Email Advice from Caterlyst

E-marketing is a fantastic new way of reaching you’re the Out of Home market. It is by far the cheapest option for a targeted campaign, but the discipline is in its infancy and before you email a thousand people you must be prepared for:

Rejection

Some people don't like getting unsolicited emails and they may well respond to you with abrupt, sharp, even sometimes rude and unflattering replies. You've got to be tough to be in e-marketing and don't take it personally.

If a data subject requests to be removed from your email list, you must remove them and you must not send them emails again. This is a central part of the Electronic Communications Act.

Accusations

The law permits you to send unsolicited emails to business email addresses on business matters only. If you want to promote consumer services you must buy an 'opt-in' list. Caterlyst’s email lists have been compiled by calling the relevant company and requesting the email address, either from the person directly or the person's PA or someone associated with the data subject. As we have not obtained their agreement in writing this does not constitute an 'opt-in' list. However this method of collection does comply with the Data Protection Act for business emails and use of these email addresses is within the law.

Disappointment that not all the emails reached their target

John Wanamaker, a 19th century entrepreneur, once famously said that one half of his advertising was wasted, the trouble was he didn't know which half. In the 21st century emarketers can tell which emails were wasted as every e-mail shot that goes out will instantly generate an inbox full of out-of-office replies, sorry this inbox is full messages and cannot deliver notices. This is normal.

Do not be upset if up to 20% of your emails fail to arrive. Your email may be picked up as spam, the server may be programmed to reject emails from some server, the server may be down or any number of technical issues could have affected the arrival of your email. Very often you may never get a reason as to why your email was returned. All we can suggest is that you try to send it again and perhaps check your email to see if it contains words that trigger spamfilter software, such as 'money back', 'extra income', 'order now', 'order today', 'special promotion', 'marketing solutions', 'free!' (spam filters hate exclamation marks), '4U' or '££'.

The average open rate and click throughs in a recent survey from a leading email provider were:

• Open – 12.8% to 17.5%
• Click through – 1.1% to 1.8%

Certain campaigns achieve an open rate of 52.5 per cent and a click through rate of 7.1 per cent and others less than 10 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively.
As much can be learnt from a campaign’s lack of success as can be learnt from a successful campaign.

Compliance with the Electronic Communications Act

We only supply personal email addresses for people at their place of work, which means no generic emails ie info@ or sales@. Also unless otherwise instructed by the contact we do not supply emails that are given out freely to consumers eg Hotmail, googlemail or tiscali addresses, as these are classified as home email addresses and are governed by the Electronic Communications Act.

The Electronic Communications Act forbids the sending of emails offering consumer services to people who have not opted in to receive emails from you (if you are marketing consumer goods and services, you have to buy an opt-in list).

You are allowed to send emails offering business services to business people at their business email addresses, without them opting in to receive these communications, but if they ask you to stop emailing them, then you must remove them from your list and must not email them again.

Avoiding Spam filters – some guidance

Many ISPs apply content filters to emails they have accepted, rating an email using various criteria to apply a 'spam score'. Passing these filters can mean the difference between your email being delivered into the Junk Folder or the Inbox.

It's important to ensure you follow best practice when collecting and managing your data and in creating your email templates and content. Following best practice means that inbox delivery is easily within your reach.

To help you with this, here are some easy do's and don'ts to follow.

It's not an exhaustive list as this is not an exact science and different spam filters, firewalls, and ISPs may use different, often changing criteria to filter by content.

Do...

Do get a professionally designed template - A professionally designed email with the correct HTML code will ensure your email looks its best in all browsers. Bad coding can attract a higher spam score.

Make sure your email doesn't have any missing or redundant code - Missing and redundant code in your emails will cause rendering problems and indicates to ISPs that your email may not be professional. Empty font tags or lots of '&nbsp' for example can damage your deliverability into inboxes.

Send a multipart email And make sure that your plain text version matches your HTML version as closely as possible. By sending multipart, even if your recipient is opening on a Blackberry or PDA, they will still be able to view your email.

Check and double check your email for spelling mistakes and typos Bad grammar and spelling mistakes are attributes of spammers -avoid at all cost, use a spell check but also send tests to colleagues to double check for spelling mistakes as part of your sign-off process.

Use a good balance of text and images  Try to get a good balance of text and images and avoid image heavy emails. Single image emails (i.e. one image - no text) should be avoided entirely.

Personalise properly or not at all  - Make sure your database is accurate and allows for accurate personalisation. Unpersonalised or badly personalised emails may attract damaging unsubscribes or spam complaints.

Don't...

Don't use italics and very large fonts  Italics and large fonts increase your spam score. You can replace large text and titles with images, remembering to keep a good balance between text and images.  Don't use different fonts and WORDS ALL IN UPPERCASE Or even worse, gappy text which tries to fool spam checkers e.g. fr!ee c o f f e e m a c h i n e

Don't use white text on a graphical background Spammers often use white text to add content that's not seen by the recipient to try and pass email content filters. Use white text on a background colour sparingly and make sure any colour text on a colour background has a strong contrast.

Don't embed images Spammers send emails with images as attachments or embedded within the email. To avoid this host your images online, either through your image library or on your website.

Avoid using forms in the email itself Forms send submitted information back to a server. No major email programs support forms, and including one might make you look spammy - you should include a link to a form hosted on  your website or a microsite.

And of course, avoid words which have a high Spam score The email copy in your emails is very important and all content filters will scan and mark the words you use in your email. Some words on their own can cause serious spam implications, or words in conjunction with others can score highly.

We all know the obvious spam words, such as Free, Viagra, Nigeria, Porn, Gamble, but don't forget that words which go with them such as replica, quality, enhanced, hard, stamina, college, diploma and improve will also score.

Remember the more times you use a word, the higher the spam score. Your spam score is an amalgamation of several criteria so the odd single use of some words may not automatically cause your email to be classed as spam.

Phrases to avoid:

No obligation                                    Click here or click below

Click to be removed                         No risk, low risk, risk free

Order now                                         Money back guarantee

Have you been turned down          Spam or Spam legislation

Use a Spam Checker We recommend running all emails through a spam checker that will tell you if your email will be considered spam or not. It should also show you any broken HTML and which words within your email content score highly as Spam words, allowing you to alter your copy before you send your email. We also set up test accounts at commonly used email sites such as Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL to see if your email comes through into the inbox or the spam box.

Our software includes a spam checker, an advanced spam checker and Inbox Preview