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Kelly Lorenz
E-mailing, the most common activity on the Internet
Do you use the Internet? If you do, then it is highly likely that you also use e-mail. This is in fact the most common daily activity among Swedish Internet users according to the 2011 Swedes and the Internet report.
E-mail seems to be the communication channel whose death has been proclaimed the most. Every time something new comes up – for example, Instant Messaging, Facebook or Twitter – the prophets of woe have predicted its imminent demise.
E-mail, however, does not care in any way about such bad news. On the contrary.
A large-scale survey of our Internet habits, the 2011 Swedes and the Internet report, was published recently. The report asks questions about people’s actual activities on the Internet – and their frequency. And here those of us, who are interested in e-mailing, find some pearls of wisdom.
The report establishes that e-mailing is one of the most important activities on the Internet, no matter how these are measured.
Who uses the Internet?
Let us first take a look at how many people use the Internet. Almost everyone, it turns out.
• 83% of the whole population uses the Internet (3-100 years).
• 96 % of the age group 18-65 years uses the Internet.
This makes Swedes a very connected people indeed. We – as well as our Nordic neighbours – are world leaders when it comes to infrastructure and number of households which have access to the Internet. We have so many users that we literally cannot see any increase in their number – although it is clear that we spend more and more time online. All age groups increase their presence on the Internet – and there are no signs of any decrease.
… and what do they do there?
The next question is what people do online. There is a big difference here depending on how often you do something – quite many people, for example, use online banking but the majority of them do their bank errands on a single occasion once a month.
If we take a look at the things people do occasionally, there is one thing pretty much everyone does: they use Google. However, almost just as many – 95% – write or read e-mails.
Therefore: almost all Swedes use e-mail now and then.
There is also a question about what people do every day. And quite suddenly, there are very few things that stick out here. Reading newspapers and social networking are high on the agenda (35%), just like news searching (44%). Full 56% of Internet users search things on Google on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, this is good enough only for the second place. What most people use the Internet for every day is namely e-mailing. Not less than 64% of everyone using the Internet check their inbox every day.
Therefore: those of you who work with e-mail marketing stand a very good chance of reaching their customers with up-to-date offers. Better than any other digital communication channel.
… and where are they?
The mobile revolution has left its marks. More and more people have mobile telephones with an Internet connection – and they use it. There has been a strong increase in the number of mobile Internet users during the last year and even though younger users predominate, a clear increase is observed in all age groups.
Over the last couple of years, we have experienced a very strong technological development which has caused a general increase in Internet use. Something more, mobile use does not compete with other uses, for example, at home or at the office, but complements them. Mobile Internet users use the Internet, on average, for four hours per week and many of them take avail of the opportunity to read e-mails on their mobile phones. Technological development has made e-mail work well on the mobile phone today – but you as a sender should consider what it means for you to have your letters read on a mobile phone.
What does this mean for those of us who work with e-mail marketing?
• We can see that more and more people use the Internet more and more.
At the same time, we can feel certain that e-mailing is a central part of people’s use of the Internet – and everything indicates that things will stay the same.
• A lot points in favour of the assertion that social media work best as a supplement to e-mail marketing rather than as independent marketing channels – at least if the goal is to reach a majority of Internet users.
• You should work out a strategy that takes into consideration the fact that more and more people read newsletters on their mobile phones. This could be a positive change – but you should be prepared for it and for its future effect on your marketing!
Source: 2011 Swedes and the Internet report. The report is issued by .SE (the Swedish Internet Infrastructure Foundation), which is an independent non-profit organisation working for the positive development of the Internet in Sweden. .SE is responsible for the Swedish top-level Internet domain, .se, including for registration of domain names and the technical operation of the national domain registry.
The report is available for download at http://www.iis.se/docs/SOI2011.pdf
Andreas Ferm
E-mailing – the most common activity on the Internet
Do you use the Internet? If you do, then it is highly likely that you also use e-mail. This is in fact the most common daily activity among Swedish Internet users according to the 2011 Swedes and the Internet report.
E-mail seems to be the communication channel whose death has been proclaimed the most. Every time something new comes up – for example, Instant Messaging, Facebook or Twitter – the prophets of woe have predicted its imminent demise.
E-mail, however, does not care in any way about such bad news. On the contrary.
A large-scale survey of our Internet habits, the 2011 Swedes and the Internet report, was published recently. The report asks questions about people’s actual activities on the Internet – and their frequency. And here those of us, who are interested in e-mailing, find some pearls of wisdom.
The report establishes that e-mailing is one of the most important activities on the Internet, no matter how these are measured.
Who uses the Internet?
Let us first take a look at how many people use the Internet. Almost everyone, it turns out.
• 83% of the whole population uses the Internet (3-100 years).
• 96 % of the age group 18-65 years uses the Internet.
This makes Swedes a very connected people indeed. We – as well as our Nordic neighbours – are world leaders when it comes to infrastructure and number of households which have access to the Internet. We have so many users that we literally cannot see any increase in their number – although it is clear that we spend more and more time online. All age groups increase their presence on the Internet – and there are no signs of any decrease.
… and what do they do there?
The next question is what people do online. There is a big difference here depending on how often you do something – quite many people, for example, use online banking but the majority of them do their bank errands on a single occasion once a month.
If we take a look at the things people do occasionally, there is one thing pretty much everyone does: they use Google. However, almost just as many – 95% – write or read e-mails.
Therefore: almost all Swedes use e-mail now and then.
There is also a question about what people do every day. And quite suddenly, there are very few things that stick out here. Reading newspapers and social networking are high on the agenda (35%), just like news searching (44%). Full 56% of Internet users search things on Google on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, this is good enough only for the second place. What most people use the Internet for every day is namely e-mailing. Not less than 64% of everyone using the Internet check their inbox every day.
Therefore: those of you who work with e-mail marketing stand a very good chance of reaching their customers with up-to-date offers. Better than any other digital communication channel.
… and where are they?
The mobile revolution has left its marks. More and more people have mobile telephones with an Internet connection – and they use it. There has been a strong increase in the number of mobile Internet users during the last year and even though younger users predominate, a clear increase is observed in all age groups.
Over the last couple of years, we have experienced a very strong technological development which has caused a general increase in Internet use. Something more, mobile use does not compete with other uses, for example, at home or at the office, but complements them. Mobile Internet users use the Internet, on average, for four hours per week and many of them take avail of the opportunity to read e-mails on their mobile phones. Technological development has made e-mail work well on the mobile phone today – but you as a sender should consider what it means for you to have your letters read on a mobile phone.
What does this mean for those of us who work with e-mail marketing?
• We can see that more and more people use the Internet more and more.
At the same time, we can feel certain that e-mailing is a central part of people’s use of the Internet – and everything indicates that things will stay the same.
• A lot points in favour of the assertion that social media work best as a supplement to e-mail marketing rather than as independent marketing channels – at least if the goal is to reach a majority of Internet users.
• You should work out a strategy that takes into consideration the fact that more and more people read newsletters on their mobile phones. This could be a positive change – but you should be prepared for it and for its future effect on your marketing!
Source: 2011 Swedes and the Internet report. The report is issued by .SE (the Swedish Internet Infrastructure Foundation), which is an independent non-profit organisation working for the positive development of the Internet in Sweden. .SE is responsible for the Swedish top-level Internet domain, .se, including for registration of domain names and the technical operation of the national domain registry.
The report is available for download at http://www.iis.se/docs/SOI2011.pdf
Anna Torkelstam
Strategic Services: the service that emphasises your e-mail marketing
Working with newsletters is both extremely easy and extremely difficult. It is simple to create newsletters, send them and get good results. However, it can simultaneously be extremely difficult to take yet another step, develop your e-mail marketing and integrate it with other channels in order to produce a greater effect. The solution here can be a carefully prepared strategy.
– We have now reached a point where e-mail marketing is part of the daily round of most companies. Our customers are skilful and enterprising and we are proud of cooperating with so many creative people,” Anna Torkelstam at Apsis After Sales Department explains.
Anna is responsible for this fast-growing department. This is the place where ten employees work on trainings, complex customer cases and strategies. She can see a substantial interest in the services.
– Yes, there are quite clearly many who are ready for the next step. They want to set up specific targets. And when the targets are in place, there is no other channel that is as good at meeting them as e-mailing. This involves both using the technology to the full and working more clearly with a specific strategy. And we can help with this.
Many companies already work with detailed planning of their newsletters. What is the difference in developing a strategic plan?
– Well, these are actually two completely different things which do not preclude each other in any way. A plan could lay down when you are supposed to send the newsletter and what you should have in it. But a good strategy begins when the planning ends and is based on what you want to achieve. When you work with a strategy, you always have specific targets – and then you gradually adapt in order to be able to meet or exceed these targets.
What can Apsis help with?
– Many people probably think that we are primarily a technology provider who makes sure than our customers can create and send newsletters in a simple and secure way. However, we have also amassed vast knowledge of how e-mail marketing works in practice over the years,” Anna explains.
– I think that if you want to develop your e-mail marketing, one of the most important things you should do is stop working according to the trial-and-error principle. You learn a lot by making mistakes – but nonetheless, it is much better to avoid mistakes from the very beginning. When you rely upon tested knowledge, you can hit the mark directly. We know where the pitfalls are. We know what we should do in order to achieve the targets. And we can show you specifically what you should do in order to do that.
For whom is the service intended?
– After all, everyone can benefit from well-prepared strategies and this strategy can be adapted to both small and big companies. Results are observed most quickly in companies with short decision-making channels but it does not matter if you sell to companies or end consumers. Everyone can benefit from a good strategy.
When you talk about targets, they may look in many different ways. Do you have any examples of common targets?
– Many companies will naturally want to increase the number of subscribers to their newsletter. However, this is often a sub-target which is aimed at improving the traffic flow to their websites. And this, in turn, is also a sub-target aimed at increasing the conversion rate – companies simply want to receive more orders or realise more sales.
But this is just one of the ways to achieve this. Another way is to increase one’s presence in the social media and to work on integrating other marketing measures with the newsletters. We who work with Strategic Services require quite a big commitment from the company using the service – but this, on the other hand, gives a lot back in return.
How does this work on a practical level?
– Everything begins with a review of the resources available at the company and its readiness that is performed jointly with them. Then we set up targets and prepare a specific roadmap. After kicking off the process, we keep in touch during the year and reconcile the plans with what actually happens in real life. Everything we do applies directly to the customer’s operations. We normally hold a one-hour telephone meeting every month where we review the efforts, results and planning for the next month. Our work gives results – clear and specific results!
Finally – what should I do if I am interested?
– Drop us a line at aftersales@apsis.com and we will get in touch with you. We would like to help more companies develop their e-mail marketing!!
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Andreas Ferm
Nordic Sugar and e-mail marketing
With a focus on sugar Nordic Sugar is the leading sugar supplier to the northern European market. E-mails are used as a collective communication channel with a focus on the industry, end consumers and the company’s operations in not less than seven different countries.
CHALLENGE
• Communicating with three different business areas
• Using seven different languages
• Getting feedback to the sales department
SOLUTION
• Production and mailing from Apsis Newsletter Pro
• Internal content production, external assistance with design and mailing
RESULT
• Reduced distribution costs
• Greater flexibility and faster communication
• Better statistics and information about customers
Many markets, many languages
Nordic Sugar is a market leader in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The company has almost 1,500 employees and supplies sugar and sugar products to the industry, animal feed customers and end consumers. A lot of information has to reach recipients with completely different needs and expectations.
Our newsletters need to cover a lot of ground,” Eva Kristell, Product Marketing Manager of Nordic Sugar, says. “We have three different business areas which, as a rule, have completely different customer structure, so we need three newsletters. In seven languages!
E-mails and newsletters were a natural choice for us,” Eva Kristell says. ”It is a matter of pure practicality. We must produce relevant information for the different recipient groups and distribute it in a sensible way. And e-mailing is both practical and cost-effective.
Content is created internally, design externally
Nordic Sugar has now established a routine for newsletters. The first contact with Apsis was made already in 2005 – an attempt to reach out in a new medium which was making a breakthrough.
– We started on a small scale and made sure we built up experience internally. Over time we have learned more and more as to what we should do in order to reach the right recipient in the right way and e-mail marketing has thereby also grown in importance for us.
The work process has changed fundamentally. From working with a more traditional customer magazine with long lead times for production, printing and distribution, we have now developed a quicker process with newsletters that now characterise Nordic Sugar’s overall marketing communication.
– Having different newsletters for different groups has increased our flexibility and enabled us to work more clearly with the different brands we have, Eva Kristell explains.
The marketing department gets materials from other parts of the operations such as information units in other countries and the management team. Once all articles and pictures are in place, the work on creating and sending the letters is outsourced.
And this is one of the keys to the success of Nordic Sugar: we do not try to do everything on our own. Our focus is on creating good content which feels relevant for the users. The design, production and mailing of the letters are entrusted to an external cooperation partner.
– We can concentrate on what we can do best, at the same time as we make sure that we get good statistics for everything we do. It is important to be able to provide feedback to the sales departments and to present them with specific opportunities to work further with the results we get from the newsletters. It used to be a real strain on our personal resources to manage with the design and mailing of the newsletters on time, so this has been a good solution for us. At the same time, it is a challenge to work with many different languages,” Eva Kristell says. ”We have solved this problem by collecting all materials and then drafting a basic newsletter in English. Once it is ready, we translate it into the other languages. In this way, we know that there will be good quality in all stages of the process.
An important part of planning is finding a suitable mailing frequency.
– We have decided to issue our newsletters four times a year. This feels like a reasonable target for us and at the same time we know that we can fill each newsletter with content that is relevant.
Strategies producing results
It requires a bit more than an individual strategy to present relevant information to the three distinctly different customer groups of the company. The newsletters for the industry are more traditional and focus on product information and industrial novelties, whereas other newsletters have more direct offers. And also interact more with the recipients.
– When it comes to our newsletters for end-customers, for example, our animal feed products for horses, we work a lot with contests as a way of involving our readers. These can be simple things like drawing of tickets – but they provide clear results.
The important thing for us is to communicate with the right recipient in the right way,” Eva Kristell concludes. ”When we send relevant information, we feel that we give our readers something, at the same time as we get much in return in the form of statistics and customer information.
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Kelly Lorenz
One of the most popular, and effective, tools to measure and analyze customers
For every marketer there is a goal to better understand your audience and customers. One of the most popular, and effective, tools to measure and analyze customers is RFM modeling. RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value. By combining these values, marketers are able to determine and allocate efforts to reach each customer segment.
Let’s first review the composition of each letter in the RFM model.
Recency
This metric is utilized to determine the recency of the last order made by a customer. Each customer is placed into a range of time based on last purchase date that is unique to each marketer’s business and buying cycle. Typically, there are five (5) ranges within which customers are placed.
Customers should be constantly rotating through the ranges if they are buying more than once.
Frequency
One of the critical points of marketing is understanding how often a customer buys from you. Depending on your products, the buying cycle could be very long, which means the customer buys less frequently. On the other hand, if you sell consumable products, the ranges for frequency of purchases should be much greater.
If we look at recency and frequency mapped out into a chart together, it would look something like this:
In reviewing this chart, Recency ranges of six (6) months are set along the top based on this example company’s buying cycle. The columns down the left-hand side are representing the Frequency of purchases. Again, the ranges of one (1) purchase are based on the example company’s business model.
Each customer should fit into one of the squares in the chart at an intersection defining how many purchases they’ve made corresponding with their last purchase date. For instance, there are thirteen (13) customers that have bought three (3) items in their lifetime with this company and their last purchase date was between 13 and 18 months ago.
Those customers that have bought only once tend to be either first-time buyers, which means that your marketing efforts should be more aggressive for the 21 people, in this example, that fall into the 0-6 month range.
On the other hand, those one-time buyers that haven’t purchased again for 25+ months, or five (5) buying cycles, those are probably a lost cause. There was something they didn’t like about your products from the start.
The most valuable customers to your business are the 20 people in the 5+ purchases that have last bought in the past 6 months. These are regular buyers that could be advocates of your brand. Very little marketing is needed to keep them buying.
However, it is worthwhile launching a campaign targeted at the most frequent buyers that haven’t bought in a few buying cycles to determine if they’ve phased out of the market for your products or if something you did triggered them to stop buying.
Monetary Value
The third aspect to RFM modeling is the monetary value, or lifetime value, of the customer to your brand. Of those customers that have bought four (4) times, for instance, how many are worth €150 or more? Again, the ranges will be based on your company’s individual price points and average order size (AOS) to place customers into a subsequent value.
The customers that are the most valuable to your business are the ones that rank highly on all three metrics. These are the people that know, trust and love your brand. You can use them to assist your marketing efforts to the customers that score low in each metric, especially first-time buyers.
Each segment has an appropriate and unique marketing plan to approach and attempting to treat all customers the same as each other, or worse, the same as prospects, would be doing your business and loyal customers a disservice. RFM modeling and analysis can help you not only better understand your audience, but also help you construct messaging and strategies to target each customer group.
About the Author
With strategic services experience at a top ESP in the United States and known for getting results for her clients, Kelly brings an in-depth knowledge of online marketing, and specifically, email marketing and how it fits into the overall landscape. In her current role at Apsis, Kelly guides clients to strategically optimize their email marketing campaigns and drive ROI through implementation like RFM modeling.
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Anders Frankel
Apsis – Most successful company 2011
We are very proud and happy to receive this year’s super-company nomination by the business magazine “Veckans Affärer”. Out of Sweden’s 318 qualified super-companies Apsis positioned at first place where the nomination is based on growth, profit, yield, efficiency, capital structure and financing.
Apsis specialize in email newsletter sending where the user puts together its newsletter content, send it out to subscribers, and then follow up the results. The main product Apsis Newsletter Pro is a cloud-based service with more than 7,000 daily users working with their email marketing.
The company currently has 125 employees with branch offices in Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Warsaw. During ten years of operation, Apsis has reached a turnover of 130 million, had an annual growth of approximately 100% and a consistently good profitability.
“I think we can keep the growth rate that we have had in recent years”, says Apsis CEO Anders Frankel.
Click here to read the full article (in Swedish) »
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Kelly Lorenz
The Five Keys to Email Marketing Success
Accelerating your email marketing program into overdrive takes effort and analysis. Before beginning, perform a pulse check to determine where you are today. This will establish a baseline analysis for all the steps following.
There are five key elements to creating the foundation of a strong email program:
1. Defining your goals
What are your overall business goals? What are you looking to accomplish with your email marketing program? Regardless of the answers, you should work to define your goals and make them clear to all parties working on the program.
You should also go a step further and define goals for each campaign to shape your messaging and audience.
2. Defining your audience
First, why did your subscribers opt-in to receive your emails? What are their expectations of you? Which members of your audience have the best potential for a high response to the campaign?
Looking at their preferences in addition to their performance and response rates can help shape messaging and expectations around performance.
3. Determining messaging while answering “What’s in it for me?” for your subscribers
The creative and copy should center solely on the benefits to the subscriber to achieve the highest response. The messaging should also tie back into your goals.
If you are not able to achieve both of these purposes, you should rethink whether sending the email is appropriate.
4. Testing
Testing will help to uncover the best messaging, frequency, time to send emails and more. Testing all of these will also have the benefit of honing in on what your audience wants from your email program.
5. Monitoring performance and conducting regular analysis
By constantly monitoring and analyzing performance will get you resources and buy-in from the management team for your email program. In addition, it will help you course-correct when needed to constantly meet your subscribers’ needs and expectations.
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Anders Frankel
Apsis acquires Zoomio assets
Apsis has acquired the key assets such as the software, brand names and customer data from the bankruptcy estate of Danish Email Service Provider Zoomio.
An agreement has been made with the bankruptcy estate to arrange for additional uptime of the platform.
To be informed about the future process regarding the Zoomio platform and free migration options to Apsis platform, please enter your details below.
Please note that this is also required if you are an existing user of the Zoomio platform since the permission to email customers can not be transferred from one company to another.
Please keep me updated on the Zoomio platform and migration to Apsis platform
Andreas Ferm
Split test – the easy way to find out what works
Do you find it hard to decide which image to choose for your email message? Or is it difficult not to use your favorite headline?
Perhaps it is time to stop trusting your instincts and find a better way to decide what works. A split test lets your recipients decide which version they prefer – and you know for a fact that a majority of your readers will get the best alternative. In this article, we will guide you through the basics of split testing!
Are you curious about what it is that makes your email messages successful – and why it works?
You have probably reviewed the reports from your email campaigns and made a few assumptions about the success rate, but it might be hard to pinpoint the exact reason why your subscribers preferred one message to another. Was it the content, the offer or simply the send time that was right? How will you know for sure?
A split test lets you look into the future. Create two or more slightly different messages and send them to randomly selected recipients – two equally large parts of a list. You will learn something about your recipients, and you will have information that you can act upon immediately by sending the best performing message to the rest of the list. And, the best part – there is no need to speculate or to rely on a hunch; you have the numbers to prove your case in advance.
Careful preparations and planning increase your chance of success. Here’s how to do it:
Identify your goals
Start by thinking about what you want to know and what you want to improve. Do you want a higher open rate? More clicks? Conversions? Would you like to lower the number of people who unsubscribe, or perhaps increase the number of people who share your content on Twitter or Facebook?
If your answer is “all of the above”, you may have to pick a primary goal – but test something that affects several areas. For instance, it is hard to increase the number of clicks and conversions without simultaneously increasing the open rate, which makes the open rate a good starting point in most cases.
What to test
Anything in your email campaign can be tested. But be sure to test only one thing at the time, so you can be sure about what it was that made the difference. Try to make the two test versions radically different from each other. If the difference is too insignificant, there is a risk that the results will not be conclusive.
A few ideas
• Subject line. A good starting point. It is relatively easy to come up with alternative subject lines and you get conclusive results in the open rate.
• Design, color and style. You may need to make major changes in appearance to see a difference in the interaction. If you normally use a lot of images, perhaps a text-based communication may interest those who are not usually so active in your letter. Or vice versa – if you tend to have text-based messges, perhaps more images may improve the readability and increase the number of clicks?
• Offer. You can get a good response when you offer a 25 percent discount. But what if you got the same results with a 10 percent discount? Or no discount at all? Start with a test!
• Call to action. Do sales increase with links that says “buy here” or do your recipients prefer to go through a “read more”-link?
• Landing Page. What happens when someone clicks? A good landing page can be crucial to the outcome. To test landing pages, send the same message with different landing pages.
• Scheduling. What time of day or what day of the week? Send an identical message at different times to know for sure.
The size of the test list
How many recipients do you need for a reliable result? It is difficult to give a definite answer. More recipients give you a better result. But you do not want too many to receive the message that lose – then you might miss many opportunities for business. Try sending your split-test to 10% of the list – then you know that 95% of the list will get the winning option.
How long does it take?
You do not necessarily need to get all the answers before you decide which message won the test. You will hopefully see the trend early on, even if your messages generally continues to be opened up to a week after sending. Split Tests removes much of the uncertainty associated with your mailings, so you can be bolder and more creative. When you try something new on a small portion of your list, you have the opportunity to take risks. And if the risk pays off in the test – then the reward will be great when you send to the entire list!
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Bjarte Falck Olsen
How to use timing and news in your e-mail
If you have seen one of our breakfast seminars live or online from the spring of 2011 in Sweden, you may remember that I was talking about time, place and relevance in an e-mail context. This two-part article series is based on parts of my lecture, and is meant to refresh your memory and give you new ideas for your email program.
To begin with, I would like you to imagine the following situation: you are part of a sales team and listens when one of your colleagues answers the phone.
Seller: Hello, welcome to us. How can I help you?
Potential customer: Hi, I’m calling from Company X and we are curious about your company and the product that you offer.
Seller: Ok. Thanks for calling, it is registered with us. Goodbye.
Does this sound like an absurd situation? Of course it is! But many companies and organizations do this exact mistake. Maybe not over the phone – but they do it over and over in the welcome message they send when they get a new subscriber. Usually, the welcome letter looks like the picture below.
Missing the obvious
Now I would like you to make a guess. Imagine two different email massages from a company. The first has an open rate of 67 % and the other 22 %. Can you guess what kind of letters they sent? The
utskicket med lägst öppningsfrekvens är ett vanligt nyhetsbrev. Brevet med 67 % öppningsfrekvens är ett välkomstbrev till one with the low open rate is a regular newsletter. The letter with an open rate of 67 % is a welcome letter to new subscribers. According to eMarketeer.com and bazaarvoice.com, a welcome letter has three times as good a response as a newsletter. Considering these numbers, it is easy to see that it is bad for business to have a welcome letter like the one pictured above.
What can we use our welcome letter for?
We have determined that we miss the chance to make a positive impression if we completely exclude our welcome letter or if we simply confirm a new subscription by sending a plain text message.
But we may use a welcome letter to add value for the subscriber. In addition to thanking the subscriber, we build our brand, show products and add value to the letter. We may even create an email program that consists of more than one letter. It could look like this:
1. Welcome Letter
2. Letter that focuses on brand building
3. Letter that focuses on selling
Of course, any email program is situation dependent. If you try to sell through your email program it is important not to be too obtrusive and do not let the sales pitch be too obvious.
In today’s media climate, with social media, it is not possible to avoid the concept of dialogue. What you should consider in connection with your email program is this: are you trying to start a dialogue, or are you advertising? They may both have increased sales as the ultimate goal.
If you try to start a dialogue with your subscribers, you increase the chance to give them relevant information and thus you will make them understand why they should buy from you.
Apart from a welcome letter, these e-mail situations open up for dialogue:
Interest Inquiries
Events/seminars
Transactions
In the next part of the article we will discuss further dialogue around the creation, but also about newsworthy and how it can be used in marketing.
And, by the way – if you have any questions for me, post them on Twitter: @BjarteFalck
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Anders Frankel
Apsis’ new event module
- takes you all the way: planning – implementation – evaluation
We are very proud to present Apsis’ new event module. With the module, you can easily create seminar invitations with an unlimited number of steps and a design of your choice. Read more about some of the features.
The event module is an add-on. If you want to know more, please email us. If you are a customer already, please contact your sales manager for details.
The event module lets you create a complete email program for any event or seminar. The email program may include – for instance – an invitation with a registration form, reminders via email or SMS, a re-invitation by email and an evaluation by email.
But there is so much more. Take a few minutes and read more about some of the new smart functions.
Drag-and-drop to create email programs easily
It is easy to create an email program – just grab a step, drag it to the timeline, and drop it there. You may have several different email messages on the timeline, including a registration form.
Each step of the process is edited by drag-and-drop making the creation of your e-mail program quick and smooth. All email messages can be designed according to your graphic profile.
Manage and edit participants – wherever you are
The built-in participants-management tool is powerful, making the administrative work easier. Using the list view you can easily check the status of various participants, and see if they are registered, are absent, present, or not registered on the waiting list.
Changing the status of the participants on the list is easy, and it is possible to export the list to Excel. From the list view you can also take care of the check-in at the event, or you may register visitors manually. If you have access to an iPad, there is a web application to manage check-in on the go.
Get powerful real-time reports with timelines
For each sending in the event’s email program, a standard report is generated with the statistics for the specific mailing. Also information about the entire event – registration, check-in and delivery statistics for all sendings – is presented in a powerful report with timelines.
Examples of more smart features
Creating an event flow with Apsis Newsletter Pro is easy. We have designed the functionality with both the user and the visitor in mind. Here are a few examples of smart features available in the event module:
You may …
- Limit the number of participants and create waiting lists
- Set a date when the registration closes
- Set up notifications via email when the event reaches a certain number of registrations
- Send calendar notifications in the form of *. ics-files to the participants (who will automatically receive a mark in their calendar)
- Auto-generate maps showing where the event will be held
Do you want to know more?
Please contact your sales manager or email us if you would like more information on the event module and the opportunities available.
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Anders Frankel
Mobile e-mail makes open rates less relevant
To measure, to test and to understand what makes e-mail marketing work is essential for anyone working professionally with email. But since more and more people read email on a mobile device, one of the most widely used metrics has become increasingly difficult to use.
The most obvious way to find the best time to send newsletters is to measure the open rate. I know for sure – I have done it myself for years.
But now, it is probably time to think differently – and a little further.
The open rate is a rather blunt metric since many recipients do not view images in the newsletters they get. This means that about 30 – 40 % of all opened email messages do not register as “opened”.
The statistics for opened email messages will never be totally accurate. Recipients who do not view images will not be registered and recipients who simply preview their messages (with images) are registered – but they have not necessarily read the contents of the message.
But even if the statistics are a bit flawed, there is still a lot to be learned from open rates. If you spit your mailing list into two randomly selected groups to test different subject lines, you may learn a lot – as long as you do not jump to conclusions on the basis of the open rate.
A high open rate does not necessarily translate into more clicks or purchases. This has always been the case. A great offer in the subject line will get your messages opened – but if the content is not as good as the subject line, nothing else will happen.
The fact that more people read e-mail on mobile devices makes it difficult to say how valuable the open rate is. The main reasons for this is that a mobile device regularly is used to scan incoming messages, to give quick responses when possible and to delete whatever you do not intend to act upon.
If the message that we send is not highly relevant, there is a risk that it will be deleted quite quickly. The right time to send is not necessarily when most people read your messages. Instead, focus on the effect and measure clicks and purchases, since that is what you want, after all. Having great, relevant content is increasingly important – both from this point of view and when it comes to finding your way into the new Priority Inboxes. And while we are at it: forget the notion that there is a single day of the week that is the best day to send email messages on. We hear a different story, one where it is obvious that different products and services benefit from totally different dates and times. If you want better results, consider a segmentation of your mailing list and “filter” the send time. Then, your recipients will get newsletters based on when they usually open them – and do something. If you know things like times for log-ins, times for purchases or times when recipients click, you know how to start segmenting.
Test, measure, improve – and become number one!
Anders Frankel
Email Marketing Evolved 2011 – Read more and register
Email Marketing Evolved 2010 was a great day and seeing some of the best presenters in the business at one place was a great experience.
What made our day were not only the great presentations, but also the fact that the visitor response was overwhelming. Not only were more than 95% of the guests very happy or happy with the day (most of them very happy) but a lot of them took the time to tell us what an inspiring day they had.
Click here to read more and register for Email Marketing Evolved 2011!
Email Marketing Evolved is an annual event (held in Sweden) with one major goal: To give you updated and useful knowledge about email marketing.
To do this. We gather top speakers from all around the world.
The content is a mixture between theory, practical information and case studies.
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Encyclopedia
ALT attribute/ALT text
Caption that is seen instead of the image when it disappears or is blocked.
Encyclopedia
API
or application programming interface is a rule set for how a particular software can communicate with other software.
Encyclopedia
Background image (in e-mail)
an image can be placed as background ei- ther in the e-mail reader window, that is to say behind the mail. or as an image inside the mail be- hind another element, for example behind a text.
Encyclopedia
Blacklisting
When a particular e-mail server is blacklisted this means that someone has clas- sified this server as a sender of junk e-mail. it means that certain e-mail servers will refuse to re- ceive the messages from this server.
Encyclopedia
Bounce
an e-mail that cannot be delivered to its recipient. Bounces are divided into hard (permanent), soft (temporary), technical and other.
Encyclopedia
Character set
Used to say which type of lettering is in the message, for ex- ample Western European characters (called iso 8859-1). UniCodE is of- ten used today, a common standard for virtually all languages.
Encyclopedia
Click
a click on a link in a newsletter or web page denotes that someone reading is interested and wants to learn more. it is one of the most important measures of how e-mail marketing is working.
Encyclopedia
Click-through rate (CTR)
a measure of the propor- tion of recipients who click through from your e-mail message to your website.
Encyclopedia
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
is a language which describes the presentation style for example font, text size and colour.
Encyclopedia
CSV
file or Comma- separated value is a file format which can be used for the exchange of data between different programs which have different file format standards.
Encyclopedia
Deliverability
a measure of how much e-mail arrives at the recipients. deliverabil- ity is affected partly by the design of the mail, partly by the e-mail pro- vider’s reputation and technical conditions.
Encyclopedia
DK/DKIM (Domain- Keys)
domainkeys is a way to authenticate e-mail in order to vali- date the dns domain of an e-mail user and check the integrity of the message. dkim is a newer, improved protocol.
Encyclopedia
DNS
domain name system is a system for simplifying the addressing of comput- ers on the ip network like, for example, the internet. instead of 91.213.250.10 we write www.apsis.com
Encyclopedia
Domain
a company’s e-mail address (for example, www.apsis. com) which most often forms the second part of the e-mail address (for example, info@ apsis.com).
Encyclopedia
Double opt-in
registration to newsletters where someone who subscribes must click on a link in a message to confirm that the registration is correct. Used to prevent registrations being made in another person’s name.
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Dynamic e-mail circular
When each message is uniquely created at the time of the circular and contains information which is customised for each recipient.
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E-mail client
program or web application which makes it pos- sible to read the e-mail message.
Encyclopedia
ESP
E-mail service provider, a company that supplies different types of e-mail ser- vices for marketing.
Encyclopedia
Filter
a way to practically carry out segmenting in e-mail marketing is to use a filter or conditions that determine which recipient receives a particular type of content.
Encyclopedia
Geotracking System
that makes it possible to track items of mail geographically.
Encyclopedia
GIF animation
a type of simpler animation in which gif images are played one after the other. suitable for simpler, short displays, for example advertise- ments.
Encyclopedia
GIF image
image for- mat which is suitable for illustrations and logos since they re- quire a low number of colours. a gif image can contain a maxi- mum of 256 colours. gif images often have a very light file size.
Encyclopedia
Greylisting
is a method of combating junk e-mail that is based on a short delay being added in the host server, spam often fails to handle this.
Encyclopedia
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)
a markup language for the structuring of the content of, for exam- ple, web pages and in e-mails.
Encyclopedia
Image blocking
images that do not download automatically. the recipient must activate image viewing themselves with a click.
Encyclopedia
IP number
is a unique address used so that machines are able to recognise and communicate with each other on a computer network using internet protocol standard (ip). normally, the ip number is a unique ad- dress to a computer.
Encyclopedia
ISP
internet service provider is a telecommunications operator that provides internet access for private clients or companies.
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Landing page
a temporary website or webpage to which a recipient is guided to in connection with campaigns and circulars.
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Link text
a selection of text that refers/sends the user onwards to another page.
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MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
is a standard for e-mail. it is used to denote which type of data an e-mail message or an attachment contains (e.g. text, images, multipart).
Encyclopedia
Module
a build ing block or part of something bigger, for example, a system or a mail.
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Multipart e-mail
format for e-mail that automatically detects whether the recipient can receive messages in html format, a text version is sent to and displayed for those who cannot see the html version.
Encyclopedia
MX record
mail Ex- change record is an entry in a database that indicates the mail server that handles
mail for that domain. An mx record can route e-mail to a server in another domain than that indicated in the e-mail address.
Encyclopedia
Nested table
a table placed within a table cell. table cells are the boxes consisting of rows and columns that intersect.
Encyclopedia
Open rate
the proportion of circulars which are opened. Can be measured in mails
in html format and gives a good picture about how well you have succeeded with creating a good subject line and a good time for the circular.
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Opt-in
registration to newsletter or other e-mail circular.
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Opt-out
Unregistration from newsletter or e-mail circular.
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Permission e-mail marketing
E-mail marketing which is based on you having received the approval of your recipients before you distribute the circular.
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PNG image
image format which is suitable for several purposes but most commonly is used for graphics with shadows and transparency effects (lacks support in the lotusnotes e-mail client ).
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SMTP server
Web server that handles the distribution of e-mail.
Encyclopedia
Spam
Bulk distribution of a message which the recipient given free choice would have refrained from receiving. it is forbidden by law in the majority of countries to send marketing via e-mail without the recipient’s permission.
Encyclopedia
Spam filter
solution that analyses the e- mail message with the aim of preventing the recipient from receiv- ing messages that are classed as spam.
Encyclopedia
SPF
ender policy framework is a method for preventing e-mail being sent with a false domain name in the sender address.
Encyclopedia
Sub-domain
a domain name consists of a number of differ- ent parts which are separated by full stops. sub-domains are usu-ally used if you are going to divide up the local network’s servers into different fields
of use such as www
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Preheader
the part that lies uppermost in the newsletter (before the header).
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ROI (Return of investment)
a measure of how much of the costs of marketing were earned again. If advertising for sEk
1 000 gives a surplus for sales of sEk 1 500, roi is 150%.
Encyclopedia
Segmentation
dividing recipients according to the information that is available. Examples can be according to geography, click behaviour and purchased products. the informa- tion can later be used to send the e-mail message only to one segment of recipients or in order to compare how different types of recipients are reacting to a newsletter.
Encyclopedia
SenderID
is an authentication technology who contributes to solving the problem of spoofing and phish- ing by checking the domain name which the e-mail message is sent from.
Encyclopedia
RSS stream
data format which is used to provide the recipient with information which is updated often.
Encyclopedia
SaaS
software as a service, a model of program distribution through which a provider licenses the usability of a product or service to its cusname specified as sender of an e-mail message. has great significance for open rate.
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Transactional message
personal e-mail message that is a receipt or confirmation of something, for example, a booking or a purchase.
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Viral marketing
is a marketing method with a message, service or product that is so interesting that those who are exposed to it often spread it further to others.
Encyclopedia
Whitelisting
When the owner of a server has obtained approval from a recipient or a group of recipients so that the message from this server will always arrive.
Encyclopedia
Web-safe font
the font that the majority of computer users have pre-installed on their computers.
Encyclopedia
Web statistics
statistics that show what visitors read and clicked on when visiting a website. the information can be used to design content in a newsletter.
Encyclopedia
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Apsis Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
A/B split test
is a way to test which version of for example a newsletter has the best prerequisites for success.
Apsis
E-mail marketing strategist
In all matters Apsis strives to be creative and a workplace where skilled and motivated people gets the chance to be successful and with Apsis Newsletter Pro our personnel gets the chance to work with a world class product. Our team of staff is the single most important key for success and we are always focusing on personal growth and individual challenges. Also, Apsis is continuously looking for candidates with high ambitions that seek a working environment with high demands on results. Earning and career opportunities are high for the right candidate.
We are now expanding our international After Sales Team and are looking for an:
E-mail marketing strategist to be based at our headquarters in Malmö and join our after sales team today consisting of 8 colleagues. Focus will be helping our customers to build up theri e-mail marketing strategy and benefit from it both in the perspective of customer relation and customer profitability. The main customers are based in Nothern Europe and are Marketing- and Sales persons in companies of all sizes in most industries. Work will be conducted by telephone, visits and other activities and 5-7 travelling days are to be expected per month. There is an absolute need to understand and like the phone as the main working tool.
Candidates should have a track record within international operations with proven customer results in earlier career. You are fluent in English and used to individually build business relations.
Good IT-understanding and knowledge within basic HTML is also valuable and will be extra considered in the recruitment process.
For more information please contact Marika Bertilsson at +46 705 08 00 44. Send your application and CV latest at 17.03.2011 to marika.bertilsson@apsis.com
Andreas Ferm
Email marketing for beginners: Image blocking
Do you use images in your newsletter? The answer is probably yes – images are an essential part of email today. But it is also one of the most problematic areas to deal with for anyone involved with email marketing. Many email clients does not display images by default, but demand that the user approves this manually.
We have written about blocked images many times before. But there are good reasons to get back to basics on the subject of images in newsletters. The conditions are constantly changing for anyone who sends e-mail and what was the practice for only a year ago may have changed completely if one of the major e-mail clients has been updated.
For our own part – when we send out our newsletter – we must think of Microsoft’s Outlook and Entourage clients, but increasingly also web clients such as Gmail and Hotmail. The statistics differ between various industries and it may be good reason to find out how the majority of your readers decide to open their letters.
Plan your newsletter: how many images do you need?
Start your planning as early as the design stage: how many images should we have in our letter? Is the entire design based on images, or are they an added flavour? If your letter needs images, then you should use them. There are many occasions when a text version is simply not enough, and then you have to do everything you can to make your letter deliverable, so that as many recipients will open it as possible.
Summary: a good letter should …
• come to a recipient who really wants it
• display images in a good way in as many email clients as possible
• not get stuck in any of the most common spam filters
• be legible and possible to understand even if the images are not displayed
Ask to be a trusted sender
To be a trusted sender means that the recipient has told their email client to trust you. The email client assumes that you will not post spam, lets the messages through and displays the images automatically. The term “trusted sender” may look a little different in different email clients, but the important thing is as a general rule that you are added to the address book – then the system knows that whatever comes from that particular address is OK.
How to make a good newsletter without images
You should always use plain text for the contents of your letter. If the text is placed within an image, it looks nice – but if the image is blocked, there is no way to read the text. You have sent a letter without content.
A good subject line explains the key point of the letter. It is essential for making the recipients open the letter and it encourages readers to allow images to be shown.
Use informative links as calls to action in the letter. You want your readers to move from the letter to an environment that you control completely – your own web site. Use image links, but also text links that generate clicks. Take the extra time to write something that does not say “Click here” or “Read more” – it is well worth the effort!
Write ALT texts to all your images. An ALT text describes what is pictured, giving you an idea of the content even if the image is blocked or if you for some reason use a text-to-speech program to read the contents of the letter.
Design for readers on the move
Email and images in newsletters work quite well on mobile devices today. There is a significant difference compared to the situation a few years ago, when it was quite difficult to manage e-mail on the move. The technology has taken huge steps forward, not only in terms of handheld devices but also the technology and infrastructure surrounding them – today, limited bandwidth is not even an issue.
Anna Torkelstam
Email marketing for beginners: the subject line
In our series on email marketing, we cover the basics of email and what you need to know in order to become a successful email marketer. This time, we discuss something that is present in all newsletters. It may be perceived as a triviality, but it is quite often the difference between an opened letter and an ignored letter. Time to take a look at the subject line!
The subject line is best described as the name of your newsletter. It is the first and only thing a recipient sees apart from the name of the sender. The subject line must tell the readers what the letter is about – and be interesting enough to make them open the letter.
The subject line is easily forgotten, and it is often written seconds before the newsletter is sent – usually without too much consideration. But it is important for the overall success of your newsletter, and it deserves a lot of attention. Here are a few key points to consider when writing subject lines!
One of the essential building blocks
Sender, subject line and timing. Those are the three most important building blocks that decide whether your newsletter will be opened or not. For the recipient, it is important that the sender is well known, and that the timing is right. But the one thing that may be the crucial decision point is the subject line.
Is it tempting? Is there an interesting offer? Do I become curious? If the answer to at least one of the questions is “yes”, then there is a good chance that your newsletter will be opened.
The length – should be shorter than 50 characters
A good subject line should be short. And by short, we actually mean really short – shorter than 50 characters, including blank spaces. There are several reasons why you need to practice your skills in writing short sentences.
1. A short subject line is read at a glance. You are not the only one sending email, so you need to be swift and get to the point quite fast. Put the most important stuff first. People read the first three words most carefully.
2. A long subject line is cut off in several email clients, especially on mobile devices. It does not matter how good your subject line is if nobody can read it. Anything after 49 characters runs the risk of disappearing, so it is best to begin with what is the most important.
3. Spam filters do not like long subject lines. There is an increased risk of ending up in a spam filter if your subject line is longer than 49 characters.
Describe the contents – include a call to action
Read headlines in newspapers for inspiration. Pay attention to how the editor uses words and phrases – it is often creative and clever, but almost always easy to understand. A headline – or a subject line, for that matter – does not have to be conventional or grammatically correct, as long as it is interesting and possible to understand. The important part is to communicate.
Choose your words carefully – remember the spam filters!
Spam filters use a number of different techniques to stop suspected spam from reaching the inbox. One of the most common – and one of the simplest – techniques is to look at the subject line and search for suspicious words.
Businesses such as medicine and finance run the highest risk of getting blocked, but anyone may be affected. If you have nothing but honest intentions, this may feel totally unjustified. But we have to remember that the purpose of spam filters is to stop an illegitimate phenomenon that is hated worldwide and constitute a threat to our marketing channel. Spam filters will not be perfect all the time, and the best way to make sure that your newsletters won’t be blocked is to test them before sending.
Perform a split test
How will I know if my subject line is good enough? Try to write two or three subject lines and test them against each other. Then you won’t have to guess which one to choose and you make sure that a majority of your recipients get the best subject line.
Make a simple test like this: write two subject lines and send each of them to 5 % of the recipient list. Use the one that has the highest open rate for the remaining 90 %. Then you make sure that 95 % of the recipients get the best subject line.
As time goes by, you will learn which subject lines to use. Do not forget to use all available statistics – many things are interesting besides open rates!
Would you like to know more?
My name is Anna and I am Manager of After Sales and Education at Apsis. My team is ready to help you and your company to improve your skills in email marketing and communication.
Are you thinking about shifting or changing your current strategies? Do you need more information on Apsis Newsletter Pro to find new ways of using the system in order to make the most of it for your company?
Don’t hesitate to contact us at aftersales@apsis.se
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Andreas Ferm
The truth about e-mail marketing
The popular TV show Mythbusters examines whether there is any truth to popular myths and beliefs. More often than not the myths are busted, but once in a while there is a grain of truth to the stories. Email is surrounded by rumours and mysteries. In this article, we turn our attention to a few of the most widespread myths to see if they are plausible or not.
What is the truth about email marketing?
Myth # 1: Email is dead (or dying, at least)
Email has been declared dead many times – and it has come back to life every time. As soon as a new communications channel sees the light of day, it is declared that email will disappear. Yet, somehow, email is still a natural part of our lives. An American study shows that the proportion of people with access to the Internet using e-mail on an average day increased by 15 % between 2002 and 2008. This is despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that most social media were invented and had their breakthrough during this period.
Myth # 2: Personalised email is not worth the effort
Segmentation, filtering, personalisation. There are many ways to make email more personal. But in this particular case, none of them will be used. Many email marketers send the same letter to all recipients, without using their knowledge about the recipients’ place of residence, age or purchase history.
But will it pay off? Is it worth the effort? Yes, definitely! Newsletters without any form of segmentation have an average open rate of 26 %, while transactional messages – that are highly personal – are opened by 70 % of the recipients. The more personal and relevant you become, the higher your open rate will be.
Myth # 3: If it works – send more!
It is not unusual to feel the urge to take advantage of a good situation. Lets say that you send one newsletter each month that bring you sales worth 25.000 Euros. A good result – but a result that possibly could be better? Shouldn’t two newsletters each month double the sales? And if we send newsletters every week, maybe our sales will be 100.000 instead?
No, it doesn’t quite work that way. There is a breaking point, and you can quite possibly see it clearly in the statistics. But it is hard to find without proper testing. Don’t be afraid to send email, as long as it is relevant. Just think about the content – and the frequency.
Myth # 4: Internal testing is quite enough
Once the newsletter is done, we send it to a few people at the office and let them check it out. Then we will send it to the entire list. That is enough testing, is it not? No, it isn’t – but this is usually how it is done. To get really great results, you need a different kind of tests. To get a reliable result from a test, you need to use your recipients. The easiest way is to make a split test, where you send two or several versions of the same letter to a limited part of your recipients. Then you will see which version that performs best, and use that one.
Myth # 5: More recipients equals better results
The notion that more recipients automatically gives you better results is quite similar to the notion that a higher sending frequency equals more sales. There is an appealing logic to the thought that it is twice as good to send to 20000 recipients compared to 10000 recipients. But the results are seldom that linear. Usually, the open rate goes down as the number of recipients rise.
Is it a bad thing, then, to have a lot of recipients? No, absolutely not. But you need to be consistent in your ambition to give each recipient something that he or she is truly interested in. We talked about relevance earlier – the more personal your newsletters are, the better chance of success you have. The number of recipients is not interesting in itself; the important part is how well you are able to communicate with each of your recipients.
Myth # 6: It is impossible to send e-mail on the weekend
We often discuss the importance of finding the perfect time for a newsletter sending. There is an ongoing debate about whether to send in the beginning, the middle or the end of the week – or if it is better before or after lunch. The answer is not clear-cut. Different times and days have their pros and cons for different businesses, but generally speaking you tend to get higher open rates in the middle of the week. These are also the days when most letters are sent.
But on the weekend, things grind to a halt in the inbox. Nobody cares about email marketing on weekends. But perhaps they should? Lots of people read email out of office. An American study shows that 34 % check their work-related email during the holidays, a number that is likely to by at least as high as that on weekends. Sometimes, it is good to be different – it is definitely easier to get noticed!
Myth # 7: Never use the word ”free”
The word ”free” is quite tricky to use in marketing. But it is even worse when it comes to email marketing – write the word “free” and you run a serious risk of ending up in a spam filter.
True or false? Well, it is true – but not entirely true. Many spam filters check the contents of newsletters and the alarm goes off when they find any word on a long list of suspicious words. The list is full of words like “free”, names of prescription medicines and words related to financial services.
It is possible that your newsletter may be in trouble if you use words like these, but it is important to remember that the words are one parameter of many that are checked. The words are seen in context and if nothing else is strange about the newsletter, it is unlikely to be stopped.
In short: if you are serious about what you do, you will have a very good chance of succeeding with your e-mail marketing. Make it a habit to test your mailings in the most common spam filters so you know you are on the safe side before sending!
Robin Sundving
Survey results: where does the shared content come from?
In one of our other articles we established that a majority of people actually shares content. But from where on the web does the content come? You probably think that this is the same question we asked in our last survey. If people prefer to share content via email, surely email must be the largest source for the content that others share? In this article you will find the answer. You will also get advice on how you can use the results to enhance your email marketing.
The truth is that it’s not only viral content that gets shared. The content must come from somewhere originally; a source. We asked the question (to 1000 Swedes):
From what Internet source comes the majority of the interesting content that you share to your friends?
We tied 11 answering alternatives to the question. Some of them can be regarded as source media, others as social media, and a few as both.
Three giants
The digital field is dominated by three sources: newspapers/magazines, Facebook and email. Integrating email with social media and working with the press at the same time suddenly seem to be a quite good design for a general media strategy.
Does the sources vary with age?
It’s quite obvious that media preferences depends on what age you are. The sources for information also vary with age. It’s also interesting that even if there are big variations in the popularity of sources, some of them theoretically intersect at certain ages.
The top part of sources among 23-35 year-olds is concentrated. By this we mean that there are only 2 channels at the top as sources: newspapers and Facebook. It’s a huge gap down to the other sources. People in the ages between 15-22 have a much more varied use of sources compared to the 23-35 year olds, both regarding top 
placements and the distribution of percentage. Among the youngest age category, there are mainly three sources at the top: Facebook, newspapers/magazines and Youtube.
Among the 36-55 year-olds we can see three different clusters. At the top, newspapers are the lonely ruler. In the middle we have email and Facebook. The rest of the sources are crowded at the bottom. In the last age category we see the sources divided into two main groups, one high and one low. In the top we have newspapers and email. This age group also have a big percentage of people that doesn’t share (21,6%).
What is there to learn?
As we have pointed out in our former survey articles, it’s important to know that what you can learn depends on what target group(s) you are communicating with. There are different small groups in the great mass of respondents in our survey. How these small groups with respondents answer may vary a lot. And the same thing goes for the different organisations target groups. These groups’ behaviours may vary from the representative selection that answered our survey.
It should also be pointed out that the question we posed contained the phrase ”interesting content”, which of course is a question of interpretation. What’s interesting to one person can be uninteresting to another. Some may prefer to share interesting content via email, while the same person may prefer to share funny content through Facebook. The most important thing is to view it all from a distance and keep the bigger picture that the data is a part of. It could be that there are invisible connections between different channels. As an example: a news article wouldn’t reach the number of people it does if Facebook and email didn’t exist. ”Newspapers” as a source would then get a high percentage, but the sharing of the content wouldn’t be as widespread. Just because a certain source has a high rate of sharing, doesn’t mean you only should use that one isolated. Then you loose the chance of more publicity.
The results from our survey could be used as basic data for a part of your media plan. If you study the different age segments and how the sources are distributed among them, then you will be able to see what channels you should bet more money on and what new channels you could try. You could also combine our former survey results with this one and get even deeper insights.
Andreas Ferm
Email marketing for beginners: analysis and statistics
A lot of hard work goes into the creation of an email marketing campaign. Careful preparations, high hopes – and all of a sudden, the sending is over. Time to rest? No, now the fun part begins! Time to find out what the recipients thought about the sending. Let us take a look at the statistics of a newsletter sending and see what you can learn from it!
Open rate
The number of opened letters is a common way to measure the effect of an email campaign. If you send 1000 messages and 200 are opened, the open rate is 20 %. It is easy to calculate, but how can you be sure that a specific recipient has opened the message – and what are you able to learn from the open rate?
A letter is considered opened when a small, invisible picture is activated – and this technique is the major weakness associated with the practice of using open rate as a measure of success. What happens when the recipient block images by default? Or when someone reads an email on a mobile device and chooses not to display images in order to save time? Well, what happens is that the message is not marked as read. A certain number of recipients will be hidden in the statistics.
Active subscribers
Usually, it is more useful to measure the degree of activity in the email message. Then you will see not only the open rate, but also the proportion that have clicked on a link in the message. If someone clicks on a link, you know that the message has been opened – even if the images have been blocked.
Naturally, it is possible to open a message and read everything without clicking on a link, but since most commercial email messages are based on links that transport the reader to a web site, it is a good idea to measure the number of active subscribers.
Those who open all your messages and are active subscribers are your most important recipients. They like what you do and want more of the same. But in the statistics, you will find another group of subscribers that never clicks on anything. This is a great opportunity to experiment! Try to make a change just for this group – you have nothing to lose, but a lot to gain!
Forwarding
To share interesting stuff is a phenomenon that has increased dramatically as social media like Facebook and Twitter have become increasingly popular. The beauty of social media – if we look at it from an e-mail marketer’s point of view – is that the value of forwarding can be substantial. A single recipient may forward your letter to a large number of new recipients. A single Twitter user with many followers has the potential to let your messages reach hundreds or thousands of new recipients – and you reach a group of people you might never have contact with otherwise. If you have the opportunity to see what different social media your recipients use – by seeing what they forward to – you have a good starting point. Then you may target your marketing to these channels.
Spam complaints
Once in a while, a recipient will mark your message as spam in their email client. This is a warning sign that you should take very seriously as it indicates that someone actually thought that your email message was so bad that he or she actually thought it was spam. But an even more serious problem is that a large amount of spam warnings may result in all your correspondence being seen as spam by the recipients’ e-mail servers – so no one will get your messages at all. Maintain a list where all recipients have confirmed that they want to receive messages from you.
Bounces
A letter that bounces is a letter that for some reason cannot be delivered to its recipient. There are several different types of bounces, including everything from misspelled addresses to technical errors. Take the time to review the statistics for the bounces – it tells you a lot about the state of your subscriber lists. If it turns out that you have many incorrect addresses, it may be a good idea to remove them – there is no point in continuing to send to recipients who do not receive the messages.
Trends
Many things that you measure will be more interesting when you have sent several newsletters. Then you may begin to discern trends, and see if the results are maintained, improved or even deteriorating. Think about what you are changing from time to time and try to see patterns – when do you get the best results?
Notice tendencies
If you use demographic data, your statistics will be even more interesting. It is often possible to notice tendencies based on gender, age, disposable income or other demographic facts. Can you discern trends here? You may find important clues that guide you when you create content for your circulars.
Look for well-functioning areas
Didn’t things work out the way you wanted? Don’t focus on the weak points. Look at the good stuff, too. Maybe it turns out that your recipients are interested in other things than you thought? Think about why these areas work well. Try to transfer your winning formula to your areas of improvement.
Make a to-do-list
Always be prepared to make your statistics useful. You may want to search for patterns and trends and transform them into a to-do-list. This gives you something to act upon instantly.
Robin Sundving
Survey results: social media is not the only popular method for sharing
– read about how we share differently depending on age
You’ve probably asked yourself this question more than once: How do people prefer to share something? How many shares? Does age affect the sharing? We conducted a survey, and the results point at some interesting aspects.
We asked around 1000 Swedes the question:
How do you most often tip your friends about something on the web?
The respondents are divided into the age groups:
15-22, 23-35, 36-55, 56+
The answering alternatives were:
Should we take for granted that people share content?
It could be argued that sharing is a part of human nature and culture. According to our survey 92,6 % of the respondents answer that they share things that they’ve got from the web. So there is a huge potential for your message to be shared, if done correctly.
And the winner is …
Guess what alternative got the most votes? ”By sending the link by email” won with 34,2 % of the votes. The silver medallist may surprise you, ”By talking to a person face to face” got 18,2 %. So we’re not totally digital yet.
Interesting aspects and variations
Email and personal meetings are the most popular when it comes to spreading interesting things found on the Internet. None of the other alternatives stands out particularly. But our analysis gets misleading if we 
don’t take into account that some of the alternatives actually are connected to each other.
If we combine the alternatives 2-4 and call them social media, alternatives 1 and 5 are called email and 6 and 7 are called offline – then we get the following numbers:
Social media: 17,5 %
Email: 43,4 %
Offline: 27,7 %
Email is still the most popular. Also the second place is unchanged. But we can see clearer that social media also plays a role regarding sharing. What also should be taken into account is that the content that is shared could have reached the sharer in different ways. The sharer could have come in contact with something via social media, which he then shares offline or vice versa. The different ways something can be shared tells us that the sharing of content is a complex apparatus that’s not always so obvious.
Based on age specific data, we can see that the popularity for email as a sharing medium increases as we move up thru the ages. This could be linked to the entering into adulthood and working life – our habits change in correlation to our occupation. However, it could also be linked to the fact that email has been popular much longer than social media, and has more users. There are also some interesting patterns in the 
statistics. How come that the share of people who prefer to tip their friends thru personal meetings, actually decreases with age? Could it have to do with that the older people get, the more of them retire from work and don’t socialise as much? What are the ”other” ways that 7,8% of all 56+ use to tip their friends? Is it mail, SMS, MMS or maybe smoke signals? Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer for that specific question.
But is email king in all ages?
It’s the 15 to 22 year-olds that’s going against the current. To them, email is only at third place. But then social media must be the most common way of sharing amongst our youngsters, right? It’s actually not that easy. The alternative that gets the most votes is number 7 (face to face). A digital generation uses an analog method the most. Isn’t that peculiar?
However, we mustn’t forget that some of the alternatives belong together. If we fuse together the same alternatives as we did before, we can do a more accurate determining of the different channels:
Social media: 39,2 %
Email: 22,3 %
Offline: 30 %
Now we can see that the sharing that is most common by youngsters is Internet, and particularly social media. However there is still 30 percent that rate offline as the most common way of sharing.
The key is finding the right mix tailored for your specific target group
Take the time to think a little extra about your marketing. Think about this article and if it gives you any new insights on how to improve your marketing. In what/which age segments is your target group situated? Does it consist of males or females or both?
By answering the former questions, you will get an idea on how you could distribute the budget for different media. How is your media budget right now? Does it need to be changed? Why? Maybe you should increase the budget for email? Maybe you should strengthen the bonds between email and social media in your marketing?
And don’t forget: The majority of people want to share.
Apsis
Business Development Manager for Asia region
Apsis offers market leading technical services for successful email marketing and has since the start in 2001 experienced a fantastic growth. The company has today approximately 100 employees in eight offices in six countries with an expected turnover of 150 MHKD the current financial year. The company has an international approach and more than 6,000 companies of all sizes in over 50 countries use our services. Our international expansion is now our key focus and we are now looking for individuals that are ready to take on the challenge of our Asian expansion.
In all matters Apsis strives to be creative and a workplace where skilled and motivated people gets the chance to be successful and with Apsis Newsletter Pro our personnel gets the chance to work with a world class product. Our staff is our single most important key for success and we are always focusing on personal growth and individual development. Apsis is continuously looking for candidates with high ambitions that seek a working environment with high demands on results. Earnings and career opportunities are high for the right candidate.
We are now expanding our international sales team and looking for a
Business Development Manager – New Markets
to be based at our Asia headquarters in Hong Kong and join our sales team. Focus will be sales to other countries in Asia, but also some local clients. The main customers are Marketing- and Sales Managers in companies of all sizes in most industries. Work tasks will be to find and establish new business through telephone sales, visits and other sales activities and 5-7 traveling days are to be expected per month. The person will have an employment in our office in Hong Kong.
Candidates should have a track record within international operations with proven sales results in earlier career. You are fluent in English and used to individually build business relations abroad. We have an extra interest in candidates with earlier work experience in Asia and a swedish back ground.
Good IT understanding and knowledge within basic HTML is also valuable and will be extra considered in the recruitment process.
For more information please contact Marika Bertilsson at +46 734 15 58 58. Send your application and CV as soon as possible to marika.bertilsson@apsis.com
Apsis
Business Development Manager
The Job
- Identify and actively approach new customers
- Conduct sales presentations and execute business deals with customers
- Manage customer accounts together with our team
- Maintain good relationships with clients
- Opportunity to take an active part in our Asia expansion.
Who are we looking for?
- University degree.
- 3-5 years of relevant experience in sales (preferably B2B)
- Proven track record in meeting sales targets
- Experience of software sales is an added advantage
- Excellent presentation and negotiation skills
- A team player that can work independently.
- Good spoken and written English and preferably Cantonese
What do we offer?
- Base salary with an attractive bonus scheme
- Medical Insurance
- 5 day work week
- Big potential for fast track career development for the right person
Please email your full resume with current and expected salary to Marika Bertilsson to apply for this position. You can also apply for this position on JobsDB.com
Apsis is an IT company in the technological forefront of online platforms for email circulars, online surveys and SMS. Apsis has experienced a very strong organic growth and solid profitability since our start in 2001. We are currently a team of 100 employees serving more than 6,000 customers in 40 countries from our 8 offices in Europe and Asia.
Our customers range from small companies to multinationals like Citibank, Mercedes, H&M, IKEA, Adidas and many more.
Read more about us on our website www.apsis.com
Apsis
Email Marketing Evolved – Swedish event focusing on email marketing
Email Marketing Evolved is an annual Swedish event with one major goal: To give you updated and useful knowledge about email marketing.
To do this. We gather top speakers from all around the world.
The content is a mixture between theory, practical information and case studies.
Email Marketing Evolved is arranged by Apsis.
In fall 2010 the first Email Marketing Evolved event was held
The speakers 2010:
- Dela Quist, CEO, Alchemy Worx
- Marc Borgers, Borgers&Straathof
- Lars Johansson, Web Analyst and Co-Founder,
inUse Insights and Ampliofy
- Christoffer Luthman, Web Analyst &
Co-founder, inUse Insights
- Steve Kemish, Director, Cyance Limited &
Chair of the Institute of Direct Marketing (UK) Digital Council
- Bill McCloskey, Founder, Email Data Source, Inc.
- Annemieke Bossen, Head of B2B Marketing, KLM
- Michael Straathof, Sr. Consultant, Borgers&Straathof
- Lars Magnus Øksnes, Pingbull Digital Agency
- Annelise Kiønig, Marketing Director, Campus Kristiania
For interviews with the speakers, pleace visit our Youtube-channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EmarketingEvolved
If you would like to view Steve Kemish 40 minute talk on email and social media, you will find it here:
http://www.email-marketing-evolved.com/emailandsocialmedia.php
Steve has over twelve years of experience in all aspects of digital marketing. He has worked client-side in both b2b and b2c and offers considerable expertise as a digital marketing specialist, be that consulting, training or lecturing.
He has worked on digital marketing and strategy with many global brands including Cisco, ITV, IOD, npower, Skype, British Airways, Random House and Oracle and has been invited to speak throughout the world on the subject of digital marketing.
We also recommend the Q&A session, with lots of interesting discussions about email marketing:
http://www.email-marketing-evolved.com/qa.php
Don’t forget to subscribe for updates about email marketing evolved 2011:
Mikael Molin
Modules and templates in Apsis Newsletter Pro
In Apsis Newsletter Pro, there are two different ways to create a newsletter. You can either code a template in HTML the same way you would code a webpage – or you can use the system’s existing templates and modules. Today, the last-mentioned is the most commonly used method, and in most cases there are a number of advantages associated with templates.
The major advantage of a module based template is that the code is generated automatically in Apsis Newsletter Pro, so that you do not have to write a single line of code yourself. The newsletter is created in an editing mode where the contents of the template follow a pre-defined layout.
The pre-defined layout saves you a great deal of time, making the creation of newsletters an easy part of the marketing process.
A template that is consistent in its structure and content is also recognizable to the subscribers when the newsletter arrives in the inbox.
Another advantage with a template in Apsis Newsletter Pro is that the generated code has been manually coded and checked in all major e-mail clients. This means that your newsletter will look just as you intended once it reaches your subscribers.
The template
The template consists of one or several place holders – spaces where the content will be put. Place information that will not be changed very often – such as your company logo and contact information – in the template. That way, you will not have to worry about forgetting vital information
Modules
The module based template is composed by modules – a sort of building bricks. The modules have a fixed layout, and your only input is to place content in the form of text or pictures in the modules. An optimum module template gives the user the freedom to move the modules, dragging and dropping them wherever he or she wants them to be.
An optimum module template
The optimum module template has only one place holder, spanning the entire breadth of the template. This means that all layout is placed in the modules. If you, for instance, would like to have two texts beside each other, all you need to do is create a single module with both texts.
Why is this a good thing? Well, the not-so-good option would be to put two place holders in the template and then add one text at the time. The downside to this approach is that this place in the template cannot contain a full-breadth module, since the template is split in two parts here.
A template with a single place holder opens up for a more varied approach to creating newsletters. It is also easier to use, since it is no longer possible to put a module where it will not fit.
Apsis’ new default template
In January, Apsis releases a new default template that replaces earlier templates. The new default template is an optimum module template with a single template and nine modules, that provides more layout options than the earlier six texmplates and eighteen modules
Apsis
What about your preheader?
Today, most email clients block images by default. This is naturally a huge problem for anyone who designs newsletters and other email circulars with images. In the US, many designers try to make the best out of the situation by using preheaders. A good preheader may not be the perfect solution, but it will certainly help you along the way. Let’s take a look at how it works!
A preheader is, as the word suggests, visible above the header. To be more specific, it is the first line of text in the email message. Usually, you see a text link here to a web version of the letter saying something like “Click here if you can’t read this email”. But you could use this space to more than that.
By pushing the text link to the side, it is possible to write a short sentence that sums up the contents of the letter or highlights your main offer. The preheader becomes a second subject line. In the example below, we see that the sender is “Apsis’ Newsletter” and that the subject line is “Improve your newsletter design”. But the third line – the preheader – says that the letter deals with transactional mail and welcome letters. And the letter has not even been opened yet. Pretty smart, don’t you think?
A preheader is visible directly after the subject line in the inbox of certain email clients. Above, we see the email client “Mail” on an iPhone.
This works even better in Gmail. In the image below, the entire preheader is visible.
What is the link between preheaders and blocked images? Take a look at the example below, where Victoria’s Secret has done something really clever. Since their newsletters are almost entirely based on images, nothing is visible when they are opened and the images are blocked. Except at the top, because there is a preheader. The preheader says the same thing as the text in the image, so you get an idea of what is in the letter and what you will see if you choose to download the images.
Having said that, it is probably not a very good idea to design image-based newsletters thinking that preheaders will solve everything. But it is a good tool for anyone who wants to use images in their newsletter.
Anders Frankel
E-mail University 2010 – part 1
One of our most popular series of articles in Sweden has been our E-mail University. The articles highlights different aspects of e-mail marketing and newsletters to help our readers get better results from their own marketing efforts. This is the first part of E-mail University.
Part 1 – The plan
Let us get off to an easy start by taking five minutes from your – most likely – busy work day to think some things over. Start by taking a look at what you have done in the last year when it comes to e-mail marketing. What was successful? What could have been better? Make a short list (5-10 bullet points on each side) that sums up your experiences from the past year. Now, it is time to look at the plan.
I suggest that you plan as far ahead as the next year, but you do not necessarily have to be too detailed – you need to be open for unexpected opportunities that arises. If you – like we do – publish a newsletter every month, plan the coming three months in detail, have about half of the content ready for the three months after that, and a rough sketch for the rest of the year. It is called a newsletter, but it does not have to be all news – a lot of content may be produced in advance and if necessary be updated before a sending.
By being well prepared you will not have to deal with the last-minute stress that often cause newsletters to fall short of being readable and interesting to a large audience.
It is hard to create good content – here are a few tips that may help you:
• Take a look at your most popular articles from the past year. Can you expand and elaborate further on these articles?
• Do you have to write everything yourselves, or could external writers give your readers new knowledge?
• Are there topics that warrant a series of articles?
• Is it possible to give your readers access to something practical (maybe on the Internet) that help them in their daily work?
• Ask your readers about tips and experiences
• Carry out an investigation in one newsletter, and report the results in the next newsletter.
Look at other newsletters. Is there anything that might inspire you and that may be adapted to your line of business? Perhaps it is time to try out using video in your newsletter? It is a powerful tool that will help you improve click-through rates. Try it out – but be sure to have content that is good enough to attract viewers a second time!
When creating content, try to be on schedule and preferably write more than you need (if you have planned for four articles, write five). You will have the possibility to add new content easily or to remove something that seemed like a good idea but did not live up to your expectations.
Write your plan, leave it for a while and look at it again tomorrow. I promise you this: to work with an elaborate plan rather than to put everything together at the last minute is an excellent way to to evolve and improve your e-mail marketing.
Joakim Bergmark
How to create an Internet survey
The answer to a question always depends on how the question is posed. This is a simple truth that will guide you as you create Internet surveys. A good survey with well thought-out questions will give you considerably more answers — answers that tell you the truth and that are possible to use for further analysis.
In this article, we take a look at how you should choose between different types of questions and what to thing about when writing the texts. At the end, we provide some information on what you should not do – sometimes mistakes can be revealing!
Questions with only one possible answer
Certain questions should only have one possible answer. Choose a layout with radio buttons or a drop-down menu.
Questions with multiple answers
Questions where it is possible to answer one or several different things (such as the question ”What or which newspapers do you read?”) should have clickable boxes.
Matrix questions
If you would like to have several questions on the same topic, use a matrix question. This is an excellent option if you want to know how your product is perceived on different levels (such as usability, pricing, sustainability) on a scale from 1-5.
Open questions
If you would like to give the respondent a chance to use his or her own words, use an open question. It is possible to have an open question directly following a related closed question if you want longer answers.
A few things to avoid
It is important that your questions are correctly asked in order for you to get usable answers. Let us take a closer look at the mistakes you should avoid when writing questions and answer options.
- Double questions
A common mistake is to ask several questions at the same time. Take this question, for instance: ”Do you think our service and our accessibility fulfils your expectations?”. If the answer is yes, how would you know which alternative the respondent meant? Is is the service or the accessibility?
Ask a separate question for each alternative if it is important for you to know both things.
- Technical terms and abbreviations
It is easy to become used to certain expressions. Do not take for granted that everyone will understand the words you use when talking to your business colleagues. Use simple words that everyone understands – it will increase the number of completed surveys significantly.
- Avoid negations
Avoid negative questions. Instead of writing ”Don’t you think we should get a new CRM system?”, ask ”Do you think we should get a new CRM system?” Be direct.
- Leading questions
Avoid questions that highlight one of the answer options, so called leading questions. Make sure that all options are equally appealing. ”What is your experience of using the razor?” is a better question than ”Do you find the razor difficult to use?”.
- Words with value
How much is enough? What is the characteristics of something good? How often is sometimes? The words enough, good and sometimes are three out of many words with value that you should try to avoid. Try to be precise in your questions. Use numbers, size, or amount as exactly as possible to give the respondent an idea of what you mean.
- Questions in the right order
The order of the questions have a significant impact on the number of respondents that complete your survey. A good tip is to start off with a couple of easy questions, and save the difficult and more demanding questions for later. They will not feel that hard this way. At the end of the survey, you return to a couple of simple, positive questions again. It is also useful to give the respondents the possibility to comment a couple of open questions. Close the survey with questions about gender, age and income. These are sensitive questions, but when placed at the end they usually become answered.
- Overlapping options
It is easy to get a bit confused when creating answers. Consider the question ”How old are you?”. There are overlapping options at the top example and correct options below. Which box would you tick if you were 35 years old?
0-15 years
15-25 years
25-35 years
35-45 years
45 or older
0-15 years
16-25 years
26-35 years
36-45 years
46 or older
- Missing options
Your survey has to have sensible answer options to present a realistic image of the world. If an option is excluded, consciously or subconsciously, the survey might show a totally faulty trend. You have to carefully consider which answer options to include in order to get a fair result. If you examine shopping habits and exclude the option ”Bulk purchases”, the survey will show that the respondents mostly shop in small quantities, which may not be the actual case.
- Neutral options
There are different opinions on how to use neutral options such as ”Don’t know”, ”Either/or” or ”No experience”. Many surveys exclude neutral options to get a clearer picture, something that may be effective in certain situations, such as attitude measurements. Be careful with this, though – you run the risk of creating a leading question where certain answers are highlighted. You should not expect everyone to be willing to take a stand in any given question, but rather give the respondents a neutral option on as a general rule. Your survey will be more accurate, since the respondents will give honest answers when it feels right to do so.
Some usable tips
• Make it possible to give anonymous answers and present your anonymity policy in the survey. More people will dare to give honest answers.
• Most participants want to know the results of the survey. Offer them the possibility!
• Only ask about things you really need to know. Make the survey quite short – you will get more answers.
Andreas Ferm
How to write a welcome letter
What happens when someone starts a subscription to your newsletter?
Do you send them a nice, personal message that makes your new reader feel welcome? Or perhaps just a text message, a simple note to let them know that the registration worked?
Or, perhaps – nothing at all?
A welcome letter is a valuable opportunity to make a connection with your new subscriber. Take care of the opportunity by giving a positive image of your company.
Anyone who subscribes has taken a moment of his or her time to do so. Give them a reward – or at the very least say thank you. It means a lot. Here are a few tips on how to write welcome letters!
Include your company name in the subject line
Be sure to tell that your company is the sender. A subject line is short and should be able to be read and understood at a glance.
Use the words ”welcome” and ”thank you”
Too many welcome letters are a purely technical confirmation that a registration process has worked out. They say something like ”You have subscribed to our newsletter” – and nothing else. Tell your reader that you appreciate their time and interest.
Include links to your web site
At the moment of signing up, people have a strong interest in your business. Pick a few representative parts of your web site and include links to these pages in your welcome letter.
Include any login-data
If your recipient has registered with a username and a password, make sure that these data are included in your welcome. Your letter will most likely be saved as a reference.
How can you be contacted?
Contact information is a natural part of all e-mail communication. In the welcome letter, it is especially important to communicate accessibility and openness.
Do not talk about yourselves – talk about your subscriber!
A subscription to your newsletter suggests a certain interest. But it is not certain that everyone is interested your company history or your organisation. Most certainly, though, they are all interested in what you can do to improve their everyday life.
If possible – make it personal
The more personal your letter is, the more likely it is to be opened and read. Although there are limitations to what is possible in a welcome letter, perhaps you know the recipient’s name or city of residence – and then it is possible to make a filtered sending.
Do not forget an unsubscribe link
Just as contact information, an unsubscribe link is a natural part of all e-mail communication. You might think that it feels unnecessary with an unsubscribe link in a welcome letter – if you just registered, why would you want to unsubscribe immediately? No, perhaps you would not. But you give the reader the option to do so. And by that, you show respect for your recipients by always communicating on their terms.
Poll questions – a great way to get more information
The main purpose of a welcome letter is just that – to welcome someone. But as we have seen, it is possible to include offers or to add value for the reader in other ways. An easy way for you to collect more information about your new subscribers is to use a poll question. It may not give you as much information as a full-scale survey, but it is on the other hand easy to answer a poll question and it is not intrusive in any way.
Apsis
Results from the survey at our seminar in Hong Kong
We conducted a survey after our latest seminar in Hong Kong. Many of the results pointed in the same direction. The answers on the open questions was also quite unified, but nevertheless interesting. We asked questions about the participants use of email marketing. Here are the results:
The first question was: ”Are you currently using email marketing?”
The majority of the respondents answered ”yes” (88 %). 8 % answered that the plan to begin with email marketing. The remaining 4 % wasn’t using email marketing.
”What is your preferred channel to receive information from your suppliers?”
As it turns out, people prefer email for receiving information from suppliers. 96 % percent of the recipients prefer email, the rest answered regular mail.
Approximately how many newsletters do you currently subscribe to?
The answering results for this question varied a little bit more. 44 % answered that they subscribe to 6-10 newsletters. But 28 % subscribes to more than 15 newsletters, which is a quite large number.
24 % answered 1-5 newsletters. But as we can see, the majority (72 %) subscribes to more than 6 newsletters.
Are you currently performing any split testing or quality testing for your email marketing?
Now, this is an area that has a lot of growing and development potential. 68 % answers that they don’t do any testing at all. But at the same time 32 % does, and that’s not a bad number. But still there is room for improvement.
We also asked some open questions:
”What is your biggest challenge within email marketing?”
We got many interesting answers. And some common topics regarding challenges in email marketing were about deliverability, getting good subscriber lists and also about creating relevant content.
The answers on the second open question were very unified. ”What is the most common reason for you to unsubscribe from a newsletter?” The number one reason for unsubscribing is irrelevant content.
Anders Frankel
Survey of e-mail clients
Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook are still the most widely used solutions to read e-mail. The proportion of Swedes that use mobile phones as their main email client is still below 1 %.
This survey was carried out between 16/2 – 19/2 2010 and was answered by 1075 individuals of different genders and ages living all over Sweden. The purpose of the survey is to give marketers information they need to customize their e-mail marketing for the market’s most widely used email clients.
Observations
The three most widely used e-mail clients have a market share of 75 %, according to the answers to the question “What solution do you usually use to read your private e-mail”. The complete chart is show below.
The e-mail clients that require the most work to show graphic e-mail messages correctly have a total market share of less than 2 %. As a consequence, e-mail marketers who want to reach consumers should focus on a design that looks good in clients such as Hotmail and various versions of Outlook (including Outlook 2007) – then the design will look good in the other clients that are widely used. The e-mail message should have a design that looks good even without images, since both Gmail and Hotmail does not automatically load the images for all senders.
Optimizing e-mail messages for mobile readers does not seem to be that important in the short term, given that the mobile phone with the greatest market share – iPhone – only has about 0,7 % share and generally displays graphical e-mail messages well.
Differences based on age and gender
Hotmail is dominant in most age groups, but has a declining market share when we reach older users. 80 % of the respondents between 15-22 years use Hotmail as their main e-mail client, while the proportion of respondents aged 56 and over is only 16.9 %. In this group, Outlook is more popular with a market share of 36.7 %.
Hotmail is clearly a more popular client among women (46.5 %) than men (32.2 %). Men tend to use Gmail (13 % for men, 9,2 % for women), Outlook (26,9 % for men, 21,5 % for women) and iPhone (0,9 % for men, 0,4 % for women).
The question: “What solution do you normally use to read e-mail at work?”
When people use e-mail professionally, things are quite different. Lotus Notes is used by nearly 10 % at work, compared with less than 1 % when it comes to private e-mail. Hotmail is hardly used at work, and Gmail is used by roughly the same number of recipients at work and at home. (Since the survey included respondents of all ages, a large proportion did not work.) Adjusted for those who does not work or use e-mail professionally, Microsoft Outlook becomes the most popular e-mail client with a market share of more than 40 %.
E-mail on mobile devices is not yet significant – not even in a professional settting – with a market share of less then 1 %. E-mail marketers targeting B2B clients should adjust and test their designs for the same clients as if they were targeting B2C customers, with the addition to also test and adjust the content for Lotus Notes.
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Anders Frankel
E-mail drives offline purchases
E-mail has become a popular channel to market products to consumers as well as other companies. A common argument has been the low cost of creating and distributing information.
We were curious to understand the recipients’ reactions – do newsletters actually lead to purchases?
The survey was conducted during 16/2 -19/2 2010 and was answered by 1075 individuals of different genders and ages living all over Sweden.
The results of the survey:
It may not come as a surprise that more than 50 % of the respondents shop online after receiving a newsletter, since the distance between the inbox and an e-store is very short. A more remarkable finding is that 25 % of the respondents made purchases in regular shops after having received a newsletter. This shows that e-mail is not just a fast channel – but that in some cases, the effect of a good newsletter can last for a long time.
Apsis
Welcome! Oh, really?
Do you ever think about the first impression you make? What to say? What to wear? Well, you are not alone – most people do. First impressions are important, and when it comes to e-mail marketing, they are just as important as they are in real life.
When you get someone’s email address, it is an expression of confidence. For most people, the inbox is a high pressure environment and people are usually quite restrictive with their e-mail address.
So, what do you do when you get new subscribers to your mailing list? Do they feel that you appreciate their vote of confidence? Do they feel truly welcomed? According to several American studies, including one from Marketing Sherpa, welcome messages are among the most opened email messages. Like other transaction messages, they have an opening rate of over 70 %. You have the opportunity to build a foundation for a successful future communication. A good welcome message may very well be vital for your subscribers’ loyalty to your mailing list.
Here is a real-life example: My sister started a subscription to a newsletter from a supermarket chain. The reason for her sudden interest in food was not really a reflection of her desire to cook a healthy meal. Rather, she had been promised a discount at the next purchase. That was the real reason why she agreed to subscribe to their newsletter.
On the subscription form, she had the opportunity to specify areas of interest and to mention that she would be interested in information about organic foods. The supermarket chain used this information to create a personalised welcome letter, which contained recipes that were tailored to her interests, links to previous letters with her type of content and a discount coupon for organic vegetables.
Her first contact with the supermarket chain via e-mail was a success. She got so much more than she expected. As a consequence, she still opens all their letters – even though the letters might not always be as good as the first one. But surely she might miss the next great letter, if she does not read them all! What is important to keep in mind when you design a welcome message?
Firstly, remember that your new subscribers are receptive to information when they sign up. Do not wait to welcome them – send your welcome message right away. A week later, they might have forgotten all about you.
Use the first email to find out more about your readers, but be careful not to overwhelm new subscribers with a detailed questionnaire. The registration process should be as simple as possible and any additional information the subscribers submit should be voluntary.
Secondly, focus on the subject line. Let both the subject line and the content focus on welcoming the subscriber and to give added value in order to build a good basis for communication. Do not try to sell anything – give something away! Be personal. Remember that it is a letter, and that many people appreciate a more personal approach. Perhaps the letter should be signed by the CEO or someone the recipient has had contact with at the company? Michael Katz, Blue Penguin Development, thinks that the language level of e-mails should be close to what we say in a conversation. He even suggests that you should record what you want to say and then write it down in the letter. A bit exaggerated perhaps, but it might be worth a try.
Send an HTML-message. Subscribers have to recognize your company profile even in a welcome message. Your new readers have probably signed up for your newsletter on the web, and they have might have been in contact with your company in stores or via postal mail. Do they recognise your company profile in the welcome message? A well-crafted HTML message shows that you care about your new readers. Obviously, you should send a text version if your readers can not receive HTML messages.
If you have the opportunity, tell the reader what your newsletter will contain, how often you will send them and give examples of what a newsletter will look like. Try to get the recipient to look forward to your next letter.
This is an example of a nice welcome message that also offers added value.
- Send an instant reward
- Become “whitelisted” – ask your recipients to add your email address to their address book. Your letters will then be delivered correctly at all times.
- Show some personality! Take a few minutes to figure out a warm welcome.
- Provide a link to your email policy
- Send a well-formatted HTML letter that follows your company profile
- Lead the receivers back to your website or to pages that may be of interest to a new customer.
- Tell your readers how often you will send newsletters, and create expectations.
- Make sure you create a good basis for further communication and attention
Anders Frankel
What makes you click?
These are a few of the most commonly asked questions people ask us at Apsis. Here are our suggestions on what you can do to increase the click-through rate in your messages
Activate the reader in the preview window
In our experience, few people double-click on a newsletter to read it on fullscreen. Generally, we prefer to read our email in the preview window of our e-mail programs. You should design your message so that it looks good there – put the important information on top and do not make your readers scroll sideways. We are quite comfortable with upwards and downwards scrolling, but not sideways. Your message should not be wider than 600 pixels.
The link texts should be placed to the right, where we find a higher level of activity. We believe the reason for this is the fact that most people use their right hand to move the cursor.
Let your logo and contact information be accessible, but keep a low profile. The readers should see what is important as quickly as possible, preferably in the preview window.
Polls increase the level of activity in our own newsletter. The reader may submit an answer to a question and see what other readers have responded. They learn something by contributing themselves.
Whenever we send Christmas cards or Valentines Day cards that the reader can forward, the activity increases in the entire letter. Conclusion: activate your subscribers!
The design
Recognizing the sender is an important factor when we decide whether to open a letter or not. You should let the receiver recognize the layout and your organization’s graphic profile. We have all seen innumerable examples where a lot of time and resources are spent on web sites, brochures and direct marketing. E-mail marketing is equally important. Make sure the layout is pleasing to the eye – it will make wonders for your click-through rate.
It is important to “keep it simple” when you send e-mail to your customers. When we visit a web site to search for information, we choose to be active. We are able to handle a lot of information and a variety of designs when we seek something actively. But a letter in the inbox should be more careful in its approach. Present the information clearly, so that the reader understands your intentions. Do not give away everything in the letter – serve an appetizer that encourages further clicks to read the entire article. Think of your letter as a table of contents. The purpose of pictures is to strengthen the text. Remember to test your letter in different e-mail clients.
Headlines
A headline helps the subscriber to determine whether the article is worth reading. At Apsis, we have summarized our five latest newsletters and we have seen that there is a dramatic difference in click-rate when the headline is personal in nature. In one of our letters, we had the headline “How good is your transactional e-mail, anyway?” We think that some of our readers did not understand the headline – but they were intrigued. “I should probably know more about this”, many people thought. In our latest newsletter, one of our headlines was “Do you test?” It was placed at the bottom of the letter, but still had an unusually high click rate. Avoid placing headlines within a picture, since many e-mail clients block pictures.
In the future, we will evaluate our headlines even more and we will try to have short, soulful headlines that encourage the reader to click.
Conclusion
• Make sure your letter “fits” in the preview window of the email client. Is it reader-friendly?
• Encourage your readers to click or to be active in the letter – polls are quite effective.
• Make sure your subscribers recognize your letters. Let the layout reflect your company’s graphic design.
• Write headlines that are interesting and show what the text is about – preferably focused on what the reader might benefit from reading the article.
In short, think about your own behaviour. Obviously, there are newsletters that you like a lot. What is it you like about them? Use that in your own letters! If you like it, odds are that many others will like it too.
Anders Frankel
Arranging seminars with e-mail invitations
1. Your database is priceless
You should have a reasonably large database with e-mail addresses in order to arrange a seminar with e-mail communication. The receivers must recognize the sender and the must have given their permission – purchased addresses often yield a poor response (as well as putting you at risk of bad will, obviously). With your own list of potential participants, it is both easy and efficient reach them.
2. Your potential customers probably know others just like them
Encourage your visitors to bring a colleague or two. It is an excellent opportunity to expand your database with additional contacts for your next seminar.
3. Send the invitation separately
It may seem odd, but whenever we send an invitation as a part of a regular newsletter, we get quite few applications. But if we send a message with only the invitation, the response is considerably better – even if the number of receivers is quite a bit lower. Conclusion: The readers give the newsletter a quick look, and each headline does not get nearly the same attention as it does in a separate letter.
4. Send a remainder a few days before the event
We have all busy days, and it might be easy to forget or give a seminar a lower priority. To avoid empty seats (or even worse, turning down visitors who might have had a seat) – send a remainder a couple of days before the seminar where it is possible to unregister.
5. Time is precious – make it worth while for your visitors
Anyone who registers for a seminar wants to learn something new – they do not want to listen to a sales pitch (in that case, they will call a sales representative). Plan your seminar carefully and make sure that you give your visitors good value for their invested time. And, finally – be careful not to linger too long in the spotlight. If you stretch beyond the scheduled time, visitors will have to leave during your presentation, which is never a good thing.
Good luck!
Lars Nilsson
Email school, part 3: To make people read your newsletter
When using marketing via email there is an obvious chain of incidents that needs to work in order to get the proper results. The message must reach the recipient’s inbox, the recipient must open the message and then act in an expected way.
When using marketing via email there is an obvious chain of incidents that needs to work in order to get the proper results. The message must reach the recipient’s inbox, the recipient must open the message and then act in an expected way. The goals might vary (for some senders a purchase in a web shop is the goal, while others are satisfied with building stronger relations to the recipients when they read well-written articles), but the steps mentioned above must be taken – probably all the times.
Let’s presume – although it cannot be taken for granted any more – that the message has reached the recipient’s inbox. Then there are at least four different things that decide whether the message will be opend by the recipient or not:
• who sent the message
• when it was sent
• what it contained
• how the message looks in a preview window and different emailprogrammes
Simple, isn’t it?
Well, maybe not as simple as that. Have a look at this …
According to surveys conducted by Doubleclick the most important thing is who the sender was when it comes to whether the recipient will read the message or not. This seems to be reasonable – compare having a message from a close friend (the guy who only sends you bad jokes excluded) or a message from a lottery you’ve never heard of.
Apart from the recipient’s general image of the sender (a company or a person), the recipient’s experience of emails or newsletters from the sender in question also plays an important role. When we compare the development of the number of opened messages between various companies it is evident that those who are good at providing the recipients with messages worth reading will have their newsletters opened and read more often than those who nag about irrelevant offers.
Conclusion: Every time you send a newsletter for example, the quality of the contents will have an influence on the number of recipients that will read the following issue. If you feel that the contents don’t come up to expactations – don’t send the message.
Another important factor when you choose the name of sender is whether to use the company’s name or the name of the contact person of your company. Both methods work in different ways in various situations and your choice is dependant on whether you want to build a realtion to the contact person or to the company.
The most common moment for sending a newsletter seems to be as soon as it is written. That may appear natural, but it is not always the optimal thing to do.
It has been proved that the point of time when a newsletter is sent is quite crucial to whether many recipients, or just a few, will open and read the newsletter. Tests that we conduct in cooperation with our customers show that there is a difference of about 20 % – only due to whether a certain newsletter was sent on a Thuesday, a Wednesday or a Thursday.
There is nothing strange really that the point of time affects the result. Consider the scene: You arrive at your office on Monday morning. You find 35 emails in your inbox and they are of varied interest, to say the least. Apart from reading and answering these emails you are supposed to set about the work of the week with new enthusiasm. If you do like most people, you probably delete all mails that you don’t consider to be important. If you get a newsletter on Tuesday around 10 o’clock instead, it will probably stick out more.
But 10 o’clock on a Tuesday is not always the best point of time. It has become a “truth” that newsletters are to be sent on Tuesdays or Thursdays in order to get the best response. This has led to the fact that most people do send their newsletters those days, which, in turn, creates a problem similar to the Monday mornings! So alternative ways must be used.
There are two ways of finding out the most optimal time for your newsletter:
• Use the visiting statistics for the home page in order to find out when people are most interested in the offers of the company. To send the newsletter about 1 hour before that peak will probably work very well.
• Make a test. Try out various points of time and evaluate the responses of various choices.
The advice to make tests is really the best tip even when it comes to deciding on a subject line. Try out various styles: informative/urging etc. and check what works best.
A problem might occur when you test the subject lines – if you don’t try out all the subject lines in the same newsletter. Otherwise it might be difficult to know whether it was the ponit of time or the subject line that gave the result. As a user of the Apsis’ Newsletter Pro you can get access to a function called “advanced sendings, a function that gives you an opportunity of randomly trying out av number of different subject lines, points of time or contents – randomly divided among the recipients of your list”.
A preview test is a “maybe”-factor that might affect the result in somewhat different ways.
The most common is the graphic preview test which you can find in the Outlook for example, where the recipient (typical) will see “the upper left corner” of the newsletter. The best way of meeting this is to see to it that this area contains valuable information (for instance a summary of the contents of the newsletter).
An alternative that sometimes occur in the Outlook is that the textversion of a html-message is shown directly under the subject line of the message. This text is the same as is shown for those who has activated functions who shows a window(with a short preview or a new email message. In order to create a correct textversion for a newsletter it is not only of importance to the minority that cannot read graphic email messages, but also for the users of the ordinary Outlook.
This is all for part 3 of the email school. Next article will deal with one of the biggest questions within legitimate email marketing (the absolutely biggest one if we can trust American investigations): Deliverability concerning email messages and spam filters.
Anders Frankel
Email school, part 4: To reach the inbox
Is it really necessary to care about deliverability in connection with email marketing?
Oh yes.
In the fall of 2005 a study was made among American companies using email marketing. More than 60 % answered that problems with deliverability was the biggest one of all. About the same time another study was made in the US, which stated that more than 20 % of all legitimate email messages disappeared on the way to the recipients due to various spam filters. Studies that we conducted ourselves in Sweden show that the corresponding figure here is about 15 %.
Why?
The question about how many of the mailers’ messages that are classified as spam gets different answers depending on who you ask. Figures between 80 – 90 % are not uncommon.
From the beginning a spam filter searched for words and phrases like “Viagra”, “Get rich quick!” or “Congratulations! You’ve won the lottery!” If an email contained any of these words or phrases it was probably a spam and the message was deleted.
The senders of spam didn’t like that, of course. One way to avoid this type of checks was to change the words so that “Viagra” was “V1agra” for instance, “get rich quick” was changed to “g3t r1ch quikk” etc. So in order to keep up with the changes the developer of spam filters needed to search for words similar to the typical spam words as well. This naturally reduced the precision and increased the risk of mistakes. (There is a rumour that the Swedish community Villaägarna for instance had some problems with too zealous email filters.)
The solution for those who was sending spam then was to “hide” certain words and texts in images which is much more difficult for a filter to analyse. The answer from the developer of spam filters was to search for email messages containing a suspected amount of pictures.
A problem with all these methods is that they cannot take the absolutely most important aspect of spam in email marketing into consideration: the ethics of the sender.
It might not be very usual, but absolutely legitimate emails may of course contain the word “Viagra” (ask a pharmaceutical company) or a large share of images. Therefore you can very well say that if email filtering is based on the reputaion of the sender, then it is okay – even if it fails sometimes, as do the other techniques. This type of filtering is based on the fact that recipients who are dissatisfied with email messages they received from a certain mailer do report this and that the email servers that have been sending a lot of these reported messages become blacklisted. The receiving email servers are then able to refuse email messages from those blacklisted servers. The weakness of this is that serveral companies might have a share in the same server. Consequently also the “innocent” companies might be negatively affected if they share a server with less particular senders.
Apart from the above mentioned methods technical obstacles are relatively common phenomena that might stop unwanted email messages. Typically this means that the one who operates a receiving email server:
• adds a short delay before received email messages are forwarded to the recipients. If too many messages have been sent from a certain mailer during a specific period of time this might be interpreted as spam.
• makes the server send a failure message at the first attempt to reach the receiving email server containing a request to try a little later. This technique is called “greylisting” and it means that certain types of virus cannot interpret the failure message and thus won’t try again.
• intentionally makes the receiving server slow when it comes to answering the server that sends email messages. The idea behind this is that several sending servers are short of time and will not wait as long as it takes.
• keeps an eye on whether there are many bad email addresses to the receiving domain in question. Lists that are not properly taken care of are seen as an increased risk for spam messages.
What can you do as a sender?
Pretty much, in fact.
1. Make sure that you have access to the most common filters on the market, filters that analyses the contents of the messages. Check the messages before you send them. This means that you also should have an address on Hotmail and Gmail and make a test there.
2. Make sure that you don’t share email servers with not serious users. [Det är nog något fel på den följande svenska meningen här.] Or if you really care about your deliverability – make sure that your emails are sent from an IP number that no one else is using. (If you are our customer we are glad to help you in this regard.)
3. Don’t “modify” your code of ethics. Stick to it!
4. Make sure that you use an email technique which doesn’t fail because of “greylisiting” and which checks recipients for messages about “too many sent messages”.
5. Delete bad email addresses from your list.
6. Use the authentications technologies like Sender IP, DomainKeys and Sender Score Certified. These are techniques that help the recipients to feel sure of the fact that the email messages that you send aren’t from faked sender addresses and that you follow certain ethical guide-lines. All this improve the possibilities to get through.
7. Avoid some of the technical pitfalls like IP numbers in links (they are interpreted as false links by newer versions of Outlook), tracking of written links (the same thing) or to send newsletters that consist of one or several images only.
Curiosities:
The very first occasion the word “spam” turned up is as a description of a product that does not appear to be very tasty: spiced ham. For more information click here: www.spam.com
“Spam” also became famous in a Monty Python musical where some poor hungry people cannot in any way avoid “spam” when trying to order something for lunch. Maybe that feeling is something you recognize? You’ll find the sketch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn4CZw3oGOQ .
The first spammers are said to be American lawyers who wanted to advertize their services to people who wanted a “green card” to the United States.
Anders Frankel
Apsis Index: Cultural institutions and organizations are still successful
Once every three months, we at Apsis gather statistics for different types of newsletters to give you as a sender a few points of reference for your marketing. Q4 2007 offered few surprises, but still some clear-cut trends.
1. Newsletters from membership organizations and organizers of cultural events continue to have the highest open-rate. Book publishers and travel agents still have the lowest open-rate.
We believe that there are two reasons for this: the size of the circulars and the relation to the sender. There is an obvious size difference between the different circulars within the categories – and smaller circulars make it easier to create content that is relevant to the target audience.
The receivers within the cultural sector tend to have a strong relation to the sender, who for the most part sends relevant and current information, about concerts or other shows. Travel agents regularly inform about prices and other travel-related matters that only interest the subscribers on a few select occasions every year.
2. The general level of activity went down slightly in December. The rate of opened messages as well as the number of clicks in newsletters was lower in December than in November.
The share of opened messages was 24 % (26 % in November); the share of receivers who clicked in a newsletter was 7 % (8 % in November)
Our assessment is that the reason for this is simply a combination of two facts: the subscribers received a large number of marketing offers during December and they had their attention span elsewhere during the holiday season.
3. It is still highly doubtful to send marketing e-mail during weekends. Newsletters sent on Saturdays or Sundays had considerably worse open-rate than those sent on a weekday.
The open-rate for newsletters sent on a weekday was around 25 %, as compared with 20 % for those sent on the weekend.
New in-depth statistics will be published in Apsis’ Newsletter for April.
Anders Frankel
Authentication of email
Authentication means that ISP gets the possibility to in fact verify who is the sender of an email. That´s a big
progress. In a world there unwanted mass emails and other spam takes more and more time from the average user, can this type of solutions mean important steps on the way to decreases the problem.
Authentication perhaps sounds like a complicated and technical word. But it should interest even you who a responsible for the marketing and don´t types code. Both emailmarketers and ISP agrees that authentication is an important step in work to reduce the amounts of unwanted emails, like spam.
E-mail which which ain´t authenticated will have a hgher risk to be trapped in the emailservers spamfilter or end up directly in the wastebin. And if this happends with your mailings it´s not your technicians which will be blamed, rather you which are responsible for the investments in marketing whic gives value.
What does this mean, ok, authentication is really not much more complicated than that the ISP get´s a possiblity to verify who is the sender of an email through your IP-adress. This is commonly setup to block emails, which trys to use your identity, high jack your server or IP-address to send the emails.
In other words, it´s not that complicated. The questions is rather if you have give the issue enough focus. But on the otherside it´s very easy to find out. Because if you already use authentication today, you probably use some of following protocol:
• “Sender ID Framework”: means that Hotmail add a warning to each email which doesn´t use authorization and tell the receiver that they can´t identify the sender, “Sender is unknown”. This technology is developed by Microsoft and just recently free for use which means that we expect the use of this will increase rapidly.
• “Sender Policy Framework (SPF)”: SPF is a solution which is developed from an open-source project, to be integrated in several big solutions, like AOL and Googles Gmail. SPF is also integrated in the latest version of the popular contentfilter SpamAssassin.
• “DomainKeys Identified Mail”: This is a process developed by Yahoo! and is built around a small encrypted key which is added to the header of the email, and that way ensure that the reciever can verify the sender.
With all problems an emailuser gets around spam in mind, it´s difficult to find disadvantages in working the authentication. Instead there is several advantages:
So let us finish with the 5 most important advantages with authentication:
1. Many big ISP filters and blocks e-mail just because they aren´t authenicated
2. You can use several types of authentication without any problems. If You do it the right way
the authencation can´t harm your emaildeliveries.
3. The cost to handle the authentication is nothing or atleast very low
4. Authentication is import to build a good reputation for you as a sender.
5. Through authentication you gets a possibility to get you an advantage compared to your competitor
which don´t do it yet.