I recently sent a work-related email to a colleague with some time sensitive information in it. Not being in email marketing mode, I included the words “time sensitive” in the subject line and hit send. Several days later when I hadn’t heard back, I called him to see if he had received my message. He hadn’t. After a little digging, he found it—yep—in the spam folder.

Deliverability is a serious issue for brands, not just because legitimate messages get siphoned out of the inbox and into the spam folder, but also because your sender reputation is at stake.

What Happens When Someone Marks Your Email as Spam?
When a subscriber marks your email as spam, his ISP will block future messages from you. Your email service provider will also keep track of this information, making it possible for ISPs to make judgments about future emails you send to other recipients. Every time someone hits the spam button, it chips away at your sender reputation, making it harder for you to reach your subscribers.

Why Legitimate Emails End Up In the Spam Folder
Spam filters are all well and good for keeping out the baddies, but what about your legitimate messages? What mistakes are you making and how can you fix them?

• You’re including questionable material in the subject line. Spammers use tactics like all caps, multiple exclamation marks, and key phrases (like my “time sensitive” email above) to get people to click.Fix: Create subject lines that communicate message content without using gimmicks.

• You’re not communicating the right expectations to subscribers. If you send messages more often than expected or send valueless content, your subscribers will get irritated and send you careening into the spam folder.Fix: Communicate clearly what types of messages you’ll be sending and how often. Each message should include valuable content such as special offers, useful information, or sales announcements.

• You’re using shady list-building practices. Purchased lists often include spam trap messages and closed accounts. Too many of these bounces will destroy your sender reputation. Not only that, it’s bad business practice.Fix: Use double opt-ins to build your list, ensuring that each subscriber legitimately meant to sign up and knows what to expect.

A strong sender reputation is essential for keeping your legitimate messages out of the spam folder. Focus on providing valuable content, presenting it in a reputable format, and keeping an eye on your email metrics in order to deal with potential problems before they spiral out of control.

In a post on the eConnect Email Blog at the beginning of October, James Trumbly, Director of Business Development at eConnect Email explained how to use an email marketing system to nurture leads. Trumbly discussed how the best lead nurturing approaches to email marketing consists of delivering high quality content to a narrowly targeted audience at regular intervals. In addition, they always provide incentives to opt in to an email list that contains your ultimate offer and leads to a sale.

I’d like to talk about how marketing should approach leads after they’re nurtured by email marketing when the prospect is ready for qualification. In my view, the lead qualification process, like the lead nurturing process, should stay within the marketing department. I also think that marketing personnel should take the additional step of getting on the phone to qualify leads. While this is a function normally left to sales departments, I think Marketing is in a better position to qualify leads- and by doing so will ultimately produce higher quality leads for your sales teams. Here’s why:

Marketing Doesn’t Have Near-Term Quotas to Close Deals
The reality of sales departments is that salespeople live quarter to quarter, and they have to hit a quota each quarter in order to stay in the good graces of their department. While this is a great incentive for keeping your sales team motivated to bring in revenue, that same incentive could be counterproductive in the lead qualification process.  So that is the reason I believe Marketing is better suited for lead qualification.

First off, the marketing department isn’t particularly concerned with hitting near-term quotas. This allows the marketer to engage a prospect in a more open and honest conversation about their needs, purchase time frame, budget and other factors that comprise typical qualification criteria. Beyond that, marketing departments should become more responsible for the quality of leads that they send to the sales team. By managing the qualification process, the marketing team becomes intimately tied to the quality of the lead.

In order to make this work however, marketing departments need to be methodical about whom they hire, how they compensate and how the lead qualification process is managed- and improved. Here are four tips for managing this process:

1. Hire at the Junior Level
In any role, hiring the right person is critical. For the role of lead qualifier, you want someone energetic, competitive and willing to spend time on the phone. You also want them to be junior enough to grow into a different Sales or Marketing role. Beyond that, you want someone that can really drive a phone conversation and has the inquisitive nature to dig beneath the surface to and uncover information from the prospect.

2. Compensate with a Sales-like Pay Structure
The biggest driver in increasing the quality of marketing leads is to tie compensation to the sale. The easiest way to do that is to start them off at a base salary while offering them a commission based on the total revenue of closed deals. You can also add incentives for qualification accuracy such as an additional bonus for a great sales-accepted lead.

3. Decide How to Route Leads
The natural lead category breakdown is to create three buckets of leads:
a.  Qualified leads
b.  Disqualified leads
c.  Leads that need to be nurtured

All of these are fairly self-explanatory but the last one is worth elaborating on. The real opportunity for shifting this role to a marketing department is that you can dedicate someone to nurturing leads with a human touch. As such, there should be an intense focus on the nurturing aspect of lead qualification.

4. Improve Sales and Marketing Alignment
While this is a long-standing issue in companies across the globe, it’s a necessary area of focus for making this model work. Both the sales and marketing departments should have regular meetings about lead qualification criteria. This allows the sales team to fully understand why Marketing is disqualifying certain leads (and to double-check that they’re not disqualifying a few hidden gems). The best way to manage this process is to have both departments meet frequently. Introduce weekly meetings and gradually move to once a month.

While this is not a comprehensive list of what needs to happen, I believe it to be the key area of focus. If you follow these steps, you can create a Marketing team that drives more sales, is more accountable and is better suited to see its contribution to revenue.

How long do you have to snag your reader’s attention before you lose them? Say it with me: ten seconds or less. We’ve had this drilled into our heads, and great designers know what keeps people reading and what doesn’t. But what hasn’t been learned nearly so well is that your customer’s online attention is not only short, but also very narrow.

Usability guru, Jack Nielson, explains in a recent Alertbox Column that most users focus only on what interests them or what they expect will give them the answers that they need while ignoring the other content. Known as “Tunnel Vision,” this phenomenon can make the difference between click-throughs and deleted messages.

Let’s consider an example. You design a newsletter advertising your website’s 20 percent off sale. You include a headline, an image, a block of text that includes a coupon code, and a call to action that says “Shop Now.” Nielson’s usability research suggests that if you haven’t stated the coupon code in the headline or included it as part of the call to action, many subscribers won’t see it. It’s a phenomenon similar to banner blindness, where readers ignore portions of the screen that they think aren’t essential to the overall message. If the coupon code is necessary in order to receive the savings, you’ll need to follow a few design tips in order to keep it within your subscribers’ field of vision.

• Put important elements near each other.
  If your image shows sale items and information, try putting the coupon code within the image or as the image caption. If subscribers must read through a block of text in order to find the coupon code, they may miss it altogether.

• Include essential info in the link.
  People tend to focus on click-able elements within an email design. Your call to action button and any nearby links should contain the essential information you’re trying to communicate. So instead of using a call to action that says “Shop Now,” try “Save 20% with coupon code FALL2012.”

• Test with actual users.
  Designers have difficulty recognizing usability problems with their designs because they already know where the important information is and their eyes gravitate toward it. They might not recognize where tunnel vision might occur for the average subscriber. Creating simple A/B split tests can point out problems that keep your readers from noticing the important stuff amongst everything else.

Tunnel vision means that users often don’t see things that are right in front of them. By grouping important elements together and putting essential information where readers tend to look anyway, you can boost your click-through rates and ultimately, your conversions.

Your call to action is arguably the most important element of your email marketing messages. Because it provides the link between passive reading and active clicking, it supersedes even the supremacy of the subject line. But many businesses fail to treat it with the respect it deserves. Subject lines tend to get all the attention because they provide the first point of contact and the incentive to open. And while that is undoubtedly a vital role, the call to action requires the subscriber to take decisive action towards your conversion goal.  That’s why it’s essential that you put some serious thought into creating a single call to action that will funnel your subscribers toward the decision you ultimately want them to make.

Why a Single Call to Action?

Simply put, too many calls to action paralyze the decision process. For instance, one email I received offered me the opportunity to donate, review new merchandise, visit the store website, and make a purchase, all in the same email. Just reading it burned through my allotted attention span for this email campaign; forget about actually deciding which call to action was most enticing. Studies show that you’ll make more sales by offering fewer choices than you will by offering a smorgasbord of options. Why? Ever try to choose between twenty-four different flavors of barbecue sauce? After a while they all start to taste the same.

Continue…

When was the last time you created an email and sent it out to your entire subscriber list? Last week? Lifecycle marketing offers a more personal approach to creating emails by targeting them toward customers at various stages in their relationship with your company. By segmenting your audience based on their current interest level, you can create emails designed to elicit the next logical response. Still not convinced? Take a look at how lifecycle marketing approaches these three common groups of subscribers.

Subscriber #1: The Newbie

• Profile: This subscriber has just expressed interest in your company by signing up for your email list.
• Email Type: Send the newbie a welcome email that makes him feel appreciated and that encourages him to engage immediately.
• Email Goals: Encourage a first purchase, educate him about your company, promote your website, and let him know you’re glad he’s on board.
• Email Approach: Thank him for signing up and offer him a discount off his first purchase. This is also a great time to let him know what benefits he can expect to receive as a member of your subscriber list.

Subscriber #2: The Supporter

• Profile: This is the loyal gal who loves to shop at your store and opens every email you send.
• Email Type: Respond to the loyalty of this customer by giving her the VIP treatment. Make her feel like a valued customer and she’ll reward you with return visits and recommendations.
• Email Goals: Encourage increased purchasing, offer excellent customer service, and increasing loyalty
• Email Approach: Offer sneak previews for upcoming sales, give special valued-customer discounts, target email creation based on viewing history, send abandoned cart reminders, and provide immediate customer service interactions when appropriate.

Subscriber #3: The Bystander

• Profile: This person has been a member of your email list for a while but has no recent purchases and may fail to open or click on any of your email campaigns.
• Email Type: Seek to win back the loyalty of this subscriber with special offers and “we miss you” messages.
• Email Goals: Jump start re-engagement, understand her concerns, and keep her from transferring loyalty elsewhere.
• Email Approach: Solicit comments by asking for social media involvement or survey responses, offer incentives for purchases or website visits, and seek to make her feel like a valued member of your list.

The goal of lifecycle marketing is to segment your subscriber list based on their customer behavior and then to create targeted emails that encourage greater levels of participation. eConnect Email can help you reach these goals by managing subscriber data, analyzing list metrics, and building segments based on custom criteria.

A few years back I subscribed to a newsletter from a gardening company. Each month, they sent me a well-written, informative article that included a plug for their website  and a relevant gardening tip. At the close of each email, they included a sentence that read: “Just ignore the ad. It’s how we pay the bills.” This little tidbit endeavored to reduce sales pressure while at the same time subtly promoting the link. The problem is that the message was undoubtedly a little too subtle—even discouraging. On the other hand, subscribers like me kept opening and reading the newsletter month after month, because it provided relevant information without being pushy. So where’s the balance? How do you create a newsletter that people want to read while still promoting your business and encouraging click throughs?

• Provide great information to keep people reading.

The best thing about the gardening newsletter above was that it provided thoughtful, well-written information. It included seasonally relevant tips that weren’t common knowledge, meaning that every month subscribers learned something new. Keep your subscribers clicking by giving them something worthwhile to read in every message.

• Reward readers for their loyalty.

The second best way to keep subscribers clicking is to provide incentives for them to do so. Don’t just announce an upcoming sale—give your subscribers exclusive access to early bird specials and other offers.

• Create compelling subject lines.

It doesn’t matter how great your content is if your subject line doesn’t communicate well. Avoid spammy phrases and make sure that you don’t over-hype your message. Try testing several different wordings to discover what style works best for your audience.

• Include personal touches.

In addition to using subscriber names, you can further personalize your messages by tracking user behavior and knowing what your subscribers have shown interest in previously with the goal of making each message as relevant as possible.

• Know what constitutes spam.

Show respect for your subscribers by avoiding the appearance of spam at all costs. Don’t flood their inboxes and make sure you’re current on the provisions in the CAN-SPAM act in order to maintain the loyalty of your subscribers.

The best way to earn and keep the trust of your subscribers is to treat them the way you want to be treated. People understand that the purpose of your newsletter is advertising, but they also want to know that there’s something in it for them. eConnect Email can help you create compelling email templates, manage your subscriber lists, and track the effectiveness of your newsletters as you seek to create email campaigns that will boost your click through rates.

It’s happened to all of us. You hit an “I Agree” or “Subscribe” or “Buy” button without reading the fine print, only to discover that you’ve inadvertently signed up for a monthly newsletter, weekly promotional flyer, and daily deal alerts, all without intending to. When the first email arrives, you franticly click the unsubscribe button only to be told that your request may take up to a week for processing and that in the meantime you will continue to receive daily emails until your request is processed.

While you can hope that these experiences don’t happen to you on a regular basis, they should spur you to think about your own email marketing practices. With a little effort, you can create an experience that lets your subscribers know you care about their preferences by giving them the right to choose.

• Automate Your Unsubscribe Feature

When a customer wants to unsubscribe, let him. You’re not going to win any brownie points by making him wait 7-10 days or by trying to convince him at the last minute to stay. Instead, these tactics will encourage him to report you as spam. eConnect Email automatically handles unsubscribe requests (immediately) and we also provide you with a suppression feature so that you can prevent emails addresses/ domains from subscribing to your mailing list.

• Let Customers Make Their Own Decisions

When you give a customer the option of signing up for your various newsletters, resist the urge to pre-select options for them. Allowing customers to choose the contact options themselves will reduce the number of people who sign up accidentally and then become frustrated when they receive unexpected emails.

• Offer Detail Modification Options

Can your customers modify their contact details and subscription preferences easily? A customer should be able to update his email address or unsubscribe from one newsletter while continuing to receive others. With eConnect Email you can give your subscribers the ability to manage their contact information and subscription options through the preference center. Giving customers the opportunity to choose will make them more likely to remain on the lists they want rather than unsubscribing altogether.

Giving your customers the opportunity to choose their preferences and to say good-bye if they so choose will leave a positive impression in their minds about your company. Even if a subscriber opts out of your list, he’ll be more likely to buy from you later if you haven’t irritated him with your list management practices. By taking advantage of the easy list management options available through eConnect Email, you can create a positive experience for your customers.

Ever wondered how email messages get flagged as spam? For every email campaign you create, there is a possibility that up to 20% of the emails you send will wind up flagged as spam. The responsibility can be shared by indiscriminate spam filters and poorly constructed newsletters, but the bottom line for businesses is determining what factors will doom your email campaign to the spam folder and how you can prevent it from happening.

Even legitimately requested confirmation emails can be tagged as spam if they make these mistakes:

1.     Include too many references to typical spam topics.

Spammers love to entice readers with free stuff, making lots of money, mortgage pitches, urgent information and money back guarantees. When a spam filter detects this wording in an email, it assigns point values for each reference. If you must refer to these topics, use them sparingly in order to stay under the “This is spam” limit.

2.     Incorporate spammy wording or formatting.

Phrases such as “free gift,” “once in a lifetime,” or “click here” all receive spam points, especially when written in all caps or accompanied by lots of exclamation points. Test your email for effectiveness using eConnect Email’s inbox previews tools to evaluate each message for spammy red flags.

3.     Fail to use recipient’s full name.

Most mail servers will give you a free pass out of the spam folder if you have been added to the user’s address book, if they have emailed you, or if you use their full name in your email. By requiring recipients to provide both first and last names when they sign up for your newsletter, you can ensure that your messages reach their inbox.

4.     Purchase an email list.

This is the cardinal sin of email marketing. Not only is it unethical business practice, but it will also result in lots of bounces and spam complaints. Instead, collect your emails using double opt-in procedures to ensure that the majority of your customers will be expecting your newsletter. At eConnect Email, we take your email list seriously, and we’ve provided a variety of tools that will keep it up to date and targeted, including custom fields and demographics, individual contact histories, suppression lists, and effective list cleansing.

5.     Fail to include an unsubscribe link

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires businesses to include a working unsubscribe link in every email. The link also benefits you by helping target your email list toward those customers most likely to read and remember your messages.

Takeaway

Spam filters hold the power of life and death for your email marketing campaign, but you can stay on their good side by acting upon the five suggestions above when putting together your next email campaign.

As we put the holidays behind us and face a new year, most businesses have decisions to make about their email marketing campaigns. Heavy advertising and shopping seasons mean email list expansion, and now that you have all those new subscribers eagerly awaiting your newsletter, the question of how to keep those subscribers happy must take top priority. List growth usually means a corresponding growth in your bounce rate and a drop in your open and click through rates, especially if you keep operating the same old way you always have. But by doing a little tweaking, you can ensure that your new subscribers remain just as happy as your original ones have been.

• Reduce Volume

Your original subscribers may have been thrilled to receive a daily or weekly email from you, but those who signed up on a holiday whim might not be so excited to have their inboxes full of your promotional emails. As your list grows, the number of people who can be considered casual readers grows as well, meaning that you’ll need to change your sending strategy in order to keep them interested. Consider reducing your volume to bi-monthly or even once a month in order to keep from overwhelming your subscribers. Or, use eConnect Email’s list segmentation feature to choose which subscribers want daily emails and which ones would prefer less frequent emails.

• Monitor Bounces

Large email lists inevitably include bounces, but a high bounce rate eats up valuable time and space and can cause headaches for you and your team. eConnect Email helps you keep your lists clean by monitoring and immediately handling hard bounces and unsubscribes. At the end of the day our goal is to ensure successful deliverability of your email.

• Optimize Subject Lines

If your unsubscribe rate is high and your open rate is low, the problem could be a subject line that fails to connect with readers. Subject lines should look enticing without appearing spammy. Avoid using multiple exclamation points or subject lines that don’t tell the reader what the email contains. Opt instead for short, concise wording that offers something of value to the reader.

• Optimize Content

Take a hard look at the content of the emails you send and ask whether they look appealing and make sure your emails contain information your subscriber will want. If you’re sending daily emails full of fluff, your readers will quickly become frustrated. Take advantage of the email creation tools offered by eConnect Email to test templates, images, and design before you send.  How about trying a A/B Split Test to see what engages your subscribers?

A new year means new opportunities for growing your business through email marketing. Use the above suggestions to ensure you’re connecting and keeping your subscribers engaged.  Do you have a question or suggestion, let us hear you thoughts!

Valentines day is already behind us, although our lovely offer is still good for a few more days (view our newsletter for more details). So be good to your business and take advantage of the savings while giving your email campaigns a fresh and professional look.

Also, included in this months newsletter is our email marketing recap for 2010.   As always, let us know if you have any questions or suggestions, we are always happy to hear them!

For This Month’s Tips & Tricks – CLICK HERE