Archive for October, 2010
From Name – are you using the best one for the job?
The from name is one of the most important factors influencing a recipients decision to open and read an email, therefore it is important to use a from name which is going to be recognisable to the recipient, such as the company name, the brand name, or an event name. If using an individuals name be sure the recipient will recognised who the sender is. Also be aware that by using an individual’s name you are building the brand of the individual rather than the company, if that individual were to leave the company the relationship you have built with the recipient is lost and you have to start again. On some occasions, it is appropriate to use an individuals name e.g. when the mailing is coming from the recipients account manager.
Getting your emails opened and read is a constant battle, have a read through Best Practice Email Design for Marketers – 30 ways to maximise recipient interaction with your email for more tips on how your can improve your email campaigns.
If you would like any further information please contact your strategy consultant at strategy@adestra.com
Jenna Lovell, Client Strategy Executive
Have you checked how your email renders in Hotmail lately?
Does your email have a background colour? If so you might want to check your email in the new version of Hotmail. Hotmail has of recent started to display the email as wide as the maximum pixel width defined by the main table or widest image. This often means that the background colour does not have space to display. This is especially important if you have white text over the background colour as this text will now be invisible.
In order to fix this read Tip 7: Using white text and overall background colours from our paper Best Practice Email Design for Coders – 30 ways to ensure that your HTML is working for email. This basically describes that by copy and pasting the following CSS into the head section of your email you can get around this. The code forces Hotmail to take into account any container tables that have been set at 100% width which is usually how background colours are displayed.
<STYLE type=”text/css”>
.ReadMsgBody
{ width: 100%;}
.ExternalClass
{width: 100%;}
</STYLE>
Creating emails that render well in prominent browsers is a daily challenge for email marketers. If you are having rendering issues why not have a scroll through Best Practice Email Design for Coders – 30 ways to ensure that your HTML is working for email for more tips like the above.
For monthly best practice tips and advice sign up to our newsletter.
Serena Elston, Client Strategy Executive.
Hotmail Changes; how it will affect you
A number of enhancements have recently been made to Hotmail in order to help recipients keep on top of their emails.
These new features include;
Trusted senders Icon – Hotmail will now identify ‘trusted senders’ in the recipient’s inbox. By placing a green safety badge next to those senders who are recognized as legitimate senders. Particularly useful for recipients to identify mail from banks and financial service senders which are commonly being impersonated in phishing scams. Details on how a trusted sender is going to be classified is limited right now, but is most likely to be based on a combination of authentication and a consistently positive mailing reputation.
Tabs – One click tabs will filter recipient’s inboxes to easily view a group of messages; with one click users will be able to see mail from their contacts, updates from social networks, or mail from pre-defined groups. ‘Quick views’ will also be available in order automatically sort four types of mail; flagged, photos, office docs, and Shipping Updates.
Time travelling filters – Emails will no longer be guaranteed as successfully delivered to the recipients inbox until the recipient has actually opened the email; Hotmail’s new ‘Time Travelling’ filter will be able to remove messages from the inbox if the reputation of the sender later turns out to be poor and the recipient has not yet opened the email.
Unsubscribe prompt – Subscribers that delete messages without opening them multiple times will be prompted to see if they wish to unsubscribe from that sender. This will help remove inactive recipients from your data which will inevitably help improve open and click through rates, as recipients who have emotionally unsubscribed are no longer sent to. If a recipient does ask to be unsubscribed and continues to receive messages from that sender Hotmail could block messages from that sender altogether.
Sweep – This feature allows users to clean out their inbox in one ‘sweep’. In one click the recipient can automatically delete all the messages in their inbox, mark all messages as read, or move every email from a particular sender out of the inbox into a different folder. The sweep function will remember the users’ preferences; if a recipient sweeps a particular sender’s mail once, Hotmail will sweep incoming messages automatically on an on going basis.
Delete all of mail from a sender – When deleting a single email from a sender, users have the option to delete all mail from the sender with the ability to block all future messages from that particular sender. The main aim of this feature is to remove all the mail that the recipient has signed up for but no longer wishes to receive, allowing the recipient greater time to interact with the legitimate messages they wish to receive.
With these changes in place, reputation and engagement matter more than ever. Review your results; have the changes to Hotmail had an impact on your response rates. Pay close attention to activity by Hotmail addresses and try and re-engage the inactive recipients much sooner than you would normally.
Jenna Lovell, Client Strategy Executive
From Name – are you using the best one for the job?
The from name is one of the most important factors influencing a recipients decision to open and read an email, therefore it is important to use a from name which is going to be recognisable to the recipient, such as the company name, the brand name, or an event name. If using an individuals name be sure the recipient will recognised who the sender is. Also be aware that by using an individual’s name you are building the brand of the individual rather than the company, if that individual were to leave the company the relationship you have built with the recipient is lost and you have to start again. On some occasions, it is appropriate to use an individuals name e.g. when the mailing is coming from the recipients account manager.
Getting your emails opened and read is a constant battle, have a read through Best Practice Email Design for Marketers – 30 ways to maximise recipient interaction with your email for more tips on how your can improve your email campaigns.
If you would like any further information please contact your strategy consultant at strategy@adestra.com
Jenna Lovell, Client Strategy Executive
Have you checked how your email renders in Hotmail lately?
Does your email have a background colour? If so you might want to check your email in the new version of Hotmail. Hotmail has of recent started to display the email as wide as the maximum pixel width defined by the main table or widest image. This often means that the background colour does not have space to display. This is especially important if you have white text over the background colour as this text will now be invisible.
In order to fix this read Tip 7: Using white text and overall background colours from our paper Best Practice Email Design for Coders – 30 ways to ensure that your HTML is working for email. This basically describes that by copy and pasting the following CSS into the head section of your email you can get around this. The code forces Hotmail to take into account any container tables that have been set at 100% width which is usually how background colours are displayed.
<STYLE type=”text/css”>
.ReadMsgBody
{ width: 100%;}
.ExternalClass
{width: 100%;}
</STYLE>
Creating emails that render well in prominent browsers is a daily challenge for email marketers. If you are having rendering issues why not have a scroll through Best Practice Email Design for Coders – 30 ways to ensure that your HTML is working for email for more tips like the above.
For monthly best practice tips and advice sign up to our newsletter.
Serena Elston, Client Strategy Executive.
Hotmail Changes; how it will affect you
A number of enhancements have recently been made to Hotmail in order to help recipients keep on top of their emails.
These new features include;
Trusted senders Icon – Hotmail will now identify ‘trusted senders’ in the recipient’s inbox. By placing a green safety badge next to those senders who are recognized as legitimate senders. Particularly useful for recipients to identify mail from banks and financial service senders which are commonly being impersonated in phishing scams. Details on how a trusted sender is going to be classified is limited right now, but is most likely to be based on a combination of authentication and a consistently positive mailing reputation.
Tabs – One click tabs will filter recipient’s inboxes to easily view a group of messages; with one click users will be able to see mail from their contacts, updates from social networks, or mail from pre-defined groups. ‘Quick views’ will also be available in order automatically sort four types of mail; flagged, photos, office docs, and Shipping Updates.
Time travelling filters – Emails will no longer be guaranteed as successfully delivered to the recipients inbox until the recipient has actually opened the email; Hotmail’s new ‘Time Travelling’ filter will be able to remove messages from the inbox if the reputation of the sender later turns out to be poor and the recipient has not yet opened the email.
Unsubscribe prompt – Subscribers that delete messages without opening them multiple times will be prompted to see if they wish to unsubscribe from that sender. This will help remove inactive recipients from your data which will inevitably help improve open and click through rates, as recipients who have emotionally unsubscribed are no longer sent to. If a recipient does ask to be unsubscribed and continues to receive messages from that sender Hotmail could block messages from that sender altogether.
Sweep – This feature allows users to clean out their inbox in one ‘sweep’. In one click the recipient can automatically delete all the messages in their inbox, mark all messages as read, or move every email from a particular sender out of the inbox into a different folder. The sweep function will remember the users’ preferences; if a recipient sweeps a particular sender’s mail once, Hotmail will sweep incoming messages automatically on an on going basis.
Delete all of mail from a sender – When deleting a single email from a sender, users have the option to delete all mail from the sender with the ability to block all future messages from that particular sender. The main aim of this feature is to remove all the mail that the recipient has signed up for but no longer wishes to receive, allowing the recipient greater time to interact with the legitimate messages they wish to receive.
With these changes in place, reputation and engagement matter more than ever. Review your results; have the changes to Hotmail had an impact on your response rates. Pay close attention to activity by Hotmail addresses and try and re-engage the inactive recipients much sooner than you would normally.
Jenna Lovell, Client Strategy Executive