Below are questions submitted before the course “How to Get Your Emails Delivered, Read and Acted Upon” was created and after the original release.
John Carlton and I reviewed all of the questions submitted before and after the webinar.
Our responses follow the questions.
We answered the great majority of the questions that were submitted in the original webinar. Below are a few we either did not cover, or thought there might be a little more we could share.
How do I find out what servers are prone to be blacklisted?
Easy to get on = prone to be blacklisted.
Anybody can load any email address they want into the system and start sending them emails = prone to be blacklisted.
Beyond that, you’ll want to check recent references for any given vendor.
I know a major vendor that had serious blacklisting problems in the past. They claimed they were doing things to fix that. And to be quicker on resolving blacklisting issues when they occur (It’s not ‘if’, it’s ‘when’. For all vendors). So I don’t want to name them, because my information is several months old and that’s a long time in this field.
Is controversy & current event tie ins a good way 2 get opened, or will it get you blacklisted?
On its own, I don’t think this will get you blacklisted. Pissed off people make spam complaints, but so long as there is some tie-in, I doubt it will cause any trouble.
You’re not going to get blacklisted based on what’s in your headline. You’ll be blacklisted for spam complaints, excessive bounce-backs, unexpected high volume, etc.
Is the delivery reporting in icontact and 1 shopping cart accurate?
Sorry, don’t know. Even if we used those services, we would be just like you. Hoping the reports were close enough.
How do I know if my emails are opened?
The one report that most vendors provide that can’t be accurate is the Open Rate Report.
The way open rates are determined are by including a tiny image in the email. When the email is opened, that image is downloaded. Counting how many times a download occurred vs. how many emails sent it how the Open Rate Report is created.
The reality is a many people don’t view images in their emails (at least by default). And many email clients provide a preview of up to several lines, which, as you know if you do this yourself, give you a pretty good idea what most emails are about without having to click on them to open.
Add different vendors use different systems to determine how many total emails to count. Do they include rejected / bounce-back emails in that total, or do they exclude those?
When you factor in the unknowns the Open Rate Report is nothing more than an estimate.
However, that does not make is without value. Just the opposite.
While the actual percentage shown isn’t accurate, changes to that number, email to email, or over time, provide a lot of information.
You can experiment with different subject lines (split test or over time) and see what makes the open rate number go up. No matter how the number is calculated, it’s consistent every time. Moving to a higher number is better.
Also, sudden drops in open rates indicate something is wrong. Might have just been a bad subject line or a bad opening few lines (which stopped a lot of the preview folks from opening to read the rest). However, it might be a sign that you have blacklist problems.
If you see your open rate drop, you should look into it immediately.
One more point – Open Rate Reports only work on HTML emails. They don’t work on text-only emails. This is one of the reasons most marketers send HTML emails. There can be a hit in deliverability rates, but they trade that for the data HTML emails can give them.
How to increase confirmed subscribers, i.e. there’s always a number of subscribers who enter their email… sign-up (e.g. interested in a special report)… then never click on the confirmation link received in their inbox. Which means, you can’t follow up with them because they didn’t confirm their subscription.
No magic here. Are you telling them on the Thank You page that they need to check their email right now to get the free report? Are you offering them an extra bonus to do that?
Yes, you’ll have a bigger list if you don’t force them to double opt-in. But are folks who won’t double opt-in really your best leads? And if they are not double opted-in, your email delivery rate to them will be lower. Is it more important for you to get them on your list for follow-up emails, or to hit them one time to buy now?
Different marketers in different markets with different business strategies will give you different opinions and have differing data to back those opinions up.
Also, some email providers (like InfusionSoft), do not require double opt-in. So you can communicate with single opt-in email addresses.
However (and this isn’t a slam against InfusionSoft, just part of the single opt-in reality), single opt-in servers have many more blacklist problems than double opt-in servers. For obvious reasons. A double opt-in server can only send on email to a bad or mistyped address. A single opt-in server can send several. Which is going to get more spam complaints, bounce-backs, etc.?
Our solution to this is to rent a dedicated server from InfusionSoft. That way, only our single opt-ins come off server. So no other marketer can mess with our email server quality reputation. If we get complaints or have a blacklist issue, we can take full ownership of the situation and work with InfusionSoft to get it resolved.
Have you tested (and what are the results) sending the content as an email vs. just an email saying: “go to this page, that’s where the content is” vs. sending to page with PDF on it. Is that extra step putting of people (vs. being able to use words such as “free” etc)
Our approach is to sell the click in the email. We’ve used both long and very short copy. For us, long does slightly better.
But the short vs. long data is crushed by the results we get from sending more than one email. 3 seems to be best for us, although we have never tested sending dozens in 7-10 days for the same product, as some folks in our industry do.
We don’t have hard data on this, but I suspect it comes down to different emails are better for different people. Some folks like a short message and a ‘click here’. Some like a longer message.
One big advantage of short emails is they are easier to get through spam filters. But we’re very careful with long email to make sure they don’t score spam points.
Any suggestions on frequency of mailings, particularly when dealing with a small crowd I want to build a real relationship with (as opposed to the classic IM-approach: law of large numbers….). If e.g. you had a large amount of great quality content that is relevant (and would therefore — fingers crossed — be read) would you send it in one email or break it down into a sequence of mailings.
Easy one. Spread it out. Open rates over 10% are very good. Why would you want all of your eggs in one basket? Spread it out to as many emails as possible. Give a reason to act in every one. Do not expect anyone to read all of your emails, no matter how hot a prospect they are.
What’s the best combination of Unsubscribe functions, change contact info functions in the links that you can generate on the bottom of your email with Infusion. There’s a choice because some just allow reader to opt-out. Some do both. But is there an ideal combination so that they can easily change to getting your email at a different email address?
How do you keep up with developments on spam filter rules?
Funny you should ask about this…. just last week, the same “Click here to update….” and “Click here to remove…” text that we’ve used for about 2 years suddenly flagged spam filters. So I spent about an hour tweaking it. Go figure…
You must have an opt-out link in the email. We have not tested opt-out rates with / without an Update link.
Do you ever trim your list?
Yes. We track bounces. Every few months we look for folks who have been on the list for years and not replied to anything and we cull those. Our goal is for folks who want and open our emails to get them. We don’t care if 50,000 folks who don’t want or don’t open or don’t ever act get them. We would rather hit the inbox of 1,000 folks who open and act.
How do I know if I’m sending an email to a non-working address.
Track bounce backs. A good service will remove email addresses that bounce back 2 or 3 times from your list. You might want to keep an eye on this for any rock-star customers. They could have been on vacation for a few weeks and their inbox filled up.
Is “Spam Assassin” a good program?
Good or bad, I think it’s the most widely used spam filter system. So, if you want your emails to be delivered, you have to know its rules and play by them.
How do you get a “take a survey” request taken seriously?
Need to give people a reason to take the survey.
You can pick up a lot of tips on writing compelling email copy in the Email Marketing & Copywriting lessons in the Marketing Rebel Insider’s Club.
You can also go over to www.SimpleWritingSystem.com and take the free express course. We offer that course to (1) teach you a little about copywriting and (2) show you the power of the Simple Writing System Coaching Program, where you’ll get that personal feedback from a successful professional writer for a full 8-weeks.
If a person has opened the email, but didn’t respond ..or if the person clicked to the landing page, but didn’t respond, how to track that person’s exact action and send an email which tells the person: “I saw that you went on the landing page…but you didn’t seize this amazing offer. Is there something wrong?”
Click tracking.
You can tell who clicked on what, and, if you use an integrated system like InfusionSoft, move them into different buckets based on what they clicked on or did not click on.
Tracking links are ugly scary looking. So you’ll want to put them behind text like, “Click Here To Get Your Free Report.
I used to do the misspelled “free” thing in the emails. But we were told by Habeas that many spam filters are getting wise to this and starting to flag the fr*e and the f-r-e-e types of spelling.
If you were writing a program to identify spam, wouldn’t you look for fr*ee and f-r-e-e and freee and hundreds of other strings like that. Even more than you looked for ‘free’? All I can tell you is that, up until now, the spam tests that I’ve been able to find are not picking up the misspellings.
Does that mean that actual spam filters that run on the real servers are not picking up these terms? I don’t see how they can’t be. All I know is what I can test and, so far, our data indicates we’re doing better with the funny spellings.
However, our first option is to try not to use any spam filter words, like ‘free’, at all.
I have a greater than 10% viewing rate, but very few click to give me their email address for a FREE ebook. What’s wrong?
You’re not selling the ebook. Change the offer.
Are you sure the folks who are reading your emails want your ebook? Have you tried offering a different ebook to see if that does better?
What are the better email list resources
We don’t buy email lists. I am not familiar with anyone who’s is doing well online who does. Which does not mean it’s not happening. Everyone I know builds their lists with opt-ins, SEO, JVs, etc.
When creating a series of autoresponders for new subscribers (assuming you’re giving them a special report to signup) & the intention is selling an info product… do you: a) just send them the special report then in a few days tell them about the info product b) send them the special report, be upfront about the info product (i.e. mention the sales letter) & focus following emails on selling the info product c) as in ‘b’ just focus the following emails on presenting free samples of the info product and in the process mention the sales letter In other words, what ‘style’ of auto-responder sequence (more sales vs. free content samples) would help boost conversions/sales.
Another one where different approaches work for different businesses.
We have success with offering 7 or so daily emails that are 95% content with a soft pitch to one of our products or services at the bottom.
If the opt-in was on a page for a particular product, all for the emails pitch that one product.
If the opt-in was on a page that isn’t about a single product (ex. www.John-Carlton.com), we mention a different product or service at the bottom of each email. This is not the ideas situation, but in this case, at that point in time we have no idea how we can best help the prospect or what motivated them to find Carlton’s blog or opt-in. So we present several options.
By how many days do you space out emails for maximum effect in a campaign?
We’ve tried back-to-back days for 3-7 days.
We’ve tried every other day for a week.
We don’t have overwhelming data that one approach is much better than the other for our list.
Do you change your writing style from web page sales to email sales?
Not really. One of the cores of John’s methods is the importance of developing the voice you are going to use to communicate with your customers. There’s a whole section on that in The Simple Writing System (www.SimpleWritingSystem.com).
So we’ll encourage consistency every time.
What do you do when an email bombs? (i.e. how do you repair a relationship that has gone sour (or alternatively, revive one that has gone cold).
How to get an existing email list with a low open rate to a high open rate?
Once someone has broken up with you, it’s pretty hard for you to talk them out of that.
Better to put your efforts into cultivating new relationships. In this way, marketing is a lot like romance. If “The Ex” finds that you’re out there, doing good stuff, providing value, etc., they might decide on their own to come back. But you’re probably not going to be able to talk them into that.
Which of course does not mean that it’s impossible. I would just put my effort into maximizing my value to the next lead, rather than investing that time trying to talk someone who’s not interested in me anymore into being interested in me.
How do you deal with ‘professional’ clients in terms of tone of the message. Yes, they are human beings too (one would hope), but many of them ‘hide’ behind this professional facade …. do you ignore this and go flat out ‘matey’, or do you wean them off their ‘professional/corporate’ lingo and transition them over to a warm/personal level of communication?
My question would be what are the differences marketing to businesses rather than individuals. Do the same things work? And how do you get sure your message gets to the right people?
People are reading your emails. Not businesses.
If you are marketing to someone who can’t make the decision and sign the check on their own, your marketing message needs two prongs.
(1) What’s in it for the person reading your email? (2) What can they take to the boss or committee to help you sell.
Which means you have to arm the person to promote you. At least enough so that you or your message gets to the next level (boss or team).
Is it still good to personalize either email copy and/or subject lines with standard {!firstname} tags as this is widely used?
We’ve tested both. For us, it’s come down to a style.
Generally, we use a FirstName tag in the subject line when we’re writing to customers.
When we’re writing to prospects, which means we have no idea if they entered a correct First Name on the form, or if we even have a first name, we don’t include a FirstName tag anywhere in the email.
I’m acquiring a video distribution company that sells to schools, libraries and other mostly public institutions. They have 1000’s of past customers, but no email database and relatively few recent contact names. How do I start an email campaign from scratch building on prior non-email business relationships?
Call them on the phone and send them a 1st class letter.
On the phone, offer them something they’ll want. You’ll send it to them by email.
By mail, give them a strong reason to go to your website and opt-in to download something they will want.
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