Because there are so many email clients, including web-based ones like Gmail and Yahoo!, it is essential that email marketers ensure their messages display properly in all the various email clients.

Look at these examples from Groupon.com.  This company (Think: Group + Coupon) specializes in emailing you a deeply discounted local deal of the day, and their business is HOT.  But viewing it from the preview pane, it doesn’t look so hot.

We see three major improvements (In order of importance) that could be made here:

1. Alignment. The alignment is all messed up. It’s obvious to us that someone created this email template without any regard to the various email clients in which it will be read. We’ve included two samples below – the first for the Mail client in Mac, and the second from Gmail through a Chrome browser. These were the first two options that tried it in, and they both look terrible. We’ve examined the code for the email and it’s cliear they need help in coding for email because it’s different than coding for the web. Just because it looks good in one browser, does NOT mean that it’s going to come through all the various email clients unscathed. You have to test it and tweak it to get it right.

2. Missing Alt-Tags. What are those question marks about?  I don’t know, and I’m too lazy to display the images, so I’m over it and deleting the message.  After all, if my attention span is the same as most people who open emails – it takes me 8 seconds to click something on average.* And unless your email message and preview pane kicks ass, it’s going to be the delete button. Adding alt-tags for each image will help insure that your message is coming across even if your user doesn’t download images.

3. Top Line Message Missing. As we mentioned, you have a very limited amount of time to get your readers attention. Why then would you not have the very first line of your email describe your offer? Notice how the very top line of this Groupon email says “Your Daily Seattle Groupon | View this message in a browser | Unsubscribe”. This is a completely missed opportunity. Some email clients, like Gmail, show the first line of your email in the “preview” pane, before the user opens the message. Is “Your Daily Seattle Groupon” the most important thing they could say? Uh, duh, since the From address says Groupon – I already know it’s a Groupon. Why would you use such valuable real estate to repeat yourself? And if you’re trying to “create intrigue” how about something like – “Get a Head to Toe Fix from Blix.” Sure, it’s a little more work to change your template every day, and to think up something creative – but don’t your clients deserve it Groupon?

Groupon viewed in Gmail through Chrome browser.

Groupon viewed through Mac Mail email client.

The daily discounts offered by Groupon are undoubtedly good bargains, but is business so good that they’re too cool to be concerned with aesthetic details? Do companies like Apple care about asthetics? Maybe for Groupon, it’s “good enough,” but that’s a dangerous marketing mentality. What about your company’s image?  Can you afford to overlook the details? Utilizing Groupon’s advertising is an investment for their clients. They pay for Groupon to create messages, so those messages had better look damn good down to the smallest detail in our opinion. If I was a Groupon client and my promotion looked all discombobulated, I’d be pretty upset–I don’t want to pay and settle for “good enough” because good enough never is.

Solution
Email Broadcast understands that an email campaign’s vitality rests on presentation of relevant content. Therefore, we hand-code each message in HTML to W3C standards and TEST IT against a battery of multiple email clients, so we know it’s going to look amazing no matter what web service or email client is used to view it. We also use ALT TAGS to make our messages “disabled-image friendly”, so just because our reader may not see the image, they still receive the central message of the content – which is key to getting them to the next step – downloading images. And of course, we always create great “Top Line Messages” and often personalize them.

True story:  CEO of Email Broadcast, Ken Mahar, loves a great deal – but when he got the email above from Groupon last month, he cringed.  So he emailed them back, a simple heads-up, pointing out how their preview pane looked with a suggestion that they take a look at it.  It’s been over a month now and he has yet to receive a reply.

So Groupon, here’s a little Email Broadcast “coupon” of our own, just for you:

—————————————————————————————-
100% Off One Hand-Coded Template So You Can Get It Right

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* Lyris Webinar: *Turn your Email Marketing Up A Notch – 5 Ways to Improve Performance Now” 6/2010

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing Tips: #5 Test, Test, Test

So how could this happen? A couple of insights:

Technology is making it so cheap to interrupt someone that even the holy can be tempted by the lure of immediate results such that even an organization that should be absolutely opposed to this kind of technology not only embraced it, but were boasting of their efforts on Twitter. That is until the entire marketing community overwhelmed them with a major spanking in public. Now the “convo” that they wanted to keep rolling has taken a life of it’s own and is undoubtedly something WOMMA would do anything to stop. Right now they are reaching for their “disaster recover” binders and Googling “Tylenol.”

This leads to another insight – playing with fire can get you burned. By participating in social media there is an inherent contract that you are no longer in control of your message. It’s a very powerful tool with very sharp edges that cuts both ways. A quick search of @WOMMA on twitter shows an overwhelmingly negative response to their tactics. This should be a warning to anyone that they need to be squeaky clean in this era of instant news cycles where everyone is a publisher. And when Seth Godin takes the time to call you and tell “You’re doing it wrong” you shut the F up and listen.

Another problem is that regulators are asleep at the switch. I don’t expect government to be everywhere in our lives, but this is a prime example of the FCC being woefully out of date with technology. If you don’t need a brain to use ROBO calling, perhaps you should at least have to get a license or answer some questions like “Have you been drinking today?” We made fun of the lack of prosecution of spammers (it’s pathetic) last summer during a stunt that we videotaped.

You might be thinking this point that perhaps it was a highly considered ploy to drive PR – but I guarantee you that is not the case no matter how they will try to spin it. At best they were moronic, at worst they were desperate. You may create some PR for yourselves, but when it diametrically opposes your message – your going to be a punch line on the Tonight Show. Your name recognition will certainly go up – but be careful what you wish for. Ask Steve Bartman if that is a good thing after he ruined the Cubs 2003 world series run. In a mindless grab of selfishness, because it was easy, he derailed his favorite team’s hopes for victory. He and the organization may never be the same, and I’m afraid this may be the case here.

Related posts:

1. Government Turning a Blind Eye to the High Cost of SPAM?

Republicans Vow to Repeal Obama Bedtime

In a stunning blow to President Obama, the Republican Party unanimously opposed the new bedtime hours recently given to Sasha and Malia by the President and the First Lady. “It’s irresponsible and unfathomable” commented John Boehner (he requests that you pronounce it “Bay-ner,” by the way). “We’re outraged that the President would not consult and then summarily kowtow to the congressional minority.”

When asked what bedtime he and his party recommended, the congressman said, “We oppose all bedtimes suggested by the President and the First Lady and recommend an incremental approach. We also reject the government takeover of bedtimes.” RNC Chairman Michael Steele was finally reached outside Voyeur, a Los Angeles club where topless dancers can be seen mimicking sex and bondage acts, and he observed, “I’ve seen firsthand what can happen when bedtimes are not respected.” …read more

Tiger Woods Thanks Jesse James

Email Broadcast is reporting that an intercepted text message from Tiger Woods to Jesse James read: “Dude, THANK YOU! Got 2 tix for you at Masters will call. Let’s get drinks after.” …read more

Toyota Selects – Then Fires – New Ad Firm

Beleaguered by its public image regarding quality, especially pertaining to sticking accelerators, Toyota reached out to PR Firm Chiat/Day to solve its problems. Only after the announcement did Toyota executives realize that the same ad house had created the Energizer bunny campaign, leading them to summarily dismiss the firm as “Not a good strategic fit at this time.”

Woman’s Life Work Worth $500 Reward

A woman who had been robbed on several prior occasions left her life’s work on her computer, without a backup, and that computer has been stolen. Her losses consist of over 40 musicals written over 20 years, including the current production, “The Princess and the Iso Peanut.” There is a $500 reward for the return of her computer. Observant neighbors saw one potential suspect strip off his clothes and baseball cap in a nearby yard and saw another man jump a fence while an accomplice waited at the car with the trunk open. …read more

Paddleboarder Dates Whale

In what can only be described as bizarre behavior, a woman recuperating from a broken foot decided to paddle across 40 miles of open ocean, during which time she had a long encounter with a Minke whale. The whale was seen blowing kisses at Nelson. …read more

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Today he saw me in line behind some “new” customers who were still making up their mind. He pointed his finger down with eyebrows raised visually asking me if I want my usual to eat in or to go. I pointed down and he called out my order to the kitchen while the ladies in line never even noticed that I had virtually skipped the line. When I get my order (with brown rice not white) he also remembers to serve it to me on a plate, and not in a styrofoam container since I mentioned my preference before.

He is also a study of efficiency wasting zero movement making change at lightning speed, calling out orders to the kitchen, calling out finished orders “Your Taco Salad is ready” and this is the amazing part – he makes eye contact with every single person while smiling and genuinely wishing each customer a nice day. This small family business might not come to a screeching halt if it weren’t for the Linchpin on this business – but it’s volume would probably be cut in half. The lunch rush is probably 75% of their sales and no matter how many people are inside this tiny deli – your order is taken within seconds of you entering the door. Ordinary performance wouldn’t cut it and sales would be lost due to line balking if it weren’t for him. It’s quite amazing to see and is truly remarkable. His attitude isn’t “how fast do I need to go to meet demand and not lose customers”, but rather “how fast can I possibly go while still being very polite.”

Lessons:
What improvements could you make to your business that could create the same “amazing service.” Could you do it WAY faster than the industry standard like our client Mor Furniture that incredibly offers SAME DAY delivery when you buy before 7:30 pm? Could you come to someone’s house to perform a beauty treatment for the same price like our client MOD Beauty Squad? Could you somehow over deliver on your ordinary promises? Make a list of the aspects of the service or product that you deliver for your customer and ask if you could make any of these extraordinary and remarkable somehow.

Here’s an ordinary deli business – one of hundreds in the city that has one remarkable quality – amazingly efficient service. It’s held together by a good team, but with an exceptional front man. Another question – who is the Linchpin in your business? Are you? Do you want to become one? The first person to reply to this email will win Seth Godin’s new book “Linchpin – Are You Indespensible”

If you are not yet an avid reader of Seth Godin you should be. You can sign up for his newsletter or RSS feed here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Congratulations to Trey Smith who won December’s email reply and was sent a book.

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Watch this video and then ask yourself how we can make the mundane parts of your business more fun? How can we use FUN to modify people’s behavior and deliver the unexpected? How can we use fun to be remarkable?

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Please comment below on what your business is and some ideas that you came up with – even if they are crazy.

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Here’s one of ours: We ask for a birth date in our demo and we’ve just come up with a daring and hilarious email to send people on their birthday. You’ll probably agree that it’s very unexpected if you get it.

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It’s incredibly unfortunate that there are no enforced standards for email clients like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and Outlook as far as formatting. Email is already kind of “stuck in the stone age” coding-wise. Since email doesn’t recognize css (cascading style sheets — the “rules” for how a website looks), businesses using email marketing have to use basic HTML to construct their message.

And even within this HTML, some email clients will pick up or ignore elements differently than others. Take Gmail for example. Gmail doesn’t recognize background colors, and 9 times out of 10 text will come through a smaller size than you intended it.

And don’t even get me started on Outlook 2007. Although a lot of people use this to look at email, it is by far the worst as far as standardized email formatting. Something about Outlook 2007 using Microsoft Word to run the HTML through causes many email templates to look like they went through a meat grinder.

The only way to make sure your email is going out to every one of your subscribers exactly the way you intend it to is to test, test, test. By far, this is one of the most important tips we can give you. In fact, if you only follow one of our ten email marketing tips, it should be this one.

Your system to be set up to test messages through multiple clients, so that you know what your message looks like in all of them. How does your newsletter look for those using AOL, Mac.com or Mozilla Thunderbird? Don’t know? Maybe it’s time to switch over to a system that can provide you that information, as well as info for Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and Outlook. You wouldn’t believe how different each of these can look with exactly the same HTML coding.

Testing also gives you the chance to read over your email newsletters multiple times to check for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. Send it to yourself a few times, as well as at least one other person in the office. A fresh pair of eyes can recognize a lot.

Save yourself the embarrassment of a mangled message or poor grammar — test, test, test! And give yourself the time to do so. It’s not worth trading time for quality, is it?

Want to know our secret strategy? We have checklists for everything that we fill out as we test. Everything has to be marked off before we send our messages. We think it’s the best strategy for getting it right, all of the time.

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing Tips: #3 Content is Vital
2. Email Marketing Tips: #1 Get Permission
3. Preview “Pains” – First Impressions DO Matter

However, it’s always a good idea to confirm this. You wouldn’t want to design your email marketing campaign around people 40-60 years old if your subscribers are all 20-35. By now you should know that buying a generic list is both illegal and a dumb marketing move, so you should have a pretty specific group of subscribers that you can analyze.

These are the people who have come to your website and were interested in more information, or people who were interested enough in what your company does to attend one of your events or come into your store. By looking at the kind of people who subscribe to your emails, you should be able to see clearly what kind of groups your subscribers fall into. You have a target market, you just need to determine who that is.

And once you do, make sure that your email marketing campaign is geared toward that group of people. Not everyone is the same.

Is your list mainly prospective clients/customers or are they people you have worked with before? Are they interested in information and tips, or did they subscribe for products and deals? Knowing this information is going to be the key to creating relevant messages and keeping your “list churn” (the amount of people who unsubscribe) down.

Prospective clients and customers want to hear how and why what you offer will benefit them. They want testimonials and incentives. Previous or return clients and customers want to know you care about following up with them — asking how their product or service was and if there’s anything further you can do for them.

Each company’s incentives will look a bit different. Sometimes it’s appropriate to incentivize with monetary deals, like free or reduced-price products and shipping, or a buy-one-get-one-free service or coupons. Sometimes your target market may benefit more from tips and tricks or advice. Think about what is most relevant for your subscribers, and you’ll find that you have a happy list full of people who actually enjoy getting your messages.

And isn’t that the most you could ask for in an email marketing campaign?

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing Tips: #2 Personalize
2. Email Marketing Tips: #3 Content is Vital
3. Email Marketing Tips: #1 Get Permission

Here are our tips for making sure your content is great every time:

• Consistency trumps creativity — ultimately, you’d love for your campaign to be both consistent and creative, but sometimes you just don’t have the time that month to find the perfect balance. And the worst thing you can do for your branding is have emails that are off the wall, irrelevant or unrecognizable.
• Match your branding – that means the logo, colors and content in your messages should be similar to, if not that same as, your website and other marketing materials. If people can’t match you up with other contact they have with you or they can’t even recognize that the email they received is from you, they’ll probably think you’re spam.
• Plan ahead, not last minute — if you’re pressed for time and struggling for content, you may throw something totally irrelevant into your message. Remember the saying, ‘if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it at all’? Well, that goes for good content too. Your subscribers aren’t going to want to read something that has nothing to do with you or your business. It’s a great way to end up in the spam pile.
• Brainstorm your ideas & use a list – we recommend setting aside a designated time for brainstorming content for your messages. Think of as many as you can, without edits. Write them all down. You will need to go back later to make sure that the idea is consistent, but brainstorming provides you with a great way to come up with a bunch of creative ideas and keep them for backup. Don’t get stuck trying to think of one thing to say a day before you want your newsletter to launch — get a whole bunch of ideas that you can come back to and draw on.

Content is a way to hook a reader in and make them want to read what you have to say. Don’t spoil that or spam subscribers with bad content — you’re only harming yourself.

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1. Email Marketing Tips: #4 Relevance is Key
2. Email Marketing Tips: #2 Personalize
3. Email Marketing Tips: #1 Get Permission

Other than a boring email, why would you want to spend extra time to personalize? Because it is yet another way to develop a relationship with your customers and clients. We’d hope that building a relationship with the people you serve is a priority to you and your company — it should be — and that your goal with email marketing is to further this relationship. There’s almost no better way to do this than to personalize your messages.

Personalizing will provide you with a two way connection. First, you’ll know more about your customers, and second, they’ll see that you took the time to include some information about them and reach out.

Now that you know why you should personalize, here’s how.

First, of course, you will need information about your customers. Basically every piece of data you collect about those on your email list can be used to personalize a message. The important first step is to make sure you’re getting permission, of course — meaning, in this case, that each person is supplying their information to you. Like we mentioned in the last Email Marketing tip, Get Permission, it’s important that the people receiving your messages have given you the go-ahead to use their data.

The easiest way to gather information within the rules is to include an Update Profile link in your emails. This does a couple of things.

1. Initial sign-up is easy — just an email & name — so that there aren’t a thousand boxes to fill out to get your newsletter. This will make sure that you get the highest initial opt-ins, while still giving each person the chance to enter more information later. The less initial information one has to give to sign up, the more likely they are to subscribe. Some studies have shown that even just one extra box can reduce opt-in rates by 40%.

2. If at any point a subscribers information changes, they can easily find and update their profile.

This profile information can be used inside an email message, such as referring to a subscriber’s first name in the greeting or title, or to their company name in the message. It could also be used for segments to send out different, highly relevant information and deals, for example by using their zip code to let people know when a nearby store is having a sale.

The second way you can easily gather information is when customers interact with you. You can document when they purchased an item, when an item was delivered, and even the name of the sale associate that helped them.

This information is great for adding in details to your messages, or to use for triggers. Want a message to be sent to a customer if you haven’t seen them in 60 days? You can do that. Want to send a special thank you to someone for purchasing an item? That’s possible too.

Of course, you can always use Profile information for triggers too — the best example being happy birthday messages.

There’s almost no limit to the categories you can create to personalize your messages.

However…

You don’t want to go overboard. There’s no set maximum amount of personal information to use in a message — that’s a judgment call — but we would recommend you keep it to just a couple key pieces. If you include too much personal attributes, it may distract from your message or be overwhelming to the reader. It’s also a bit Big Brother, and could creep your reader out or turn them off from giving you information.

The best strategy…

Would be to sit down with your team and discuss what the most relevant, useful data about your customers would be. Is it their zip code because you have multiple stores? Is it their birthday so that you can provide special incentives and deals? Is it just who last helped them in the store so they know who to ask for in the future?

Figure these sort of things out, and decide on the methods you’ll use to collect that data. Get to know the people you serve and personalize your messages for them. The benefits are greater than you might imagine.

Related posts:

1. Email Marketing Tips: #4 Relevance is Key
2. Email Marketing Tips: #3 Content is Vital
3. Email Marketing Tips: #1 Get Permission

A recent study by The New York Times reported that up to 94% of all email traffic is SPAM. That’s hundreds of millions of emails clogging one of our most important communication channels and it’s getting worse. Though each of us may only spend a few minutes a day dealing with it, the collective drag on productivity is astounding. The National Technology Readiness Survey says it costs us 21.58 Billion per year. That’s $131 per year for every Internet user in the US.

As ISP’s have become more capable at filtering SPAM, and an entire hardware industry has been created to fight the problem, it seems that our government has taken a back seat in its enforcement.

Robert Solovay, aka the “Spam King” was finally convicted last year by the state and sent to prison for a mere 4 years. Microsoft successfully sued Solovay as far back as 2003 and his exploits were widely known according to SpamHaus. Why has it taken the state 6 years to track down such an obvious offender even with him mocking the legal system? Before this conviction, the state’s last legal victory, according to the Attorney General’s website appears to be in 1998. So for 10 years our state has not been able to prosecute a spammer even though the problem has grown exponentially?

Similarly, the Federal Government’s record is not much better. While they did just receive a guilty plea from a 5-man SPAM operation lead by Alan Ralsky and his son the penalties seem to be quite light. While the spam induced pump-and-dump stock scam they ran reportedly raked in millions, the sentences sought are only “up to” 24 to 84 months, and the corresponding fines from only $30,000 up to 1 million dollars. Sentencing occurs Oct. 29, 2009.  The CAN-SPAM act says that offenses are supposed to be subject to $11,000 fine per email incident. At billions of emails sent by this ring, the math simply doesn’t add up. And that ignores the wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, and lying to the FBI charges that are included in the guilty plea.

While any conviction is laudable, is this the best we can do? For a major player in the 21 Billion dollar problem (not counting victims ripped off by scams) we get a couple of years behind bars, and a penalty less than the amount swindled? That might even be palatable if these convictions occurred regularly, but it is years between major convictions. It seems that the government (we the people) are not angry enough about the problem, or are not directing our ire in the proper direction.

It’s time that we aggressively punish those that punish us with their time-wasting email. Prosecution needs to be extended to those selling email list and companies that are paying spammers to advertise their wares. Below is our list of things you can do to help can spam:

1. NEVER respond to a spam e-mail, or even “download images.”

2. Click the “This is Spam” button, if you have one. This alerts your ISP and allows them to refine their proprietary spam filter.

3. Forward all spam to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov BUT:

4. If it’s an e-mail you signed up for, don’t use the spam button. Just click unsubscribe and you should be removed. Be fair!

5. Reply to legitimate “over-senders” and tell them to reduce their frequency. If they don’t, unsubscribe and warn your friends about them.

6. If you are not willing to take the time to read the sender’s privacy policy, don’t give your e-mail.  If it’s more than one paragraph, forget it.

7. Use two email addresses. If the content is good, use the “update profile” and give them your real email address.

8. Use your own e-mail filter. A free, personal version is available at cyberdefender.com, but there are others. Check frequently for false positives, especially when first installed. Your legitimate mail may be getting trapped.

9. Write to your Congressional representative, and insist that they introduce legislation intensifying pursuit and prosecution of spammers and their business partners.

10. Reward only email marketers who “Do Email Marketing Right” with your business.

Related posts:

1. Disasters Of Spam
2. Email Marketing Tips: #1 Get Permission