Should you care?

Given the skyrocketing growth that’s happening, I think we know the answer is yes. However, it leaves an open question:
“Do you know if your audience is reading your emails on mobile devices?”
We all assume that they are, but many marketers have not even begun to test mobile clients, nor do they know what tools to use. In the end, they might not understand the basics that should be applied to all email campaigns.

Testing:
How can you tell which devices or email clients your subscribers are reading emails on? Well, there are four great ways to test:

1. The Ask: Why not take the simple route and present a survey to your audience at an opportune time. A good time to do this is when you put together your, I suggest quarterly, profile update/email preferences campaign. This is a good time to progressively profile. Add/subtract data points, email frequency preferences, and ask subscribers which email client they use, or if they read on mobile. This will help, but will not solve the situation completely. Many people out there read emails on both mobile and desktop email clients. However, it should give you some insight.

2. The Link: We see this quite often: A “View Mobile Version of this Email” at the top of the email (which most frequently used to be the “View as a Web Page” link). Run a report on use of this link in your emails to start finding user-defined, action-based data to roll into your strategy. This has holes in it as well, but is another way to test.

3. Email Litmus test: There’s some great software out there. You can use a feature in your existing ESP or email platform to get an almost perfect report on the email clients being used without asking. The company I like in this testing space is http://litmusapp.com. I have seen some reports from them that work well and it is one of the easiest systems to use.

4. The Holy Grail: Pivotal Veracity has recently launched a new tool that gives some of the most in depth testing we have ever seen. Not only will this solution give you the inbox client data, but it will also help you to build profiles on where they read email, which dates and times reads happen in each platform and more. This is the best solution on the market right now.

Now that you Know: Best Practices that work across traditional and mobile.

So now that you have the data, what should you know about best practices, from a mobile perspective, in your email campaigns?

1. Subject Line: If you are working on long subject lines and your subscribers are active mobile users, then your subject lines are most likely being truncated. So what is the value in a subject line that cannot be understood in its entirety? Not much. A good rule of thumb is keeping it short and simple so that the most important part of the subject line is easy to read, understand and process.

2. Sender ‘From’ Field: Do you really need to call yourself NAME.com? I look at so many brands that still focus on a From name with a dot com ending. Why? If we are getting an email from you should we not be connecting with the sender name and dropping the NAME.com? We are online and you are taking up space where you could be using those valuable characters for something that connects better.

3. Pre-headers: Some of you might still not be clear as to what an email pre-header is. Note everyone that uses a text header with the “Having trouble reading this email? View it as a web page (link).” That is a pre-header. Now in mobile that pre-header is often the first thing someone reads after the From name and Subject line. Would you really start out a conversation by highlighting the fact that there might be a problem with this email? Not the best idea here. Better yet you can use that same pre-header to focus on the main point of the email you sent. Think of things that reinforce: what is inside, the main benefit of opening and reading it, or the discount that they might get. This is a great chance for you to set expectations before they even read it. It will also work well in the regular inbox preview pane. Make this a new static element that you always implement as it will lift your success in all email clients.

4. Size: Yes size matters. Now not as much on every client (as iPhones tend to work better in displaying the email to fit the screen) but with other mobile clients that are not as good at this. Why run the risk if the majority of your audience is reading on mobile? Safe width in an email for mobile is currently seen between 500 to 550 pixels wide. Now personally, I love emails that go 650-700 pixels wide, but you might start testing yours on mobile clients or segmenting your lists for readers you know are on mobile in a skinnier format.

5. Logos and Images: Is your logo going to be seen on the mobile client? Will your images be the right size to load? Are you images formatted to have an ALT Tag behind them so that if images are suppressed or even the mobile connection is slow that they can read what needs to be there? I have seen many campaigns that, due to forces beyond control, render poorly due to images and often lack image alt tags. You should be tagging all images regardless, as you might already have subscribers that are suppressing images in their email client by choice or by default.

6. Text Versions: Don’t count on your email platform to always be smart enough to show the text version of an email, or know on which device the email is being read. We often see issues with Blackberry or Windows Mobile where marketers assume that the multipart email will suffice. If you are not preparing multiple formats, you can run the risk of your email marketing platform placing 3-6 scrolls of HTML code into your email that meaning nothing to your subscribers. What this means is that your actual message and content are shoved down lower and you risk losing them right there. Always make a text version ready to fill in where you don’t know or your email platform does not know.

The Next Steps:
So, you are an astute email marketer and have now tested your campaigns, followed the above best email marketing mobile practices, but are still missing the final step. What if they actually want to click from your email and read, react, buy, comment or engage? Are your landing pages or web site optimized for a good mobile experience? From the 1000’s of campaigns I have seen, I would wager over 90% of sites are not ready for this type of engagement. So what can you do?

You can build a mobile version of your site. Now typically, this doesn’t mean the entire site, but select important areas of your site that provide a path for easy mobile exploration. You can do this yourself by using software that helps you to structure a mobile site, or simply focus on building the landing pages that support a campaign. There is always code out there to support the detection of a mobile email client and redirect to a site experience that works. Here is one (if you are reading this email on your desktop it will come across odd) that we recently launched for a campaign built for mobile detection and experience. Try it on your mobile device if you want: http://touch.wacom.com/m/ – or you can see the site as it lives on the web at http://touch.wacom.com.  Either way, we are making sure that if mobile is a consideration that the thought has been placed ahead of the action.

Game On:
So to wrap this up, mobile is important. Not just to you, but to your customers. It is time that you start to test, measure and plan for mobile, leading with your email campaigns and following up with your websites. This change upon us is being driven by a rapid move in devices and consumer adoption. Will you be ready?

So you can imagine how impressed I was to get an email from him on this past 4th of July. It was a nice touch as I am not sure that I have ever/nor expected an email on our nations birthday, but it got me thinking a little about it and was it truly a message from him OR a marketing campaign moving the ball forward on his agenda.

Being an email marketer at heart I had to jump in a little deeper, not to analyze the messaging but the the technical aspects of the message itself. So being a slight email geek I cracked open the headers of the email to see deeper behind the curtain of this campaign. And what did I find, well you can see some of the things I highlighted in the image in this post, it was actually not what I expected but it validated my thoughts that made me curious. It seems that this email is truly not from the White House at all, but from the marketing arm that the campaign used called Blue State Digital. I can tell you that this was not truly a surprise when I found this but for some reason I expected a White House with all of the marketing power, a CIO, CTO and an army of technical elite to actually be in control of this platform.

WHAT? A PHP Mailer? Is that the most secure?

They use a PHP mailer was the first thing that struck me. I would have assumed that maybe they had taken the route to use one of the larger ESPs out there to help them with delivery and campaign management. Open Source at its best it seems mirrors the ideas behind this Presidency. Finding the tools that are open, flexible and allow the least cost to do the job. Not a horrible choice but an odd one I thought.

Would the President use my name IF he knows it?

They know my name, but continue to address me as “Friend”. Is personalization something that is beyond the data abilities of this effort, or is it much more Presidential to not call you by name but unify you as a collective of people moving towards the goal. Now the term friend is in line with how he addresses people in his speeches, but it seems in one to one email he might look to use some of the efforts that we all try. I state this as to me it leaves this communication impersonal. Not a big deal, but something to think about.

Leading by example? What about Domain Keys or other authentication?

No DomainKeys set up? Really? The President of the US does not have authentication set up in emails? I noticed a lack of that in the headers, but then went to some testing servers to make sure. Yep none to be found. Odd that they would not have that set up for messages as important as these from the man in charge.

I went to an outside 3rd party to check deeper, here is what they found:

“I searched through the auth results from a pretty large subset of our complaint and spamtrap data and could not find a single message from those IPs that got an actual pass on any form of email authentication. The most common domain was barackobama.com which appears to have an SPF record as does bluestatedigital.com but the most common result we saw was a neutral. There were also a bunch of temperror results which either means there was a parsing error or a dns problem when we checked. Since this sending IP

No message from any domain seemed to be signed with DKIM or DK.

The second most common domain was imahealthcarevoter.org which has no SPF record and for which I could not find a DKIM record.

The DKIM results are nonexistent but there is some oddity with the SPF/sender id results. The envelope domain is bounce.bluestatedigital.com which has no spf record. Looking back through historical data barackobama.com seems to have passed Sender ID in the past, and these IPs currently pass but would nto be flagged as passing my MS. They only pass due to the PTR entry in bluestatedigital.com’s SPF record which Microsoft ignores.

Looking back historically it doesn’t look like the record has changed in the last 90 days.

So my overall assessment would be, for barackobama.com specifically, they have a functional though not ideal SPF/ SID set up. Their Sender ID record is technically accurate but would not pass Hotmail’s stricter requirements. The envelope domain has no SPF record so that would also not pass.

No mail sent from these IPs appears to be signed with DKIM.

Overall, clearly attempting to do authentication but could use some help.”

In Closing:

Now I appreciate that they are continuing to use email to communicate with everyone that has opted in, but I am surprised that it is being run by a political marketing company and they are not taking the high route. On a good note, at least many of us out there are doing so. Maybe we can lead by example and they might follow.

Why you might ask? Well it matters. With whitelists, adding to your address book, and many companies and individuals setting delivery rules around emails they get why would you not tell them.

Take a look at this example of how clear and simple they make it. They let you know the what, why, and how their subscribers need to know in order to help them continue to get the emails. Not only is it clear but they also provide a list of links to each email client in order to make this as educational and easy as it can be. Something you might want to steal if you need to do this for your own campaigns.

Now as great as it is, I did notice I few things I would recommend that they (or you) change to emails like this.

First off is to use the Pre-header of the email to drive the importance of this email home for those that might get this on a mobile client like an iPhone, Palm Pre, or Blackberry. Using “Having Trouble reading this? View in a browser.” is not the first thing I would want anyone to see. This old school message is immediately promoting that there might be an issue when there is not. Plus you could use that real estate so much better for your goals of the campaign.

The second point is to not suggest unsubscribing as the action at the footer, but instead ask them to update their preferences or information with you. Telling them to jump ship is not the most proactive step in maintaining your reach. Instead use it as a proactive progressive profiling or email frequency management step to allow them to tell you more or give them options to change how often or what they are getting from you.

The third point is that this is not a campaign but a transactional/account message. So although they are not trying to drive sales, page views or a visit, they do have an opportunity to use this email to feature an option for some type of revenue goal. I would think as a publisher they could use it to reward or offer a tie into extending, renewing or getting a print subscription to their magazine. As long as it was not interfering with the account status/change in delivery email in a tasteful way it would be a good opportunity to engage with a subscriber.

As a whole I am a big fan of this type of email even if it is not driving immediate revenue to your email marketing programs.

Think about how often you are making sure to let people know how they can not only help your deliverability but what they can do to make sure that they are not hunting for your emails in the junk folder.

Let me put some scenarios on the table to give you some real world examples of challenges I have been facing in some recent work with a retailer.

1. Your customer opts in from your site. First time here and they subscribe to your newsletter. They want to simply get your newsletter about alerts and deals. Easy and done.

2. They buy some merchandise from you and at the checkout, since you had the box checked (bad idea) they opted in again to your newsletter through your store. Simple enough as I am sure you would not duplicate the opt in as you already have that record and relationship in place. Or do you. Best idea here is to flag the change in record date and location of subscription again OR at least have a data point in your subscriber record to reflect this secondary opt in. Also at risk here depending on how you have your welcome stream set up is triggering: another double opt in message, not letting them know that they are already subscribed and maybe pointing them in another direction for something else to subscribe to (hey maybe a customer communications preference center?), or making sure that you do not start your welcome or email customer lifecycle string again and quickly make yourself look foolish. Okay easy to handle.

3. They come to your store and your clerk asks them for their email address (that I assume you just want to append the customer record in your CRM to the merchandise that they purchased and the location) that you add to your file. Hope you remember the examples I gave in the 2nd one above as all of those could happen again here.

4. They are on their mobile device and text in to subscribe to something you are doing for a mobile contest. Ready, the shampoo effect here of lather, rinse, repeat of the examples above.

OK here is the kicker. What happens in between any of these steps when they opt out and then proceed to any one of the examples later? Are you welcoming them back? Do you know? Do you have a new string of a re-welcome email or do you just turn a blind eye to it as you were not prepared for this and don’t have programs in place to think about this?

Do you care?

What throws all of this for a loop and can cause so many issues are that there are 15 other scenarios I have played with from partners, contests, product registration etc that can really make things ugly.

Where does opt in start and end and then begin again? AND do you have your systems set up to handle this?

Many of the clients that I have worked with have not thought about any of this and stare blankly at me when I walk through the big list that I have accumulated from real world projects i have worked on over the past years. I can tell you that it can be a data nightmare and an even bigger nightmare for the customer or you if you are dealing with a spam complaint from any ISP.

These are the things that keep me up and night thinking about how silos keep us all from having one hell of a job that most normal people not in this space ever confront, realize of can comprehend.

Time to audit your own programs, make a flow chart, hell draw it on a piece os scrap paper or a white board and see just how many places you are set up to not deliver the right program. It might shock you to find all of this out.

But look, I have been there as have many 1000s of other people and you can work through it. Knowing about it is the first step in making a plan. Good luck.

Well welcome to the couch. I will let you know that it is ok. You will be fine. Your campaigns will perform better. You will not be fired.

But is there a better way to approach this as no one really (no matter what they say) is comfortable with the cleansing of a subscriber list. Sure there is. Here is how I might suggest you approach it.

First: Build your Campaign. Focus on two segments to test. I would push you to the win back campaign to get them reengaged. While taking the other approach of letting them know clearly that they can manage their profile or preferences (if you have a preference center) to find things that are more relevant to them. Maybe they only want to hear form you less and you have been pounding them outside of their engagement cycle.

Second: Segment your lists. Build your lists based on performance attributes that you deem to be the make up of someone to break up with. Maybe it is not read (try a different subject line here). Or it could be a read but no click. Your call as they are your lists. You know best, not me.

Third: Test. Test. Test. Try some different approaches to engage with these people. Try text only emails. Try to save the relationship.

Fourth: You have the results, but still don’t want to delete them from your life. Fine. Segment those people out into a seperate list and work on reengaging them on key times, sales, launches, etc. Get them when you are hot.

It is alot like dating. Think about it that way. You win some, you lose some. But those that love you might come back later.

Do you have any good ways you have done this to share?

You have the copy.

You have the creative.

Everything is done and you have an email marketing program/campaign that you are ready to get out the door. Check, Check, Check. But what happens when it leaves your location and enters into email inboxes around the globe? Well you could get on your knees, pray to the gods of the WWW that all will be well, OR you can continue to go blind into battle hoping that you do not get flanked by image or HTML rendering along the way, the device or the inbox. IMHO both of those methods are not aligned to produce the best results.

So what if you had the ability to know before hand what you need to do to have your hard work pay off when it arrives? Do you know that you can see this before you send it? At eROI we always test our emails for delivery and rendering with projects that we work on. So why doesn’t everyone else?

Maybe it is costs, but there is very little cost to test an email. Maybe it is time, well if you don’t have the time then maybe you should move to HR or Building Maintenance. It is typically just not having a provider, partner or solution to use. If you work with us, you have it all.

I have added an example of our latest email newsletter to show you what we see before it goes out the door which allows us to make design or coding changes to give this campaign the best possible chance of working. Testing is the norm and if you are not testing you are fighting battles at half speed.

Let us know if you would like to run some tests to gauge inbox rendering performance and be in a position to share with your team, agency, execs what needs to be done. We will help you build a case in 24 hours or less.

This is most likely the work or an over zealous designer with little knowledge of email marketing that is only focused on the LOOK of the email and not the purpose or function of email marketing. With so many resources on the interweb why can’t brands start to be smarter or just hire people that have their best interests at heart? 

Design is just the start of the battle in order to win the hearts and minds of your subscribers and customers. If you have a designer on your team that continues to create your emails like this example, please walk over to their inbox, go into the settings, and turn off all images in their system. Then have them test send the email to their own inbox. Sit back and watch the look of horror on their face when their work arrives empty. That might help them to see the light in email design. Then ask them to show you what they want to buy in that email. You can then explain to them that this could be the experience that your customers will have with this email. 

As a final point, show them a blank check. Now this is not to allow them to write what they want to be paid, but help them understand that unless the emails they design work, then this is the type of payment they will be getting when you do not make a sale. 

Lesson over.

Now first before I talk to the downside I cannot remember the last time that I really had to use my laptop when I did not have an internet connection. Well maybe on an airplane in mid air, but then again I am not sure why I would be using my gmail account to do business in mid air? 

But the impact is there in the realm of email marketing. What impact this could have would be that your reporting could be diluted with opens and clicks if your subscribers are reading offline and decided to click, and then they would go nowhere as they would not have a connection. So in the end maybe only read rates and click rates COULD be impacted, but I would assume that this offline idea truly only benefits those that use it as a main email client and would not really impact campaigns as they would need to wait for a connection until they could click, delete or unsubscribe from an email. 

Great idea, but not much impact to many of us.

With people concerned about the opt in and giving away the information to parties that they deem important enough to want to get content, alerts, studies, beta invites, etc from why would we want them to be able to decide when to kill a relationship except by using a valid opt out system? To me this is only going to pollute the database integrity of email marketers world wide and in the end dilute the ISP/Email reputation that most of us work so hard each and everyday to move forward.

Will services like these create a larger challenge to deliverability? Will we see higher bounce rates? If so this is going to force most marketers to work harder on list hygiene and targeting campaigns based on actual behavior and not data at the relationship opt in. Well maybe this could also be a good thing from that point of view of forcing email marketers to have real time data integrity and to constantly be updating and cleaning their lists. 

Does anyone think that there is going to be a way to set up domain filtering against these systems to possibly not allow their use in the opt in? I know that some folks that read this will believe that they should not have to give away information and an email address to take information or join something. Well to them I say get off the public internet and go back to the old Darpa systems. This is not embracing the way that companies, brands, and emerging technologies are working so hard to clean up their acts, use better frequency measurements, and even build better preference centers. Look you can always opt out, why is this not good enough? (waiting for 2-3 readers I know with strong opinions to chime in any time now)

I would say if this is the direction that the consumer web wants to grow, let’s collectively take this in the right direction with a relationship (being a two way street) and look at using OpenID instead. We love the direction of OpenID to allow people to share the profile and information they want with a site, brand, opt in form etc. I would actually tell you to take a look at some folks we love at Vidoop to see how this works. Microsoft Health Vault has decided that this is the way to go for authentication, trust and data/user protection as well as many financial services and entertainment companies. Maybe this is what we should all as email marketers be looking at as well. 

Your Thoughts?