5 Great Tips from Email Service Providers

Delivery rates, promotional emails, renting lists, subject lines and basic content, oh my!

Email Service Providers are the folks who actually deliver those fine email newsletters you write. They monitor hundreds of thousands, to millions and billions of emails being sent every day.

So, as you can imagine, they have an awful lot of data on their hands, and sometimes they share that data with their customers and blog readers. Since often times, we are only exposed the ESP’s that we use, we can miss some invaluable insight provided by their competitors.

Consider this a kumbaya approach to bringing together a few hot tips from every angle of the email hosting universe.

1. Can you get a 100% delivery rate? MailChimp says yes:

“Most well-established ESPs have gotten their infrastructure set up and proactively monitored to allow for extremely good delivery to the inbox. The rest is up to the sender. And if the sender does screw something up, it’s the ESPs responsibility to purge them from the system with extreme prejudice (whenever gentle hints and educational intervention are not enough).”

So how does the sender keep from “screwing it up”? MailChimp explains how:

• “Data is collected through confirmable opt-in methods.  There are no assumptions about permission in play. (The account owners responsibility)
• Content sent is 100% spam filter safe. (The account owners responsibility, which we can help with this and this)
• Your delivery solution dynamically monitors and polices its environment for misuse and aggressively closes accounts that create situations that could harm other accounts within the system. (The ESP’s responsibility)”

2. How you get more people to respond to promotional emails? Experian CheetahMail offers 10 tips:

“Transactional emails are generally high performers, on average having seven times the open rate and four times the click rates of standard promotional email. Also, transaction rates (i.e. purchases) can be four to eight times higher in transaction emails compared to bulk emails.”

A few tips? Say thank you, use HTML, brand your email, use cross-sells, track orders and five more best practices.

3. How should you test your subject lines? WhatCounts gives a few pointers:

“Marketers should be performing subject line testing within their subscriber lists by testing a representative portion of their list (10-15% of random subscribers throughout your list).  Make sure that you choose 2-3 subject lines that are varied based on content, urgency of message call to action or any other criteria which you think could affect the users decisions to take action.  Varying the tests from one another is important, as it allows you to better differentiate what contributed to the altered action by the subscriber.”

4. Should you rent a list? AWeber doesn’t think so:

In 2010, “only 12% of marketers reported a “great” return when they invested in traditional list rental (compared to 45% for house email lists).” However, AWeber notes that if you’re going to proceed, that you should follow these four steps:

1. “First, find another email marketer whose brand fits well with yours. (If you were their subscriber, would your email delight you?)
2. Contact the marketer with your proposal. Will you pay them to feature you? Will you trade space in each others’ emails? (Note: this works best if you have similarly-sized audiences.) You may have to ask around to find a partnership that works.
3. Make sure your host marketer introduces you to their list correctly. It’s best if they announce you in a previous message, unless their subscribers understand at sign up that they’ll occasionally hear from other marketers.
4. Turn over your message. It’s best if you agree that it will be sent with your host marketer’s usual design, so readers identify it correctly. To cover your bases, make sure there’s some sort of introduction from the host that explains just why their readers will love you.”

5. Is my content too basic? MessageSherpa reminds you that you’re the expert:

“Most businesses and individuals tend to take their knowledge for granted. They believe that most of the knowledge they have about their business or industry is common knowledge to their market. This may be true, if it were your coworkers or competitors you were catering to, but you are communicating with your customers who are outside of your industry and they rely on you as their expert. Your customers may know a little about why they need your product or service, but they want to know more and they want to hear it from an expert. That’s where you and your customer communications come in.”