One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

It’s not often we invoke Sesame Street on this blog, but today it seems appropriate.

Let’s play a little game: which thing doesn’t belong in your email marketing campaigns?

• Presenting subscribers with other ways to interact with your business – like on your blog, Facebook group, Twitter account or even in person at events your business will attend.
• Writing in a conversational tone – like a “real person” talking to your subscribers.
• Requesting feedback from subscribers on how your business – and your emails! – can better meet their needs.
• Trying to learn why people unsubscribe by asking them.
• Starting with subscribers’ permission and creating relevant emails that seek to build a relationship with your potential customers.
• Sending your emails from a “No Reply” or “Do Not Reply” address.

If you guessed “Sending your emails from a ‘no reply’ or ‘do not reply’ address, give yourself a pat on the back.

“Do Not Reply” Addresses Have No Place In Your Email Marketing Campaigns.

Period.

All the other ideas in the list above aim to make your email marketing more social.

“Do Not Reply” addresses, on the other hand, try to take a permission-based, conversational marketing medium and mold it into an online version of TV or billboard advertising.

People who use “Do Not Reply” addresses…

• … try to have one-way conversations in their marketing.

  Problem is, a one-way conversation isn’t a conversation at all. It’s a monologue.

• … treat subscribers as a cost whenever they’re doing anything except buying something.

  To them, feedback isn’t free research on how to market better; it’s a cost to be avoided.

• … don’t get that the main thing that affects your email deliverability is basically whether you make subscribers mad. Make them mad, they click the “spam” button. Enough of them do it, and you have a delivery problem.

  To subscribers, spam isn’t just unsolicited bulk email, it’s any email they don’t want. And not many people want to hear from people – or companies – who refuse to hear back from them.

  Business who use a “Do Not Reply” address don’t understand that they’re asking for spam complaints.

Good News: Most People Understand This. Better News: More People Will.

Most people don’t send their email marketing campaigns from “Do Not Reply” addresses – which was exactly what we expected to find when we ran stats on the “from” lines in all of our users’ campaigns a while ago. You guys are good

That said, there were a few people who were creating campaigns in AWeber and using addresses like noreply@example.com, do-not-reply@example.com and so forth (at their own domain, not example.com) in the “from” line.

We realized we needed to close that loophole and educate those customers, and we’ve done so.

When you create a campaign in AWeber, we check the “from” address for many common variants of “Do Not Reply” addresses. If a customer enters one, they’ll be notified that this is not OK and will be prompted to choose a new “from” address.

Our hope is that with a little guidance and education, we can help those businesses become better email marketers.

What Do YOU Think of “Do Not Reply” Addresses?

Have you ever sent a campaign using a “Do Not Reply” address? Ever received one? What do you think of them?

Share your thoughts on the blog!

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In the comments of our recent post on email whitelisting, John asked about how to deal with spam complaints and shared what his experience with them has been.

After looking back through other posts on spam complaints, I didn’t see one that fully addressed his comment the way I wanted to. And I’ve heard similar comments and questions from other people.

So let’s talk about it.

Problem: Getting Spam Complaints When You’re Not a Spammer

Here’s what I took away from John’s comment, along with quotes from his comment:

• He’s getting a higher complaint rate than he’d like. ¹
• His emails are not promotional. (“We are still in start up mode and not [even] selling anything. Our emails are short two-paragraphers linking to a high-content blog post.”)
• His subscriber base is “entirely web-based sign ups” so these should be people who want his emails.
• He emails weekly (“so it’s hardly too much or too little that they forgot who we were”).

In short, it sounds like John’s trying to do the right things.

So what’s going on here?

Spam Complaints Happen For Many Reasons

Not all spam complaints occur because the email is “spam” as it is traditionally defined.

Here are a few scenarios where complaints might occur (and what John – or anyone else – might do to avoid them):

1. It’s easy to click “spam” – and not as easy to find the unsubscribe link.

   Solution: make it easy to unsubscribe – consider putting an unsubscribe link near the top of your email.

2. Some recipients don’t trust unsubscribe links and/or have heard they shouldn’t click them unless they remember subscribing.

   Solution: remind people when/where they signed up and why they’re getting your email (you can use personalization fields to include information like the date/time/URL that a subscriber signed up on.

3. The email was requested but not relevant.

   Solution: make sure that your emails closely address your subscribers’ needs and wants. Track what subscribers are responding to in order to create more relevant campaigns as you go.

4. Similarly, the content or timing of the email was not what the subscriber expected (perhaps because expectations about the specific email content and frequency were not explicitly set when the subscriber opted in).

   Solution: set expectations clearly when subscribers opt in. Tell them what they’re going to get, when they’re going to get it and who it’ll be coming from.

5. The subscriber didn’t like something about the email – or something else about the company sending it (“I had a bad experience on Company X’s website/in Company X’s store, so now I’m marking their email as spam.”).

   Solution: request feedback from prospects and customers. Find out what they do and don’t like about your emails – and your business as a whole. Customer service, product selection, pricing, policies, everything… they can all affect subscriber perception of your company. Then take that feedback and improve.

There are certainly other possible reasons for spam complaints, and other courses of action that you might take, but by addressing these areas of your email marketing, you can reduce your exposure to spam complaints and maximize your email deliverability.

What Have You Done To Reduce Spam Complaints?

Have you addressed these causes of complaints? Other ones? What have you found to be effective?

Share your thoughts below!

1. For the record, part of John’s complaint rate is due to the low volume of email he’s sending. One or two complaints raises his rate significantly. I think it’s reasonable to expect that as he connects with more subscribers, he should see lower complaint rates – if he follows the advice here, of course!

A lot of email senders are concerned with whitelisting and spam complaints.

They’ll ask questions like:

• Are you whitelisted? How do I get whitelisted?
• So if you’re/I’m whitelisted, I won’t ever go to the spam folder?
• How do you make sure I don’t get spam complaints?
• How do I know who marked my email as spam?

If you’ve ever been concerned about your email deliverability, you’ve probably wondered the same sorts of things.

All of these questions can lead to useful discussions about getting your email delivered. But a lot of times, those discussions require more than a simple one-word or one-sentence answer.

I recently came across a handy resource on ISP whitelisting and feedback loops that gives us an opportunity to clear up some misconceptions and uncertainties that many people (perhaps even you) have had about email deliverability.

Fact: Not All ISPs Offer Whitelisting or Feedback Loops

The problem with asking a question like “are you whitelisted?” is that it assumes that whitelisting is an everybody-or-nobody proposition.

Even if you’re whitelisted (as AWeber is) with the ISPs who do offer it, there are other ISPs who simply don’t offer whitelisting.

The same goes for Feedback Loops – not all ISPs will tell you when a subscriber marks an email as spam.

For a handy list of ISPs that do and do not offer whitelisting and/or feedback loops, see this blog post at Word to the Wise.

Keep in mind, if you’re using AWeber, you don’t need to get whitelisted separately for your email campaigns through us.

What Does It Mean to be Whitelisted?

What’s interesting about this question is that I cannot recall anyone ever asking me this in my 4+ years at AWeber. People will ask if we’re whitelisted, but they don’t ask what that means or what the implications of being whitelisted are.

Here’s something that a lot of people don’t know about whitelisting…

• Whitelisting does not in any way guarantee that your emails will all end up in the inbox.

It doesn’t. That’s not why it exists.

Being whitelisted at an ISP is not a “free pass” to send whatever you want, whenever you want, without any potential deliverability repercussions.

I think of it this way…

Being whitelisted is like taking a pledge – by providing information about your mailing practices to an ISP, you’re saying “I practice responsible email marketing, and I’m willing to prove it by letting you keep a close eye on me and how recipients treat my email.”

After all, one of the effects of getting whitelisted is that you make it easier for an ISP to identify email coming from you – and potentially block it.

This doesn’t mean whitelisting is bad. It’s a good thing to do, and whitelisted senders have an advantage over those who are not whitelisted. But don’t think it’s a free pass to send unsolicited or irrelevant emails to people.

What About Feedback Loops? What Do They Mean to You?

Here’s the lowdown on feedback loops:

• When an ISP offers a feedback loop, it means that they will tell us when one of your subscribers marks your email as spam.

  The feedback loops are what enables us to show you complaint rates within your account.

• If your complaint rates get too high, an ISP may not deliver your email campaigns to the inbox.

  What is an Acceptable Complaint Rate?

  Being on a feedback loop is kind of like being whitelisted – you’re taking responsibility for your email practices, and their consequences.

• Whenever someone marks your email as spam, we immediately unsubscribe them from your list.

  As a couple of us were discussing on Twitter earlier today, this is just common sense, and it also helps prevent future emails from being blocked.

  If you run any email campaigns outside of AWeber, you should regularly export your unsubscribes (this will include people who marked one of your emails as spam) so you can make sure that they’re not on those other campaigns.

What Other Questions Do You Have?

Is there anything else you’ve wondered about email deliverability, but not asked about before?

Share your thoughts and questions below!

Know someone who would benefit from this? Share it with them!

Some people don’t trust unsubscribe links, even from legitimate email senders.

Others don’t want to be bothered locating the unsubscribe link in your email.

In both cases, recipients may click the “spam” button in order to unsubscribe – raising your spam complaint rates and possibly reducing deliverability.

Wouldn’t it be nice if ISPs made unsubscribing easier and more trustworthy for users (at the same time reducing your complaint rate)?

One major ISP is already doing so.

List-Unsubscribe Header Allows ISPs to Add an Unsubscribe Button or Link

By adding a “list-unsubscribe” header to your outgoing email marketing campaigns, you enable ISPs to add an unsubscribe link or button into their user interface.

That way, readers who want to unsubscribe, but who don’t want to be bothered with locating the unsubscribe link in your email, can do so without clicking the “Spam” button in their email clients.

How Hotmail Uses the List-Unsubscribe Header

Windows Live Hotmail (for simplicity’s sake, I’m shortening it to “Hotmail”) is the first major ISP to implement support for the List-Unsubscribe header.

Here’s what happens.

When a Hotmail subscriber first gets a message from you (like this welcome message from our Test Drive), since s/he hasn’t added you to the Safe Senders list yet, images and links are disabled.

The top of your email looks like this in Hotmail:

(Click the image above to see what the full email looks like.)

When someone clicks the “mark as safe” link, images are turned on and the top of the email changes to include an unsubscribe link:

If someone clicks the unsubscribe link, they see an alert box:

When they click “OK” they’re taken to the unsubscribe page:

What Do I Need To Do To Use The List-Unsubscribe Header In My Emails?

If you’re an AWeber user, nothing at all – we automatically add this header to your campaigns.

We’ll keep you updated on any other major ISPs adopting the list-unsubscribe header (if you haven’t already done so, follow this blog by email or RSS and be the first to know!).

Since our messages’ relevance to subscribers is crucial to the deliverability of our messages, knowing how they respond to them is important.

Opens and clicks tell us some things, like the rate at which our subscribers positively respond to messages. But at best, that’s only half of the story.

That’s why we’re glad to be a part of Comcast’s new feedback loop system.

A Win-Win Situation for Email Deliverability…

The other half of the story is recognizing when subscribers react in a less beneficial way, such as when they mark our messages as SPAM. This is crucial because nothing good can possibly come from messages that don’t get through as a result of ISP blocking.

By passing a more complete subscriber complaint rate to users, we can help them to better understand what is relevant and important to subscribers and what they don’t want to see in their inboxes.

At the same time, our administrators now have another tool at their disposal to monitor our system to make sure the actions of a small subset of people sending irrelevant messages doesn’t affect those of us adhering to email marketing best practices.

So, while it’s not a flashy new feature, it’s something we’re happy to implement.

[ You might notice that we are testing the publishing of full article content in our RSS feed. This is a slight change over our previous method of including only the few paragraphs as a preview. ]

With some things in life, what is “too much” is quite clear.

Last week, we might have had too much turkey or sweet potatoes, or in the ensuing weeks we might go over our holiday spending budgets. When we hit the scales or balance our checkbooks, we know whether or not we went overboard.

Still, in other cases, we need some guidance on the matter. For instance, if we receive too many spam complaints from subscribers, the deliverability of our messages can really suffer.

But how do we know when we’ve received too many of these?

How to Understand Complaint Rates

AWeber sends complaint reports to our customers forwarded from ISPs when their user’s click the “Mark as Spam” buttons they offer.

With ISPs increasing the priority of their users’ feedback on the deliverability of email messages, too many of these complaints can mean too few of our messages get through to our subscribers.

Seeing a need to set the bar and provide some guidance on understanding the volume of these complaints and when we should be concerned, we’ve published a Knowledge Base article covering what you need to know:

Maintaining Good Deliverability

Use this article as a resource to measure potential issues with your own campaigns. These complaints may be trying to tell us one or more ways we can significantly improve results and avoid issues with our campaigns, so you’ll also find additional information on how to make them.

Fortunately, by using email marketing best practices such as those we talk frequently about on this blog, we should continually find our campaigns in good standing.

Related Information:

Permission is a Good Start …

Free Deliverability Guide

Spam Buttons and Complaints

Have your own thoughts on spam or complaint rates you’d like to share? Please join the discussion.

It happens all too frequently.

A business puts in the time and expense of getting a customer to their website or store, establishes trust and credibility, and gets that person to make a purchase. Which brings them to that critical first post-purchase contact.

Do they use it to provide more value? To reinforce the buying decision? Show the customer how the purchased product is even more valuable than they thought?

Nope.

The response to last Thursday’s seminar on blogging was fantastic, and we received lots of positive feedback. Here are just a couple of the comments we received in the post-seminar survey:

Our Education Team is here with the primary goal of helping small businesses build their marketing campaigns, so hearing comments like these is gratifying because it let’s us know we’re on the right path.

More Free, Timely Help For Businesses

We could have rested on our laurels for a few days basking in the success of seminars passed, but instead we went right back to the drawing board and have scheduled our next free live video seminar:

Reach the Inbox: How to Avoid the SPAM Folder

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

2:00 – 3:00PM ET

Not on Eastern Time? Click Here.

Stumbled across this yesterday: Google Blog: It’s Not About The Spam.

The video they included with their post gives a basic — and amusing — overview of what they do to filter out UBE while delivering wanted email to the inbox. (Bonus: the lab costumes add a nice Halloween touch!)

Check out the video.

If I had a nickel for every time someone has asked to send a “reminder” email to unconfirmed subscribers… well, my 4th of July fireworks would already be paid for.

It’s a common temptation: email addresses are entered into your form (or imported), sent the confirmation message… and then…

Nothing. They sit there, pending. They haven’t confirmed. And it’s looking like they might not at all.

So the publisher starts thinking…