Gartner has some really good recommendations for companies considering mailing about the coronavirus pandemic. Launch your COVID-19-themed marketing email campaign only if you can answer yes to four questions: Am I telling customers something different from other brands versus saying the same thing as everyone else? Am I telling customers something they don’t already expect of my company or brand...
Things are extremely busy here and blogging is going to be light for a few weeks. I’ll be reposting some older blog posts that are still relevant for today’s email senders. Today’s post is a repost from July 2009. I discuss why recipients complain about mail and how senders can lower the complaint rates. While this addresses complaint rates directly, the same series of questions...
It is reality that ISPs look at the population of recipients that a mail stream is going to. It is reality that they evaluate the activity of that population. It is reality that ISPs treat senders that are sending to a significant number of email addresses that have not been logged into or accessed recently negatively. If you’re having delivery problems, looking at the recipients and their...
Most delivery experts will tell you that ISPs measure recipient engagement as a part of their delivery. That’s absolutely true, but I think there’s a language difference that makes it hard for senders to understand what we mean by engagement. ISPs, and other filtering companies, profile their user base. They know, for instance, who logs in and checks mail every day. They know who...
While this does seem to be more common with gmail addresses, it’s not solely limited to gmail. I’ve written about this frequently. Don’t leave that money sitting there. Sending mail to the wrong person, part eleventy. Email verification, what are we verifying. Recycled Yahoo addresses and PII leaks. Dr. Livingston, I presume. No, I’m really not Christine. Confirming...
A couple weeks ago, Yahoo announced that they were retiring abandoned user IDs. This has been causing quite a bit of concern among email marketers because they’re not sure how this is going to affect email delivery. This is a valid concern, but more recent information suggests that Yahoo! isn’t actually retiring abandoned email addresses. You have to remember, there are Yahoo! userIDs...
Please Don’t Add Me to Your Email List
Email marketing wisdom from Forbes and someone who spends a lot of time networking and handing out business cards.
I haven’t been able to track down any information about what happened, but it seems MINI USA had a major oops in their email marketing recently. So much so that they’re sending out apologies by snail mail. Pictures of the apology package appeared on Reddit earlier this week, and include a chocolate rose, some duct tape and a SPAM can stress reliever. It’s a great example of a...
Ken has an article today about how Pro Flowers managed to get their mail out of the bulk folder at Gmail by asking their recipients for help. This year, ProFlowers apparently took into account Gmail’s use of sender reputation and user engagement in its spam filtering rules by using subject lines, such as: “Gmail Customer Notice: Open if you missed yesterday’s special discount!” and “Help Teach...
Many, many people hire me to educate them on delivery and fix their email problems. This is good, it’s what I do. And I’m quite good at helping clients see where their email program isn’t meeting expectations. I can translate tech speak into marketing. I can explain things in a way that shifts a client’s perception of what the underlying issues are. I can help them find...
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