Broadcasting Email Campaigns

If you take away one thing from this guide, let it be this: Test, test, and test again.

OK, it adds to the budget of the campaign, but will ensure you a greater return on investment as you learn what works and what doesn't. If you have the time, test different subject lines, a different template, copy, images, creative and offers. Ideally you want to send out slightly different emails at the same time to test what works. For example, you could start analysing figures like this:

	Sent	% Open	% CTR	Sales
Email A	15,000	30%	8%	£5,000
Email B	15,000	22%	2.5%	£500
Email C	15,000	50%	2%	£3,000

Email A was reasonably successful. Email B did not seem to work and needs to be reviewed, and with Email C a high number were instantly interested but click through rate was not as successful as with Email A. Perhaps the call to action wasn't strong enough and with a slight change could be very successful.

Average industry standard response rates# are:

• Delivery rate (after bounces) 85.9% (Acquisition) 91.7% (Retention)
• Open rates 23.3% (Acquisition) 30.7% (Retention)
• Clickthrough Rate (CTR) 6.2% (Aquisition) 10.5% (Retention)

When considering the timings of email campaigns, Tuesday is the most popular. But there are no hard and fast rules. If you are promoting a product that most people purchase at the weekend then maybe a Thursday or Friday mailing is better. Or even if you are targeting people at home then Saturday could be most effective. Best advice is test and review what works for you.

Test your email with a content-based Spam filter, such as Spam Assassin. It scans your email and gives a score based on it's spam rating. Spam Assassin maintains a database of commonly used words and phrases that trigger Spam filters. It will check email 'from address', 'subject line', email copy against the database along with other factors like capitalisation, message size, text image ratio and provide a score. Revise your email if you get a high score, as this means it's likely to be labelled as spam.

#The National Email Benchmarking Report Q4 2005 by Direct Marketing Agencies (DMA) UK Email Marketing Council.

Make sure your data is as 'clean' as possible. List vendors and managers should do this for you. If it is your own list ensure it is cleaned regularly. A regularly cleaned list should see no more than a 3%* bounce rate, while a non cleaned list will rise to a 10-20%* within 12 months. Too many bounces will alert the ISP and potentially get you blacklisted. If you are sending out mass emails then check your IP address regularly to ensure it isn't blacklisted as all further emails from this address could be blocked, often without your knowledge.

There are two types of bounces; hard and soft. A hard bounce occurs because of a permanent problem with the address, and a soft bounce is temporary. There are numerous reasons why emails may bounce. This can be from anything such as an incorrect email address to network congestion. It's vital that you have your email sender set up to record the specific reason for each bounce. Additionally, set up a robust process to deal with the challenge response required in some anti-spam authentication processes - which requires the sender of an email to prove their legitimacy before being added to the recipient's Buddy List -for simple delivery of subsequent emails.

Pay attention to the details, we're about to get slightly technical:

• Ensure your emails publish a Sender Policy Framework record (SPF)
• Ensure all emails are request for comments (RFC) compliant
• Ensure all the email servers have valid reverse DNS look-up
• Ensure all the servers used are closed to third party relaying
• Ensure the servers are not blacklisted

Once you've tested, and tested again, and are ready to start thinking about broadcasting, STOP. Ask yourself, are you are ready? Is your website set up to cope with an influx of new traffic? Are your staff and telephone systems prepared for a busy period?

When it comes to email broadcasting, there are three options:

• Do it yourself (DIY)
• Use an Application Service Provider (ASP)
• Outsource to an Email Service Provider (ESP)

* e-consultancy Internet Statistics Compendium

DIY email broadcasters are one of two types. They can either be heavy users who have invested in their in-house solution to reduce costs, or small-scale users who are slightly more naive in thinking it is easier and more cost efficient to do email broadcasting in-house.  Whilst they are in complete control, they have complete responsibility to get it right.

The ASP approach offers a halfway house between DIY and fully outsourcing to an ESP. Under the ASP model, the client company licences the use of email broadcasting software with a platform such as i.send platform. The client prepares the campaign which is sent by the ASPs technology and platform.

Outsourcing to an Email Service Provider (ESP), sometimes called a Managed Service Provider (MSP), such as itineris means the whole campaign from creative to analysis is taken care of by experts who invest in the latest technology and tackle new legislative and technical issues to ensure successful delivery and evaluation.

Discover more about Objectives, Campaign, Creative, Data and Evaluate.