E-Mail Marketing Tips

I recently had a client call me and ask why there was such a high bounceback rate in her constant contact list, or many that ended up in the 'junk folder'. While there are many reasons that can occur--from what you put as the subject line in your email to a few irate people hitting "spam" when they see it--in her case, here was the fix.

In my experience, the reason failure rates started becoming an issue to marketers started many years ago from the spam/valid email dictionary attacks on ISPs.

This is how constant contact defines "high" bounce rate: "Constant Contact also expects your mailing list to be as "clean" as possible before you import it to our system. Your list should be recently aged, as well as scrubbed of both "role" and illegitimate addresses. <this is why I always say our list management services, whether email or direct mail, needs to be at minimum a bi-monthly commitment--we manage, add and delete emails for you--all you have to send us is an email with old/new names/email addresses/physical addresses>. These lists consistently result in high abuse complaints and bounce rates, and directly impact email delivery rates."

Constant Contact is a low cost ESP that targets small businesses and organizations. It's a self-serve model and so anyone can come to their site and sign up for the service. Accordingly, to protect their IP addresses, Constant Contact has the most stringent thresholds for the three main criteria that ISPs screen for to determine whether or not to block, or at worst, blacklist you:

1. excessive "this is spam" complaints
2. excessive bounces
3. existence of 'spamtrap' addresses

So we also provide services that will help clean your list and flag/remove closed domains, suspect and malicious email addresses, hygiene (i.e. syntax, typo, formatting, misspelling, etc) and top level domain errors. What we try to avoid is having our clients function with an old list that contains a significant percentage of validly formatted emails (e.g. anniej@hotmail.com) that are no longer in use. We step in, 'hygiene' the entire list and then message the remainder of the file that otherwise looks OK. Given that most email address lists experience a 30% annual churn rate, it's easy to see how companies can get blocked or blacklisted if they're not being diligent about keeping their email lists fresh and up-to-date on a regular basis.

Give us your old list and let us start maintaining it now. You can design the most attractive email campaign in the world, but at the end of the day, it's only as good as your list. Same with direct mail.

Historically, B2B doesn't get as many spam complaints as B2C.

Try out our additional list cleaning services before sending out your next email campaign and see the 'failure rates' decline.

The Art of Video Message Mapping

By Jolyn Janis, RCM Contributor

The art of video message mapping.
Before moving forward with any commercial video or film, we "map" our messaging and shooting plan in detailed visual graphs. While our clients may already know their messaging, it almost always evolves and shifts as the project continues and the creative juices are flowing. This mapping strategy helps to keep the project on a clear path in terms of the video as well as the world in which it lives.

Digital video rarely lives alone.
Digital video always lives within the context of a website and other content is sharing that space. What else lives on the page where your video will be shown? Where does the video direct the user? What emotional response do you want to evoke and what actions do you want your audience to take based on that emotional response? These are just a few questions we ask our clients to understand the context of the film that we are trusted in creating.

Story is key.
There is story in everything, everybody, every company. When a client is open to spending the time to craft their unique narrative thread, it always enhances their final product on an emotional level (the most impactful level). Making a video is the easy part, but what do you say and how will you say it? We've all seen the ads that are informational, but kinda boring - or they are entertaining but once its over, you cant remember what company it was promoting. This is the result of a good idea without a core foundation of the company that created it. Start with the story and craft outwards from there.