Archive for August, 2011
“How nice of them to think of me” Drayton Bird
‘How nice of them to think of me’ quickly followed by ‘I want to find out more’, is the exact response we would all love to our carefully crafted email landing in someone’s inbox. So, how can we prompt these happy responses?
Subject Lines…that one little line that means an open or not.
I was once told by an American digital marketing agency that their research showed people spend 2 seconds deciding whether or not to open your email. No pressure, but that means your subject line needs to be engaging enough to sway someone to a “yes I want to open” decision in 1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi. So, what are the 3 main things to consider when creating this one little sentence?
1. Does it include the main point of your message?
Why are you emailing me? What’s new? Tell me, that way I’ll probably open the email straight away. This doesn’t mean all subject lines should be ‘Hi, please visit our website’ But they should share the aim of your email in a catchy, considered way. Remember some email clients, and mobiles will truncate your subject line, so get the most important bit in at the start.
2. Let out your creative side
Think about your finished email as an artistic creation; now you need to title it. It doesn’t have to be a summary of your content; it can be something completely new. If you often use your brand name, switch to focusing on the copy, or if you normally use statements try a question, something to get people intrigued. If you are really in to your social media you could even try writing a subject line that would be ideal to tweet, linking your campaigns.
Once you’ve come up with one, question it. Ask around, do other people like it? Also, don’t get too panicked by spam words, unless you pack it full of them it should be fine, you can always check with us if you are worried, the idea that you cannot use the word ‘free’ can be challenged.
3. You knew it was coming…testing
Testing is great, there’s no getting away from it. With A/B split testing you can try things out on small samples. Be a little daring without risking too much in terms of reputation or ROI, safe in the knowledge that the bulk of your list will receive the winning email. For more information on our new Split Test Feature click here or contact: moreinfo@adestra.com. One thing that can be really worth testing with subject lines is personalisation, controversial but can be very effective. It doesn’t have to be a person’s name but can be any data you have, location, membership number anything at all that might make it more relevant and interesting.
Think about these 3 factors before you write your next subject line and let us know if you’ve managed to improve your open rate. Do you have any tips on subject lines that have proved effective? If so let’s discuss them below.
Catherine Holt
Account Manager
Getting the most from the new security features in MessageFocus
The new version of MessageFocus brings a number of additional security features that can be enabled right now, giving you better control of who, and from where, has access to your data.
IP address restrictions
The first and most significant change is using IP address restrictions to control not only the locations from which your users can access MessageFocus, but whether the downloading of contact data is permitted from that location. These options are configurable per user, which enables you to take complete control, whilst providing the flexibility required for marketers to do their job without security getting in the way.
For example, at the most basic level, you can restrict access to your account from your head office only. Another possible scenario is to allow data download access from your head office, where you are certain the necessary security controls are in place to protect your network, but restrict the ability to download data from any other location, whilst still allowing the user to login as normal.
OTP tokens
Along with IP address restrictions, MessageFocus has optional two-factor authentication. Used in combination with your account, username and password, users will be asked to enter a 6 digit one time passcode provided by an OTP token (pictured above).
The tokens cannot be shared between users, and codes produced are valid for one use only. So, if the worst happens and your login credentials fall into the wrong hands, you can be assured that your MessageFocus account will remain secure.
OTP tokens also fit in with the IP address restrictions explained above, so along with data download restrictions, you can pick which locations require a token for access, reducing the risk associated with users that need access on the move. E.g you can restrict data download to users that have logged in with an OTP token.
Minimising risk
All of these features are optional, as these aren’t decisions that we can make on your behalf. However, I strongly recommend that you look to implement some, if not all of the features above, as doing so will reduce the risk of your contact data getting into the wrong hands.
Your account manager can run through the options and will be able to advise on which are best to suit your business requirements.
Keeping your data safe
All of the above security restrictions are in place for any Adestra employee that requires access to MessageFocus, including mandatory OTP tokens and the download of any customer data by our support teams is strictly prohibited.
To find out more about the data security functionality and services we offer, please contact us
Carl Chambers
Head of Development
Homail, hotnail, hotmai… we assume you mean Hotmail?
When doing the routine cleansing of our database, I noticed that many common email domain names appear to be misspelt. We can easily assume that domain names such as hotmail.com can be mistyped to hotnail.com, homail.com and many other variations of the same domain.
Regular data cleansing is important to ensure that you have optimum deliverability and your data doesn’t contain spam trap email addresses which can have a negative impact on your sender reputation. But looking into it further, perhaps not removing these apparent misspellings could have a bigger effect on your deliverability than originally thought. Upon reading the DMA Email Marketing Council Blog, it drove me to investigate this further.
Now, take a generic apparently misspelt email address such as joebloggs@homail.com. Looking at this you’d think the domain should be invalid and therefore, we should be receiving bouncebacks from that email address. Having a look, we received no such bouncebacks but no activity either.
So what does this mean for you? It seems the major ISPs have registered the most common misspellings of their domains as live domains. For example, homail.com is owned by live.com. With the lack of activity, these email addresses are not owned by anyone, but the domain is live, so could this be a new spam trap? Are the major ISPs using these misspellings to judge the quality of your data?
To prevent any problems, you should regularly look at your data and remove your inactive email addresses. By removing those addresses that have never taken any action on your emails (opens or clicks) you will have your data in good shape to improve your deliverability and avoid repeatedly sending to spam traps. Good data quality is at the heart of your email marketing, so keeping on top of data cleansing and the quality of your database WILL maintain and improve your deliverability.
To find out how MessageFocus can automate this process for you, please contact us
“How nice of them to think of me” Drayton Bird
‘How nice of them to think of me’ quickly followed by ‘I want to find out more’, is the exact response we would all love to our carefully crafted email landing in someone’s inbox. So, how can we prompt these happy responses?
Subject Lines…that one little line that means an open or not.
I was once told by an American digital marketing agency that their research showed people spend 2 seconds deciding whether or not to open your email. No pressure, but that means your subject line needs to be engaging enough to sway someone to a “yes I want to open” decision in 1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi. So, what are the 3 main things to consider when creating this one little sentence?
1. Does it include the main point of your message?
Why are you emailing me? What’s new? Tell me, that way I’ll probably open the email straight away. This doesn’t mean all subject lines should be ‘Hi, please visit our website’ But they should share the aim of your email in a catchy, considered way. Remember some email clients, and mobiles will truncate your subject line, so get the most important bit in at the start.
2. Let out your creative side
Think about your finished email as an artistic creation; now you need to title it. It doesn’t have to be a summary of your content; it can be something completely new. If you often use your brand name, switch to focusing on the copy, or if you normally use statements try a question, something to get people intrigued. If you are really in to your social media you could even try writing a subject line that would be ideal to tweet, linking your campaigns.
Once you’ve come up with one, question it. Ask around, do other people like it? Also, don’t get too panicked by spam words, unless you pack it full of them it should be fine, you can always check with us if you are worried, the idea that you cannot use the word ‘free’ can be challenged.
3. You knew it was coming…testing
Testing is great, there’s no getting away from it. With A/B split testing you can try things out on small samples. Be a little daring without risking too much in terms of reputation or ROI, safe in the knowledge that the bulk of your list will receive the winning email. For more information on our new Split Test Feature click here or contact: moreinfo@adestra.com. One thing that can be really worth testing with subject lines is personalisation, controversial but can be very effective. It doesn’t have to be a person’s name but can be any data you have, location, membership number anything at all that might make it more relevant and interesting.
Think about these 3 factors before you write your next subject line and let us know if you’ve managed to improve your open rate. Do you have any tips on subject lines that have proved effective? If so let’s discuss them below.
Catherine Holt
Account Manager
Getting the most from the new security features in MessageFocus
The new version of MessageFocus brings a number of additional security features that can be enabled right now, giving you better control of who, and from where, has access to your data.
IP address restrictions
The first and most significant change is using IP address restrictions to control not only the locations from which your users can access MessageFocus, but whether the downloading of contact data is permitted from that location. These options are configurable per user, which enables you to take complete control, whilst providing the flexibility required for marketers to do their job without security getting in the way.
For example, at the most basic level, you can restrict access to your account from your head office only. Another possible scenario is to allow data download access from your head office, where you are certain the necessary security controls are in place to protect your network, but restrict the ability to download data from any other location, whilst still allowing the user to login as normal.
OTP tokens
Along with IP address restrictions, MessageFocus has optional two-factor authentication. Used in combination with your account, username and password, users will be asked to enter a 6 digit one time passcode provided by an OTP token (pictured above).
The tokens cannot be shared between users, and codes produced are valid for one use only. So, if the worst happens and your login credentials fall into the wrong hands, you can be assured that your MessageFocus account will remain secure.
OTP tokens also fit in with the IP address restrictions explained above, so along with data download restrictions, you can pick which locations require a token for access, reducing the risk associated with users that need access on the move. E.g you can restrict data download to users that have logged in with an OTP token.
Minimising risk
All of these features are optional, as these aren’t decisions that we can make on your behalf. However, I strongly recommend that you look to implement some, if not all of the features above, as doing so will reduce the risk of your contact data getting into the wrong hands.
Your account manager can run through the options and will be able to advise on which are best to suit your business requirements.
Keeping your data safe
All of the above security restrictions are in place for any Adestra employee that requires access to MessageFocus, including mandatory OTP tokens and the download of any customer data by our support teams is strictly prohibited.
To find out more about the data security functionality and services we offer, please contact us
Carl Chambers
Head of Development
Homail, hotnail, hotmai… we assume you mean Hotmail?
When doing the routine cleansing of our database, I noticed that many common email domain names appear to be misspelt. We can easily assume that domain names such as hotmail.com can be mistyped to hotnail.com, homail.com and many other variations of the same domain.
Regular data cleansing is important to ensure that you have optimum deliverability and your data doesn’t contain spam trap email addresses which can have a negative impact on your sender reputation. But looking into it further, perhaps not removing these apparent misspellings could have a bigger effect on your deliverability than originally thought. Upon reading the DMA Email Marketing Council Blog, it drove me to investigate this further.
Now, take a generic apparently misspelt email address such as joebloggs@homail.com. Looking at this you’d think the domain should be invalid and therefore, we should be receiving bouncebacks from that email address. Having a look, we received no such bouncebacks but no activity either.
So what does this mean for you? It seems the major ISPs have registered the most common misspellings of their domains as live domains. For example, homail.com is owned by live.com. With the lack of activity, these email addresses are not owned by anyone, but the domain is live, so could this be a new spam trap? Are the major ISPs using these misspellings to judge the quality of your data?
To prevent any problems, you should regularly look at your data and remove your inactive email addresses. By removing those addresses that have never taken any action on your emails (opens or clicks) you will have your data in good shape to improve your deliverability and avoid repeatedly sending to spam traps. Good data quality is at the heart of your email marketing, so keeping on top of data cleansing and the quality of your database WILL maintain and improve your deliverability.
To find out how MessageFocus can automate this process for you, please contact us