The Reasons You Need Email Deliverability

 

The problems associated with email deliverability are a significant hindrance to the conduct of internet commerce via email.  That may be as succinct a statement of the obstacles we face when trying to build an online marketing presence as we use as a primary or even a component of your internet marketing plan any form of email marketing.  Even the best designed and written marketing plan that depends on reaching your customers via standard email communications faces the problem of spam filters and other hindrances to email communications resulting in disruptions to your email deliverability.

So before you design an elaborate methodology to battle theemail deliverability issue, maybe its best to drop back and look at exactly what you are looking for email marketing to do for you and evaluate whether the investment is worth the outcome. The basic reasons we utilize email marketing are these….

.          To generate enthusiasm for online promotions.

.          To make product announcements and build customer awareness of new products and services.

.          To generate interest in special promotions designed to stimulate sales.

.          To evangelize new customers and build our online marketing program.

.          To maintain open communications with our customers.

.          To solicit feedback from the customer base.

.          To encourage referrals.

.          To repair relationships after service calls or returns and to rebuild customer confidence.

.          For mass mailings to create a new wave of sales and to grow your online market niche.

These are probably just a few of the ways you might use an internet marketing program via email if it ran smoothly.  But if you are facing email deliverability problems, every one of these objectives can be frustrated and you could actually lose customers and see a decline in business simply because the email system is so bogged down with spam and spam filters put in place to battle the problem.

These are all valid reasons for any kind of customer communications.  And under the previous model of how the internet operates only a few years ago, internet citizens looked to email as one of the primary touch points for communications from friends, business associates and online merchants. 

Having established that under the assumption that email is the most efficient method for sustaining contact with existing customers and building new customer relationships, then making an effort to get email deliverability under control makes a lot of sense.  There are two levels of email relationships here to take into account and the effectiveness of a war on the email deliverability problem differs for the two types of customer relationships.

When using emails for relationships with existing customers with whom you enjoy an ongoing relationship of trust, the investment you might make to clear away any email deliverability problems makes a lot of sense.  But you also have resources in an existing trust relationship with a customer that take a lot of the tedium of fighting email deliverability out of the formula. 

An existing customer can add you to their preferred contacts list so the email spam filters will automatically allow your emails to flow through to the customer.  You can ask for feedback on a regular basis to assure deliverability is working and to test that your communications are getting through.  In a relationship of trust with your existing niche, keeping email deliverability active is not as much of a problem.

However when using email to gather new customer contacts particularly through mass mailings, you face an uphill battle to open the doors of email deliverability with dozens if ISPs and to learn up to date email deliverability "tricks of the trade" so your email doesn’t get discarded with hundred of other mass mailings which qualify as spam.  And in that mass mailing solicitation already had a low percentage of return on investment before the email deliverability problem came up, the investment in solving the deliverability problem for mass mailing emails may just not be worth the effort.

Start Them Communicating and Keep Them Communicating

 

As an internet customer and web surfer, you no doubt have signed up for mailing lists, web site "memberships" or to buy something online and experienced an email verification process.  The process is pretty straight foreword and most of us follow the instructions of the web site without giving it much thought…

.          You sign up to have an ID on the web site.  This is a common practice so you can make posts on a web site's message boards or get notifications of changes to the site or news about the web site topics.

.          You provide the safe information including what nickname you want to use, a password, perhaps your zip code and your email address.  Because the web site doesn’t require phone number or address, you don’t mind giving them this information , especially if they post a notice that they  will not sell your email on a mailing list.

.          Once your registration is processed, the web page instructs you that a verification email was sent to assure that the email adders you gave is valid. You are then instructed to go to your email address and find the verification email, open it and click on the link to complete the activation of your membership.

.          You are obedient and complete those steps and you are done.  You might get a "congratulations" email letting you know that you are ready to use your new membership on the web site.

Have you ever thought about why the web site owners created this system?  It might be to limit the people who can  post on their message boards or change their wiki pages.  But that probably is not the reason.  The real reason is to establish email communications up front to head off any problems with email deliverability issues and to encourage you to add the email address they will be using to contact you to your preferred users list in your spam blocking software so their emails will get through.

This technique for overcoming the email deliverability problem is probably one of the best of the current thinking on the problem.  That is because the solution is not based on assaulting the machinery in place to handle spam emails.  The solution is based in building a relationship with the customer from the ground up.  And by starting that relationship out with an enticement, you start them communicating with them via email early on so that channel of communication opens up.

However, I have often thought that the web site owners miss a golden opportunity when they guide us through this process.  If you are like me, you are happy to go through this verification process because it makes sense.  And in a way it makes you feel good that the web site owners want to know you are for real and they give you a chance to opt out during the email verification process.  You are in a cooperative and partnering mood with the web site owner which is a business providing you with a product or service, whether you know they are that or not.

But the online business that just did such a good job of starting you communicating missed the chance to keep you communicating.  Yes, the congratulations email is a nice follow up.  But this is s a golden opportunity to start a dialog of communication with each customer that not only keeps that email channel of communications open, it builds that customer relationship so you can exploit it for more sales, greater participation in the web site and for referrals.

At that moment when the congratulations email, what if you put a coupon for 15% off a newsletter subscription or from something in the catalog of products?  Immediately are drawing the customer to a buying relationship with your internet business.  And by drawing them to your sales page, you can market all your goods and services to them as they claim their prize.

There are dozens of ways to tease further communications with the close of each successful transaction.  You already have the customer's attention when you step them through the email address validation process and you know you have a "hot" email marketing contact point with an active customer.  Don’t miss out on using this hot channel to build and expand that relationship and make it bigger and better with each exchange of emails with that customer.

Selling and Teaching via Email

 

Probably the most reliable way to get around the problem of email delivery problems is to shift the desire for communications from the merchant, which is you, to the customer.  By turning the tables so the customer wants your emails, the customer will take the steps to white list your email sending address to make sure he or she gets every single email you send.  And the best way to create that desire is to give them something of value in their email each week.

People come to the internet for many things including entertainment, discussion, free stuff and diversion.  But one of the most common things that people want is knowledge.  Yo have a specialized knowledge you can offer to your customers that will not only benefit them but it can be used as a marketing tool to open communications to your customers email inboxes in a far more effective way than any blind email or mass mailing could ever do.

There are several ways to offer training courses online including ebooks or videos.  But what is most effective for the sake of opening a long lasting communication channel to your customers is an email course in which you step by step lay out your specialized knowledge about your field of expertise over a  period of twelve to fifteen installments.

Sometimes this kind of offering is called an autoresponder series because the function of an autoresponder software package can be helpful with distribution of the e-course.  An autoresponder is a specialized service or type of software that either automatically responds to events or emails by sending out a response email or it can be used to generate email traffic on a schedule.  So you can use an autoresponder to send the next installment of your email course to those who "subscribe" to it and know that it will go out without fail on the appointed day.

Now probably the biggest challenge of offering an autoresponder email course is how to create the course.  Few of us are writers and while you may have the knowledge, you may have trouble composing that knowledge in the form of a course.  There are a couple of ways to solve this problem…

.          You could hire a ghostwriter to compose the course for you.

.          You could speak the course contents into a tape recorder and then have it transcribed into a written course that could be sent to customers in short email installments.

.          You could even have a friend "interview" you to draw that specialized knowledge out of you.  The interviews could be fairly free form and then you could take the transcriptions of the interviews and organize them by topic into an e-course to offer your customers.

Once you have the contents laid out, don’t publish the course until you look it over to see where in the outlines you can integrate marketing messages.  Many of the products or services you offer as part of your business are directly related to your specialized knowledge.  So by including links to your shopping cart pages or to web pages that can lead customers to purchase decisions, the course is both instructional and useful for promoting your web site and sales as well.

The next step is to get the course into the hands of your users.  The first candidates to become "students" are the active cyber citizens who spend a lot of time on your web site.  So look at the regular posters on your message boards and blogs or citizens of a chat room on your site or contributors to your wiki and open conversations with them about offering a course. 

You can also create multiple ways to allow your customers to subscribe to the course series.  An online sign up is always a good choice because you can harvest their email address there and then open communications to their email and see to it that your business email is added to their favored contacts spam filter list so they do not see the courses disappear into their spam bucket each week.

As the customer enjoys learning from your series, the added benefit of getting them used to an active interaction with you and your web site is put in place.  And the course can be viral to be passed along to friends and family members so it recruits new customers as well.  

Viral Marketing Trumps Email Deliverability

 

The internet has turned another corner in the last few years.  This should come as no surprise.  The one constant about the internet is change.  But the changes that have become a reality in the last few years have made fundamental changes to how we view the internet, how we use it and what we expect when we go on a web site and interact with the web site owners any more.

From wiki control over web sites to YouTube to social networks, the emphasis of the internet has shifted from the operators of web sites to the users.  And with this change the way those of us involved in using the internet for marketing have begun to change the way we do business as well. 

The model for internet marketing that predates the shift to the WEB 2.0 methodology was heavily dependent on email as the primary line of communication with the customer.  Next to online sales, email was the way customers sent in inquiries and the way customer support was handled.  And other than online advertising, email was the most sophisticated method for internet marketing we had at our disposal.

Over time, however, the use of email for marketing began to see abuses in the form of spam.  More and more the need to protect customers from spam communications has so dominated the world of email marketing that has become a cost burden for online merchants and customers alike and it has slowed or stopped email deliverability to the point that it is uncertain on any given business day whether you can depend on email to keep your business running or not.

As a result, a discipline and a methodology for circumventing email delivery interference points such as spam filters has imposed yet another new area of online knowledge that takes time away from running your business so you can focus on working with ISPs and learning the methods of spam control so you can carefully construct your emails so at least they will get to your customers.  But the methods you have to use to jump through hoops to get your marketing emails to customers have come to dominate email marketing so heavily that the message and the communication has almost taken a back seat to just getting the email delivered.

It is interesting that the big changes in how the internet operates in some ways are going to retire this cumbersome email system before we come up with a solution to the email delivery problem.  There are some very sophisticated internet marketing techniques that are showing themselves to be highly effective that never depend on email at all.  And as modern internet merchants turn to these methods, the problem of email delivery may never be solved as much as it is ignored and allowed to die out on its own.

Viral marketing is one way modern internet marketers are recruiting new customers and getting the word out about products and services by tapping the power of video and the instinct internet denizens have for downloading free stuff.  Viral marketing is a method where the merchant creates a download that is desirable.  A funny video, a musical performance or an ebook make great viral marketing tools.  But along with the free "toy", the download carries the marketing message of the merchant and is downloaded into the internet network of users quickly and with no cost to the merchant or the user. 

The viral part occurs naturally as users upload the video or link to it on other web sites or share it with each other on blogs or through email.  The marketing message spreads from customer to customer, like a virus spreads the flu and as it spreads, it directs new customers back to the merchant web site to become active customers. 

This is a powerful marketing technique that depends on nothing more than human nature for success.  And unlike the cumbersome email system, viral marketing has its own way of avoiding "spam", it is fast and it is cost free.  But above all the one trait that makes viral marketing trump email marketing as the means to success for the future of internet marking is a simple principle that always attracts business people.   It works.

Those Tricky Customers

Internet marketing can be a cat and mouse game with you being the cat and the customer being a very wily mouse.  Internet denizens are a clever sort and if they see something on your web site, they will not hesitate to sign up for a membership and even agree to receive your promotional emails.  But those tricky customers have ways to dodging your email advertising so even though you think you are advertising to them, your messages are actually vanishing off the face of the earth.  So we have to be just as clever as well.

Knowing how customers think is a big part of being successful in your marketing plans.  Internet customers are just like customers in the old marketing model.  They are curious about promotions and they want to enjoy your give aways and dodge ongoing advertising.  The cat and mouse game is to get them to want your advertisements by attaching them to things they want and get them to give you their email addresses and even to add your email identification to their preferred contacts list so your marketing emails fly right through their spam filters. 

Much of what goes into web site design is making a web "place" that will draw customers to register for a "membership" or otherwise provide you with their real email address.  When you develop a system that is working with actual visitors on your web site, you can then build a mailing list that is of much greater value than any list of email addresses you might buy from a mass mailing email service.  Your email list is pure gold because it consists of real customers who actually had an interest in your web site and your product or service and who are likely to come back if your marketing is well done. Not only is that email contact list gold to you as a business, it is of great interest to other businesses in similar lines of business as you who will pay well to get their hands on that marketing email contacts list for the same reasons you value it.

However, those tricky customers of yours even have ways of stepping around your validation schemes and it all lies in the fact that anyone can set up as many email addresses online that they want.  You know from your personal use of email that you have one or two primary email accounts, probably with your ISP that go directly to your desktop email software such as Microsoft Outlook.  But most of us also set up two or three or many more other email accounts with services like HotMail, Yahoo and others.  Its easy to set up an account on these services to use for games or to register for contests.

Those alternate services are where tricky online customers can trap your emails and actually give you the impression that you are advertising to them when you are not.  A typical ploy by internet denizens is to send any incoming emails that are not personal or of immediate value to a yahoo, hotmail or other free email service.  The result is that even if you harvested their email address when they signed on for a service or became a member of your web site, your advertising emails are being "dumped" into these alternative email inboxes which the customer has no intention of keeping up with. 

The customer might check those email boxes every few weeks and just hit "delete all" on the inbox knowing that they don’t want to see any of  those emails.  And when they do that, there goes your advertising and you may never know what happened.

One way to try to bypass this problem is to make verification of email a part of the registration process.  In that way, the customer has to log onto that email box to see a verification email and hit a link in that email to validate that it is a valid email address.  But the final answer is to make your marketing emails so interesting and valuable to your customers that they don't want to "dump them" into a holding tank email because they want to see what you are going to send them.  And when you get to that level of relationship with a customer, you really do have a gold email list that will result in much higher sales for your online business.

Monitoring Email Deliverability

The world of business communications has changed dramatically in the last two decades and with it the way you go about marketing your products has changed too.  In this new century if you are not assured you can be successful with internet marketing and to do so using email, you are behind the curve in getting to the customer base you need before your competitors too. 

For many companies the only way to reach the volume of customers you need to reach to reach your financial goals is through mass email advertising campaigns.  But the services you can subscribe to are costly.  If you pay a price to deliver 100,000 emails to potential customers and only 5000 actually get to those email inboxes because spam filters are catching your advertisements first, then you have wasted a lot of money. 

The only way you can really know what percentage of emailsare getting through to the customers is to find a way to monitor them.  That is why employing an independent agency that can help you track your emails makes sense.  If that company can deliver to you a report that shows in detail and by ISP what percentage of your emails are being trapped by filters and conversely how many are getting to customers, you have what you need to make some decisions about how to spend your internet marketing budget in the next quarter.  But that data has to be reliable and usable to you and it must be graphic so you can use it in presentations to current management to illustrate the problem and what you plan to do with it.

It makes sense to look into the top email delivery monitoring services to determine if they can provide you with those statistics.  An example of such a service is DeliveryMonitor.com.  This service makes it possible to see in detail how many of your emails are getting to their intended email inboxes, how many are being diverted to spam filters and how many vanish entirely from the internet (presumably automatically deleted by spam filters).  This information is reported by major ISP so you can quickly spot if your message is  being caught more often by one ISP than another.

Armed with this kind of information, you can dig deeper to find out what spam detection rules the ISPs in question are using and then tailor your next mass communications email so your message is approved by the ISP filters and goes on to the customers.  The outcome is that if the service is accurate, within a matter of months, you will have what you need to fine tune your email marketing plan and see a significant improvement in successful delivery of your advertising to customers. 

When you see that percentage start to go  up, you will immediately see a corresponding increase in inquiries about your product or services followed by an increase in sales.  That kind of refinement of your marketing program is exactly what needs to be done every week and every month by your marketing department to assure long term success in this modern world of digital commerce.

A good email delivery monitor provides two important services for your business.  The first is the one we just described.  By giving you the data you need to evaluate why your emails are not getting to the customers email boxes, you can make changes to fix the problem and see a dramatically higher rate of success for your marketing dollar.

But the second service is just as valuable because the reports, statistics and graphs that are given to you are crucial both for your management of internet advertising and for communication with corporate management.  You are going to be held accountable for the success of your internet marketing programs.  This data will help you be able to show both where you are successful and where work needs to be done and to show management the path to success you have planned.

This is not a commercial for any one service but DeliveryMonitor is a good example of how they work and a good starting place for your evaluation.  But be a thorough business person and evaluate the field of services so when you do budget to bring a email delivery reporting service on board as a vendor, you know what you are paying for and you know what they can do for your business.