MindComet

Outlook 2010 - The Inevitable Letdown

Apparently the fixoutlook.org campaign was “too little, too late”. When the campaign hit it’s stride and Microsoft took notice, they had unfortunately already begun developing the next version of Outlook: Outlook 2010. And with the development of their new email client comes the same glaring issue all email marketers find so abhorrent: using the Word engine to display their emails.

Dave Grenier from CampaignMonitor has been pivotal in putting this on Microsoft’s radar in the first place. He’s had direct correspondence with Microsoft’s development team for some time now and reported the following from them:

“At this point, our plans for email authoring and rendering in Outlook 2010 are unchanged. However, I can tell you that this is a significant topic of discussion as we plan our business going forward, and something we will definitely be thinking about for future releases of Outlook.“

The highly-regarded testing service, Litmus, had access to test the Beta version of Outlook 2010 and have posted their results here. Needless to say, they’re not surprising and are more or less in-line with what we’ve come to expect from Outlook.

So hopefully by 2013, Microsoft will release another email client—this time using a significantly better rendering engine thus allowing for elements such as background images to render correctly… Emphasis on “hopefully”.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 30, 2010

Why Even Good Senders Get Blocked

Now I have to be honest, most webinars I attend don’t really provide a whole lot of value. Most of them barely skim the surface of what they’re advertising the topic to be. All in all, they are a means for the company to simply promote themselves and sell their services. What I’m trying to get at is that the emphasis is on the company, not the topic when in reality it should be reversed, dontchathink?

So when I attended the “Why Even Good Senders Get Blocked” webinar hosted by Silverpop late last week, I was slightly skeptical. Luckily, Silverpop did not fall into the same pitfalls many webinar-hosts succumb to and delivered a highly informative and useful webinar detailing many points I want to share with you here.

RELEVANCE::
So first off, the entire webinar revolved around the theme of RELEVANCE and I can’t stress that word enough. If you’re not delivering RELEVANT content to your subscribers, they’re going to mark you as SPAM. If there’s a relationship gap between the marketer and the subscriber, all of the best practices in the world won’t help you if the subscriber thinks you’re simply abusing the relationship. You also need to give your users a means to stay active and involved. Give them some incentive every once in a while to keep them on board with your brand.

ENGAGEMENT METRICS::
There are many aspects ISPs look at when determining if a sender is blacklist-worthy. These include:

- tracking time the email stays in the inbox before deleted
( assuming the longer is stays in the inbox, the better for the sender reputation )

- marked as “not spam” data
( I brought this up about a year ago wondering if ISPs also take into account emails that land into the junk box which users flag “Not Spam”, which they definitely do )

- panel data
( I may be wrong about this, but from what I gathered, panel data is asking a sample of their users take a poll which determines what the ISP should and should not be considering SPAM )

- mail sent to inactive accounts
( self explanatory )

- users for feedback and data
( again, the users of every email provider such as AOL and Gmail are the ones who determine whether or not your emails will be delivered in the future. be as transparent, honest and relevant with your subscribers as possible. )

QDOBA::
Next they showed an example of an email sent out by the mediocre burrito chain Qdoba.

Their burritos may be bland—and so is this email—but it’s for a good reason. This is actually a pretty clever email. It’s subtle. It’s not your standard marketing message with loud, abrasive imagery. It’s just text and it’s tone acts like it’s coming from a snotty co-worker-guy. But the problem is that it simply doesn’t appear to be coming from Qdoba. It’s disengaging and actually does look like SPAM, but it wouldn’t really work any other way. So can you tell why the recipients may have been confused and marked the email as SPAM?

Basically, you can’t get around identifying yourself to your subscribers. If you don’t prove you are who you are clearly, you will be marked as SPAM, which may lead to blacklisting all over the place. It’s too bad, too. I liked where they were going with the intention of this email.

SEGMENTATION::
This also touches on the fact that sending relevant messages to your subscribers will work out in spades.

Marketers have reportedly experienced a 22% higher open rate for segmented campaigns and click rates twice as high opposed to non-segmeneted campaigns. Get as much personal data on your subscribers as possible and use it to your (and their) advantage!

FREQUENCY::
There has to be a sensible balance and cadence to your sends.
A) don’t over send - if you berate your subscribers with too many emails you’ll ultimately end up annoying them to the point of unsubscribing or marking you as SPAM. limit each subscriber to no more than 3 emails a month, spreading each delivery to 10 days.
B) don’t send too infrequently - you have to stay fresh enough in your subscriber’s mind when it comes to their inbox. If your email appears to be from Random Brand X in the mind of the user, you better believe they are going to mark you as SPAM. I’d imagine one email every 2-3 months just touching base will do you more good than once a year.

ESPs::
Any ESP worth your money should have a deliverability team on hand constantly working for you to ensure you are whitelisted and your reputation is maintained. If this is not included in your monthly invoices, find a new ESP which offers this service. Word.

FINAL THOUGHTS::
I think this screenshot of a slide from the presentation sums up everything about this webinar. If you apply these 7 aspects of engagement to your email marketing campaigns, you should have a much easier time with your deliverability, open and click through rates.
Thank you to Silverpop for delivering such a compelling, informative and topical webinar. I only hope all webinars were as good as this. Much appreesh.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 23, 2010

Top o’ the Mornin’ to Ya! A St. Patty’s Day Email Recap

It’s one day after St. Patty’s Day and I accomplished everything I wanted to yesterday:

So since my liver-recovery is in full swing, I figured it’d be a great time to review some exceptional St. Patty’s Day-oriented emails. But instead of waxing poetic about why I liked each one, I’m simply going to post the screenshots of the impressive emails. There are four total. Find the below:

Simple:

Season’s 52:

Bare Escentuals:

Paul Frank:

Did you receive any awesome St. Patty’s Day emails? If so, don’t hesitate to comment!

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 18, 2010

Must Subscribe: Moosejaw, Threadless & Swell

Threadless:

Seemingly influenced by Tim & Eric, this is an obnoxious, tacky and hilarious email and I love it so. Comic sans? check. Hot pink background? you got it. Eye-catching? you bet. Well done.

Sign up for Threadless’s email list here.

Moosejaw:

Simple creative. Witty copy (FTF call to action). A very unique basis for a sale. These things amount to the email below from Moosejaw.

The main call to action is the extended 10% off sale, but there’s a subtle aspect to the sale which makes it above average and slightly interactive. Enlarge the screenshot above and see for yourself.

Sign up for Moosejaw’s email list here.

Swell:

This email struck a chord with me, mostly because it doesn’t employ some overpaid model enjoying themselves way too much while wearing the shoes. It’s just two angles of the product. That’s it. It’s simple and sweet.

Sign up for Swell’s email list here.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 08, 2010

The Hotmail / Firefox Line Break Issue Is Resolved

Have you ever come across the consistent issue of line breaks in your email design in Hotmail using Firefox?

One consistent annoyance I’ve always encountered has been testing an email in Hotmail with Firefox. For some reason, this combination of client and browser generates horizontal line breaks in emails. I never knew why… until now.

After some digging, Smith-Harmon has discovered that a simple bit of code is the purest remedy for this issue. At the top of the email (before the opening TABLE tag), make sure you include this:
<style>img {display: block;}</style>

It’s that simple. You can also accomplish the same effect if you code each image individually with the “display: block” property / value. For example:

<img src="images/header.jpg" style="display: block;" />

Kudos to Smith-Harmon for this useful shred of knowledge!

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Mar. 02, 2010