiving server attempts to process the invalid email, acknowledges the message and continues to attempt to deliver it until the delivery fails.

After the email bounce is determined to be synchronous or asynchronous, it is assigned to one of two categories using standard RFC codes, which can be identified in the return email header.

The Soft Bounce

A soft bounce is email that has bounced back to the sender, undelivered after it has been accepted by the recipient’s mail server.  This is usually a short-term condition with an expectation of clearing up in the future.  However, it is good practice to monitor soft bounces and remove them from your list when they bounce a certain number of times in a row.  Advanced email tools automatically handle this process.

Soft Bounces may occur when

1. An Email is returned undelivered because the receiver’s mailbox is full at that time.
2. An Email Message Size is too large to be delivered.
3. Auto responders, such as a vacation out of the office message may be incorrectly reported as a bounce.

The Hard Bounce

All things not being equal a Soft Bounce on one sever maybe interpreted as a Hard Bounce on another server.  A hard bounce normally perceived as a long-term or permanent condition is generally not expected to clear up any time soon.  It is good practice to remove hard bounces when they occur however, you might want to develop an internal policy to remove the address after a few consecutive bounces as hard bounces may clear up when temporary condition occurs such as a temporary system fault or a blacklisted domain.

Hard Bounces may occur when

1. Recipient address is misspelled.
2. User doesn’t exist
3. Your domain is blacklisted

Some ESP’s such as Dundee Internet offers a more granular bounce grouping rather than just a “Hard and Soft Bounce” report, accentuated with a uniquely colorful graph for easy evaluation.

The following nomenclature is used by  ListManager ™

Technical failures: user specific disk space problems.

Uncategorized failures: A failure that doesn’t easily fit into one of the other categories.

Invalid Users: For some reason, the email addresses are not legitimate ones (this is often caused by spelling errors).

Content Blocks: Content blocks are responses that indicate that the message is ejected for issues detected by a content filter. The filter may conclude that your message contains spam-like content, non-RFC compliant content, blacklisted URLs in the content,etc

MailStream blocks: You can learn more about MailStream blocks here.

End User complaints: Spam complaints made about the mailing.

Recipients remaining: The number of recipients for a mailing that are current pending in the Active Recipients queue. These users may not have been attempted yet, could be in retry due to transient delivery failures, or could be inactive due to a block by the destination IS

Next Up:  How to actively manage your bounces.

The Big Bounce is a post from: Mailing List Services