 |
Welcome to the March Email Marketing Performance Tips.
In this Issue
In Other News
If you have account with us: Client log-in here
If you like to have a demo account: log-in here
Pass it on
Know anyone who might be interested in our newsletter? Click here to forward this email to up to 5 friends at once.
|
|
|
Audio Text
In this issue, we introduce Audio Text Speaking Character.
You can now include a speaking character to make it more personable and persuasive!
1) Personalize your email communications
2) Engage your email communications
3) Stand Out from other emails
Common Problems when sending HTML email using Mircosoft Outlook.
Title: Email Marketing Performance
By David Ng
In the next few series, I like to share with you how to achieve results from your Email Marketing.
This issue, I will share with you Common Problems when sending HTML email using Mircosoft Outlook.
1. Introduction:
Quite many of us start off with do-it-yourself in email marketing by sending out company newsletters with Microsoft Outlook. They usually send a plain-text email to a small customer list every month or so. Sometimes they attach a Word Doc, or a PDF file.
They run into problems. Their HTML email newsletters break when viewed by recipients who don't have Outlook (like if they're using Lotus Notes, or Apple Mail, or Yahoo!Mail, or Gmail).
2. What are the problems when sending Newsletters from Outlook?
Outlook isn't really built for sending email newsletters to a large list of customers. You can send an HTML email to a few contacts, but not to your entire customer list. Why? – This is because Outlook sends HTML email really for other people using Outlook.
Other considerations when sending Newsletter:
- Are you sending too many emails from your computer? If you send too many emails from your own computer, your ISP will think you're a spammer, and will most likely block you. Depends on your ISP, but this usually happens once your list reaches a large list of customers? (eg. More than 500) recipients)
- Are you sending to large list of customers? If you send emails to large list of customers, and you'll get all the bouncebacks and autoreplies from them. Will you be able to manually process them?
- Hard bounces should be removed from your list immediately, or your email address will be blacklisted by ISPs. Soft bounces should be retried a couple more times before removing them.
If someone requests to be removed from your list, according to CAN-SPAM law, you must do so within 10 business days. However, most people who send their emails from their desktop computers don't have scripts to help them automatically process unsubscribe requests. They simply ask their subscribers to unsubscribe by the subject line or reply to email. This manual method has risk to make mistakes by not removing the list in a timely manner. For information about SPAM: visit www http://www.ftc.gov/spam
Are you putting all your distribution list in “cc” or bcc”? Either way, if you make mistake by outing “cc”
There are 2 problems:
- If any your client reply to your email and click reply all – imagine the huge number of unwanted emails received by your customers? Also, putting “cc” deprived of privacy to all the people in the list.
- Do you like to see how many people clicked on your link? Outlook don't come with tracking tools to show you how many people opened and clicked your campaigns.
3. How to send a proper HTML Email?
To send a proper HTML Email, they need to be coded in a special format, called "multipart/alternative." That means you combine both a plain-text and HTML email into one message. Then, if a recipient's email application can't (or won't) view HTML email, the plain-text one will display instead. This is usually something a programmer has to configure on your email delivery server.
|
|
