Category Archive: All things email marketing
Staying in touch with music fans
How a few customers in the music business use email marketing with style
Emma’s home office is in Nashville, TN, home to about 1.5 million residents, and (by my count) approximately 1.4 million are involved in the music business in one capacity or another, including myself. In fact, my first introduction to Emma came while I was working at a small independent music label. It was love at first press release, and I soon switched over to working at Emma full-time. I had seen how helpful Emma could be for musicians who wanted to spread news quickly.
These days, I’m becoming familiar with more and more musicians and music venues, as Emma has a talented bunch of customers from all across the country. For those in the music business — whether you’re an independent songwriter, concert hall or symphony — it’s important to stay in touch with your audience even in the midst of a busy schedule, and Emma is a great way to share news quickly. Let’s dive into a few Emma customers that hit all of the right notes.
Click to view the full version.
Marshall Chapman
I’m a huge fan of the emails from the delightful and talented Marshall Chapman. Aside from being a talented songwriter and performer, Marshall knows how to put together a compelling email. Sure, you can find the usual suspects, such as upcoming tour dates, links to purchase her record and current happenings, but I really enjoy the personal content Marshall includes. A link to Marshall’s favorite summer salad recipe? Delicious. A list of tunes she’s been rocking lately? Sounds great. My favorite segment of the email is a little something she calls the “Hummingbird Hall of Fame.” Fortunately for those of us whose musical ability doesn’t extend past that year of recorder lessons in elementary school, becoming an inductee simply involves forwarding a campaign to a friend.
+ View the online version of this email campaign
+ Visit Marshall Chapman’s website
Click to view the full version.
The Worsties
Jesse Worstell, a member of Emma’s billing team by day and total badass rockstar by night, is a member of The Worsties, along with his wife and his fellow Emma colleague, Jairo Ruiz. When fans hit The Worsties’ website, they can sign up to receive updates and news from the band. After submitting their contact info, fans immediately receive a welcome email with a link to download a free MP3. Jesse makes sure to capture subscribers’ zip codes when they sign up so the band can easily let fans know when they will be rocking a stage near them. (If you want to set up a welcome email like this, read how-to steps here, and make use of Emma’s document library for downloadable content.)
+ View the online version of this email campaign
+ Visit The Worsties’ website
+ Follow The Worsties on Twitter
Click to view the full version.
Nashville Ballet
If you’ve had your fill of pedal steel licks or grown tiresome of cowboy songs, don’t fear — Nashville is chock full of all kinds of arts. The Nashville Ballet sends a fantastic monthly newsletter to ticket holders, donors and supporters with a wealth of engaging content. The option to buy tickets is front and center, but subscribers can also learn about the ballet’s involvement in the community, welcome new board members and even register for dance classes to stay fit. Bellissimo!
+ View the online version of this campaign
+ Visit the Nashville Ballet’s website
Need an encore? See more campaign examples in the slideshow below.
Click to see a few more stylish email campaigns.
Email inspiration at your fingertips
New online service Emailium brings emails from thousands of companies together in a fully searchable database
Emailium helps you find your favorite shade of blue.
Why do we do this? Because we like to have our boots on the ground, so to speak. We love to encounter new and different email tactics and strategies, and to engage them in the same way a dedicated follower would. Every so often, you come across an email campaign so inspiring, you almost want to write the company a thank-you note. And yet, when the time comes to prepare a presentation with email examples, or to seek out new ideas for fresh content, we must scour our archives, knowing that, even though we’re drawing from libraries of hundreds – thousands – of email campaigns, we’re only sampling a tiny slice of the email marketing landscape.
This is where Emailium, a brand new, fully searchable database of the email campaigns of thousands of companies, comes in. The brainchild of entrepreneur and seasoned email marketer James Paden, Emailium collects the accumulated email campaign history of hundreds of companies and presents them in intuitive, organized and searchable galleries. One example: We tried out a new shade of “Emma Blue” in the background of our July newsletter. We liked it, but let’s imagine we wanted to take a look at some other color schemes that might work well. If I wanted to scour my collected “email example” folders for a potential match, I might have to set up camp in the office over the weekend. But with Emailium, I can search the database for other email campaigns containing that color’s hex code (#3E7E97, if you’re curious). Within moments, hundreds of email campaigns containing this color appear in a neatly thumbnailed, paged library.
The range of companies represented is impressive, with luxury shoe brands arriving alongside electronics shops, hockey equipment manufacturers and Broadway theater companies. You can refine your searches as much as you need, so if you only want to see examples of campaigns with “Halloween” in the subject line from retail companies, you can filter your search by subject line content and by industry (the industry filter, while still in beta, seems to function well).
Emailium isn’t just for design inspiration, though. It’s a good way to get a closer look at any featured company’s email campaign strategy, from their sending frequency to their subject lines to their special offers. So if there’s a company that you or your client is particularly interested in — because you admire their brand or because you share an industry — you can follow their history in their email archive. Don’t see the company you’re looking for? With just a few clicks, you can submit a request to have it added to the roster, and Emailium will email you when it’s been added.
For email marketers who work closely with their clients on design, copy and mailing strategy, Emailium is a massive time saver. It’s free to try out a few searches, and with a paid subscription, you can export emails to share, save your most common searches and tag your favorite emails for later reference. If you spend a lot of time in the email marketing trenches (or digging trenches through your own inbox in search of inspiration), you’ll probably wonder how you ever got along without it.
Surveys (and leaps) we like to take
Using Emma's free feature to request customer feedback and take your business to new heights
I love a good challenge, so when I saw the opportunity to go skydiving *and* meet some Emma customers in person, I couldn’t resist. Located in rural Chester, South Carolina, they are the Carolinas’ premier drop zone and consistently draw adrenaline junkies from far and wide (even design consultants from Nashville, Tennessee!). I recently caught up with James LaBarrie, the general manager of Skydive Carolina, to discuss the experience I had using their service and an Emma feature he has found quite beneficial.
Kelley en route to earth. Also pictured: just another day at the office for her tandem, Chuck, from Skydive Carolina.
Skydive Carolina regularly uses the Emma survey feature that’s free with every account because it’s a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of their customers. James is passionate about the company’s commitment to building relationships with clients and providing superior customer service.
“We aren’t only hoping to please our customers,” he says. “We are hoping to amaze them. But when we fail, I see it as an opportunity to create a raving fan.”
Of course, an important element of the service experience is the customer’s ability to easily provide feedback and the company’s willingness to listen. With a role that is mostly behind the scenes, James does not get the opportunity to interact with each customer who visits. For him, it is often the survey alone that provides the valuable feedback they need.
“The survey is a great way to know when we’re falling short and when all is well,” he adds. And in those rare instances that a customer does not have the best experience possible, James has been known to follow up with them personally.
The Skydive Carolina survey inquires about everything from how easy it was to find the location to how much the client liked the photo taken during the jump; each bit of information helps James make educated decisions about the business. But it’s not just about asking the right questions — James is also very intentional about asking at the right time as well. Jumpers receive a trigger email the day immediately following their dive, when the experience is still fresh enough to recall details.
Survey says: Everyone's gotta try this.
It’s amazing how much information is available if you simply request it. When thinking about your own business, consider the difference that customer feedback could make for you and follow Skydive Carolina’s lead. Heck, you may also like to follow their lead right out of a plane — you definitely wouldn’t regret it!
Here’s to surveyed customers, empowered email marketing and thrilling jumps.
5 questions with Hamilton Wallace
Hamilton's based out of Scottsdale, AZ.
Describe your role in six words.
If you can believe it, I can narrow it down to five: Story finder and story teller.
Tell me about a success or two you’ve had using email to engage your clients’ customers.
Even though it might not seem “sexy,” one of our recent Emma successes is with a client that sells software, and they sell a relatively inexpensive piece of software to a small niche of customers.
When they first hired me, I took a look at how many customers they had. They ended up having over 250,000 registered users, but they never talked to them, and didn’t give them opportunities to talk back. On Google Analytics, it was clear that a big chunk of their conversions were coming from people who were typing their domain name into a search, which indicated that a current customer had referred this new customer to them.
We helped them use Emma by sending 70,000 emails to current customers every month. The first time we sent, the president of the company got an irate email back from one of his customers that said, “You guys have got to be kidding me! You don’t offer a Mac version of this product? You should be embarrassed. You all are the industry leaders. What’s going on here?” The president forwarded the email on to the lead developer. Then, the developer took a weekend to figure out how to make it happen.
Before this, they’d come to the conclusion that creating a Mac version of their software would be this gargantuan, expensive and time-consuming thing. But, because the company sent an email through Emma — giving the customers a channel to speak up — the developer came back to the president after that weekend to say that they could do it. And the happy ending to the story is that four months after the customer spoke up, the company is going to have a Mac-friendly version of their software available. It’s one of the biggest, most positive things that could happen to them.
Another client I have does training for business writing. He was hesitant to communicate with his contacts at first because he isn’t a “sales guy.” So, we decided to take his two-day business writing seminar and break it into 52 parts, sending an email a week for the year. Our goal wasn’t to try and sell anything, but to help people learn about business writing. He’s been sending an email a week for almost six months now, and has never included a price, talked about a seminar or tried to sell a DVD.
About a month ago, a government agency — that had inquired two years ago and never followed through after inquiring — responded to one of his emails letting him know they were now ready to take advantage of his training. They signed a contract, and this new customer will account for about a third of his business in 2011.
How has email helped you grow your business?
I don’t know that I can point to a client and say that “because of email, they’re a client.” I just think that the entrepreneur of today, who is my primary client, needs to be able to carry on an engaged conversation with their customers. This means they need to be able to attract traffic to their website and convert that traffic into leads or sales.
I’m probably as much of an emailer as I am an email coach. I believe that email is now and will grow more and more to be one of the fundamental skills that a business owner needs.
I’ve tried the approach of letting my clients choose which email service they want to use, and when the client chooses an email service other than Emma, they never send one email. And, when a client chooses Emma, they send emails. That, to me, is gigantic. I can’t say that there is one reason why, though. It’s like saying, “Why do people buy iPods?” It’s not one thing — it’s everything about the iPod. It’s everything about Emma: You can talk to a human being. You guys do good design. Your interface is simple. There are times that I wish I could do more in Emma, but I think that you all do a good job at keeping it simple.
How do you stay on-top of trends and be that go-to resource for your clients? Where do you draw inspiration?
I’ll answer you in two ways. One thing I try to do is follow people who, in my opinion, are smarter than I am and are doing similar things to what I do. I follow them on FriendFeed, Twitter and I subscribe to their blogs.
I also push myself to push my clients forward — to always test and continue testing. It’s a constant battle to be courageous and continue to move forward. But, when my client and I stop being afraid for a moment, we come out knowing a lot more than we did before.
I have always considered myself a direct response marketer who generates leads and sales. The internet is the biggest direct response platform ever imagined. A fundamental part of direct response is testing. The wonderful thing about the internet is that you can test one thing this week, but completely change it the next, which is completely different from how you would have to test not too long ago.
Who is your brand crush?
Looking at someone who is generally in the same business as I am, I’d have to say Seth Godin. Everything he does is so focused on others, so genuine with zero manipulation, and that’s his ethic. There’s so much to aspire to there.
Company-wise, it’s a tie between IKEA and Google. A lot of folks can relate to IKEA, and the reason they’re my brand crush is that when you walk into a store, their ethic of “simple, practical and intelligent” is everywhere, from how you put the furniture together to how they communicate the products in the store, to, literally, how you put your dirty dishes and trays away in the cafeteria. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about what we want people to do on our websites, and when you walk into an IKEA — they want you to go up an escalator, or drop your kid into a play area, and those really are your only two choices. It’s very rare when you see a company that has such congruency in everything they do.
I have to say Google, too, because they are a “listening company.” I would bet that their next quarter plan is the same as their five-year plan, and that is to intently listen and watch what people are doing, and give them a platform to support those things. They push products out into beta and watch. They kill the things that don’t catch on and amplify things that do. I think this is what every company needs to do.
I want to relate that right back to email. Send regular emails to your customers, even if they have nothing to do with selling a product. It’s just about communicating with them and getting that conversation going. Because if you do that, every once in a while you might just a get that customer who tells you how it is, that tells you what’s wrong with your product – and they’re right! Email is the best way to listen like that, and it’s the communication of choice for most people.
Okay, let’s switch gears. Which baseball team are you rooting for this year?
Ha! As close as I could get to answering you is to say the San Jose Sharks, which is a hockey team. I have to say, I don’t really follow baseball.
Well, it looks like I struck out with that question, didn’t I?
What sets Emma apart?
From opening your account to building your email strategy, we want your Emma experience to be fantastic
Is Emma really that different from other email service providers out there? I’m glad you asked. As a member of our direct sales team, my job is to help folks from all walks of life — and with different marketing goals and tasks — learn how Emma will make their jobs easier. Sometimes, Emma is a perfect fit for them, and other times, they might need to go another route – and that’s OK. Either way, the Emma sales team is here to make sure we get everyone started on the right track with their email marketing plans.
So, you find out a bit about Emma and like what you see. What happens next? Sending out beautiful, professional email newsletters to your recipients isn’t rocket science, but we believe it’s a lot better when you’ve got a network of experts who have your back.
Let’s take a look at what it’s like to join forces with the bespectacled first lady of email marketing …
When you initially give us a call or inquire online, a member of our sales team is here to help you get started. A few of the details we’ll share with you include:
- Emma’s pricing is all-inclusive, and we don’t charge for add-ons like surveys, image storage or access to an online archive of your sent messages.
- We offer a menu of fantastic design options so the design works for you, not the other way around. Your email stationery will be uniquely yours and look nothing like the law firm across the street that’s (gasp!) using Template #203 from another service.
- Our support team of real-live Emma experts is here Monday through Friday to help with questions via email, LiveChat or by phone.
You’ve decided to sign on with Emma (good choice). We’ll set up your new account and login details, and send you a personal, informative welcome note so you know how to access your account and get started. You’ll submit your design form based on the design option you’ve selected (usually Concierge Design or Studio Design), and then you’ll wait a few business days before winning the design lottery.
How do you win that lottery? By getting a hand-crafted custom design by one of our lovely designers, like Taylor Schena or Jennifer Kasdorf. Once you submit your design form, they may want to chat more with you, to make sure they know exactly how to meet your design needs. But, they also want to get to know you better. Perhaps you’ll find out you’re both from Pennsylvania or maybe you’ll swap vegan chocolate peanut butter cupcake recipes. In a few days, your design is ready. You can start sending emails right away, or request some revisions if you’d like.
Since you chatted with me or another sales team member, you know it’s in your best interest to send your monthly newsletters on a, well, monthly basis. So it’s time to add your contact list into Emma, build and send your first email. Not quite sure how to do this? Visit our handy Help Guide or chat with a member of our support team, like Casey Correll or Cortney Rockhill. They’d be happy to walk you through your first audience import and answer any other questions you have.
You’re all set! You’ve created your first campaign, sent it to your audience and collected real-time response data. Good work. And the best part is, this isn’t just some red carpet we roll out for first-time customers. Have a question about billing? Call us (800-595-4401). Have a question about your response numbers? Email us. Curious how to get started with surveys? Stop by LiveChat. Want to know where Emma gets her name? Well, it’s really not a big mystery, but we’d love to tell you. We’re happy to have you on board.
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Get started with an Emma account. Inquire here.
What’s in a name?
How Gmail's recent changes affect your Emma emails
Gmail recently made one more change in what seems to be a constant stream of upgrades to their email service. Now, Gmail displays additional information about the sender of each email, revealing something to recipients that they might have missed before — that you’re using a 3rd party service (Emma) to send them email. This information has the potential to be a bit confusing at first, but it’s all part of Gmail’s attempts to ensure the right emails reach your recipients’ inboxes — and the junk gets filtered out.
Most email services have sophisticated email security measures in place, and they’re good at filtering out almost all of the bad emails sent to you every day. However, there’s still a relatively small amount of malicious content that makes its way to your inbox. These emails don’t readily announce themselves as spam. It’s easy to recognize spam for enhancement pills and Nigerian prince scams, but what about an attempt to collect your personal information (bank account number, passwords or SSN) masquerading as a password change notice from Facebook or a Google + invitation? That could be trickier.
To combat these attempts (which are generally called phishing attacks), Gmail now displays more information about where emails are coming from. For customers of ESPs like Emma, this means that our server information will show up alongside your RSVP address:
Now, if you get a message from a service saying you need to change your password, and you’re confused, it should be easier to make a decision about the trustworthiness of that email. You should see a from address, which is regularly displayed, and the *via* part should have a domain that matches that from address. If it doesn’t, there may be reason to investigate a bit.
For emails sent using Emma, the text via e2ma.net will be displayed. Some recipients may have questions at first, though a history of good communication and an engaged readership will outweigh that confusion. If you’re concerned that this change could negatively affect your campaigns, here are a few things you can do:
- Encourage people to add you to their address book. This won’t remove the *via* notice, but being in a recipient’s address book does have delivery benefits and will, at the least, give them confidence in the origin of your message.
- Avoid using a free-mail email address as your RSVP. This will almost certainly cause authentication issues. Seeing *yourdomain.com* via e2ma.net is one thing, but imagine *yahoo.com* via e2ma.net. Your recipients’ lack of knowledge about how your domain is hosted works in your favor, but because yahoo.com is a pretty well-known domain, people will rightly assume that emails from yahoo.com should only be *via yahoo.com*.
- Authenticate using Sender Policy Framework (SPF). SPF is a standard email authentication method and is really easy to set up. Check out our SPF setup page for more details.
As always, we’re here to answer any questions you have, or to chat about this change to Gmail and how it affects your campaigns.
Interested in hearing more about the future of email marketing?
Join Clint Smith for a lively conversation in Portland, OR
This summer, the Portland office is happy to welcome our co-founder and CEO, Clint Smith, as he spends the month of July with us. He travels out here quite a bit, but this extended stay is already shaping up to be a good time. Especially considering the lovely weather and how many breweries we want to introduce him to. (Hello, Hopworks.)
But despite Clint’s reputation, he doesn’t party all the time. On July 12th, Clint will be leading the lunch discussion on the future of email marketing for the Oregon AMA. Speaking to the role of technology in an expanding marketplace, he’ll focus on the most innovative ways companies are using email alongside social channels and what marketers can expect in the future. Clint will also share success stories, in both the business and consumer sectors, from current clients working with Emma.
Prior to starting Emma, Clint was an editor with TicketMaster/CitySearch and the vice president of product for Smallbusiness.com. Currently, he guides the Emma brand, ensuring we stay on top our game through smart technology, exceptional design offerings and unparalleled customer service. All of this is just a fancy way of saying he knows his stuff, and he’s a nice guy to boot.
Join us for what will surely be an entertaining and informative discussion. You can register here, and please appreciate the irony that the event is being held at Bridgeport Brewery. Maybe Clint’s back on the party train after all.
Beefing up your email link tracking
Get more mileage out of your URLs with Google Analytics
We email marketers love open rates and click-through rates. They tell us the quantity of attention we’ve won and show us opportunities to win more, whether we’re out to increase alumni engagement or to hawk Corvettes.
But what do your readers do beyond the click, when they leave your email campaign to visit your website?
Add web analytics software like Google Analytics to your email marketing campaigns, and you’ll be able to see what your email subscribers end up doing on your website. It’ll give you invaluable data about conversions and site traffic patterns, and it’ll help you plan even better marketing campaigns. I’ll walk you through it.
Getting started
If you don’t have an Analytics account, set one up here. Google’s installation guide explains how to place tracking code in the appropriate files on your site.
Why email + web analytics matters
With Google Analytics, your email campaigns and website exchange click-based crib
notes to score conversions, pageviews and other metrics. By adding specialized code to each URL — called “tagging” — you’ll have a system that not only shows which links generate the most traffic but also ranks the effectiveness of email marketing alongside paid search, print and more.
How to do it
To incorporate Analytics in your next email campaign, start by using Google’s URL Builder to turn your simple link into a tagged URL. Each Google parameter helps you categorize the source:
Set these parameters so they’ll make sense in your analytics report. And don’t feel like you have to fill in every blank; according to Google’s tagging tips, don’t bother unless you need to drill down to the nitty gritty.
Here’s an example from May’s Agency Insider, a newsletter series we send to creative firms who resell our email marketing service. In the bottom right section, you’ll see an image of a stupendously fancy chair. It’s linked to a blog post called “Building a slice and dice campaign.” Here’s how we defined the parameters for the fancy chair image:
- Campaign Source: Agency-Insider
- Campaign Medium: Emma-Email
- Campaign Content: SliceDice-Blog-Image
- Campaign Name: May-Edition
Here is the original URL: http://myemma.com/blog/2011/06/01/send-big-image
And here is the finished product: http://myemma.com/blog/2011/06/01/send-big-image/?utm_source=AgencyInsider&utm_medium=emmaemail&utm_content=SliceDice-Blog-image&utm_campaign=May-Edition
It’s a whopper, I know. Do this for each link that goes back to your site, and then add the tagged links to your Emma campaign just as you would any other link. Send a test to check that every link from your inbox lands in the right place. When everything is ready, set that heat-seeker loose on your audience.
Understanding the results
After Emma records the opens, clicks and other inbox activity, she’ll pass the baton to Google to follow the clicks to your site. Allow about 48 hours to get a clear picture of your results.
When the clicks roll to a stop in your Analytics account, you’ll have a full road report of what each visitor did and saw on your landing page. To find the report in Google Analytics, log in and select “Traffic Sources” in the dashboard. You can choose to “View Full Report” or just display the “Top Traffic Sources.”
Find the Campaign Source you tagged your links with in the URL Builder (in my earlier example, that’s “Agency-Insider”). Google ranks the popularity of your links and shows you the average number of pageviews, how long people spent on each page, the percentage of new visitors and the bounce rate.
Knowing what’s next
With Google Analytics riding shotgun on your Emma campaigns, you’ll have a heat map to guide your marketing plan. You’ll be able to learn what calls to action resonate most with each segment of your audience and how they arrive at the shopping cart. The various promotional channels that make up your marketing spend will be tuned to the same stat-o-matic Google frequency.
And along the way you’re bound to develop stickier content that keeps visitors on your site longer and engages them in your service. Here’s hoping there’s heavy traffic ahead. Jersey Turnpike or bust!
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Want to learn more about becoming an Emma agency? Inquire here.
Ever wonder what happens to your email after you hit send?
An easy explanation of the complex world of email delivery
Every day, Emma customers log in, create campaigns and send them to their audience. For most of you, that last sentence is not a summary of the process as much as it is the process, as far as you’re concerned. But, did you ever wonder what actually happened when you hit send?
Before I started my career in email delivery, I imagined sending emails looked like some sort of Rube Goldberg Machine: a bowling ball rolling down a track, opening a door that pushes a knife into a string, releasing a mouse that takes the cheese off of a scale, which then unweights and causes a small explosion — no, a huge explosion! — to propel said email to the other side of the Internet. In reality, it turns out it’s surprisingly similar to this model.
There are a ton of pieces to the email-delivery puzzle, and the first piece is you. It could technically be your content, but in chicken-or-the-egg situations, I lean towards the one with ambulatory ability. So, you create your campaign, save and proof it, but then what? Well, the short story is that Emma takes that content, wraps it in your stationery and then sends it to one of our “mailers” (technically an MTA). The mailer adds the email header information that identifies: the email’s sender (also known as the RSVP address), where the email is being sent from (our servers and IP addresses) and to whom it is being sent (your audience members).
If you’re a visual learner, there’s a nice infographic of the email delivery process by Focus.com here.
But that’s just a small piece of the mystery. Let’s dig in …
So you’ve got a message that’s ready to be sent, and it’s up to the mailer (MTA) to make sure it goes to the right place. First, the MTA establishes a connection to the MX record, found in the DNS for the domain to which you’re sending. (For example, you might be sending to domains like gmail.com, hotmail.com or companyname.com.) A domain’s DNS is a one-stop location that other machines use to communicate with the domain’s various servers, and the MX record is there to process any incoming mail.
If the connection is unsuccessful, there may be a permanent issue (like the domain not existing) or a temporary one (bad connection, Internet connection issues) that may be resolved when Emma reattempts delivery. (Emma typically makes up to four delivery attempts, if the first connection is unsuccessful.)
If the connection is successful, it’s time to send that email. This is done using a process called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Traditional SMTP transactions have these main parts:
- HELO or EHLO (an extended SMTP command) identifies the sending server and the receiving server.
- MAIL FROM identifies the email’s sender (your RSVP address).
- RCPT TO identifies the email address you’re trying to reach. There’s one of these for every address you send to.
- DATA is where you transfer the actual information — HTML, text, images — you’re trying to convey via email.
Usually, this entire transaction goes by pretty quickly (in a matter of seconds or minutes), but there are some reasons why it may be slowed. Some servers take longer than others to respond to the different parts of SMTP, usually by design to allow time to check the information being passed their way, and that can result in a timeout on the connection (and eventually a soft bounce, though that is rare). When they do occur, the Emma delivery team has the ability to alter our expectations for connections to that domain so that we wait the appropriate amount of time for responses. Of course, there are other common issues like unknown users, full mailboxes and potential authorization failures when SPF or Sender ID records are present but are improperly configured or invalid (speaking of which, now might be a good time to have your IT folks update your SPF record). Once the SMTP transaction is complete, and the message has either been accepted or denied, your email is ready to be delivered to the recipient the next time they access their email from a computer, phone, tablet, etc.
What you can do
Now, just because an email is successfully delivered doesn’t guarantee it ends up in the recipient’s inbox. To ensure the email lands in the inbox, you should follow these best practices:
- Ask your recipients to add your RSVP address to their address book or trusted sender list.
- Have your IT folks update your organization’s Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record.
- Avoid words and phrases that can be caught in spam filters.
- Don’t let formatting changes outshine your campaign content.
There you have it: the wandering path of an email. It seems complicated, I know, but the powerful machines that handle email delivery are notoriously good at completing all of the necessary steps. Still, it’s certainly not cheating to have a little guidance, and Emma’s here to help you create and send solid campaigns and to offer explanations when delivery issues arise.
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Want to read more about email delivery? Check out Mary’s post about list hygiene or Claire’s post about the differences between permissions and opt-ins.
5 questions with Suzanne Ryan
Suzanne takes off her many AimCoR group "hats" to try out new styles with her daughter, Heather, at Disney World.
Can you start off by telling me about your role at AimCoR group? From my experience working with you, it seems like you wear several hats there.
I’m kind of like the “girl Friday” from one of my favorite movies with Rosalind Russell and Carey Grant, His Girl Friday. My primary focus is marketing. We’re a very small company, with 40 BGAs around the country, but there are only four of us in our corporate office — we all do a lot of different things. My title is Marketing Director, but then I also do a lot with member services, getting them up and running. I help plan a lot of the events, too. We have three events throughout the country each year.
What is one of the most interesting things you see evolving in the insurance and financial industry? Are there any trends you’re seeing this year?
I think the number one thing we’re seeing has to do with recent legislation passed in December, which began on January 1, 2011 and ends on December 31, 2012, and deals with changes in estate taxes. There’s a lot of changes in opportunities within that two-year window for estate planning. We are helping to provide advanced marketing solutions to the agents and the financial planners for when they go out to their customers and try to get them to take advantage of this short window of time.
The second biggest thing we’re seeing is the tremendous amount of change within the life insurance industry. There has been so much competition among providers with what they offer due to the medical and technical advances. People are living longer. The recent census shows that women are living into their mid-eighties and men into their lower-eighties, so that really affects the type of risk class a person can fall into. And with all of the advances in health care, it’s making it easier for people to qualify for a better risk class. You can’t just buy a life insurance policy from twenty years ago and be set. People should be constantly evaluating either on a yearly or bi-yearly basis their financial needs, especially their insurance needs. I think that’s the key point in what I’m trying to say: Life evolves, and insurance has to keep up.
How do you use Emma to communicate those needs and trends in the industry?
We’ve got close to 40 or 50 members with accounts set up in Emma. What we do on a monthly basis for each member is set up a four-part communication series (with one campaign each week).
We’ve got two Carrier Connections each month, where we highlight what’s going on with our core carriers. The first Carrier Connection goes out the first week of every month, and we highlight six of our core carriers there along with a feature on our monthly agent webinar. The second week we send out the Underwriting Connection, where we highlight underwriting trends. On the third week, we’re back to Carrier Connections, and we use this campaign to highlight the other half of our core carriers. And then the last week is the Sales Connection. That’s where we feature new sales and marketing techniques and the new ideas we have.
These mailings that we set up for members are just a starting point for them. They go in to edit and customize the campaign, then send them out to their agents. Ideally, we should be reaching close to 50,000 people a week through this monthly series.
Obviously, you spend a lot of time in Emma. What is the one Emma feature you or your clients couldn’t live without?
The very best part of Emma is the audience component and the audience maintenance. I think it’s one of the best in the industry. We really take advantage of the ability to easily group our members, and we’ve started experimenting with audience searches. The signup forms are also very powerful so that you can have links on your website for new additions.
I noticed that you all are located in Maple Grove, Minnesota, which by name is very similar to Walnut Grove (also in Minnesota), the former stomping grounds of Laura Ingalls-Wilder. Do folks ever show up there looking to re-live the prairie days?
That’s actually south of where we are, so we’ve yet to see anybody get lost and end up here. Maple Grove is a nice, family-oriented suburb of Minneapolis. We are big fans of Laura and Little House of Prairie, though.
Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
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