About BACN: Spam’s (Slightly) Less Repugnant Sibling

Ok, so maybe you’re not a Spam Artist after all, but it’s possible your emails fall under a new (slightly less repulsive, but still not quite desirable) category - BACN.  

What is BACN?
Unlike SPAM, BACN isn’t an attack on your privacy. It’s pretty much self-inflicted.  BACN is email you signed up for, but rarely read…  or email you might want to read, but not right now… or email you sometimes need, but still find irritating.  Some examples:

• "hot deals" newsletters or new product announcements from your favorite store or website

• frequent flier or vacation club updates

• those notifications you get from Multiply or Facebook telling you what your friends are up to

While BACN isn’t SPAM, it can still be pretty annoying (honestly, Facebook, how often do i have to read that someone poked me?) The reason you DON’T unsubscribe is that once in a while you might get something that interests you, or an offer or information you might actually need.  For the most part, though -  you scan, yawn and delete.

As an email marketer, it’s important to take any and all steps necessary to ensure your opt-in email doesn’t turn into the dreaded BACN. Here are three tips that might help:

1. Create anticipation. The main reason your email messages may be going unnoticed is that you send them too frequently. You want to generate some anticipation for your next offering so that when your email enters the inbox, the recipient says to him- or herself, "Oh, I haven’t heard from them in a long time. I wonder what’s going on?"

Limit email sending to enhance the reader’s expectation, and be creative! At the 2008 Email Summit in Miami, I met a newsletter publisher who sends out company newsletters "every full moon."  Because it’s so original (and really, pretty hilarious) he  actually gets reminders from subscribers when newsletter time draws near ("The full moon is coming - how’s your newsletter coming along?").

2. Add more personalization.  Over time, you collect a lot of data on your subscribers: who they are, what they like, how much they spend. Use this data to create engaging, one-on-one communications. Make your subscribers feel that your email message is just for them alone — a one-off message that engages them in a real conversation.  There’s a lot of great email software you can use to do this, which I’ll discuss in a future post.  

3. Segment unresponsive subscribers. As hard as it may seem, at some point it’s best to just weed out  unresponsive email addresses and let them go.  You don’t have to get rid of them altogether, but as a first step, try putting unresponsive addresses in a separate list.  Treat them differently. Woo them back. If all your efforts fail, just make a clean break.

Over the past 3 months I did a major hatchet job on my company’s email lists - cutting down huge lists of 10-20,000 down to a seemingly alarming 1,000+ responsive names per offer.  Because my lists were smaller and more segmented, they were easier to personalize, make relevant to the recipient, and track… so instead of decreasing sales (as everyone thought it would), the hatchet job actually BOOSTED sales - and more importantly… customer loyalty and satisfaction.

 At the end of the day, the same rules apply - whether to SPAM or BACN or even personal email.  Only send people messages that they actually want to read.  Be relevant. Be interesting. And remember the sage advice of our non-techie parents, as it still applies today… if you have nothing good to say, it’s often best not to say anything at all.

Complying with CAN-SPAM - 7 Key Steps

A little more info for those of you who failed the Spam test.

Complying with CAN-SPAM - 7 Key Steps

The CAN-SPAM Act lays the foundation for a clear differentiation of "spammers" from permission-based email marketers. Consider taking the following steps to ensure compliance:

1. Convene all company staff involved in the email marketing process - marketing, Webmaster, IT, call center, legal, sales and others. Ensure that all affected personnel have a good understanding of the act and how it might affect their practices and policies.
2. Review your company’s email marketing programs to ensure that they comply with the content and notification requirements and involve your legal counsel as appropriate.
3. If you haven’t already, add a postal mailing address to all of your commercial emails.
4. Review and test your opt-out/unsubscribe language and process. Make sure it’s clear, simple and actually works. Also, make sure you are using a valid return email address or Internet-based reply mechanism that will function for at least thirty (30) days after messages are sent.
5. Ensure that all opt-out requests are honored within ten (10) business days of receipt. The best approach is to utilize software (installed or hosted) that automates the reply, unsubscribe and global unsubscribe process.
6. If you use pre-checked boxes or other "passive" opt-in mechanisms in your email sign-up process, it’s recommended that you change to unchecked boxes or another affirmative consent approach. Otherwise you’ll need to add conspicuous language that identifies your email as advertisements or solicitations.
7. Add a profile update page on your site and link to it from your messages. This enables customers and subscribers to update their address, opt in or out of individual and multiple newsletters/communications, request global suppression, change email formats and modify preferences and other information.

Source: EmailLabs.com  (Do check the other articles in the resource section of this site, as it has really great material)

5 Simple Steps You Can Take Right Now to Improve Your Email Deliverability

In case my last post (Are You a Spammer?) depressed you, here’s a list of 5 things you can do - right this minute - to get started on the road to improving your email situation:

1. If you haven’t done so yet, set up and publish an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) Record for your domain.  (Not sure if your domain has an SPF record?  Check here.)  You can find more information (and a free tool for creating your SPF record) at http://www.openspf.org, but in extremely simple terms an SPF record basically tells the receiving internet service provider that the email you are sending is really from you. If your email fails an SPF test, your email MIGHT still be delivered, but this raises your SpamAssassin rating unnecessarily. (Ideally you want to aim for a score of 2 to ensure delivery.)

2. Publish (and adhere to!) a Privacy Policy, and set up "abuse@" and "postmaster@" email addresses for your domain to handle spam complaints. I’ll have to tackle the privacy Policy in more detail in another post, but the abuse and postmaster addresses are recommended by Internet standards set by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).  Some MTA’s (message transfer agents) do a ping back on the postmaster@ address, and if it doesn’t exist they will put the email(s) in quarantine or bounce, or drop the email, and some will just send an entry to the blacklists (very bad news).

3. Check your current email reputation. Are you on a blacklist? Is your email not getting through because of spam complaints? Is your SpamAssassin rating off the charts?  You really need to find out!!!  There are several ways to check your email reputation, including Habeas.com’s free rep check, but I personally use the Delivery Audit by Email Reach.  You can register for a free trial, but if you’re serious about your email marketing, I recommend you sign up for a paid subscription ($49.95 per month, cheaper if you get a longer subscription) — as it really is the most incredibly useful tool I have ever come across.  Basically you send an email to their 23 test email addresses, and they will test and score your email’s deliverability based on reputation, content, which inboxes it landed in, and whitelist status.  For each "failure" it provides recommendations to improve delivery.  Pretty amazing, though I’m warning you … some days it will make you want to cry.   

4. Add an unsubscribe mechanism to your emails.  It always amazes me how people (and I’m talking big name companies here!) neglect to do this.  You need to give your recipients a way out of receiving your email.. (1) because they may actually not want to receive it (have you ever considered that?) and (2) .. if they don’t have a way to unsubscribe they are likely just to report it as spam.. and believe me, you do NOT want that.  Your unsubscribe mechanism can as simple as a note to "reply to this email with "STOP" as the subject line" - though a one-click unsubscribe (i.e. an unsubscribe link) is always better.  More on this when I discuss email service providers and email sending software.

5. Last, but definitely not least, make your email content relevant to the people you are sending it to.  This is perhaps the most valuable learning I took home from this year’s Email Summit. While you may think your company, promo, service etc is the best thing since sliced bread - others may disagree. Live with it.  Move on. Organize your email lists, and send specific offers only to those who might actually benefit from them.  Stop flooding the inboxes of your friends and relatives, and for god’s sake, please do not send email to people you don’t even know!  Once again, details on email relevancy will have to be tackled in future posts (too much to cover here), so just be patient. 

 Well that’s it for today.  What are you waiting for?  GO! Get cracking!

Happy Easter, and have a great week!

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Are You a Spammer?

Surprisingly, even legitimate marketers from reputable companies can be guilty of sending SPAM (unsolicited commercial email).  I should know - because I receive lots of it!!!

Are YOU a Spammer? Take this quick test to find out: 

1. Are you mailing to anyone who has not explicitly agreed to join your mailing list?

2. Are you sending email to a rented or purchased list of ANY kind?

3. Are you sending email - without knowing who the recipient will be - to non-specific email addresses such as: sales@domain.com, business@domain.com, webmaster@domain.com, info@domain.com, or other general addresses?

4. Are you sending commercial email to distribution lists or mailing lists (for example, Yahoo groups) which send indirectly to a variety of email addresses?

5. Have you ever falsified your originating email address or transmission path information?

6. Have you sent out email using an email address or domain name that is not your own without the owner’s permission?

7. Does your email’s subject line contain false or misleading information?

8. Does your email fail to provide a working link to unsubscribe?

9. Are you failing to process unsubscribe requests within 10 days of the request?

If you’ve answered YES to any of the above, then you’re (unfortunately) guilty as charged - which is a pity, because email is without a doubt the single most cost-effective medium for promoting any business. But with the proliferation of spam (and consequently, spam filters!) it’s become more and more difficult for legitimate email marketers to get their messages delivered… let alone actually read.

The old method of sending a mass email to your entire contact list via CC or BCC - whether they’ve asked to receive your message or not - just won’t cut it anymore. (In fact, in some countries, the practice is actually illegal.) If you’re failing to provide and abide by an unsubscribe mechanism - that could mean big trouble as well.

To successfully tackle the challenges of Email Marketing today, it’s become mission-critical to keep up with global "best-practice" email sending standards adopted at the 2003 Email Authentication Summit II.

These include:

• Sending email only to confirmed opt-in subscribers. Your mail recipients MUST have agreed to receive your communications, by signing up for your mailing list either online or offline. If a spam complaint is raised you must have a means to verify that the subscriber asked to receive your email.

• One-to-one correspondence. Commercial email should be sent "one address per piece" - meaning that each piece should be addressed only to the primary recipient, and should not be cc:ed or bcc:ed to additional addresses.

• Bounce management and unsubscribe request handling - All commercial email must include a working unsubscribe mechanism, and email senders should maintain a system to immediately process unsubscribe requests, complaints and delivery failure notifications.

Sad to say, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  The rest will have to be reserved for (several) future entries - there’s just too much to cover.  Email marketing is a constantly moving target, with the rules changing constantly (and often inexplicably!)  The very things that brought your email into the Inbox one day could land it into the Junk folder tomorrow.   So bookmark this blog because there’s a whole lot more to come!

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The Marketer’s Creed

 Copyright©2008 MarketingExperiments

 The Prospects Protest (A Problem)

I am not a target; I am a person: Don’t market to me, communicate with me.

Don’t wear out my name, and don’t call me “friend,” until we know each other.

When you say “sell,” I hear “hype.” Clarity trumps persuasion. Don’t sell; say.

I don’t buy from companies; I buy from people. And here’s a clue: I dislike companies for the same reason I dislike people. Stop bragging. It’s disgusting.

And why is your marketing “voice” different from your real “voice”? The people I trust don’t patronize me.

In all cases, where the quality of the information is debatable, I will always resort to the quality of the source. My trust is not for sale. You need to earn it.

Dazzle me gradually: Tell me what you can’t do, and I might believe you when you tell me what you can do.

In case you still don’t “get it,” I don’t trust you. Your copy is arrogant, your motives seem selfish, and your claims sound inflated. If you want to change how I buy, first change how you market.

The MarketingExperiments’ Creed (A Response)

ARTICLE ONE: We believe that people buy from people, that people don’t buy from companies, from stores, or from Web sites; people buy from people. Marketing is not about programs; it is about relationships.

ARTICLE TWO: We believe that brand is just reputation; marketing is just conversation, and buying is an act of trust. Trust is earned with two elements: 1) integrity and 2) effectiveness. Both demand that you put the interest of the customer first.

ARTICLE THREE: We believe that testing trumps speculation and that clarity trumps persuasion. Marketers need to base their decisions on honest data, and customers need to base their decisions on honest claims.