Category: Stefan Eyram

_This is Day Two of *5 Days To Optimize Your E-mail Messages*, here is “part one”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/12/05/5-days-to-optimize-your-email-messages.­_
People who receive email use a wide range of email clients ranging from “Outlook”:http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857931033.aspx and “Outlook Express”:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/oe/ to “Eudora”:http://www.eudora.com and “Thunderbird”:http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/. They also use web-based mail solutions like “Hotmail”:http://www.hotmail.com, “Yahoo”:http://www.yahoo.com, “AOL”:http://www.aol.ca and now Google’s “Gmail”:http://www.gmail.com. Each of these handles incoming email a little differently. And if you send a lot of B2B email or sned to recipients who might be checking email from within large organizations, you will come across “Lotus Notes”:http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/noteshomepage?OpenDocument&cwesite=notes, an email client that is very tough on HTML and other formatted email. Lotus Notes will often chew up your HTML email and spit out some pretty awful stuff for the recipient.

I often get asked about email best practices. What is the best day (“here’s a PDF on that one”:http://email.exacttarget.com/pdf/Best-Day.pdf) and time to send marketing email? What are typical open and click-through rates? How do I optimize my email marketing?

In October the US Direct Marketing Association (“DMA”:http://www.the-dma.org) made “an announcement”:http://www.the-dma.org/cgi/dispannouncements?article=373 that makes it mandatory for their members to use “e-mail authentication”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Authentication for marketing email. As with the Canadian Marketing Association (“CMA”:http://www.the-cma.org), the DMA counts the major marketers and brands as members so this announcement is a big deal.