Delivery and marketing part 2

A while ago I wrote some thoughts about the conflicting requirements of delivery and marketing. I posted something similar over on the Only Influencers list, too. My thoughts generated a very interesting discussion, one that helped me clarify some of my somewhat random thoughts from earlier.
Marketing is about finding mindshare. One way you get mindshare is repetition. But people tune out repetition pretty quickly. Sending the same offers, the same copy over and over again means recipients start to tune things out.  When recipients start tuning out mail, they may not bother opening it, they just read the subject line.  If too many recipients start relying on the subject line then delivery can suffer.
Effective marketing relies on getting mail in front of the target audience. That’s the delivery component. Without inbox delivery, even the best marketing will not work.
No one will see marketing if it is in the spamfolder.
I don’t think you can cleanly separate delivery strategy from marketing strategy, but it’s important to realize they have different constraints and different pressures. When I talk about delivery with a client, I’m talking about getting mail into the inbox. And, most of the time, they’ve come to me because they’re not getting into the inbox and they have to make changes. The genius of their marketing is irrelevant, because no customers see it.
But once mail is in the inbox you can’t just ignore delivery, either. Sure, it becomes less of a pressure on the copy and the marketing strategy, until such time as the mail isn’t getting into the inbox any longer. Then it’s back to working on delivery and maybe having to implement some aggressive data hygiene. Back in the inbox and you can be aggressive on the marketing again.
Successful email marketing requires balancing the constraints of good delivery against the constraints of good marketing.

Useful bits of Cryptography – Hashes
Relevant and timely marketing

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Dear Email Address Occupant

There’s a great post over on CircleID from John Levine and his experience with a marketer sending mail to a spam trap.
Apparently, some time back in 2002 someone opted in an address that didn’t belong to them to a marketing database. It may have been a hard to read scribble that was misread when the data was scanned (or typed) into the database. It could be that the person didn’t actually know their email address. There are a lot of ways spamtraps can end up on lists that don’t involve malice on the part of the sender.
But I can’t help thinking that mailing an address for 10 years, where the person has never ever responded might be a sign that the address isn’t valid. Or that the recipient might not want what you’re selling or, is not actually a potential customer.
I wrote a few weeks back about the difference between delivery and marketing. That has sparked conversations, including one where I discovered there are a lot of marketers out there that loathe and despise delivery people. But it’s delivery people who understand that not every email address is a potential purchaser. Our job is to make sure that mail to non-existent “customers” doesn’t stop mail from actually getting to actual potential customers.
Email doesn’t have an equivalent of “occupant” or “resident.” Email marketers need to pay attention to their data quality and hygiene. In the snail mail world, that isn’t true. My parents still get marketing mail addressed to me, and I’ve not lived in that house for 20+ years. Sure, it’s possible an 18 year old interested in virginia slims might move into that house at some point, and maybe that 20 years of marketing will pay off. It only costs a few cents to keep that address on their list and the potential return is there.
In email, though, sending mail to addresses that don’t have a real recipient there has the potential to hurt delivery to all other recipients on your list. Is one or two bad addresses going to be the difference between blocked and inbox? No, but the more abandoned addresses and non-existent recipients on a list there are on a list, the more likely filters will decide the mail isn’t really important or wanted.
The cost of keeping that address, one that will never, ever convert on a list may mean losing access to the inbox of actual, real, converting customers.
 

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Cheetahmail on appending

Experian CheetahMail believes that opt-out email appending is no longer an acceptable practice, and that marketers should no longer use of this practice to acquire customer email addresses. EmailResponsibly

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You can't always get what you want

It’s a problem anyone who has done any delivery work has faced. There’s a client who is having blocklist problems or ISP delivery problems and they won’t pay any attention to what you say. They insist that you talk to the blocklist or the ISP or hand over contacts directly so they can “dialog with” someone internally. They don’t like what they’re hearing, and they hope that the answer will be different if they find a new person to talk to.
The reality is many of the people at ISPs and blocklists don’t want to talk to these types of senders. They may answer a friendly question from someone they know and trust, but sometimes not even then.
Some very large ISPs and major blocklists don’t even take sender questions. They won’t communicate with anyone about any delivery issues.
I’ve had to tell more than a few clients recently that various ISPs and blocklists weren’t interested in helping those clients with their delivery problems. There are two classes of reactions I get from clients. Some clients focus on moving forward. “OK, now what? How can we identify the issue, what data do we have and how can we figure out what the problem is?”
Other clients continue to look for ways to talk to whomever is blocking their mail. They’re convinced if they can just “explain their business model” or be told what they’re doing wrong, that all their delivery problems will magically disappear.
Needless to say those clients who focus on moving forward and looking at the information they do have have much better success resolving their delivery problems. What many senders don’t understand is the wealth of data they have that will help them resolve the issue. And even if they know it’s buried in their files, they don’t always know where to start looking or even what they’re looking for.
But that is, of course, why you hire someone like me who understands spamfiltering and email. I help senders understand how email filters work and identify what parts of their programs are likely to be responsible for delivery issues. I often find the most valuable service I provide to clients is a fresh set of eyes that can see the forest. With my help, they manage to stop obsessing unproductively about one particular symptom and focus on the underlying problems.
Senders who think the holy grail of problem resolution is speaking to the right person at an ISP or blocklist generally are disappointed, even when they hire someone who knows all the right people at the ISPs.  They can’t always get what they want. But I can often help them get what they need.
 
 
 

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