Titan Atlas | Why Email Campaigns Often Fail | Kevin Edwards
New Post has been published on http://www.titanatlas.co.uk/index.php/why-email-campaigns-often-fail/
Why Email Campaigns Often Fail
Why Do Email Campaigns Often Fail?
A recent analysis of email activity performed by Titan Atlas suggests that emails sent as campaigns often fail to reach their intended recipients.
The reasons for this are many and varied, but many are blocked by Spam filters.
It is worth gaining a little understanding of how these filters work and what they do prior to lashing out hard earned money on a campaign.
A spam or junk mail filter is designed to do exactly what it says by analysing each individual email for it’s content and it’s authenticity prior to delivering it to either your inbox or your trash can.
What exactly gets analysed?
The email is scanned to check that it is sent from where it says. The sending domain name is checked against the domain name of the company it is supposed to be sent from. If this check fails in many cases it goes no further, it is blocked or deleted. Emails are often scored after this process and on such things as how many internal and external links are contained within the mail, word analysis, picture analysis, how many recipients of the mail there are, and the subject line is also checked. The higher the score, the more of a chance your email will be blocked. The issue doesn’t end here as many mail filters will now automatically submit details of junk mails to central databases, a blacklist, DNSBL and URIBL. Any future mails sent to these organisations will then be blocked regardless of content no matter how legitimate your email is.
A spam filter is a very complex computer program but a very valuable one in business due to the vast quantity of junk mails doing the rounds. Lets face it, who wants 100+ junk mails in their inbox every single day? People want to get on with their work and only read emails relating to the work they do.
So, I want to do an email campaign, what do I need to do?
There are several preliminary checks you can do …
When requesting the service from a 3rd party, ensure they are using or you have supplied a verified mailing list, a quality list of people who have subscribed to receive emails of the nature you are intending to send.
When selecting a 3rd party, ask them for their mail server addresses and corresponding IP addresses. You can then run your own check for free on the internet to make sure they are not already blacklisted before you start.
When using a 3rd party, ask them if the email will be sent out using your domain name or their own. If it is your domain they are sending from then it is really not a good idea to proceed and would be best to select another company to distribute your campaign mails.
Compose your email template very carefully. Spam filters do not like links to external sites, sites other than your own, and many filters do not like links to too many pages on your own website. 2 or 3 links during the course of your email to your home page should be adequate.
Keep picture content small in size and refrain from pictures with skin tones in them. These may be considered inappropriate content by a recipients filter.
All of the above will help you, but be prepared to get yourself blacklisted in any event. Even if the mails are being sent with someone elses domain name on them, there will be links to your own which could also be submitted for addition to the black lists.
Titan Atlas have blocked 52% of emails received over the last 12 months and that equates to 44,174 blocked emails! We don’t deny that some of these may have been worth reading, but who has the time or inclination to go through that many mails just to see if they are worth keeping?
Good luck with your campaign and I hope you have found this brief article of use.
Kevin Edwards
www.titanatlas.co.uk
