Email Deliverability & DomainKeys: A Marriage Made in Heaven

With more and more business owners turning to email marketing to gain competitive traction and drive revenue, deliverability is the hot topic on everyone’s mind. Finding the right copy, subject lines and calls to action still carries weight; but consensus among eMarketers is that making it to the inbox is by far the biggest challenge they face today.
What with email authentication standards constantly changing and recipient’s always looking for more control over their inbox, it’s no surprise that the deliverability discipline is getting complex. That said, marketers who have mastered the art of getting through the noise to achieve inbox success will confirm that improved deliverability boils down to three key factors… TRUST, TRUST and more recipient TRUST!
Trust is built over time, easily broken and hard to rebuild. For eMarketers, trust is the result of a sender’s ongoing commitment to protect their email reputation and their recipients from serious issues plaguing the internet community like spoofing (identity theft of a legitimate marketer’s email address) and phishing attacks (fraudulent solicitation and scams). In the past, brand preservation and increased recipient trust were key success components sought by many and achieved by few; however with the introduction of Yahoo's DomainKeys protocol, things are starting to change.
DomainKeys is the drive by industry leader Yahoo to develop an open-standard email authentication specification to curb the illegitimate practices like spoofing and phishing mentioned above. This translates into increased protection for recipients and increased reputation for senders — the ultimate win-win equation when it comes to boosting your deliverability and success rates. By doing so, DomainKeys brings clarity to the whole murky subject of whether the sender is who they claim to be.
For this reason DomainKeys is quickly being adopted by many providers and senders alike, as it finally gives all the key players concerned a long-awaited mechanism for verifying the authenticity of senders.
So how does DomainKeys actually work? DomainKeys is a signature-based type of authentication. This means that email senders must digitally “sign” each outgoing email to indicate who they are. The receiver then checks each signature to make sure the sender is authorized to transmit mail from the domain in the “From” address — that the message is indeed from the actual sender and not someone else. Once the domain is verified and other anti-spam tests don’t catch it, the email can be delivered to the user’s inbox. However if the signature fails to verify, or there isn’t one, the email can be dropped, flagged or quarantined. Still sound complicated? It doesn’t have to be.
As a leading email service provider, GOT Corporation is pleased to support the DomainKeys protocol in its award-winning Campaigner products. This ensures customers don’t have the risk or worry of protecting their recipients from fraudulent email communications — only the rewards of improved customer trust and deliverability. And as any eMarketer can tell you… TRUST = DELIVERIBILITY = SUCCESS!
To learn how the latest releases of both Campaigner and CampaignerPro’s support for DomainKeys can increase recipient trust level and improve your deliverability call us at 1-888-845-4544 today.

Email Marketing — Free Seminars

GOT Corporation to Deliver Do-it-Yourself Email Marketing Seminars in the Lone Star State
Live sessions to reach out to new eMarketers and eExperts alike on how to harness the power of Email Marketing to grow their business and revolutionize their ROI
Montreal, QC — May 3, 2007 — GOT Corporation, a leading email marketing service provider announced today that it will be holding a series of live email marketing seminars set to take place May 8-10 in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.
The focus of the informal sessions will be on how do-it-yourself email marketing can allow businesses to cultivate strong customer relationships, build loyalty, drive high returns on investment and stay ahead of competitors.
“Email marketing is clearly not a one size fits all issue. That’s why we’re pleased to share our knowledge and demonstrate to users of any skill set how easy it is to market online using our great Campaigner and CampaignerPro products,” says Maxine Grossman, Director of Business Development at GOT Corporation.
Specifically, the live seminars will deliver relevant information on the state of the email marketing industry, building effective programs, best practices, creating successful e-newsletters, strategies for growing opt-in lists, delivery optimization, as well as automating sales touches and much more.
“The upcoming sessions are a great way of letting business owners in Texas discover for themselves why 81 percent of marketers are using email to retain customers,” says Grossman. To lean more about our live seminars in Texas, or to register, visit www.campaigner.com.
About GOT Corporation GOT Corporation’s on-demand Campaigner products enable organizations to have highly personalized one-to-one email dialogues with their customers, measure how they respond, and analyze those responses to interact in a more intelligent, automated way — resulting in more profitable relationships. GOT Corporation partners with industry leaders including Salesforce, Comcast and Yahoo!; provides applications to companies such as Nokia, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Nielsen Media Research, AT&T, West49 and to thousands of small and medium-sized businesses. To schedule a demo or for more information please visit www.campaigner.com.

Listrak Email Marketing Announces Integration with Google Analytics

Lititz, PA (PRWEB) — Listrak announced yesterday that it has integrated Google Analytics with its award winning email marketing solution. The result is a powerful marketing tool that tracks open, read, and click-through rates of the email campaigns and then tracks the interaction the subscribers have with their websites after they clicked-through the call to action link on the email message.
This gives Listrak users a better understanding of their subscribers’ online habits, which allows them to increase the relevancy of future campaigns while accurately predicting subscriber response. Combining both email tracking features and web analytics data gives marketers a complete understanding of their subscribers.
Google Analytics gives marketers quick and easy access to information that allows them to build accurate subscriber profiles while tracking overall goal conversion.
With Google Analytics, marketers can tie goal conversion back to a specific email address or to a link through a specific email campaign, gather information on the average amount of pageviews per visit tied to a specific email address or to a specific email campaign, capture overall conversions from a specific email send, and summarize number of total visits across all email campaigns.
Ross Kramer, CEO of Listrak, says, “The combination of Listrak email marketing and Google Analytics results in a robust reporting tool that marketers can use to create timely, relevant email campaigns targeted to individual subscribers.”
Google Analytics offers many marketing benefits to companies using it in accordance with their email marketing strategies. For example, companies will be able to see which subscribers added items to their online shopping carts but abandoned the carts before completing the purchase.
Since the analytics are tied to their Listrak email marketing solution, marketers can easily send emails to those subscribers to complete the sale. Also, marketers can use Google Analytics for trending analysis, landing page optimization, and entrance and exit point reporting. Because it is integrated with Listrak email marketing, users can apply the knowledge instantly so they communicate better with their customers.
For more information, read Listrak’s white paper “Using Google Analytics to Increase Reporting Capabilities of Email Marketing Campaigns and Boost Relevancy and Response“.

Internet Marketing Make money with Email

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Are your email messages being blocked or filtered?

Are your email messages being blocked or filtered?Make sure that your messages get through.
Boulder, CO- On average, 15 percent of messages sent by companies do not get through to their customer's inbox. Despite strong filters and blacklists, we're receiving more and more unsolicited pieces of email each day. It costs time and energy to sort through and hit the delete button - time and energy that employees could be using to help solve customer's problems. And the worst unsolicited email - pornographic content - makes us worry about opening any message in front of young kids.
Yet 48% of the US population has an email account, and 84% of them check their email frequently. When people go online, one of the first things they tend to do is check email.
The fact that so many people - 136 million active email users in the US alone - put up with porn, body-part extension offers, herbal extracts, the chance to earn $15,000 a week from the comfort of their home - attests to how important email is in the lives of the everyday citizen.
Why is email so important?For grandparents, images of their grandchildren can smile at them from their inbox.
For friends across the country or the world, email is a great way to stay in touch - without having to worry about time zones, long distance charges, or if the person is available at that exact moment to talk.
For businesses, email is a cost-effective way to stay in regular contact with the 80% of past customers and prospects who make up only 20% of revenue.
So how can you make sure that your messages get through?
There are two distinct categories of barriers that block your messages: physical barriers (like blacklists and filtering systems), and psychological (where quick decision makes the difference between the 'delete' key and a read message).
1. Physical Barriers
Blacklists. The first line of defense against unsolicited email for many businesses, organizations and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) is to filter all incoming email against blacklists. Blacklists are lists of sites that may have sent unsolicited email in the past. I stress the word 'may' because the lists are typically compiled by volunteer organizations without any notice or due process.
Many companies and ISPs subscribe to one or more blacklist, and if your company's mail server is on the list, your messages will by default be automatically blocked.
Blacklists aren't infallible - in a recent study, nearly two-thirds of messages marked as spam by blacklists were false positives.
So before all else, make sure that you or your web hosting company is not listed on any blacklists. Here are a few places to check: http://www.mail-abuse.org/, http://spamcop.net, http://www.ordb.org, http://www.spamhaus.org,
Filters.Filters work by looking for lots of exclamation points or dollar signs in a subject line, sexually-explicit words, as well as other patterns in messages that are common to unsolicited email (such as the exiled royal from sub-Saharan Africa that needs your help to transfer money out of his country). Some companies use filters that do reverse-lookups (sort of like Caller ID for mail servers; you're blocked if you have the equivalent of 'anonymous' displayed in the window). Others will allow a few messages to trickle through, but will start to filter similar incoming messages if you hit a certain threshold of volume (approximately 50 per hour for AOL, for example).
Yet as soon as new method for filtering unsolicited email appears, nefarious spammers attempt to find ways around them. That's why many unsolicited email messages often contain only graphics, or may have random letters and characters in the subject line or message to fool filters.
The main problem with filters is the false positive problem. This article is chock-full of information about how to avoid spam filters; ironically, many of the keywords in this message may trip sensitive filters and prevent this message from being delivered to people who signed up on the CustomerParadigm website for this newsletter.
Several of our Fortune 50 clients are not able to receive their own HTML email newsletters because their IT department's filtering procedures trap them. For many of these companies, it's important to only send messages in plain text.
2. Inbox Psychology
Relevance.If a message comes into your inbox from your brother-in-law, chances are good that you'll either (a) open it up because you still like him, or (b) delete it and curse for the next half hour. Likewise, if your company has a good relationship with someone - a relationship that is built on trust - your message will be opened and perceived as valuable. But if you treat your email database as something that you just 'blast' messages to whenever you have an item that drops a penny or two in price, the recipient is much less likely to open and read your message
Anticipated.If we meet at a networking event, and I tell you that I'll send that very valuable article on email marketing that will make your career blossom, when you see the message from me arrive in your inbox, you're excited to open it. I set an expectation and the message was anticipated.
Permission.Sometimes it's wonderful when an old high school friend just drops in from out of town and asks to sleep on your couch for the next couple of months. But most of the time, surprises aren't that much fun. If you don't have a prior business relationship with someone, 'surprising' them with an email newsletter is not a very effective way to build trust. (And it's illegal in 27 different states).
Personalized.The TO: line of a message is very important. I'm much more likely to open a message if it is sent to "Jeff Finkelstein" vs. just to my plain email address. Why? Perhaps it's because I'm narcissistic - I like to see my own name. Or perhaps because it implies that the person who is sending something to me knows more than just my email address that was screen-scraped and scavenged from a website by an rogue, automated piece of software.
A message that has everyone's email address in the BCC: line, but the TO: line is blank, is even more suspect. Then I look to the sender's email address - and sometimes excuse them and open and read the message.
And I know I've said this many, many times in many, many articles: Don't ever put everyone's email address in the TO: line. Not only did you just paste in your entire list of customers, prospects and contacts for everyone to see, I'll bet your unscrupulous competitors would love to get their hands on the list and start sending unsolicited email in an attempt to steal your clients away.
Time is a Limited Resource.There's a reason that it costs $2 million for a 30-second ad in the Super Bowl. It's because people's time is a limited resource.
Today everyone is doing more with less. And each and every communication that you have with people takes them away from something else. So before you hit that 'send' button,' make sure that your message adds value to the relationship. You might get away with a non-value added communication the first time. But the next message that you send will likely end up in the 'deleted items' folder.
Test. Test. And Test Some More.Before you send a message, test it out to make sure that it isn't blocked. Sign up for a free hotmail account. Get a free AOL trial membership. Send out a few test messages. And ask some friends at different companies to make sure your messages aren't filtered into their junk folders before you send to your entire list.
Conclusion.
Federal legislation will be here soon. There are currently 27 different state laws that regulate unsolicited email. But even the definition of what constitutes 'unsolicited email' varies widely from state to state. And state boundaries and jurisdictions are easily crossed with the click of a mouse. Federal legislation that supersedes the myriad of state laws will hopefully help slow the flow of non-permissioned email. Industry solutions, too may help, but there are currently as many proposed solutions to unsolicited email as there seem to be flavors of spam.
I was recently called to testify as an expert on pending anti-spam legistation at Colorado's state capitol (a rare occasion to see me wearing a full suit and tie). After the testimony, I was chatting with one of the state senators who was terrified to let her grandchild use the Internet because of all of the pornographic spam she received.
It's likely she receives a lot of unsolicted email because her email address is listed on the state government's web site. Spammers play the numbers game - hoping that just 10 people out of two million will click through and make a purchase - so they 'grabbed' her email address and added it to their list.
If it takes people a mere three seconds to look a subject line, decide that the message isn't for them, and then hit the delete button, the 1,999,990 other people who don't make a purchase spend a cumulative 70 days hitting the 'delete' button.
That's a lot time wasted. And a lot of impatient people who try to hit delete even faster.

Your Cell Phone Tracks Your Every Movement

Boulder, CO - Someday in the not-too-distant future, you'll be visiting a new city - lost - but your cell phone company will know exactly where you are and may market products and services to you based on your location.

Your cell phone is generally toted around and used by a single person: you. Unless you use an expensive, pre-paid cell phone, your cell phone's unique ID is linked to your billing information (your name, address, social security number and credit card information).
Helping stranded motorists find their way is good. Helping hungry travelers find the closest vegetarian restaurant may be useful. Helping police, fire and medical personnel find accident scenes more quickly can be a lifesaver.

But a hidden cost of these tracking systems is that your location-based information is recorded and saved into a file that can be searched at a later date. Think divorce proceedings, criminal trials or justification to fire employees for hanging out at casinos instead of visiting customers.
Imagine a line of questioning that goes something like this: "Where were you on the night of the July 25, Ms. Smith?," a divorce lawyer asks. "According to your cell phone provider's records, your cell phone was located at the Hideaway Hotel."

Perhaps Ms. Smith should have turned off her cell phone before the alleged rendezvous.
"There are some things you don't mind other people knowing, but your location isn't one of them," said Gary Laden, a privacy program director for BBBOnLine, a Better Business Bureau subsidiary.

Like migratory birds with radio collars strapped to their backs, the paths of wireless-enabled, wandering humans are increasingly recorded in meticulous detail (at least everywhere they're in decent cell phone coverage).

Why is your cell phone's location tracked? More than 190 million 911 calls are placed annually, and 25 percent of those are made from a wireless phone. When you dial 911 from your landline phone, you can be certain that within minutes of your call, police, fire and medical assistance will arrive to your location. It's fairly easy to dispatch people to your location because your house is a fixed location.

But for cell phone users who dial 911, precious minutes can be wasted trying to figure out where to send emergency personnel. In a former career as an emergency medical technician (EMT), I've been in the dispatcher hot seat. A lot of people really don't know where they are and are often really freaked out by the emergency situation. Telling you where they are isn't always an easy process.

The FCC has required that all U.S. cell phone companies track their cell phone customers' location for emergency purposes. Cell phone companies, in turn, see new revenue opportunities to offset the burden of installing these complex new location-tracking systems.

In the past, cell phones have given us the freedom to hide. I may not want someone to know that I'm in Iowa, just that I'm available to answer their questions and solve their problems.
So before you wander carefree with your cell phone in hand, know that if you really want privacy from being located and found, the "off" button may be your best option.