Black Friday-Cyber Monday: The busiest days for ISP’s

In the week leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, our research showed a decrease in deliverability. There was a decline of as much as 15% email communication received for false positives. Deliverability was also affected via junk/spam box placement. Here at KobeMail, we have seen more and more of our clients flourish during the season, as a result of being proactive and strategizing ahead of time and planning for the Holiday season.

The rush before the holidays affects everyone and is not just limited to consumers- it also includes ISPs. Simply following best practices is not always the key to deliverability success. Email marketers are wise to send incentivized emails to subscribers. The major influx of emails sent during this period from companies causes ISP’s to get flooded. In obvious reaction, the floodgates come down to protect themselves. In order to deal with that digital mess, ISPs are forced to queue messages. When queued for a long time, some of these emails time-out and receives a false positive i.e. the ISP silently eats away the email without taking action of delivery.

ISPs deal with backlog and continue mitigating the millions of pieces of spam that are also inbound for the same inboxes that your email campaign is sent to. ISPs receive larger amounts of volume so they are forced to set their threshold lower. Spam thresholds also are lowered at this time and ISPs have a lower tolerance on how many spam complaints they will accept from a specific entity. More words are flagged as SPAM and overall deliverability becomes more challenging. This makes it even more difficult for email marketers to successfully send large quantities of emails in a short period of time. Throttling is one of the best options and planning a strategy to distribute out the send is wise to do – especially if you have a large list.

The ability to reach the inbox during these high traffic days is almost completely out of your control. KobeMail clients have an upper hand because of their whitelist status and the reputation they have built in the past months. As always, there are certain things you can do to better your chances of getting into the inbox. While utilizing tactics such as segmentation and subject line work, the real key to success lies in preparation. We will be doing an article soon on to do’s for the holiday season soon.

You need to take advantage of the days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday as you know for a fact your subscribers are most likely actively shopping. Stay tuned for tips on how to better your chances of making turkey day make you a lot of green.

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Yasifur Rahman

Profit Practices Should Replace “Best Practices”

If the term “best practices” was replaced with “profit practices,” would you be more inclined to conform to them? We have a feeling that you would – Cash is King. KobeMail has seen the gamut of email marketing campaigns and through extensive analysis and case studies; we understand what works and what doesn’t.

When implementing email marketing into your overall marketing strategy, it should be viewed as an investment rather than just part of the budget. The ROI of email is widely touted as being the highest among any other marketing channel. When it comes to hiring a team to oversee your email marketing campaigns, a service provided to all KobeMail clients at no additional cost, you want a company that not only has the necessary technology, but one that can also offer the right strategy and back it up with the highest level of customer service.

Developing a marketing strategy is usually a complex process, but a necessity for a successful email marketing campaign. There are a few overarching ideas about email marketing that can’t be overseen. Firstly, you must respect established subscribers. If a subscriber has already established him or herself as a trusted client, you don’t need to overwhelm them with deals via email. Those established users have been long-time subscribers and often buy your products. Instead, take a more lax approach and target those deals to specifically what users are interested in. Soft-sell, Up-sell and Cross-sell but don’t be aggressive in the approach.

Another concept to follow has to do with transactional emails. These are emails that are sent immediately following the acquisition of an email address. Whether it is someone who signed up for the newsletter or someone who left an abandoned shopping cart, there is no reason to wait to contact them. Take initiative and send a welcome email right away. We suggest this because transactional emails usually generate more revenue than bulk mailings.

Frequency and content should be the two major points to address when deciding on an email marketing strategy. You should make sure not to send emails too often as it will likely cause your subscribers to opt-out of future messages. Nobody likes seeing the same message five days in a row. The content within those emails should be relevant to the specific list of subscribers. Compelling content that provides value to your subscribers is the best way to keep them engaged. However, some campaigns are sent daily, and those subscribers are expecting constant emails.

I cannot stress enough the importance of strategy. We offer our clients statistical analysis from current and former campaigns via campaign comparison. You should pay attention and learn from your metrics - what are your subscribers clicking on? Which subject lines have worked well in the past and what was the call to action? You should review that data and try to understand you subscribers behavior and what they want. If identified and executed in the proper manner the ROI is bound to increase.

Instead of referring to best practices, you should start implementing “profit practices.” When speaking of email marketing, the first step to improving these profit practices is choosing an Email Service Provider (ESP) that you can trust. We are always glad to address any email marketing questions you may have. Feel free to contact us or email us at inquiry@kobemail.com

Happy mailing!

Author: Peter Schirripa
Editor: Courtney Dillsworth

Social Media- Forcing Changes in Email Marketing

Social media is not inspiring changes in email marketing, but instead forcing changes. Social media sites offer consumers the ability to interact with companies in a very unique and personal way. Their questions can be answered and their comments can he heard. Ultimately, social media has led to consumers being the driving force of conversation. In order for email marketing to remain a relevant revenue generator, it too must follow the trend of more personalized communication.

No longer is it acceptable to just place a few re-direct links to your social media pages on the top or bottom of your email message. Social media is forcing email to get genuine and to make the message more of a one-to-one conversation. Are you doing everything right to keep up with this overarching trend? Are you giving sharing with your readers exactly what they want to see? Are you encouraging two-way communication?

Here are a few suggestions to keep in mind when analyzing your current approach:

Your email content must be personable. The appeal of connecting to a company through a social media site is that the user gets to feel more in touch with the brand. The company, through updates, photos, and discussions, gets a more humanized feel. Your emails should follow this trend. Start talking with the customer as opposed to talking to them.

Social media networks offer companies the ability to encourage, interact with, and analyze user content. “Fans” or “Followers” of your company have the exciting ability to comment about your company. You should build off of that feature within your email-increase inclusion of user generated content into your email messages. Adding user content gives your subscribers the power to help promote your product or service to other users.

Make sure each of your campaigns have a facebook, twitter, and other social media button so your users can directly share the content on their personal pages. Email messages can be shared far easier than ever before. At a click of a link, a subscriber can share your email message with their entire “network”. However, you shouldn’t just assume that your content is compelling enough to drive subscribers to share.

While social media is getting most of the marketing buzz, let’s not forget that email marketing does a better job of converting sales. You must look to manage communication through both mediums together, not separately. We want the best for our clients, and we realize that it begins with strategy.

Here at KobeMail, the leader in email deliverability, we encourage you to analyze your current email strategy. Subscribers are becoming more demanding of relevant and personal email content. Proper strategy behind social media, when paired with email marketing campaigns, will lead to an increase in revenue as well as a broader reach of your message.

Author: Peter Schirripa

Editor: Courtney Dillsworth, Yasifur Rahman

How to Nab Those “Abandoned Cart” Users

We are all guilty of this; most KobeMail employees admitted to: putting items in an online shopping cart, getting so close to confirming the order, then abandoning the whole situation. According to users surveyed by Forrester, 57% of those cart abandoners do so because they see just how high the shipping cost is. Other users are just distracted and simply forget they really did intend to purchase their cart full of items. For whatever reason users abandon their shopping carts on your websites, that’s revenue left on the table for your company. Here’s how you can turn those forgetful shoppers into conversions and revenue.

Sending follow-up emails is a practice all companies should implement. However, there’s a specific type of follow-up email to convert these forgetful shoppers. Send a follow-up email to users who went so far as to nearly purchase their cart load from you and abandoned before completing the transaction. It can be a simple reminder that they have items in their cart.

Even sending a friendly “let us help you complete your order” message to remind and prompt users that they have unpurchased items waiting for them will boost your conversions and revenue. Try to avoid specifically naming the items in the cart; it may make users feel a little “watched,” you don’t want to come across as a Big Brother or raise privacy concerns. Include a transactional subject line with your abandoned cart follow-up such as “Do you need help with your order?” or “Your basket is about to expire on X date.”

Another option for converting “no buy” users is adding a little incentive along with your call to action in the follow up email. You can offer a discount/coupon or free shipping on a future purchase if the user completes their order. Offering these bonuses on future orders may prompt return engagement by users to make use of the promotion offered. If coupons and discounts are not your style, you can try a buy one now and get half on next purchase. Or offer an item for free – a coffee mug with a nifty saying on it and clearly marked with your URL. Make use of the free gift to market within households

The completion process of capturing the abandoned cart user’s email addresses is not a complicated practice. Most carts, whether custom or outsourced, are able to track when an email address has left a shopping cart full. If this is not the case, please change the cart immediately, your ecommerce site needs an immediate make-over! One option for capturing this data is to collect these users and send a list of them to your email service provider to send out the follow up email. At KobeMail we’ve implemented this for a few of our clients already. This process can easily be automated and occur in real time. Also, implementing and passing the data will capture these “no buy” users’ email addresses and put them into a short CRM (we call curriculum) of follow up and incentivized emails.

The conversion rate, according to a Forrester survey, for these abandoned cart (or “no buy”) users is upwards of 20%. That figure should be incentive enough to implement this process.

For more information on how KobeMail can implement this strategy for you, contact inquiry@kobemail.com.

Author: Courtney Dillsworth
Co-Editors: Peter Schirripa and Yasifur Rahman

Deliverability – Are You Getting into the Inbox?

Email best practices are something we all should know and utilize every day. Recently at KobeMail we spent some time brushing up on our best practices. We want to share what we discussed with all of you to help improve your online reputation and deliverability. Reputation is something you need to work toward improving, it is something that must be built from the ground up, so here’s how you can do that…

Improving and maintaining your online reputation

This is fairly simple. You can begin by ensuring that your emails are authenticated. ISPs need to validate your emails to ensure that they can actually be trusted and that you’re not a spammer or sending phishing emails. Once you’ve been authenticated, you’re set to begin sending valid, trustworthy campaigns.

Practice permission-based sending

Acquire your opt-ins legitimately and you should see a decrease in spam complaints, which will boost your reputation with ISPs. You can get legitimate, permission based opt-ins a couple of ways. You can include a sign up box on your website’s homepage; include a newsletter sign up form with an order confirmation; use the double opt-in method, which requires users to confirm their subscription to your newsletter before they will receive it. Whichever method of opt-in you choose, remember that permission based signups will affect your online reputation.

List hygiene

That means, clean out dead email addresses and hard bounces so you don’t keep racking them up every time you send a mailing. Inactive or dead email addresses can be very dangerous for email marketers to send campaigns to. Often times, ISPs convert inactive addresses into spam traps with the intent of catching would be spammers. If you’re sending 2 emails a week to a list of inactive addresses, your spam scores are going to be out of this world, which will really hurt your reputation.

Segmentation

In addition to permission based signups, the volume and consistency with which you send emails can either help or hurt your reputation. Try to avoid sending huge blasts to your user base several times a week. This can result in high bounces or blocks and can generate high spam complaints, which is certainly something to avoid. If you have a poor online reputation, you will have a poor deliverability rate as well.

It’s really important for your user base to trust your company. Right on your site’s sign up page, explain to users what you will be doing with the personal information you’re asking them to give you and how you’ll keep it safe. Explain the benefits they’ll receive for allowing you to know their home address or phone number. Being straight forward with your customers is going to allow them to build a trusting relationship with you and want to give your company their business.

Welcome Emails

Another way to build trust with your customers is to send a welcome email thanking them for their sign up. This will make your customers feel noticed and important. You can also try sending new users a short welcome series, thanking them, introducing your company and explaining the types of mailings they’ll be receiving from you. All-in-all, a welcome message is great because not only does make users feel important, but immediately engages them and reminds them who you are and what you do.

Once you’ve said hello and thank you to your now engaged users, take a good look at the content you’re sending them. Is it relevant? The best way to find out is to ask your users for feedback. Send a short survey to users asking questions about the subject line, the from name, the content, how the email itself looks, etc. Offer a small incentive to users for completing the survey, such as a coupon or discount on your product. This will not only get them to fill out the survey but to make a purchase from you as well.

Relevant Content

Remaining relevant in your mailings is equally as important as introducing yourself to your readers and keeping them engaged. Not only should your content be relevant to your product and the people reading about it, but it should also be relevant to the times. The current social media craze, for example, is something every email marketer should be on board with. Include a link to your social media sites in every mailing you send. If your content is relevant and engaging, chances are people will share your newsletter or promotion with their online network at no cost or effort to you.

In order to successfully accomplish all of these things, it’s essential to have a sound infrastructure. Your Mail Transfer Agent, which basically is the piece of technology that takes your emails and sends them, should have its connection adjusted based on ISP’s standards. You should constantly be performing quality control on your infrastructure, because the quality of your infrastructure is directly linked to sender reputation. This means you should be processing spam complaints as quickly as you can and constantly monitoring reports for any issues.

These are all really valuable tips to help you up your online reputation and increase your deliverability. Implement these best practices and see great results.

Author: Courtney Dillsworth
Editor: Peter Schirripa

A Few Secrets to Creating a Solid Website

Creating a new website? People are constantly coming up with new products and website ideas, so here are some helpful website content strategies to bear in mind during the planning and creation process to help get your conversions up.

First of all, defining the goal of a website, the target audience and a website’s ability to support the content is what separates successful sites from unsuccessful sites. The content has to support the product completely and vice versa. Content creation should focus on providing information that generates call to actions and conversions. You need to know who you’re talking to and what you’re talking to them about and know what your expectations are so you can fulfill them – otherwise, how will you know if your site or product is successful?

If the site is ecommerce based, for example, conversions are a good indicator of success, while informational-based sites are more geared toward the length of time users spend on your site. These analyses are crucial for understanding how a user navigates a website so you can create content that generates leads and sign ups. Google Analytics has become a standard for such analysis. It allows you to analyze your site’s data and traffic and set future goals. Also, click heatmaps are a great way to see where users are clicking on your site and cater your information to generate more clicks.

It’s crucial to make sure everything on the site is in proper context. For example, a newsletter sign up, Twitter and Facebook icons shouldn’t just be put at the bottom of the page because they may go unnoticed by lazy site goers. They need to be in a relevant location with attention called to them so they can actually be effective – they should generate sign ups. Every single piece of your new website should be effective, especially the landing page, so you can bulk up your email lists.

If you don’t have a newsletter, consider creating an autoresponder and short curriculum to notify new users of what your company has to offer. Always include a send to a friend link in every mailing – if your consumers like what you’re saying, they’re going to tell their friends, who will likely sign up also. Every sign up and every click helps

If you do have a newsletter, the sign up should be very visible on your landing page. Put it in an obvious location and include a call to action to draw users’ attention to it. Try including a pop up which asks users to subscribe to your newsletter. This is a great call to action technique. It’s instant, noticeable, direct and effective.

Call to actions for sign ups shouldn’t just be on your landing page, though. There should be a call to action for whatever it is you want users to do – sign up, download, purchase – on every single page of your site. Some people need a little more persuading and want to learn about your business before they give you theirs.

Lastly, web content writers should get out of the mindset that content is concrete. It needs to change constantly to be relevant, maintain good SEO, comply with new laws and regulations and remain interesting. Get users to trust you and they will be loyal followers of your newsletters and purchasers of your products.

Good Luck!

Author: Courtney Dillsworth
Editor: Carolina Bonaparte

Gmail’s “Priority Inbox”

If you use Gmail, you may have noticed a new button displaying Priority Inbox (Beta). This new and improved inbox is meant to provide users with a far more efficient way of filtering their emails. What does this mean to you? Well, the Priority Inbox filters emails in a way that enables users to control what emails they will see, and when they will see them. Emails are organized into three categories: Important and unread, Starred, and Everything else.

The idea behind the new inbox is simple – Emails are tagged and then sorted by importance. Placing emails into the “Important” inbox is as easy as a click of the mouse. Gmail users can now enjoy the luxury of seeing what they want when they want. Ultimately, this could be considered the most efficient inbox to date, leaving email marketers in quite the conundrum.

To be successful, you must adjust to the change, revamp emails, and send accordingly. If you can adapt accordingly, you will reap the benefits, leaving competition far behind.

The Priority Inbox could pose a threat for your email lists hitting the inbox. However, if you implement a few minor tweaks, emails can be optimized to reach these users

Initial Email
You must continue to try to maximize engagement. This can be done through something as simple as asking users to place emails into their priority inbox. It takes very little time on both ends to do so

Optimize Emails
This concept should be nothing new to you. It’s simply an adjustment that should be made to adapt to the changing times. You should note that the Priority Inbox algorithm does not use sender I.D. to classify “important” emails.

Link Social Networks
Try to take even more advantage of social networking sites that have been implemented. If emails contain any type of link to these networks, Priority Inbox will automatically mark them as “important”.

Consistency in Emails
You must make sure that your emails are consistent. Frequently repeat keywords within emails from specific addresses. Since Priority Inbox organizes by click rate & keywords, this is sure to bolster your chances of being an “important” email.

Here at KobeMail, we like to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to strategic email marketing. Our strategy team is designed to keep our clients up to date with the newest technology and revenue generating practices. The Priority Inbox represents a step in the right direction for inbox management. For personal emails, this is a great feature. On the business side of things, outlook seems to control a good portion of the work force. However, countless small businesses do rely on Gmail. In order to be successful, you must realize this and personalize emails towards these people. The small amount of time it takes to make these changes could make the world of a difference for your campaigns.

Author: Anthony Lee

Editor: Peter Schirripa, Yasifur Rahman