Ask Before You "Blast": The Importance of Permission

Republished with permission from Mailchimp

Be honest. Whenever you get email marketing that you weren’t expecting, or that you never even requested, what do you do (after cursing the name of the person who sent it)? You click that "this is spam" button in your email program. Heck, according to some studies, 30% of recipients click "this is spam" for email marketing campaigns, even if they specifically requested it from the sender!

So what’s the big deal? Some really scary stuff happens behind the scenes whenever someone clicks that spam button. First, a message is sent to their ISP (like AOL, MSN, Hotmail, Earthlink, Yahoo, Juno, NetZero, etc.). That message says "I think these guys are spamming me." Then their ISP starts watching you, because you’ve aroused their suspicions. If enough people on their network report your email as spam to them, they’ll block all future emails from you. How many abuse reports are enough to get you "blacklisted"? ISPs all have different thresholds, but 0.01% is the number that’s most often discussed by people in the email deliverability business.

It’s even worse than you think. Some ISPs don’t even require a human to report your email to them. Some of them will block your emails if automatic spam filters think your messages are "spammy" for whatever reason (like using red fonts, or the phrase, "click here!"). Some ISPs use firewalls that can read reported spam, and blacklist URLs that are in the content (so not only will your company’s email server get blocked, but so could ALL emails that have ANY links related to your company). And ISPs and anti-spam services often share their records with each other.

Finally, once you get blacklisted, it almost takes a miracle to get de-listed. That’s because most blacklists are run in secrecy. If you want to contact the owners, you usually have to post messages on public anti-spam forums, and hope they’re lurking. Then, pray they take you off the list (after a thorough verbal-flogging by the other members of the forum, of course). Send one bad campaign, and your email marketing efforts could be compromised for a very, very long time. Yikes.

So what can you do?
If even a handful of spam complaints can cause serious deliverability issues for your company, what can you do to avoid them? Here’s a list:

• Never, under any circumstances, send email marketing to anyone that hasn’t requested them from you. Got a list of prospects (customers, friends, family who’ve done business with you)? Send them an invitation to join your email marketing list. Don’t just start sending them email newsletters or promotions.

• Never, ever, ever send email marketing to a purchased list, to emails you "scraped" from websites, or to a list of people you just assume would want to hear from you (even if they’re in your industry, or co-members of some trade association). You might not piss them all off, but a tiny handful is all it takes to get yourself blacklisted. At MailChimp, we’ve had to shut down the accounts of countless real estate agents, trade show vendors, photographers, and one Alpaca farmer for violating this rule.

• When people sign up for your email list, use the double opt-in method. Basically, when they submit your opt-in form, they’ll receive an email with a "Please click to confirm that you want to receive emails from me" link in it. Using this method, people will only be added to your list if they truly want to hear from you.

• All throughout your opt-in confirmation process, ask subscribers to add your email address to their contacts list or address book. This will "white list" your emails, so they won’t get accidentally blocked (or reported as spam) in the future.

• If you have an old list, you should ask for permission again. If you haven’t been in contact with them within the last 6 months or so, chances are extremely high that they’ve forgotten who you are, let alone signing up for your list. Instead of sending them a full blown email promotion or newsletter, send a very brief, "Hey, remember us? Still want emails from us?" reminder email.

Before you click that "Send" button, you should ask yourself, "Did every recipient on this list give me permission to send them email marketing?" If your answer is anything less than a confident "YES!" you shouldn’t send that campaign.

Are Gmail Users Laughing at Your HTML Email?

They could be. Chances are, if you design HTML emails without paying heed to the different "rules" set by various email clients, you might get away with it on most browsers. But on Gmail? Your email probably looks like crap.

It’s a pretty well known fact that HTML emails display a little differently depending on the email program you use.  In some cases, like Yahoo and Hotmail, the differences might be minor - for example, the fonts shown may not be the ones you used in your original design.  In AOL, your background might not show up.  Other email clients won’t display your images unless you click and allow it.  Annoying, but not such a big deal.

Gmail however, is a completely different story.  Among other things, it strips any code before the body tags, and doesn’t support a lot of other code that people normally use. So what might look like a gorgeous work of HTML art to you could seriously look like an awful mess of gobbledygook on Gmail.  Outlook 2007 can be pretty evil too. Trust me on this.  Here’s a real-life example.

 This is the original design of a newsletter template I made BEFORE I learned about the Gmail thing:

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     Here’s how it looks in Outlook 2007 (Yikes) 

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   And here’s how it looks on Gmail  (EEKS! WTF???)

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I’ll definitely have to fix that, and soon.  Unless you’re familiar with HTML and actually do your own coding, it’s pointless to discuss design tips to address this here, but there are a few solutions for the not-so-HTML-savvy.

The simplest solution - which you’ve probably already seen in a lot of HTML emails you’ve received - is to have a web version of your HTML email, and include a link to this in your email.  But would a person who isn’t really all that interested in your email to begin with even bother to click it?  Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Just do it anyway.

The ideal scenario is to have your email formatted in such a way that on the first look - even without images showing - people already see the most important things you need them to see. That means that your main message should be in the text - NOT the images.   

It’s amazing how many people make the mistake of sending emails that are full of big photos - or worse yet, made up of nothing but one big image - say a print ad they just decided to stick onto an email.  Not only will these emails not display in email programs with image viewing turned off by default (for ex, Outlook) - the images also affect email deliverability.  Using images in emails to hide dubious text is a typical Spammer technique, and the Spam Police have caught on pretty quick.  So any email that is too image-heavy is automatically on the suspect list of most spam filters.

Secondly, never send out an HTML email without previewing it in different email browsers first.  Sign up for a bunch of free email accounts, set up some email addresses on Outlook and other popular desktop email programs, and create a test list you can send to before sending to your actual list. Then check each one to see if your email looks ok.  If it doesn’t - tweak as needed until it does. If there’s really nothing you can do - just make sure you have that link to a web version.

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of maintaining and all those email accounts, there are some service providers that have built-in preview features that allow you to see how your email will look in most email programs.  Mailchimp has the "Inbox Inspector" (costs extra to add it on to your account though), and Interspire’s Sendstudio email software has a preview feature for Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 built right into the email editor. 

Bottom line — don’t just assume that your HTML will look as great as you think it will - whether on Gmail or any other email program.  If you really want to use a snazzy HTML design,  take the time and effort to format it properly (hire a professional if you have to). And remember that in most forms of communication, substance beats style any day. If you really want to make sure your message goes out, just keep it simple and keep it clear.