I don’t really consider myself an email expert. However, I have been asked email-related questions by clients who are using it as part of an integrated strategy. My biggest concern is generally whether or not a legitimate email make it into the customer’s inbox and not the dreaded spam folder. And with email, sometimes the issue is marketing-related (like not using "FREE FREE FREE!!!!" as the subject line) and some are technical (like authenticating your domain with domain keys).
Now, as a marketer, you might be getting hives from the idea that you have to go talk to your IT folks about email deliverability and use words like "domain keys". But now, you have a little cheat-sheet up your sleeve that will make those conversations go a little smoother. The good folks over at ThinData have released the first in a series of whitepapers on email issues and best practices.
Their premiere release is entitled "The Marketer’s Guide to Successful Email Delivery". It focuses on 5 challenges that most marketers face:
- Making sure email can be authenticated
- Maintaining a good email reputation
- Preventing being mislabeled a spammer by recipients
- Preventing being mislabeled a spammer by third-party software
- Configuring email servers to meeting industry standards
There is also a handy check-list that includes what questions to ask your IT department about and what issues should be dealt with by your Email Service Provider (ESP) if you use an out-of-house service.
Finally (and this is my personal frustration with most whitepapers), many times you want to explore an issue further, but you don’t know where to look; ThinData includes a detailed link section at the end to online resources for further exploration.
Check it out and let us know:
- Is this the kind of resource you like hearing about on One Degree?
- Is this kind of resource created by a vendor helpful?
NB … email stats are from Ipsos-Reid’s new study, "Email Marketing 2007: SPAM or Marketing – Do Canadians Know the Difference?"
Yes, this information is helpful and I like receiving this type of information on One Degree.
In 2005, I was on an internal committee with some IT people. We created an e-mail policy for the organization. It would have been helpful to have the whitepaper at the time. I’m going to use it to audit our policy and see if any changes are in order.
Thanks for sharing.
Please do continue to include this type of information on One Degree. I downloaded the white paper after receiving Thindata’s enewsletter and it is a great resource. Unfortunately there are a lot of half-baked white papers that are more self-promotional than helpful floating around out there. I’d rather not see those make an appearance. But overall, yes…white papers from vendors are useful.
I think its important to plan out an email campaign and its not normally just as simple as just getting an email list and powering up Outlook. This information helps ensure that campaigns have a maximum likelihood of being effective.
Yes, this type of information is helpful. In fact, working with ExactTarget, a leading email service provider, we get asked about this on a regular basis. Arguably, deliverability and spam filters are at the top of the list of concerns that email marketers have.
As Kathryn Lagden noted, there are a lot of promotional “white papers” that seem to aggregate other peoples’ work while being a sales pitch. Readers will easily see through that.
To build on these respirces, here are some things One Degree readers may be interested in:
White Paper – Top Email Marketing Power rends for 2007
http://email.exacttarget.com/ETWeb/whitepaper_form_new.aspx?id=1886
Webinar (July 11) – Using Email Marketing to Accelerate Marketing ROI (Joint Webinar with Email Experience Council founder Jeanniey Mullen)
http://email.exacttarget.com/ETWeb/roiwebinar.aspx?AFC=RW