How To Analyze Bounces

Bounce rates are, in relation to emails, the number of email that do not get delivered and returns to the sender. There are many different reasons why an email fails deliverability. They can be divided into four different categories, which are:

1. Hard Bounce – Emails that are permanently undeliverable. Example; bad email addresses.

2. Soft Bounce – May not have a permanent reason for why the email is not going through. Example; full inbox, server is down or message is too large. Tip to keep in mind is to remove users after the 3rd soft bounce to avoid bad ISP reputation.

3. Blocks – Internet service providers reject emails due to spam filters. This can be due to black listed domains or when users manually mark domains as spam.

4. Other – Non-verified/Inactive accounts.

Usually when inquiring a bounce message you will receive some information to help the sender understand why your email was not delivered. Message may include:

• Date and time of bounce


• Identity of the mail server that bounced your email (example@example.com)


• A reason/ error message (mailbox full or unknown user)


• Header of the bounce message and some of the email content

If you are experiencing high bounce rate, a good step to keep in mind is to first clean your email list. Having a rate of 20% bounced emails is considered high. It is important to cleanse your mailing list and remove all email addresses that are misspelled, have bad domains and that are inactive. The more bad emails you have the higher the chances of having spam filters red flag you as using stolen or bought list leading to a higher spam score causing more bounces.

Having a low bounce rate is good only when you are satisfied with the size of your email list and when you know your message is actually delivered. There can also be the issue of having email testing as a false-positive (when your email is not rejected, but is directly filtered to Trash). Analyze your low bounce rate by checking in your major ISPs for open and click-through rates. This will help you uncover any underlying problem in misreading the reports of your low bounce rate.


Author: Adeline Zeledon
Editor: Yasifur Rahman

Emails a 2 Billion Dollar Industry by 2013 ... Sweet!

A very interesting article by Gavin O'Malley @ Media Post. Talks about how Direct Mail is on the verge of doom and budgets being redirected to online email efforts. According to the article ... "Borrell credits the rise of coupons online with the demise of direct mail"

You can read the complete article @ http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=106491

Happy Emailing ....

Outlook 2007 Rendering Issue

Over the past year most of our clients using Outlook 2003 have upgraded to Outlook 2007 as their email client. Various rendering issues have Creatives that had previously looked perfect on all ISPs and Oulook 2003 now look completely different/broken when tested. This post will be an on going post of any issues that arise with rendering in Outolook 2007. What has changed? ...

Background Images – Background image no longer render in Outlook 2007. Although background colors still work.

Background Colors - Simple table background colors render. Complications occur and renders incorrectly when nested tables are used.

Font Styles has to be defined in each table - If you want the correct font to display make sure you that you have it defined within content table inline styles. Otherwise it will automatically default to "Times New Roman".

No flash or animated gif's - We never advised using Flash in your creatives but now animated gifs are out too...

CSS floats and positions a no no - Do not use them if you want your creative to render correctly on Outlook 2007. Use tables instead

To be continued...

Revival of the Blog...

I have been meaning to update the blog on a more regular basis but higher level priorities has been taking precedence. Apologies to all readers for such a long silence (close to year and a half to be exact).

It has been a strong 2008 for KobeMail which has taken up much of my time in development and building strategic relationships. I look forward to posting on a much more regular basis.

"You-Centric" vs. "Me-Centric"

KobeMail would like to wish all of you Happy Holidays. Here are a couple of tips to wrap up this year which maybe helpful for the coming year -- especially around the holiday season. As always, I hope you find the suggestions useful and they help to bring in a successful New Year.

Historically, during the holiday season the frequency of campaigns sent increases drastically. It is a time of spending, and advertising products becomes a necessity for revenue generation. While increasing your communication may seem like a good idea, for more visibility of your products and services, it may affect you adversely if the campaigns sent are spaced out incorrectly. Our recommendation to you -- allow at least seven to ten days between each campaign. Frequent emails within a short period can actually prove to be counter productive.

Users are less likely to open emails if they are sent too frequently. Like you, your users are busy with their family, buying gifts and planning out their Christmas/New Years Eve parties and are not checking mail as often. Increasing the frequency of emails may result in multiple emails from you waiting in their Inbox. This may rub some of your users the wrong way. Just because someone is a customer does not mean they want your emails all the time, especially when it becomes pushy. The chances of emails being deleted unread increases drastically which hurts your reputation. This may also result in increases in SPAM complaints or increase attrition to your database due to unsubscribes.

From a performance standpoint, you see a decrease in click through rates and from an ISP's perspective an increase in unopened emails generated from your domain/IP. ISPs have ad space within each email. They monitor the opens and non-opens, along with spam complaints on emails. If users do not open emails ISPs assume users are uninterested in your communication which can lower your reputation. The open rates on emails are just as important to ISPs as they are to you.

Planning early can mitigate the need for increasing the frequency of emails sent during the holiday season. Send campaigns in November reminding users of shipping deadlines. Remind them to try and avoid shipping delays due to the rush during the holiday season. This is beneficial to you because it may also help your company generate revenues prior to the shopping season and help your users avoid the stress and plan ahead during the holidays.

I have tried to touch on what you can do to ensure your emails are opened and have click throughs, but you should also be thinking of what your emails can do for your users. Make your emails more “You-centric” than “Me-centric”.

There are steps you can take to ensure your customers want to open your emails. Make sure you brand yourself throughout the year, so they will open the creative based on your "From Name". Build a relationship with them. Test your subject lines. Go through historical data to review which creatives had more click throughs and why. These are important details you need to keep in mind for the coming year, if you have not already.

In the spirit of giving, give back to your users. Instead of giving compelling reasons to buy your product, making your emails look “Me-centric,” take the additional effort to make your emails “You-centric.” Write about the customer benefits and what you can do for them. Instead of thinking “How can I write this email to make sales for my company” you should think along the lines of “What would my customers find useful in this email?” Don’t use pushy sales line and ALL CAPS, which can raise SPAM scores.. Create emails that have useful information and make the user want to read what is inside of them.

I will discuss this in more detail in the next blog. Have a safe and happy holiday season!

New Features

KobeMail is excited to announce new service improvements for all our clients. The additional features are a result of feedback from you, our valued clients, who have continually given us recommendations on how we can make the service as well as the application better for your email marketing requirements. Needless to say, these three features were the most recommended in the past year.

Our three latest features are:

• Rollover Unused Email Volume
• GeoTrack
• Push Reporting

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Rollover Volume

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No more wasted dollars for your unused volume. Many clients don’t even realize they have leftover volume at the end of a month. With this new service, we will track your account, and automatically rollover any unused volume to the next month. We want to make sure you get the most value for your money. The rollover volume will only be valid for the next month.

If you still have unused email volume after the one month rollover, please contact either me or your account manager so we can tailor your account to fit your volume requirements.

Rollover Volume will be fully automated and deployed effective December 1st, 2007.

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GeoTrack

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This feature will benefit all those who currently do not capture user street addresses on their signups. We can now track U.S. state and city information based on the IP of the signup via GeoTrack (there is no charge for state tracking, additional charges apply for city tracking).

Gain a better understanding of the demographic make-up of your lists. Based on the signup IP the database will be automatically populated with the state from where they are signing up from. This will give more transparency to all our clients and their data to understand the demographic distribution of their lists.

All current clients will be automatically updated in a turn-key process and we expect full deployment by the end of January 2008.

Please contact your account manager or me for details on additional customization such as inclusion of city information along with the state.

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Push Reporting

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Need a running update of how your email marketing initiatives are performing?

Push reporting will be similar to our current Dashboard which provides a monthly overview with the BIG difference being -- you won’t have to log into the application and it will be in your email inbox for you to review with your morning coffee.

The reporting will give you a running count, based on two weeks of data, of your total sent, delivered, opens, click throughs and bounces for all your campaigns.

We want to save you time and keep reporting simple – while delivering pertinent information on the overall performance of your account.

The planned full deployment is the end of January.

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We, at KobeMail, would like to thank all of you for your recommendations and look forward to more in the coming months.

Holiday Tips

Holidays are the busiest time of the year for just about everybody, including ISPs. Over the holiday seasons the number of emails being sent out, across the board, increases. ISPs receive larger amounts of volume so they are forced to set their threshold lower. There are more SPAM complaints by users, so ISPs become more stringent and strict. 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. To help counteract this problem we at KobeMail suggest throttling your campaigns. This will allow us to regulate the flow of emails being sent out which will ensure better deliverability into user’s inboxes.

Along with throttling there are other issues you can concentrate on to help improve deliverability during the Holiday season. Past experience is a great teacher, so refer back to and review your past years performance. Identify the lists and creatives that did well and which products worked best for you in the previous years. Evaluate how users reacted last year to your company’s emails over the holiday months. From your assessments make decisions on how, when, where, and what kind of emails you will send.

Encouragingly, though users’ inboxes are overflowing, past survey reports have shown that emails do influence consumers’ purchase decisions. Those who benefited most from holiday emails were companies recognized and trusted by users and consumers. This proves that email reputation and relationships are important. However, we are not suggesting you send more emails over the holiday season. Just ensure the emails being sent are more targeted and relevant i.e. mail smart not hard. Increasing the frequency of emails without increasing the value to the subscriber is essentially useless and may actually hurt you.

So we know you are going to send out holiday emails, however are text or HTML emails more effective in such a short period of time? Our research has shown that a combination of text and HTML formats seems to work best in a short conversion cycle. Text emails are best used if you just want to notify your users. However, if your goal is to give in-depth information, involve people and/or drive traffic to the website HTML format is more effective.

It is crucial to develop a strategy now that will balance promotional and informational emails that maintain the interest of your users. The strategies you implement now will help to to give you a successful email program for the upcoming new year.