• Should I Rent an Email List? What You Need to Know before Renting a List…
• But I Want to Buy (or Rent) an Email List!

The reality is that growing an email list the good old-fashioned way is often so much easier than you’d think. If you’re truly serious about building your list, then get serious…I mean really serious. For instance, think about the people in various departments in your company who regularly have contact with the outside world. Here are few examples to get you started:

• Sales representatives
• Customer service representatives
• Marketing staff
• Warehouse personnel
• Accounting staff.

In fact, I’d be hard pressed to find any employee in any company who doesn’t interact on a regular basis with relevant customers, partners, prospects, investors, and more.

Now imagine if your employees regularly asked their contacts, as a matter of doing business, if it was okay to add them to the company’s email list. I realize that motivating employees to help build your list can be a challenge, so give them an incentive. Have a competition and give away something fun to the winner. A gift certificate for a nice dinner out, for example, may be all you need to offer.

Then, watch how fast your list grows when everyone participates.

That’s just one way to grow your email list. So, if you’re really serious about building your list, don’t forget to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are definitely doing everything you can – right within your own company – to build your email list.

If you have any great ways you got your employees engaged and motivated to build your list, let us know. We’d love to hear what’s working (or not working) for you.

What Is Graymail?

On a scale of black to white, graymail is email that falls somewhere between welcome email messages and spam – depending on the individual recipient’s perspective. In other words, some people may consider the graymail messages as unwanted and “spam,” while others don’t.

Some examples of graymail include:

• Newsletters that people signed up for but lost interest in over time.
• Updates from websites and social networks.
• Newsletters that are sent via pre-checked boxes associated with signing up for another newsletter or service.

How Will the “War on Graymail” Impact Your Email-Marketing Results?

Owned by Microsoft (the developer of Outlook), Hotmail is one of the biggest free webmail providers, accounting for about 12% of the email client share. So that gives you an idea of the approximate percentage of your subscribers who likely use Hotmail as their email client and, therefore, what kind of impact Hotmail’s new tools might have on your email campaigns. Keep in mind, however, that this identification and handling of “graymail” is not unique to Hotmail. For example, other email clients – including Yahoo and Gmail – will automatically route email messages to spam folders due to a lack of response as measured by opens and clicks.

For Hotmail users, one of the primary changes is that newsletters and certain other bulk email will be automatically categorized as “newsletters.” In addition to adding the new category, Hotmail also now enables its users to:

• Conduct “Schedule Cleanup” that assigns an expiration date for mail from certain senders and automatically deletes messages when they expire (e.g., after a certain number of days, as specified by the user). The Schedule Cleanup also lets Hotmail route newsletters directly into a subfolder or delete them right away, depending on what users specify. Users can also opt to keep only the latest message from certain senders.
• Unsubscribe in one click from email lists through Hotmail, which will handle the unsubscribe process or block the emails from an identified sender. Plus, users can use the Sweep option to remove old messages from that sender.
• Flag emails they consider important, which will keep those emails at the top of the list, even as new emails come in.

What Can You Do to Prevent Your Emails from Becoming Graymail?

Although there is currently no way for email marketers to track what percentage of the emails they send become graymail, open rates and inactive subscriber rates are good indicators of whether your content is continuing to engage your subscribers.

The following are eight important ways to help prevent your emails from “going gray”:

1. Let prospective subscribers know exactly what they’re signing up for. This includes types of emails (e.g., newsletters, sales announcements, coupons) and the frequency you’ll be sending them.
2. Give subscribers the opportunity to manage what they receive from you. Ask your subscribers what they want to hear about, as well as provide options as to how often they get emails from you.
3. Ensure your list is opt-in – preferably double opt-in. Double opt-in is when users subscribe to your email-marketing messages and then confirm from their email account that the email address is their own.
4. Don’t have pre-checked boxes on your subscription forms. This is a classic way to instantly have your emails perceived as spam by recipients and classified as graymail by email clients.
5. Be sure an unsubscribe option is prominent in all of your emails. If subscribers no longer are interested in receiving your emails, make sure that unsubscribing is clear and easy to do.
6. Segment your list. Find out as much as you can about the subscribers on your list. Then use that information to optimize the relevancy of your email content for individual subscribers.
7. Track your inactive subscriber rate and periodically run reengagement campaigns to maintain good list hygiene. For more information about reengaging inactive users, read a previous NewsLever article: “5 Steps for Reengaging the Inactive Users on Your List.”
8. Continually create valuable content. In other words, make sure every email you send is worth opening – whether it’s useful information in your newsletter, a special discount, breaking news, or an upcoming sales promotion.

Ultimately, the goal is to send email messages that are high quality and have value to your list. If you do that, the war being waged against graymail will likely not hurt you, but rather help you by keeping your emails more front and center with your target audience.

Need help optimizing your email-marketing strategy? Email us or give us a call at 215-489-9336 and the email-marketing experts at FulcrumTech will get you started today.

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2/12/12 — This email promoting organic treats for horses starts off strong with a subject line that instantly grabs interest: “Winnie’s Cookies – Complimentary Samples.” Combined with the from line, “Winnie’s Organic Animal Products,” this effective subject line motivates recipients to open the email and find out how to get their free samples of organic pet treats.

The preview pane with images follows through and does a good job of telling the pertinent facts about this promotion. The preview pane without images, however, leaves a large empty space at the very top that is distracting.

Although the design of the email is quite simple, it’s straightforward and it works. The eye path is great – from the prominent company name to the “free sample” announcement, to the photo of a horse with the product – leading to a very clear call to action: “Click here to get your complimentary samples!”

The clarity of message is also good, until the reader gets to the part about Web requests having to be filled out within 48 hours of receipt of the email. Apparently after 48 hours, recipients then must call the 800-number to get their free samples. It seems as though the creative team working on this email was trying to create a sense of urgency by giving recipients 48 hours to respond via the Web. But providing two ways to obtain the free samples complicates the message. In addition, the ads at the bottom of the email are not effective, diverting attention away from the primary message of the email.

When it comes to credibility, we see a lot of information about all of the wholesome, organic ingredients used to make the cookies, but we don’t know why we should purchase from this company. How long has Winnie’s been in business? How many customers do they have? Do they have any awards or certifications? This type of information would give people who’ve never heard of Winnie’s Organic Animal Products more confidence in taking the next step of sharing their personal contact information in exchange for free samples.

Overall, this promotion is an excellent example of how an email with a very simple design can have the right ingredients to effectively communicate the message and likely drive open and click-through rates.

Disclaimer: FulcrumTech does not have access to the performance data relating to this promotional email, so any tests performed on this email can’t be reflected in FulcrumTech’s commentary.

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1/26/12 — In this email sent by BodyGuardz, the subject line and the from line work together to be highly effective for the target audience – people who are into cases for their personal electronics. “Redefining Full-Body Protection: New UltraTough™ Film!” tells subscribers immediately that there’s something new from a company they trust, engaging them to open the email to see what’s different about the full-body protection.

Once subscribers open the email, they see right away the headline, “Redefining Full-body Protection,” followed by the quick and easy-to-read benefits: “More protective, easier to install, and treated with an antimicrobial.” And right under the major benefits is a clear call to action – “Learn More.” This email is doing what it needs to do to get the opens and the clicks.

Perhaps what would be even more effective, however, is a call to action that targets early adopters – such as “Sign up to be one of the first to know when you can buy.” In addition, including the product benefits in html text in the preview pane without images would help ensure an even better overall response. The benefits are currently embedded in an image.

When you first look at this email, it’s unclear that this product is not yet for sale. This not only impacts the clarity of the message, but it also results in a weak offer and a minimal sense of urgency. Also relating to the clarity of the message is the highlighted term, “antimicrobial.” It would be great to test making that word a link to the landing page as well, since many readers may be wondering how that would really work. The level of intrigue may be enough to get some more clicks.

Finally, this email also emphasizes the need to always test your links before hitting send. In this case, the key links were dead when we tried them on both Macs and PCs.

Disclaimer: FulcrumTech does not have access to the performance data relating to this promotional email, so any tests performed on this email can’t be reflected in FulcrumTech’s commentary.

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1/17/12 — This email from Staples promotes a special offer for tuning up PCs to make them faster. But you wouldn’t know that from the generic subject line: “Special offer for your business. Open now!” Because there’s no alignment with the offer in the email, recipients have no idea what to expect in the email and, therefore, likely no motivation to open it. Similarly, the preview pane without images also sets no expectations with the copy: “Get a fresh start to the New Year! Speed up your office PCs today.”

As we look at the offer, it’s actually quite compelling: “Speed up 5 PCs for just $99.99. Limited time only.” But this offer is found in the subhead, while the headline doesn’t communicate any benefits to the reader. In this case, it may have been more effective to reverse the headline and subhead. We’d definitely want to test that. In further examining the eye path, we find the reader’s eye is drawn to the technician holding the computer, but the call to action is on the opposite side. In addition, the call to action – “Find a store” – is weak and likely not the best first action to have the recipient take. A more effective call to action could be, “Schedule an appointment now,” leading to a landing page where recipients could find the most convenient store as they complete a form to schedule an appointment. Also note that the contact phone number located in the bottom section of the email is reverse text, blue on gray, which is extremely difficult to read.

There is a sense of urgency in this email because of the “Limited time only.” If a specific deadline were included, however, the sense of urgency would be much more compelling.

Finally, the credibility for this specific offer is not as strong as it could be. Staples certainly has a strong reputation as a great source for office supplies. But there’s not much in this email to help convince readers that they are the place to go to get computers tuned up, other than letting us know that “certified technicians will come to your office.” Staples could let us know how many PCs they tuned up over the last year, for example, perhaps provide statistics on the extent of improvements they’ve delivered, the level of satisfaction as reported by customers (resulting from quantitative surveys), and other such data to help build credibility for their IT services.

Disclaimer: FulcrumTech does not have access to the performance data relating to this promotional email, so any tests performed on this email can’t be reflected in FulcrumTech’s commentary.

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1/17/12 — This welcome email from Travelzoo starts out strong with a subject line and preview pane that let their new subscribers know this is a welcome to the rewards program that they recently signed up for: “Welcome to Travelzoo!” Because welcome messages are among the most frequently opened and read emails, they provide a huge opportunity to drive further engagement with subscribers. In the case of this welcome email, however, Travelzoo didn’t optimize that opportunity.

To begin with, the email is very text heavy and difficult to scan. One way that the scanability could have been greatly improved is by adding relevant subheads to break up the text.

This email’s overall objective is also not clear. As a result, without the guidance of such an overarching goal, developing a solid, effective eye path to an appropriate call to action is difficult. Even a welcome email should have a clear objective. In this case, TravelZoo has relationships with multiple vendors, so a special offer of some sort could encourage immediate engagement at the time the recipient is most willing to become engaged.

Related to the lack of offer, there’s no sense of urgency to drive some initial engagement. The only call to action is to “join the conversation” at Facebook. New subscribers have indicated an interest in finding out about travel and entertainment deals – the welcome email is the perfect opportunity to instantly give them what they’re looking for, and with a great sense of urgency.

As far as credibility, it’s there in the copy. But subscribers need to read through a lot of copy to find it. Making some of the most relevant information “pop” with a subhead or bolder copy would help readers quickly and easily spot it.

In summary, establishing a clear purpose for this email is most important. Then, creating a version of this welcome email with some subheads to break up the text would be great; the subheads could also build the interest and incentive for the recipient to read and take the desired action. Making it clear what you’re asking the reader to do and why he or she should do it is key. It would be interesting to see the improvements that varying the subheads and perhaps incorporating some relevant imagery would offer when compared back to this email as a control.

Disclaimer: FulcrumTech does not have access to the performance data relating to this promotional email, so any tests performed on this email can’t be reflected in FulcrumTech’s commentary.

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1/17/12 — This email to promote PetFoodDirect.com’s new pet website, Petoolah, has a pleasing design, complete with a very adorable dog to capture pet lovers’ attention. In looking more closely, however, we found several areas that could be improved to make this email promotion more effective and likely deliver better results.

For example, the subject line, “Your Exclusive Invitation to Something Brand NEW and Crazy Cool…” is cute and catchy, but it doesn’t tell the recipient what’s in the email. So, will brand recognition in the From Name and words such as “exclusive” and “crazy cool” be enough to motivate people to open the email and find out more? Perhaps not as much as a clearer description of the offer inside, but testing among the target audience would be in order to accurately answer that question.

A general lack of clarity of the message that is present throughout the email could be hindering a good-looking email to perform its absolute best. The overall clarity of the message is likely hurt by the subhead “Have You Petoolah-ed Today?” You have to read all the small print to know what this Petoolah promotion is all about. Similarly, the call to action is unclear: What do you get 20% off of? What are you signing up for? And, as far as a sense of urgency, there is a deadline for the coupon, but recipients would have to read the fine print at the very bottom of the email to know that. Promoting that sense of urgency could have driven an even stronger response from what they actually had received.

In reviewing the preview pane with images, there’s a handwritten sticky note from a trusted brand about the new website, which is great. In the preview pane without images, however, the company missed a huge opportunity to tell recipients what their offer is all about since none of the “sticky note” text is visible unless images are downloaded.

For pet lovers who are familiar with the trusted brand PetFoodDirect.com, the credibility is high because Petoolah is aligned with that sister website. This association could be driven home even stronger in the email’s copy and design.

Overall, the design is very pleasant, but if some of the above items were addressed and tested, there could be some potentially dramatic improvements over the original copy and design treatment.

Disclaimer: FulcrumTech does not have access to the performance data relating to this promotional email, so any tests performed on this email can’t be reflected in FulcrumTech’s commentary.

To address this problem, FulcrumTech developed a sophisticated, web-based email ROI calculator called ROI Goalsetter^SM. We designed it specifically to assess both current and future email campaigns. The resulting model lets you understand the growth and attrition of your email list — as well as your current and potential measurable returns — if you improve one or more factors, such as open rates or landing-page conversion rates. This powerful data can help you justify the expense associated with these improvements by showing expected ROI — something the C-suite (or whomever holds the purse strings) needs to see to approve your budget.

See my quick overview of the ROI Goalsetter tool below — what it is and why we created it.

How Is Email-Marketing ROI Calculated?

At its simplest level, ROI is calculated as:

Email marketers have found that identifying and incorporating all of the components making up both return and cost is challenging. Furthermore, comparing historic email ROI to “what if” scenarios is also daunting. At FulcrumTech, we are fortunate to have an amazing math genius — who literally wrote over 100 calculus and statistics textbooks — to help bring all of our algorithms to completion so you can now leverage their power.

In email marketing, there are basically four main categories of factors that impact email-marketing ROI for email campaigns. The ROI Goalsetter tool was designed to incorporate all four categories into your marketing strategy:

1. List size and growth (list size, growth rate, level of inactives)
2. List attrition (unsubscribe rate, bounce rate, spam complaints)
3. Costs (email design, production, and distribution costs)
4. Email overview and performance (open rate, click-through rates, landing-page conversion rate, revenue per conversion, and so on)

Using the ROI Goalsetter tool’s data-entry wizard, you can quickly enter data about each of these factors affecting your email ROI. There are tool tips to guide you with industry benchmarks if you’re not sure how to answer some of the questions. Within just a few minutes, you’ll have a 12-month financial model of your email-marketing campaign. Then, you can easily use sliders (as shown below) to modify any of the factors — and see in real time the impact of your changes.

See a quick demo of the ROI Goalsetter tool’s features in this brief video.

How to Increase Your ROI

To learn more about each of the four categories and what your marketing management team can do to improve your email-marketing ROI, check out our white paper for more details: How to Power Up Your Email-Marketing ROI.

Demonstrate the Possibilities

Once you have a financial model for your email-marketing campaigns, you will be amazed at the possibilities. Here are some ways I’ve personally used the ROI Goalsetter tool:

• Prospecting — Prospects always want to know specifically what the value of email-marketing improvements will be. I use the model to demonstrate the current and potential situations. Then, with the ROI Goalsetter tool’s Compare feature, you can see exactly how much more revenue, profit, and ROI you can achieve from your proposed improvements. This is powerful!
• Planning — When running a business, if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. So if you develop an ROI scenario for the future, you can use that to establish your goals for improving each aspect of your campaigns that you envisioned would be improved. For example, if you know you need to take your unique open rates from 10% to 11.5%, on average, you now know your goal. Your designs, copy, and test plans then need to support a focused drive to improve to 11.5% because you know that’s what you need to meet your goals.

Showing your coworkers, boss, and clients the data the ROI Goalsetter tool produces, you’ll be able to get them on board quickly…and get their support for the improvements you want to make.

ROI Goalsetter Results (Graphical View)

ROI Goalsetter Results (Data View)

Don’t Waste Another Minute Without Using the Numbers

So, don’t waste another minute on developing a marketing strategy for email projects and campaigns without modeling them and predicting your email-marketing results. Try out the ROI Goalsetter tool free for 90 days and see what it can do for you (use the promotion code shown on that page by February 28, 2012). Once you check it out, please give us feedback. We want to hear from you so we can continually improve it for your benefit.