Bronto Blog

It was a lovely morning (8AM) in Durham, NC as Kimberly and I rendezvoused in the friendly confines of our local Starbucks Barista. Kimberly was sipping on a tall peppermint mocha; I was working my standard “medium” (I refuse to call it Grande) coffee. As we began brainstorming this month’s topic for BrontoFire, Kimberly suddenly shouted out, “Don’t Hide That Unsubscribe.” After I cleaned up the coffee I spit out in a fit of laughter, I told Kimberly: “Great idea. Let’s roll.”

Below is a recap of the 45-minute conversation that ensued. We reviewed some of the big boys - Barnes & Noble, Big Lots, Costco, Reebok, TurboTax (Intuit). Enjoy.

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Barnes & Noble

DJ - I like how they have a bolded section, “How to unsubscribe.” However, why do I need to log in to my account in order to change my preferences?

Kimberly - Furthermore, DJ, I really don’t like the fact that I have to follow detailed instructions on how to manage my preferences. Don’t make me work so hard.

Big Lots

Kimberly - I like the phrase “we will promptly remove you from our list.” They are clearly telling me what they will do and then are doing it. I believe and trust them more because of this statement. To boot, I really like the fact that they list my favorite store and allow me to update it very quickly.

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In the final post in a 3-part series (see first and second) written by our partners at Return Path, Dan Deneweth continues the discussion on issues affecting email deliverability. Want more deliverability information? You can check out their blog, the Email Marketing Water Cooler and sign up for real-time alerts when new content is published.

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Spammers have negatively influenced email in lots of ways, with one of the most visible being the need for image suppression. There is no question that the average consumer prefers pretty, graphically-enhanced email over the boring, plain text versions. But there is also no question that the average consumer prefers that pictures with “adult” themes don’t accidentally pop up while at the office or in front of impressionable kids. The ISPs have combated this problem by suppressing graphics — essentially treating all images as potentially problematic. (Thank you, Mr. Spam.) Despite how widespread this practice has become, few marketers really think about how image suppression affects their email program. They should. Why? Four reasons:

1. Image suppression messes up your tracking: Open rates are calculated when an invisible graphic pings your servers. No graphic, no ping, no open. Data from DoubleClick and others suggests that an overall decline in open rates is due to the rise in image suppression. Knowing this when analyzing your data is important.
2. Image suppression can make your email unreadable: Depending on how your email is designed, your message without images might look very bad or it might be completely unintelligible. Through the design process consider what the email will look like without graphics. You may not be able to make it look great, but you can at least make it readable.
3. Image suppression limits your response rates: When someone can’t see your email, or read your email, they are less likely to interact with it. How much money do you leave on the table because your best offer is in a graphic that doesn’t display?
4. Image suppression can hurt deliverability: When subscribers don’t recognize an email because images are blocked, they may inadvertently mark it as spam. Also, the lack of responses (reason #3) and tracking (reason #2) can lead to poor marketing decisions, hurting the relevance and value of your program.

Our recommendation is to design for life without images. You can design a very attractive HTML message with no images at all. Most importantly, don’t use images in place of text. Instead, think of images as the spice in your message – a little bit goes a long way. It’s also crucial to use a safety link at the top of your message include hyperlinked copy that says, “Can’t read this email? Click here to view in your browser.”

Spend a little time on your email design and you can create great messages that will be readable in a variety of environments.

Dan Deneweth, Sr. Director, Sender Score Product Management, Return Path

In the second of three posts (see first) written by our partners at Return Path, Stephanie Miller discusses issues affecting email deliverability. Want more deliverability information? You can check out their blog, the Email Marketing Water Cooler and sign up for real-time alerts when new content is published.

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In our previous post, we explained what sender reputation is. By far the biggest factor that affects your sender reputation is complaints. While there are a number of issues that can cause subscribers to complain, a big one is lack of relevance. In other words, your email is not seen as valuable and it’s very tempting to just hit “this is spam” and make it go away.How do you make your email relevant to your subscribers? Focus on them. How can your email make them thinner, richer, happier, more successful? How can you make their life easier? How does your email help them?

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The goal of the Bronto Blog is to provide new and innovative “email marketing insights.” In order to solidify that these tactics and techniques actually work, we’ll occasionally write a blog post about how our customers have found success using our advice.

In February, DJ Waldow brought the underutilized preheader/snippet text to the fore-front, showing how this small piece of real estate can actually be one of the most valuable spaces in your entire email.

One of Bronto’s clients, Blooms Today, began using preheaders in November, 2007, shortly after our post in October 2007. Since changing their preheader from the standard “If you are having trouble viewing this message” to “What are you waiting for? View our collection of fresh flowers,” Blooms Today increased their above the fold click-throughs significantly. See an example of how their preheader is visible via preview mode in Gmail:

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This is the first in a series of three posts written by our partners at Return Path on issues affecting email deliverability. Want more deliverability information? You can check out their blog, the Email Marketing Water Cooler and sign up for real-time alerts when new content is published.

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JupiterResearch recently released a report on email service providers that found that marketers are focused on deliverability when choosing a vendor. While it’s important to work with a top-quality vendor that has the infrastructure in place to get email through to the inbox, most of the reason your email gets blocked is based on reputation factors that are completely outside the control of ESPs.

There are 5 factors that make up your sender reputation:

1. Complaints: Your complaint rate is the most important element of your sending reputation. ISPs collect complaints in a number of ways, the most well known is the “this is spam” button. But email recipients can also complain by writing to their ISP directly (e.g., abuse@yahoo.com) or by using a third-party service like SpamCop.
2. Unknown User Rate: Sending large volumes of undeliverable email into a system suggests that you might be “guessing” at email addresses in an attempt to spam or that you have poor list management practices. Either way it’s a red flag to ISPs. Read the rest of this entry »