Email4Thought

Tip: Linkedin Outlook Toolbar

Here's a tip to help organise your internal contacts within Outlook. Firstly you need to sign up to Linkedin if you're haven't already.

Then download the Linkedin Outlook Toolbar.

It will go through a process whereby it examines all of your emails in your inbox and then presents the contacts for you to choose who you would like to add to your Outlook address book (as well as invite to connect to you in Linkedin. Nice - all of your existing email contacts have been added!

But wait! there's more!

There's a cheeky little 'grab' tool on the toolbar. Select and highlight the signatures on any new email contacts and click 'grab' and the signature propagates itself into either updating an existing contact or creating a new contact. All the fields in the signature are inserted into the correct fields in Outlook Contacts with one simple click.

TIP: Resize Your Images On the Fly

Here are 3 applications for reducing images on the fly ready for your email campaigns:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/3_quick_apps_for_resizing_images.php

TIP: Excel 2007

Well ...what a little beauty! I have recently (and against my will) upgraded to Office 2007 as I have a beautiful new pc which will 'halve my workload' (was the promise!).

My main reason for not upgrading was Outlook 2007 and all of it's asscoiated limitations with rendering HTML, however, to my delight Excel 2007 has some wonderful little tools for database maintenance which can make your life so much easier! - some are new, and some are just easier to use (and find).

Take for example the sort by A-Z or Z-A - no longer a 3 step process, but a nice little one clicker when in the Data window. Ahh...don't worry - I'm just warming up.

How about separating firstnames, surnames and email addresses so they're all in separate columns?... The text to columns feature is now obviously at hand and can be used for many wonderous and mundane chores...

And finally, the Pièce de résistance  - need to remove duplicates?... yes...it too is a one click process when in the Data window. Awesome!

TIP: Utilise the spam complaints information to improve your campaigns

As usual Stephanie Miller from Return Path has written an excellent blog. I encourage you to read it: "Let the phone gather dust;brush off the spreadsheet instead". In it she says "We've found that those "pesky" complaints (recorded when a subscriber clicks the "This is Spam" button) are actually a great source of feedback data. Scour them for clues around the type of subscriber (demographics, time on the list, activity, customer status) as well as source and type of message. Then, adjust your program to correct any practices that drive disproportionate complaints. " With every campaign which goes out, you can receive email reports which not only list the recipients that hard bounced or soft bounced, but also those recipients who click the 'this is spam' button. To ensure you receive these reports go to 'Edit my details > Email Address to Notify You of Subscriptions Opt-Outs, Bounces & Complaints' and fill in your email address. You can then use this data as Stephanie recommends and refine and improve your campaigns.

Labels: Tip

TIP: Duplicates automatically removed when sending to multiple categories

When multiple categories are selected for a campaign, you can be assured that if an email address is in multiple categories, it will only receive the one email, as Ezemail goes through the list and doesn't send to duplicate email addresses.

Labels: duplicate email addresses, Tip

TIP: Test Email Tool

As you all should know, we provide an handy little tool called the 'Send a Test' tool. This tool enables you to send a test email to yourselves to check that all looks as it should. It also is handy to use to send to colleages for them to review and see that all looks OK with the campaign. We recommend that a test email is sent for every campaign, as the 'preview' mode just shows what the campaign looks like on the web and the web is far more gracious for mistakes and las far less restrictions than email. So, for this reason, please always ensure that you send a test message to yourself to check that the HTML went through the email process successfully. Due to the fact that it is sent differently to the campaigns and that it uses a different IP address to our campaign sending IP addresses, it should not be used as a deliverability tool. It has not been designed as such and cannot be counted on as a reflection of whether your email will be received in the inbox or not.

Labels: testing

TIP: Test Your Unsubscribe Wording.....

Test Your Unsubscribe Wording as it could be causing your emails to be delivered to the junkmail folder. We had a client recently who decided to alter their unsubscribe information from being our standard "Please let us know if you wish to be taken off this mail list." to another more personalised wording. This is certainly acceptable and advisable - it allows you to add personalisation from any of the fields whch you have in your database. For example, you may like to include the recipient's first name, IP address collected during their signup, name of business etc... However, just be sure and test it thoroughly. As we discovered recently, this client found that their new wording actually caused their emails to be delivered to the junkmail folder rather than the inbox. Luckily - they thoroughly tested this change and discovered it before sending the campaign. With a slight revision to their new wording, we were able to get it back to being delivered to the inbox. It is useful to remember that the phrase 'click here' is still penalised by spam filters. To personalise your unsubscribe wording simply go to Edit Your Details > Unsubscribe Link Text. Test, test, test!

Labels: junkmail, test, unsubscribe

TIP: Avoid uneven HTML tags

We're finding more than ever that bad coding is affecting deliverability. More often than not a campaign which has uneven HTML tags will end up in the junkmail box rather than the inbox. The cause for these uneven tags it appears can be attributed mainly to Dreamweaver. It tends to put 2 x HTML tags at the beginning of the code. The simple remedy is to delete one of these tags by going into the Source tab.

Labels: coding, HTML, Tip