Recent Posts

Images in email

There have been a number of blog posts recently discussing designing emails that look good and inspire clicks even when images are suppressed. Much of this is related to the EEC whitepaper showing that the majority of email users suppress images in emails and the 2008 email design guidelines published by Campaign Monitor.
I happen to be one of those cranky users who suppresses images by default, even in the emails with the cute bunny pictures. Up until about 3 years ago, I was using a mail reader that did not render images (or attachments). It is always interesting to me to watch how senders in general are reacting to the marketplace. Some senders have mail completely incomprehensible without images turned on. Their weekly (or more often!) email is a network of empty boxes on my screen.
For the most part, the emails are useless to me without images, and while I have occasionally loaded images or check the website, the emails are not that much better with images. I stay on the lists now as an informal study of how long it will take the sender to notice I have not opened, clicked or purchased from their emails.

Mind filters

Stefan has a good article up at ClickZ about getting mail past the “mind filter”.

Unsubscribes made difficult

Dennis blogs about his experience trying to unsubscribe from classmates.com list over on deliverability.com. His experience touches on a number of points I have discussed recently.
Dennis initially signed up for a free account at classmates.com around 10 years ago, but has asked to be unsubscribed multiple times. Recently classmates reactivated his subscription again, sending him marketing mail he did not want. Reactivating subscriptions is an extremely bad idea. Not only is it a CAN-SPAM violation to send mail after an unsubscribe has been received, but senders really end up annoying recipients by doing this. Think about it, these are people who have actively told the sender that they do not want mail, and the sender goes out and decides to override the recipients wishes.
I can only imagine how horrible the delivery for this mailing was. ISPs measure how many non-existent addresses senders attempt and mailing a list that has addresses accreted over 10 years is going to have a massive number of dead addresses. Not that many people have the same address now that they did 10 years ago. Some of those dead addresses are probably now being used as spamtraps by the ISPs, another hit to delivery rates. Finally, there are the complaint rates to consider.
For those people who received the mail and want to unsubscribe, Classmates.com does everything possible to discourage that. Dennis describes the process he went through.

Marketers missing out

Many delivery blogs have posted about the recent ReturnPath study showing that marketers are missing prime opportunities to use email to develop a strong relationship with recipients. I finally manged to get a few moments to read through the study and comment on it. Over a few days in February ReturnPath researchers signed up at more than 60 major retailer brands. They then monitored the subscriptions to see how often and what kind of mail the retailers sent.
Overall, it seems the researchers were disappointed in how the retailers were using mail. Even the title of the whitepaper captures this feeling: “Creating Great Subscriber Experiences: Are Marketers Relationship Worthy?” The answer seems to be more no than yes.
From my perspective the data is not all that surprising. In many cases it seems bigger companies rely on the recognition of their brand to get them through minor delivery problems (like complaints) rather than good practices. Whereas a smaller company will have to work harder to develop a relationship, larger companies with wide brand recognition can fall back on their brand.
There were a few areas ReturnPath measured.

Recent Posts

Images in email

Mind filters

Unsubscribes made difficult

Marketers missing out

Broadcom Exec drugs employees

Before you send email

Microsoft takes on phishers

Suppression lists

EEC Followup

E360 drops suit against antispammers

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