Bronto Blog

Last week, Christine of the “Official AOL Postmaster Blog” posted a new entry titled, IP Reputation, the Whitelist and Inbox Delivery at AOL. I did not find anything that was earth-shattering, but the Q&A formatted article provides some real insight into how one of the major ISPs thinks about reputation and deliverability. Below is what I believe are the 3 most important takeaways (check out full post on the AOL postmaster site):

1. What is IP reputation? - “…reputation is a holistic view of your IP and takes into account a wide variety of factors including — but not limited to — spam complaints, ‘not spam’ reports, spam folder deliveries, and invalid recipients.”

2. How does IP reputation impact inbox delivery? - “In short, IPs with a good reputation will benefit from better inbox delivery than IPs with a bad reputation. Moreover, IPs with a bad reputation will be subject to more temp deferrals, temp blocks, and permanent IP blocks.”

3. How can I improve my IP’s reputation? - “The trick to a good IP reputation is to send mail to people who want it. AOL has put together a list of best practices to help senders ensure they are doing just this.”

Yahoo! and MSN/Hotmail have their own versions of the sender/delivery best practices:

• Yahoo! - What are some best practices when sending to Yahoo! Mail? As a sender, what can I do to ensure that my email goes to the right folder? General Postmaster help.
• MSN/Hotmail - Postmaster Services

The bottom line from all ISPs is quite simple: Send email that is timely, targeted, and relevant to those subscribers that have asked for it.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto

As with many conversations these past few months, it started with a simple tweet by @chadswhite (aka, Chad White of eec and Retail Email Blog fame). Chad and the eec started a new Facebook group called, “I know how to spell email.” According to the page description, this group was created to, “help convince publishers and the dictionary holdouts that they’re behind the times with their hyphenated spelling. Email has evolved from its “electronic mail” roots, and so has the spelling.” As of this writing, the group already claims over 60 members! (nudge: Join Now).

Chad’s post created a mini-buzz / debate around Bronto (see below):

I will not attempt to recreate the great conversation on this blog that is currently happening within the Facebook Group. I think where I stand is clear (hint: I joined “I know how to spell email” group). My recommendation?

1. Go to Facebook Group
2. Join
3. Start a discussion
4. Write on the wall
5. Connect with others
6. Debate, discuss, get involved

What are you waiting for?

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto

I know that I tend to very (overly?) critical of email marketing campaigns. Can you really blame me, though? It is my job.

But…every so often, I get an email that rocks my world. An email that nails it. An email that practices what all of us crazy, passionate email marketers (you know who you are) preach.

Buckle up.

Sidestep emailed me on October 21st to tell me that they were breaking off our email relationship. As you can see with the 2 screenshots of the email below - images off (left), images on (right), they got it right on many levels.

Read the rest of this entry »

Almost a year ago, I blogged about Bacn - “email that you want, just not right now.”  The determination of whether or not something is considered bacn is made at the individual (user/consumer/subscriber) level. The consumer chooses to delete, ignore, or mark that “irrelevant” email as spam.

However, often an email can land in the junk folder without the individual doing anything at all. As marketers, this can be very frustrating. Sometimes marketers send out “the perfect email” and it still lands in the bulk folder. Recently, a Bronto Blog subscriber posted an “Ask the Expert” question (abridged version below):

“I have just coded my first HTML email…but when I tested it on Outlook 2007 on a computer in my office, it went straight to the junk folder, stripped to plain text, etc…I read somewhere that if there are links to too many different URL’s it can be interpreted as spam. How many is too many? What other filter criteria might be affecting my email? I was careful not to include “spammy” language.”

That brings us to the $1,000,000 question:

Why do “good” emails sometimes get marked as “bad?” Read the rest of this entry »

I received an email this morning from a colleague in which he responded to an email campaign with a simple question:

“How did this campaign perform?”

It got me thinking. What are the components that determine success/failure of an email campaign. So, on my bike ride to work this morning, I began listing the reasons in my head.

Top 4 Reasons Why Your Email Failed (in order):

1. List and/or Segment: This is the single most critical criteria for success. If you have not set proper expectations for your subscribers (content, frequency, offer), they are less likely to respond. If you have not sent a Welcome Message immediately or missed out on proper segmentation…fail.
   
2. From Name and Subject Line: We’ve preached the importance of this one in a past BrontoFire on From Names and the first taping - in one take - of Subject Lines (as you can see, we’ve come a long way with BrontoFire). These two components are the first things that the consumer sees. If they don’t recognize who you are (From Name) or care about what your email is about (Subject Line), they are less likely to open. Fail.
3. Content / Copy: It has to be relevant to the subscriber (see #1), viewable with images on and off, and have a clear and compelling call-to-action. Otherwise, why do I care? Fail.
4. Landing Page: So, you have the “right” list/segment, a recognizable From Name, a compelling Subject Line, content/copy that is relevant, a clear call-to-action, but…when I click on that call-to-action I’m taken to a landing page that is meaningless. This may mean that the offer is overpriced, the product/service is not what I expected, the landing page is not related to the email (homepage). Fail.

DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto