The Email Wars

False-positive filtering (emails incorrectly identified as spam) remains high among leading email service providers (ESPs), including Hotmail and Gmail.

The false-positive filtering rate for Gmail nevertheless improved dramatically in the second quarter, with only 2.97 percent of emails falsely identified as spam, compared with the previous quarter’s 44 percent, according to a study (pdf) by email marketing solutions provider Lyris Technologies, MarketingVox reports. However, Hotmail’s false-positive filtering, though improving, remains high - 18.2 percent in Q2, compared with 23.4 percent in Q1.

Read the full article or download the PDF Study

Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study by Chad White

Technical Glitches, Missed Sales Opportunities and CAN-SPAM Noncompliance Issues at the Largest Online Retailers

INTRODUCTION & KEY FINDINGS

Of the 66% of top retailers that sent out welcome emails, many are missing out on the opportunity to use those emails as a selling vehicle. Instead of inspiring subscribers with their product knowledge and impressing them with exclusive deals with the very first email they receive, a great number of the largest etailers simply say hello and leave it at that. The lack of sales mentality that some retailers bring to their welcome emails is demonstrated by the fact that 12% of the welcome emails included in this study didn’t even bother to include a link to the retailers’ shopping sites. Forty-nine percent didn’t include links to their shopping departments and 89% didn’t include product images and links.

Get the Full Study or PDF

AOL now lets people using their email service choose their own address. The bit after the @ too. Or put another way, people using AOL’s email service won’t all be using @aol.com addresses anymore. They might have the address mark@randomdomainname.com. So imagine that you always wanted your own domain “@myname.com”, well know you can get that (if it is available to buy) and route it all through AOL email systems.

That might make it harder to spot problems with deliverability to AOL addresses. And harder to segment out AOL users so you can send them emails designed to display properly in the AOL email interface. Not that AOL cares if it is hard on marketers or ESPs (which they should as brands and agencies pay the bills over there with ad campaigns) but this is going to make it challenging if there is a large scale adoption of this new service.

See AOLs pitch for this new service.

I found this at Men’s Health, actually sent to me as I don’t read it. But it opened up some funny, yet real issues. I don;t agree with the list 100% as half of these are what truly makes a campaign work, or viral. But it does flag some issues that we should all be aware of… we get too much email from spammers as it stands, so if your friends understand a few simple rules, maybe they won’t be spammers as well in your inbox.

1. Don’t thank me. If you’re my boss and appreciate something I’ve done, that’s cool. Otherwise, bag it. I hate being thanked, particularly with a “thx.” And don’t copy me when you thank someone else, either, unless they saved a little girl from a well or something. I’m busy dealing with the other 150 e-mails I got today.

2. Don’t involve me in a CC circle jerk. Some people think out loud on issues of moderate import for 300 e-mails. And I’m in on all of them, because some doofus copied me on e-mail number one. E-mail should be used to inform, to resolve an issue, to end a conversation, to pass along a job, or to get out of something minor, without the need for personal interaction. But don’t use a toothpick to dig a hole.

Read All

If you had not taken a moment to check out the Email Experience Council site yet (hold tight as the new version is rolling live next week) you need to. This newly formed group is gorwing at a rapid clip with 1000s of agencies, companies, and ESPs joining. They are creating great content, studies and giving you access to webinars that will truly help your email marketing.

Take some time, take a look, and take a leap and join up. This group is going to be the leading organization in the US and world here soon for email marketers.

Visit the EEC Site

I thought that this was a timely study in light of the legal case against Spamhaus. We all know that it is sometimes out of the ESP’s control to get an email delivered. There are so many factors fighting against delivery on a daily basis. It is good to see from this report that it has been better this last quarter. But what I would like to learn more about is the testing process that ReturnPath used. What clients did they monitor, what is the relative list hygeine of the samples used, were they tracking 3rd party drops, aquistion vs. retention vs. transactional emails.

I know that I am meeting with the ReturnPath team in NYC this coming week and I will see if I can get some more details as this impacts all of us in the industry and our clients. Thanks goes out to ReturnPath for these studies.

Blocking Rates Ease … Your Vigilance Cannot - ReturnPath Study
By Heather Goff, VP Client Management and Deliverability Consulting

Our latest Email Blocking and Filtering Report shows that 19.2 percent of email still gets blocked or filtered by the leading ISPs and commercial filtering applications. While that is certainly better than the 20.5 percent during the second half of 2005 — and much better than the 22 percent peak in 2004 — don’t let the modest improvements to inbox reach fool you. Too much of your email is still not reaching your customers, making email deliverability an area needing continued focus.

Get the whole study at ReturnPath’s site

This is an interesting study from Epsilon and covered on DM News. We are all familiar with image suppression in the inbox and what a ongoing topic it is, but it seems that they are reporting good news. Many of us actually hit the buttons when we get blocked images to allow them. If I used my own personal MSN, Yahoo and GMail accounts I agree with this study completely. I use the highest filters on these accounts, and when I get valid emails in the junk or bulk folders, I tend to allow the images and even often times select allow images to be displayed from this sender in the future. Just saves time when I know I wan them.

But with those that are junk, they stay junk and stay suppressed.

Nice work on this study Epsilon. Love it.

Email Users Confront Image Suppression
Nearly 7 of 10 email users have had images suppressed in emails they receive, but the same proportion among those users regularly do something about it.

Some 65 percent of U.S. email users have encountered default image suppression, writes DM News, citing data from email marketing firm Epsilon Interactive. Some 69 percent of those users, however, manually activate the images - and 94 percent have done so at some point.

Some 90 percent of users at least sometimes activate images in emails they receive from friends and family; 69 percent do so in the case of email statements or order information from senders they buy from; and 57 percent do so for opt-in promotional messages.

Some 31 percent activate images in the case of promotional messages that users have not opted to receive - if they recognize the name of the senders and trust them.

Read the Full Study on DN News

I have been sitting on this email, stewing about it, for about 2 weeks now. I just cannot believe that this is really the answer I got. I would expect a retailer like Nordstrom to be able AT THE MIN, by gender to send out relevant emails to shoppers. I am still slightly bothered and will continue to be each week that I get one from them advertising the latest in leggings, costmetics, jewelry or heels.

Does this make any sense to you? I see so may retailers missing this boat by segmeting by gender. If you sell items that are specific to gender, don’t you think the second line after an email address on an opt in should be required gender? Then segment and send 2 versions. Not really alot of extra work, list management will take care of 99.9% of the details and then just make 2 emails. Simple.

It took JCrew only 5 months (after repeated phone calls, emails, and one in store visit) to get them to send me offers for male items. And other retailers just as long. Why is this not a default in this business?

We talk so much about the Giants of Ecommerce, guys, sort by gender and watch the targeted campaign lift your results.

I have pasted my email and response below.

Please share with me your own examples and stories about this. I would love to see more and hear from you.

From: Nordstrom Subscribe / Unsubscribe
Date: August 31, 2006 7:55:12 AM PDT
To: Dylan T Boyd
Cc: @e.nordstrom.com

Subject: RE: [CM] Re: What’s Hot? Military-Inspired Jackets | New Juicy Couture Watches (#8234-54058486-0339)

Dear Mr. Boyd,

Thank you for your e-mail to Nordstrom.com regarding the e-mails you receive from Nordstrom.

I am sorry but unfortunately when you are on our e-mail list you would get all of the e-mails that we send. I have no way of requesting certain e-mails be sent and others not sent. If you would like us to remove you from our e-mail list please respond to this e-mail and I will certainly remove you from that list.

I am sorry that I am not able to do that for you. If you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to contact me at any time.

Regards,
Mary
Internet Customer Service
Nordstrom Direct

Visit us again at: www.nordstrom.com

—–Original Message—–

From: Dylan T Boyd
Sent: Aug 31, 2006 9:28:30 AM
Subject: [CM] Re: What’s Hot? Military-Inspired Jackets | New Juicy Couture Watches

Can you please switch my clothing preferences to male? that would be better for me. I mean I like the ladies you through in my inbox, but I am more likely to buy from gender targeted emails.

Cheers.

I spotted this over at Tamara’s B2B Email Marketing Blog (She does a great job by the way and should be a read of yours). Wanted to make sure it got some coverage on this side of the pond. Another great resource from Return Path. They have some bright minds over there and are continuously getting out great articles, research and ideas. Thanks guys, see you at OMMA in NYC next Monday at 4pm for our presenation. (If you are going, join us the the Email Liars Club).

6 Simple Steps to Response-Driving Subject Lines
By Tami Monahan Forman - Director of Strategic Services- ReturnPAth

I have a secret. I love to write subject lines. It’s a task that many email marketers dread, but I think it’s fun! It must go back to my days on my college newspaper, writing headlines.

And, in my work with Return Path clients, I get to help write a lot of subject lines. So, I thought I’d share with you all the method Strategic Services has developed for writing subject lines. Following these 6 steps will make the task of writing subject lines easier and more effective.

1. Quickly write at least 6 potential subject lines. Don’t think too hard about what will work best — just string together words that are relevant to your message. At this point, they don’t even have to make sense.

2. Sit back and examine your list: Are there certain words that keep popping up? Are you struggling over word choices? Have you got at least three compelling options that convey your message? If not, go back to step one. If so, move on to step three ….

3. Hone your list by eliminating or editing any that are clearly unsuitable. If needed, write one or two more. You want to have at least four at this point.

4. Count ’em up! Many of you will be able to eyeball the length, but go ahead and count the characters using Word’s word count function. Put the number next to the line in parentheses. Example: Six Secrets to Sales Success (28). Remember that spaces count! (See our post about how subject line length affects response for guidelines.)

5. Now, sit back and eyeball your list again. Is one really grabbing you? Does another look really flat now? Are they all clearly too long? If you answered yes to the last question, go back to step three. If not, move on to step six. …

6. Time to pick ’em. We advocate always testing subject lines, so pick at least two. Make sure they are truly different. You may need to choose one and then write an alternative version to make the test meaningful. It’s actually easier if you pick an element that you want to test: length, word choice (save vs. discount) or use of your brand name. This will help you isolate variables and carry learning forward.

Use this method on a half dozen messages and soon you’ll be able to do it in 10 minutes or less. You will come up with better subject lines in less time with less effort than ever. Promise!

If you are not subscribed to MediaPosts Email Insider, do. Articles like this come out a few times a week and are very valuable to getting your thoughts flowing.

The SEM Hierarchy Of the E-mail Inbox
by Gord Hotchkiss, Thursday, September 14, 2006

INTO EACH SOCIAL STRUCTURE, A little stratification must fall. As our society takes a decidedly virtual turn, I’m finding that my Outlook inbox is the latest place where a class structure is taking shape.

Of course, you have the standard spam vs. non-spam sorting, but this doesn’t really count. That happens pretty much transparently in the background, and every day or so I wade through the muck in my deleted spam folder just to make sure a vital piece of communication didn’t get waylaid. For instance, today an e-mail from my lawyer went there. On second thought, perhaps the filter knew better than I what should be deleted.

No, it’s the e-mail that survives the cut that is subject to endless classification and sorting, as I haplessly try to wrap my priorities around an ever-expanding inbox. At first, I thought the six different flags supplied by Outlook would do the trick, but I quickly realized my complicated world needs much more than six classifications.

So in an attempt to ease the daily burden of countless search marketers, I offer the following suggestions for an SEM Custom Rules plug that would automatically take the following actions in Outlook’s inbox.

The “Anything from Google” Rule

I have not had much time to really read into this yet, but this is HUGE. Really. for legitimate OPT in, record keeping ESPs and companies, this ruling changes the playing field. I know that this is going to have ramifications on SpamCop (which is completely guilty of this) and many other ISPs. Hopefully it opens up the dialogue (which has ONLY been ONE WAY) between the good ESPs, the ISPs, the companies, the Agencies and others for the betterment of the industry.

I mean we have all taken huge strides the past few years to be better in every way, educating clients, customers, the media, the public and the government that making these groups libable for standing in the way of legal business operations and clients/customer communications is good for all. Really.

What I did find humorous about this is when you visit the e360insight.com website, this is all that is there, and at the end, a call to come be a client. A little tacky, but the validated themselves in this case and helped many of us.

British spam blocking firm Spamhaus was charged with blacklisting marketing firm e360insight’s e-mails to consumers by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Spamhaus, was ordered to pay $11.7 million in damages to e360insight ,Chicago, and its CEO, David Linhardt.

The order also stated that Spamhaus is no longer allowed to block, delay, alter or interrput e360insights’s mailings in any way.

Read it at the Source

We are noticing subscribers with Gmail Addresses using the new Plus-Addressing option on gmail accounts to generate disposable email addresses. I think it is a great idea and I hope that they continue to allow this trick. One thing I have noticed in some testing is that some opt in forms DO NOT allow the use of the PLUS (+) symbol as a character in an email field. Whether this is good or bad I am not sure yet, but have you tried your forms?

How many services use email and email validation to use?
Forums, free i-tunes, free magazines, free this, and free that…

You know many of these services make money off selling your email address; therefore, you certainly do not want to give them your main email address. Thus the need for throw-away or disposable email addresses. Although many services out there offer this service, gmail is an especially useful tool.

From wikipedia re Gmail–

Quote:
Gmail also supports “plus-addressing” of emails. Messages can be sent to addresses in the form: gmail.user+extratext@gmail.com where extratext can be any string. Plus-addressing allows users to sign up for different services with different aliases and then easily filter all e-mails from those services. It does not appear, however, that the +string feature works when sending email from a gmail account to itself. Additionally (in some cases) the string appended to the e-mail address may not be longer than six characters.

If you gmail account is throwaway@gmail.com… then you can generate additional email accounts by adding text after the plus…

Original Account:
- throwaway@gmail.com

New Accounts:
- throwaway+dumpa@gmail.com
- throwaway+dumpb@gmail.com
- etc.

By using gmail’s filtering function with your unique text (dumpa, dumpb, etc.), you can automatically archive these messages if they start getting spammy.

This likely will not work forever. Spammer and websites will soon learn to filter and remove this plus-addressing text. That’s one of the advantages of gmail… you can always sign up for another account.

See more tips and tricks users can use with Gmail

I can admit it, I have an addiction. By laptop, desktop, or blackberry, I check email in places that are both odd, and at some times unsafe. (85 mph on I-5). I know that many of you that read this blog and are in this industry are suffering from the same addiction. The addiction to being connected.

We are always asking people what they think about certain issues facing the internet and web marketing. We started last month asking people about their email inbox preferences. Seemed that we hit a nerve as so many marketing sites and bloggers picked up on it and carried the message around the global block.

This month we are curious about another issue, time management and needs. Not from a business perspective, but from a consumer/lifestyle perspective. We are all becoming internet junkies and what impact is this having on our lives outside of work? Is there a life outside of work as there used to be?

Help us understand how the world is changing between work and life and we will post the results for you in September. Take the Email Addiction Survey and see where you stand >>

I noticed today when I logged into my MSN account that there was a new small in mail ad promoting how to handle junk or spam. Also there is this great new Live Mail demo everyone should review.

See the new Demo here

Question: How can we be sure we are setting up e-mail authentication records correctly?

Answer: E-mail authentication stymies forgery of e-mail messages and allows senders to build a positive reputation with receivers based on mailing behavior.

Now that you are ready to set up authentication records, you must first decide what protocol makes sense for you: SPF, SenderID or DomainKeys. You can find detailed information about each protocol—and the steps to set the records up—by using these free resources:

SPF: www.openspf.org/wizard.html
SenderID: www.microsoft.com/senderid
DomainKeys: http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

Once you have decided on a course of action and set your records up, it is imperative to test your authentication records to ensure they are working properly. SPF, SenderID and DomainKeys all provide options to publish your records in “test mode,” which allows you to test without risking delivery failures for mistakes in your record. Testing will ensure that the mail servers you’ve authorized are being verified by receivers and will determine if you’ve missed identifying any mail servers in your inventory.

Some testing options:

Return Path’s SPF-SenderID testing tool: senderid.returnpath.net
Port25’s Email Relay: check-auth@verifier.port25.com
Gmail: Send to a Gmail account, log in, view message and view the header. Look for the “Received-SPF:” line for the result of its SPF check on your e-mail.
DNSSTUFF: www.dnsstuff.com/pages/spf.htm
OpenSPF: www.openspf.org/why.html
Yahoo!: Send e-mail to a Yahoo! account to check DomainKeys signatures. Yahoo! will also indicate to the recipient when the signature is valid.
DomainKeys at Sourceforge: http://domainkeys.sourceforge.net (step by step instructions, a few testing e-mail addresses, etc.)

Source