There are many complex issues to be aware of and to understand when contemplating running your own email marketing campaigns, email system and choosing the right ESP.

See my article on “What to know about Email Marketing and choosing the right ESP”, here: http://blog.bocanetworks.com/pt/blog/default.aspx?id=48&t=What-to-know-about-Email-Marketing-and-c .

Once you have chosen your ESP, it is imperative that you discuss how the system works, what not to do and what to do. Make sure that you fully understand the usage of the system and how to successfully launch campaigns and manage the system, before get ramped up to run with it full speed ahead. Most ESP’s have a Tips & Tricks White Paper or another document that will walk you through all of the “Do’s and Don'ts.”

Here is where the problem comes into play.  Many do not realize how important it is to put a competent person in the role of the email system administrator. This role is the key to the success of any email marketing system and If you make money or not.

I have seen too often, this job left to an intern or a receptionist, who hasn’t had experience, training or grasp of the type of performance required and thus the program fails. This is tantamount to letting a monkey with a wiffle bat rebuild the transmission in your car or manage your 401k. You can have the best email marketing system, with white listed IP’s, great deliverable data and the best converting offers on the planet, but if you don’t have the right person running the program, there is no chance to make money. Realizing that the system administrator is a big key to success, here are some other important steps that one needs to do and guidelines to be followed.

1. An IQ of more than 12 is required for an email marketing system administrator.

2. Read the article from the link above.

3. Relevant offers need to be sent to your optin email database. Send people something they can use. Provide them with a reason that they should do business with you; buy your product or service.

4. Don’t use too many graphics. This will cause slow downloads, graphics that overshadow your message, and attachments will turn off readers because they will think that there might be a virus infected payload. Keep it concise and simple.

5. Keep your HTML code clean and make sure you have a good balance of text to HTML within your creative.

6.  Make sure your content is well written, spell checked and has proper grammar.

7. Check your links to make sure they work. There is nothing worse than sending an email campaign that goes to a dead link.

8. Make sure all of your images are showing up and load quickly.

9. Pay particular attention to the "from” line, because often people will determine that they do not know the e-mail sender and delete it immediately.

10. Do not use SPAMMY subject lines. This is an “instant death” when it comes to having your email deleted prior to even being opened or viewed. Use clear, enticing subject lines to get your optins to open and read your offering. You can't get results without a clear call to action.

11. TEST, TEST, TEST and then TEST some more. Set up an AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo and a few other free email accounts and add it to your system to be used to TEST each Ad/creative you are planning to deploy. See if and how the email get’s delivered, whether it is into the inbox or junk folder and how it is displayed in each email clients system. Make changes to your creative so your email creative looks the best it can, in all email clients systems.

Boca Networks has been in the email marketing business, a publisher and ESP (Email Service Provider) for 10 years.

I have been in the internet marketing industry for 10+ years. I have seen it grow to an immense industry in a very short amount of time and implode. I have seen hundreds of companies come and go. I was here when the bubble burst and am still here helping companies generate traffic with the best possible ROI. Quality email marketing campaigns are hands down, the best way to drive targeted traffic to your website or offering, that exists on the Internet today. You may argue that Google or search engine PPC traffic is a better way to drive traffic, but I would disagree based on the cost and volumes. Let’s do a little math together and see what the results look like.

For this example I am going to use a program we have called the “Guaranteed Opens Program”. It’s pretty simple to understand. You only pay for email that is delivered to a user’s inbox, opened and read. This program is a great value when compared to a CPM campaign, where if the ESP’s delivery is not good, it could cost you .25 - .50 cents per inbox delivered, opened and read email. The cost of our Guaranteed Opens Program is about .02 -.03 per open, based on volume. Our smallest program is 45,000 guaranteed opens and it costs $1350.00.

Now the math:

45,000 opens (emails delivered to the user’s inbox, open and read) cost $1350.00. Please keep in mind that we have to send a much larger amount of email just to get the 45,000 emails delivered to the user’s inbox, open and read.

If your average open to click rate is 7%, which in this case would be 3,150 clicks to your website, this means that a new visitor to your website would cost you roughly .43 cents. Obviously, you can do the math based on your click to conversion ratio and come up with the actual cost of the new lead, sale or inquiry you would get from this to complete the analysis. Spending .43 cents per click to drive a new customer to your website is pretty cheap when compared to what PPC costs are on Google, Yahoo and many of the other PPC search engines.

Let’s compare a few PPC costs for Google on some pretty high traffic keywords for US only traffic. The costs listed below are for positions 1-3 on Google:

Debt $10.10 - $13.77
Online Education $4.72 - $6.86
Payday Loan $5.56 - $6.95
Cash Advance $5.32 - $6.65
Buy Gold $2.26 - $2.90
Dating $1.91 - $2.39

According to the above stats, to get the same 3,150 clicks from Google, it would cost you approximately $37,800 for ”debt” traffic and for the keyword “cash advance”, it would cost you approximately $18,900. There are many variables that can come into play with any marketing campaign but the numbers above should give you a little insight and speak for themselves.

I have a need to write about email marketing because I read so many posts and articles online that are so far off base and provide bad and erroneous information. I think the biggest factor most people need to understand about email marketing is that it is NOT a science. There is no such thing as 100% deliverability or some magic “Pixie Dust” that can be sprinkled on your servers to help you deliver your email creative into the recipient’s inbox. There are only “best practices” which I am going to lay out in this post. It is important to remember that all email is basically the same. So, the question is, what makes some email get delivered, some go into the spam/junk folder and other email get lost in space? The answer is pretty simple, reputation. Below are the most important factors in helping you determine how to choose the right ESP and understand the fundamentals of email marketing and how it should be handled.

This list is in order of importance:

1. IP Addresses: IP address reputation is the most important factor with any email marketing software or system. If, during your email campaigns, recipients click on the spam button or complain about the email they receive from you, this will hurt your “IP Reputation”. If enough people complain about your email or click on the spam button, this will cause your emails to either go to the junk folder or be rejected all together.

2. Email Data: Your email data or records have to be good quality. If you have co-registration or crappy data, don’t even waste your time. Sending emails to people who want to receive them is the only way to ensure that your IP Reputation stay’s in the good graces of the ISP’s. List cleaning is also a very important aspect of email marketing. If you send 100 emails and 10 of them are to email addresses that do not exist, most major ISP will block your email based solely on trying to deliver to invalid email addresses.

3. The ESP: The company that handles the backend of your system and maintains it on a daily basis is probably more important than the system itself, if it is a decent piece of software. Managing feedback loops, white listing requests, bounce processing, list hygiene, and system maintenance are only a few of the many items that need to be monitored and maintained in order to keep everything running smoothly. Finding a reputable and knowledgeable company is more difficult than it sounds.

4. Email Software: Since Boca Networks, the company that I work for, is an ESP, you would think that I would make our software, eList Manager, the number 1 item on this list. I didn’t because even though I think our software is superior to many other programs offered in the marketplace, it isn’t as important as you think. Obviously you need a quality software system to bring this all together, so I am going to list what I feel are the important factors in choosing an ESP software package, other than what I have listed above that relates to the company behind the software. Here is a list of features that are a must; IP rotation, subject line rotation, bounce processing, open/click/unsub tracking, 1-click unsubscribe processing, fully integrated reporting on a campaign and list level, global do not send lists for the entire system (ie. Do not send emails to abuse@ or @spam.com), easy suppression file uploading, master global unsubscribe importation, time/date scheduling of campaign deployments, multiple users and privileges, spam scoring for creative’s and having a single web based interface to handle a single mailer solution to a system with 50 front end mailers.

I understand that there is a lot more information than I have listed above in garnering absolute insight into email marketing, but I thought I would touch on, what I feel, are the best places to start. Boca Networks has been an ESP and large email publisher since 1999.

The Federal Trade Commission has approved four new rule provisions under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM or the Act). The provisions are intended to clarify the Act’s requirements. The provisions and the Commission’s Statement of Basis and Purpose (SBP) will be published in the Federal Register shortly.

The new rule provisions address four topics: (1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender; (2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements; (3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”; and (4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

In addition, the SBP accompanying the final rule also addresses a number of topics that are not the subject of any new rule provisions. These include: CAN-SPAM’s definition of “transactional or relationship message”; the Commission’s decision not to alter the length of time a “sender” of commercial e-mail has to honor an opt-out request; the Commission’s determination not to designate additional “aggravated violations” under the Act; and the Commission’s views on how CAN-SPAM applies to forward-to-a-“friend” e-mail marketing campaigns, in which someone either receives a commercial e-mail message and forwards the e-mail to another person, or uses a Web-based mechanism to forward a link to or copy of a Web page to another person. The SBP explains that, as a general matter, if the seller offers something of value in exchange for forwarding a commercial message, the seller must comply with the Act’s requirements, such as honoring opt-out requests.

The new rule provisions and SBP are a follow-up to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on these and other CAN-SPAM topics that the Commission published on May 12, 2005 and March 11, 2004, respectively. The Commission received 152 comments and suggestions on the NPRM and 13,517 comments and suggestions on the ANPR from representatives of a broad spectrum of the online commerce industry, trade associations, individual consumers, and consumer and privacy advocates. The new rule provisions and SBP are based on these comments and suggestions as well as the Commission’s law enforcement experience.

The Commission vote to approve the Federal Register Notice was 4-0.

1. Make your sign-up form easy to find. Remember that nearly every page on your site has the potential to be a landing page, particularly in the case of visitors arriving from search engines.

2. Provide a convincing incentive for subscribers to sign up. Provide good quality content for email subscribers.

3. Don't ask for too much information. It's tempting to ask for more information that might teach you slightly more about your subscribers, but the more information you ask for, the more hesitant many people will be to give up private information and to invest time into filling out your form. Keep it simple. Ask for what you need to email your subscribers with your goals for personalization and segmentation in mind.

4. Use a thank-you page that does its job. The job of a good thank-you page, usually, is to transition subscribers from a Website experience to an inbox experience. Set expectations with subscribers about what they should expect to receive, including what your emails will look like in their inbox, and what they should do with it. This is especially important when using a confirmed opt-in process.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

I’m disappointed that the man named Crusader of the Year by Time Magazine has fallen prey to that affliction of the ego that has body slammed countless numbers of politicians, corporate leaders, preachers and celebrities over the years.

The lust of power makes the man invincible in his own mind and allows him to rationalize lines that the rest of us do not cross. So it’s time for Client 9 to resign and let the NY State legislature get back to being the least productive and most dysfunctional state legislature in the country.

Now that HD-DVD has gone the way of BetaMax, the American public no longer has to be the guinea pig for the Electronics and Media companies that can’t find a way to collaborate. If only the ginormous retailer, WalMart, took a stand on day 1 of these two non-compatible formats and stocked only one of them, how many people would not be stuck with an HD-DVDsaurus waiting to add to our landfills?

If you haven’t yet put your HD-DVD player up for sale on Ebay, don’t bother. Their value just plunged into the bitter pit of obsolete technology on which one million early adopters gambled wrongly.

How will email marketing survive a recession? I think it’s fair to say that no industry is immune to a recession, but email certainly remains a lower cost alternative to other online marketing avenues.

Will advertisers shift more of their compressed budgets to email? It’s proven, reliable and has a predictable ROI. My crystal ball is a little cloudy, but I predict that the few winners to emerge on the other side will be the ones who can anticipate and adapt as the market evolves.

The affiliate Summit is right around the corner and I am trying to set up like 50 appointments.  Any other
city and its easy, in Vegas I keep hearing; 'well I'll be at the $5 black jack table at the Wynn,' 'meet me
at the club at Bellagio,'or the best yet 'I'm not working when I'm in Vegas, my boss will be drunk and
gambling, I'm playing.'

I LOVE Las Vegas like the next person but we still need to get business done so for all of you slackers
out there - PUT ME IN YOUR SCHEDULE!  This is a business trip so business needs to get done.  I have
10 appointments set already and need about 15 more to feel productive.  Please understand I am traveling for
BUSINESS.....Don't forget to add my name to your party list though after all it is Vegas Baby Vegas
 

Answer: Most Internet service providers have systems in place to scan incoming messages individually for viruses and spam. The messages are then checked against black lists and evaluated with other attributes. Reputation is a newer criterion that ISPs are using to evaluate mail. A sender’s reputation is determined when ISPs request the sender’s reputation score from a central, third-party reputation database.
While reputation management can decrease the amount of spam received by ISPs, it also means that senders must be able to implement a variety of specific sending rules to comply with each ISP’s requirements and be able to facilitate header markups to incorporate third-party accreditation solutions.

Some e-mail solutions readily accept new standards to adapt easily to changing ISP sending environments. Less flexible solutions make it more difficult to comply with ISP requirements, which can inadvertently damage a sender’s reputation if the company is using poor or unchecked sending practices.

Complying with individual ISP “throttling” requirements—the speed and volume at which an ISP will accept your e-mail—is a key factor in maintaining a good reputation. As a marketer, you should know if your e-mail platform (either in-house or through an e-mail service provider) allows control over settings such as total outbound connections, total message volume and volume ramping, and gives senders a way to match their sending practices to each ISP’s requirements, which change on a regular basis.

Senders should also be aware that a vast database of reputation data based on the global sending practices of thousands of companies was collected recently and published by anti-spam and accreditation vendors. This report provides ISPs with another way to filter e-mail by producing a “gray list” of senders. ISPs will make judgment calls based on the sending history published on this report to determine whether to send or block e-mail from unknown gray-listed senders.

Establishing a good reputation with ISPs is vital to deliverability. To protect your company’s reputation, consider doing the following:

1. Use throttling to insure that you are not over burdening ISPs by sending too many messages too fast. If you use an ESP, make sure they provide you with the reporting to understand exactly how each ISP treats your mail.

2. Contract with a third-party accreditation service that certifies sender policies and practices and makes those certified lists available to the ISPs.

3. Depending on the type or volume of mail you are sending, establishing an in-house ISP relations team can help ensure that your mailing practices and reporting are contributing to maintaining a good reputation and relationship with each ISP.