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Four things to check before your next mailing

Like many bits of technology, email is often set-and-forget. Everything is checked and rechecked during setup, and then no one goes back and looks at it again. But mail programs are not static, and people make changes. These changes don’t really break things, but over time they can create their own set of problems.
Setting aside some time every quarter or even every year to check and make sure all the bits of mail are configured correctly is a good idea.

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Creating emails

Email is, still, primarily a written medium. This means that good copywriting is crucial. Today I opened up an email and the pre-header says:
Laura, should have get your Naturals Sample Bag.*Web Version
Editing
Wait. What?
Maybe they mean “should have got”? But that’s implying they’re sending out free sample bags to everyone. That can’t be right. But I can’t tell because with images off that’s the only text in the mail, except the footer and legal information.
When you load images you get a little more clarity. Apparently, making a big enough purchase trigger a bunch of samples to be included in your delivery. So the line possibly should be “Laura, get your natural samples bag.”
Maybe it was intentional. After all it did get me to load images to see what the email was about.

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April 2017: The Month in Email

April was a big travel month for us. I went to Las Vegas for meetings around the Email Innovations Summit and to New Orleans, where Steve spoke on the closing keynote panel for the EEC conference.
I wrote several posts this month about privacy and tracking, both in email and in other online contexts. It’s increasingly a fact of life that our behaviors are tracked, and I wrote about the need for transparency between companies and those they are tracking. More specifically, I talked about the tradeoffs between convenience and security, and how people may not be aware that they are making these tradeoffs when they use popular mailbox tools like unroll.me. The folks over at ReturnPath added a comment on that post about how they handle privacy issues with their mailbox tools.
Steve contributed several posts this month. First up, a due diligence story about how service providers might look more closely at potential customers for their messaging platforms to help curtail spam and other fraudulent activity. He also looked at the history of “/8” IP blocks, and what is happening to them as the internet moves to IPv6. Steve also added a note about his new DMARC Validation tool, which rounds out a suite of free tools we’ve made available on our site. And finally, he showcased a particularly great email subscription experience from Tor.com — have a look!
I highlighted another post about companies doing things right, this one by Len Shneyder over at Marketingland. In other best practices news, I talked about bounce handling again (I mentioned it last month too), and how complicated it can be. Other things that are complicated: responding to abuse complaints. Do you respond? Why or why not?
Our friends at Sendgrid wrote a great post on defining what spammers and other malicious actors do via email, which I think is a must-read for email marketers looking to steer clear of such activity. Speaking of malicious actors, I wrote two posts on the arrest of one of the world’s top email criminals, Peter Levashov, and speculation that he was involved in the Russian hacking activity around the US elections. We’re looking forward to learning more about that story as it unfolds.

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