Bronto Blog

I was recently told that I’ve been on a “car kick” these past few weeks. It all started with my EEC post on June 13th, “Enterprise: Great Intent, Poor Execution” where I discussed how Enterprise sent me a confirmation email (good) but then continued to send me emails even though I didn’t confirm (bad).

Today’s post will continue down the automobile comparison road as it relates to the taboo subject of…list rental.

At this summer’s Email Insider Summit, I sat at a breakout session where marketers were debating 3rd party list rental. Suffice to say, the discussion got quite heated. Seems like you are either on one side of the fence or the other…not much room in the middle. If you’re in good company, list rental is just as dangerous a topic as religion or politics (”the things we don’t talk about”). Later that evening, I sat at dinner between a friend of mine from another ESP and a gentleman whose company provides email appends and list rentals. Emotions flew back and forth for over 30 minutes.

Why is the topic of list rental so controversial? But first…

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the FTC approved several new rule provisions under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Read the press release or download the full article (PDF). If you don’t have time to sort through the comments and legalese, below is a brief overview.

These new provisions were included largely to clarify the meanings of and intents of existing rules, so not too much has changed. There were a few clarifications that dealt more with the technicalities of the Act; however, there are two main changes to concentrate on. One of the biggest additions was an augmentation to ensure that subscribers could easily remove themselves from your list, which we’ve paraphrased here:

“…an e-mail recipient cannot be required to…take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message..

This means even more diligence is required when managing replies. You, as the sender, must include a valid reply-to address and read/respond to replies often. Also, avoid reply-to’s such as “donotreply@” or “noreply@”. It is essential to honor unsubscribe requests when subscribers ask to be removed via replying to your email. Additionally, avoid the dreaded “DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.” For more details, read the BrontoFire episode, “Don’t Hide That Unsubscribe” (look under the TurboTax section).

Read the rest of this entry »

The post Email Address Shelf Life generated several interesting comments. One in particular struck me as worthy of responding with a new post. Linda Bustos, a reader and fellow blogger asked:

Would staggering the deployment or “blast” help? Could you segment out the different subscriber types you described? (ie send the first batch to the most recent time lags, then send to the next time group etc)?

After the hair on my arms returned to its normal, dormant state (the word “blast” makes me cringe), I thought about Linda’s question. My gut response was, “Sure. That would be a reasonable strategy.” In fact, I’ve worked with clients in the past helping them implement this approach. I have always cautioned clients that “you must be very careful with this strategy.” The key is sending to small segments - very targeted - and being diligent about tracking the key metrics. When your open rates, click-throughs, and conversions begin to slip while complaints, unsubscribes, and hard bounces rise…it’s time to call it quits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Email authentication is an attempt to prove that the person in the from address is who they claim to be. It’s not a guarantee of deliverability in any way, it just ensures you are really you. So if email authentication is not going to ensure your message is delivered, then why bother?

Let’s look at it like a license plate on your car. You should have one on your car when you drive, it’s a good practice. Now, it doesn’t provide a 100% assurance that you should be allowed to drive, but it’s a good start. If a cop sees you driving down the road without a license plate they will pull you over for sure. You may be authorized to drive, but they are going to look at you at lot more closely. So you should have a license plate no matter what, even if you are a law abiding driver.

If you were speeding, you wouldn’t expect a license plate to get you out of a ticket, would you? It just proves that you were the one speeding, and not some one else.

Both of these scenarios translate over to sender authentication. You should be using authentication as it can help to show that you are attempting to be a law-abiding email marketer. But if you are sending out bad emails then you can’t expect authentication to get your emails into the inbox.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

---

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