Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket
Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket Essential Guide to E-mail Marketing - Haymarket
So, you’ve been executing email campaigns for a while now and thankfully no longer require major hand holding from your “full-service” ESP Move over to Puresend: a savvy, self-service+ email service provider offering high performance, distributed services, equipped to handle your medium and large campaign deployments robust domain level reporting powerful multivariate testing extensive data capture message creation via URL pull simple and cost effective ASP deployment dedicated sending environments custom user confi gurations, e.g., throttles extensive bounce heuristics agency solutions highly scalable integration via web services and custom APIs professional services, if you still desire Hey, with our cost effective, self-service+ model, you may fi nally have room in your budget to implement those best practices you know will solidify your programs. We recognize that it’s scary to shift providers or outsource. That’s why we offer turnkey trials to qualifying marketers, allowing you to test a subset of your marketing program, before committing. Providing reliable and powerful delivery solutions to the email marketing community since 2001 inquiry@pursend.com • 646-862-5210 • www.puresend.com PARTNERS AND AFFILIATIONS
30 INFRASTRUCTURE DM News • E-Mail Marketing Guide 2007 Keep your e-mail safe from legal challenges BY ZAFAR KHAN If your company does business transactions via e-mail, you’ll need to be sure that business-critical messages are treated, well, critically. While most e-mail users are not concerned about the electronic record they have created, it can serve as a critically important defense for business transitions, if properly managed. Businesses must consider anti-spam laws, e-discovery rulings, storage and retention of e-mails. Proof of e-mails for business transactions are a must have, and companies are investing billions of dollars to protect themselves. Analysts at the Radicati Group estimate that the e-mail archiving market will hit $6 billion in 2010. The good news is e-mail technology is catching up with the evolving regulatory and business landscape. A case in point is Great Lakes List Management, an Erie, PA-based provider of data for direct marketers, and an RPost client. Because Great Lakes’ business model involves multiple companies — including direct customers and list brokers — it experiences a sizeable time lag between delivering services and getting paid for them. By sending business files with a registered e-mail service, Great Lakes receives a detailed electronic audit trail that proves precisely what e-mail content and attachments were sent and received, by whom and when. Armed with this information, the company can ensure it gets paid for services rendered without hassle, and has the necessary backup to demonstrate compliance with regulated/required disclosures, such as privacy notices. For companies that operate their business using e-mail, legal protection is even more critical. Provisions of electronic law and recent court decisions underscore the fact that electronic business systems require proper transaction documentation, and a reliable recordkeeping management system. Here are a few ways you can ensure your business is safe from legal challenges: ■ Send business-critical e-mails Zafar Khan with legal proof of delivery and RPost content. ■ Archive your e-mails in a solution that’s easy to retrieve. ■ Prevent e-mail manipulation on the receiving end with encryption tools. ■ Don’t save every single e-mail, just the business-critical ones. Many e-mail service providers aim to ensure deliverability and legally protect their e-mail users with value-added services, such as proof of delivery and content with registered e-mail, e-contracting tools, encryption, meta data cleaning and e-mail archiving capabilities. Take advantage of the technology that is out there to cost effectively and proactively protect yourself. Zafar Khan is CEO and founder of RPost. You can reach him at zkhan@rpost.com. ESSENTIAL GUIDE Questions and answers about sending reputation BY GEORGE BILBREY Astudy by Return Path indicates that more than 80 percent of delivery problems are caused by reputation. But there is still confusion as to what reputation is, where the data comes from and how to manage your reputation for better deliverability. Below are three common questions that marketers ask about reputation. 1. What is a sender reputation and how do ISPs and other e-mail receivers monitor it? Your sending reputation is made up of a variety of factors, primarily complaint rates, unknown user rates, spam trap hits, infrastructure issues and sending stability. Spammers tend to do badly on these measures. Your job is to not George Bilbrey look like a spammer by perform- Return Path’s Sender Score ing well on these measures. Every major receiver has a slightly different way of determining and measuring reputation. They begin with their own data — what they see on their network. Some ISPs also use proprietary reputation data aggregators to see how a sender behaves with other receivers. 2. How can I manage my e-mail reputation to ensure high deliverability? It really comes down to the top five factors that are most likely to get you blocked. These are: ■ Complaint rate: Isolating why your subscribers complain about you is crucial to bringing this number down. We find the following factors to be the most common: Weak or no permission; content that isn’t valuable or relevant; too high or low frequency; and subscribers’ inability to recognize the e-mail. ■ Unknown user rate: If you have a high unknown user rate you need to review your bounce processing rules and make sure you are removing “unknown user” hard bounces after two attempts. ■ Spam trap hits: You can see if you are hitting some spam traps through Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services. Unfortunately, while this and other publicly available tools can tell you if you have spam traps, there isn’t any way to identify which e-mail addresses they are. Instead, you need to isolate the parts of your list most likely to harbor spam traps and suppress those parts of the list. ■ Infrastructure: There are specific ways that ISPs like to see a mailing system set up in order to have some confidence that the e-mail is legitimate. If you use a reputable e-mail service provider, you shouldn’t have infrastructure issues. If you are sending your own messages, you should consider reaching out to a deliverability expert. ■ Sending stability: Once you have established a good reputation for an IP address, don’t move to a new server. 3. How can I determine my reputation? There are a number of public sources of reputation data. These include Microsoft’s SNDS, DNSStuff, CipherTrust’s TrustedSource, Ironport’s Senderbase, and Return Path’s Sender Score. George Bilbrey is vice president and general manager of Return Path’s Sender Score. You can reach him at george.bilbrey@returnpath.net.
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So, you’ve been executing e<strong>mail</strong> campaigns<br />
for a while now and thankfully no longer<br />
require major hand holding from your<br />
“full-service” ESP<br />
Move over <strong>to</strong> Puresend: a savvy, self-service+ e<strong>mail</strong><br />
service provider offering high performance, distributed<br />
services, equipped <strong>to</strong> handle your medium and large<br />
campaign deployments<br />
robust domain level reporting<br />
powerful multivariate testing<br />
extensive data capture<br />
message creation via URL pull<br />
simple and cost effective ASP deployment<br />
dedicated sending environments<br />
cus<strong>to</strong>m user confi gurations, e.g., throttles<br />
extensive bounce heuristics<br />
agency solutions<br />
highly scalable<br />
integration via web services and cus<strong>to</strong>m APIs<br />
professional services, if you still desire<br />
Hey, with our cost effective, self-service+<br />
model, you may fi nally have room in your<br />
budget <strong>to</strong> implement those best practices you<br />
know will solidify your programs.<br />
We recognize that it’s scary <strong>to</strong> shift providers or<br />
outsource. That’s why we offer turnkey trials <strong>to</strong><br />
qualifying marketers, allowing you <strong>to</strong> test a subset<br />
of your marketing program, before committing.<br />
Providing reliable and powerful delivery solutions<br />
<strong>to</strong> the e<strong>mail</strong> marketing community since 2001<br />
inquiry@pursend.com • 646-862-5210 • www.puresend.com<br />
PARTNERS AND AFFILIATIONS
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