RightNow Technologies Outbound Email Best Practices
1. Include standard links for all email communications. To ensure a consistent experience for contacts, the following information and/or links should be included in all emails: email opt-in source/sign-up location, email format correction, addto-address book, company web site, copyright reference, opt-out, privacy policy, profile update and “reply-to” policy (if different from “reply-to” email address). Tip: Because some spam filters compare incoming messages to address books, you can improve email delivery and open rates by asking contacts to add you to their address book. 2. Ensure that you have obtained prior affirmative consent from the individuals in your mailing lists. Be sure that your contact list includes only those who have asked to receive information from your organization (opted-in). Opt-in includes contacts who give you consent to send email or with whom you have had a previous business relationship. Permission is gained from either single opt-in, double opt-in (subscription confirmation) or confirmed opt-in (closed loop). It is important for each organization to determine which opt-in method to use, and to track when and how contacts agreed to receive emails from your organization. 3. Remind contacts to add the “from” address to their address book. Adding the “from” address to the recipients address book will ensure consistent delivery of your messages to the contact’s inbox. 4. Allow contacts to easily opt-out. Remind contacts why they are receiving the email (sign-up location) and include a link for contacts to opt-out and/or update their profiles. Contacts should be able to opt-out of all (global opt-out) or a portion of the communications that they receive from an organization (by interest area). This process should be as simple as possible. For example do not require customers to login, type info, or make a purchase in order to unsubscribe. Confirmation of opt-out requests can be used to remind contacts that they do not have to opt-out of all email programs. 5. Include a privacy policy. Including a link to your privacy policy is important. Give contacts the ability to easily review this policy and understand how their profile information is being used. Within the privacy policy always promise contacts that their profiles will never be rented or sold to outside organizations unless they specifically opt-in for partner email promotions. This policy may increase overall contact opt-in for your marketing programs. 6. Allow contacts to update their profiles. Include a link for contacts to easily update their profiles. If possible pre-fill any information on the profile page. Profiles should allow contacts to update their contact information and preferences
1 © 2006 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Last update: 1/10/06
by interest category, communication frequency, Internet connection speed and email type (HTML vs. text). 7. Ensure the “from” and “reply-to” addresses clearly communicate your organization name. Make sure the “from” and “reply-to” addresses include your organization name and do not include special characters (any characters other than letters) that can identify the email as spam. 8. Ensure the “Subject Line” and “Body” of the message is intuitive and informative. The subject line is the first item contacts review when they receive an email. Ensure it provides enough information to state your purpose. Avoid the use of special characters and using words like “free” or “win” in the subject line and body, as these are examples of items generally tagged as spam. Otherwise, your emails may get blocked and prevent contacts from receiving your emails. 9. Don’t include email attachments. Emails with attachments may be blocked from delivery due to virus risks and/or spam identification procedures. Attachments also contribute to exceeding email account quotas (B2C marketing to personal email accounts), and to increased download times, delivery times and hardware requirements. Instead, include a link to the attachment(s) and give contacts the option to read the document on-line or download where appropriate. 10. Ensure the appropriate parties have approved all content. All content, including design, offers and standard links should be approved by legal, marketing or other appropriate management. 11. Ensure all customer touch points within your organization are aware of all high volume email communications. When a campaign is delivered ensure that all internal customer touch points are aware of the communication. This facilitates accuracy and consistency across your customer support, sales and marketing functions. This consistency across channels effectively builds customer loyalty and overall satisfaction. 12. Design reporting to support campaign goals. Ensure that you collect contact response data that supports detailed campaign reporting and analysis. Tracking open rates and links clicked is critical for identifying initial communication success. However, it is also important to track intended action completion (i.e. purchase, download, form submittal, etc.) to determine the campaigns true return on investment. 13. Target your campaigns for a specific audience. Targeting your audience is very important to campaign success rates. Demographics, firmographics, campaign history, offer acceptance analysis and stated interests are all important in campaign planning and design. Based on these factors, you must also determine the timing and relevancy of the mailing to your audience. Targeting incorrectly results in increased opt-outs and decreased response rates. It is also
2 © 2006 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Last update: 1/10/06
very important to understand your recipient’s bandwidth capabilities in determining the proper balance of graphics and text delivered in the content. 14. Use test cells to optimize your campaigns. Testing offers against randomly selected sub-segments of your audience allows you to optimize each element of your communications for maximum return. All elements, including subject line, delivery date and time, from and reply address, content design, offer and personalization significantly affect the overall response to your communications. Consistent use of test cells enables you to fine-tune every communication and maximizes your response rate. 15. Ensure compliance with spam laws. Legal definitions and penalties for spam vary between countries. Therefore, it is very important to stay abreast of current and pending legislation in the US and other countries. There are many sites that you can check to stay current with the law. Two good sites are www.spamlaws.com and www.findlaw.com. 16. Test your email content for spam identification. Test all email content against a spam filter content checker. This will help ensure that your emails do not get identified as spam and prevent them from being delivered. Because ISPs and spam filtering companies use a variety of methods to score emails, it is important to choose a filter that also employs a variety of methods. Methods used may include evaluation of special characters, key words, colors, heuristics and other criteria. By filtering your test cell and final campaign communications before launch, you can help ensure that emails are delivered and do not get identified as spam. Web sites such as http://www.enetplace.com/spam-checker.html and http://www.marketing-register.com/top_tools/Free_Spam_Checker/index.shtml are sites you can use to test your mailing for spam evaluation. You can also evaluate filtering effectiveness by monitoring ISP open rates to determine if messages are being blocked from delivery. 17. Implement a thorough spam complaint resolution process. You will receive spam complaints despite your permission-only email communication practices. Given the volume of emails people receive, it is not uncommon for recipients to forget how or when they granted opt-in permissions for specific communications. In order to support your permission strategies and maintain email as an effective communication channel for your organization, it is critical that you create a thorough spam complaint resolution process to address concerns submitted by individuals, corporations and ISPs. 18. Implement a process for managing bounce and reply emails. To ensure clean contact lists and prompt follow-up of legitimate customer replies, implement a process to automate the handling of bounces, “out of office” replies, unsubscribe requests, spam complaints and general replies. Given the volume of replies commonly received, it is often necessary to implement customized workflow to handle the inbound emails.
3 © 2006 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Last update: 1/10/06
19. Avoid list procurement for customer acquisition. RightNow Technologies does not recommend purchasing lists for your email marketing campaigns. It can be difficult to validate the accuracy of the email addresses, quality and permission. Purchased lists also tend to drive only a small portion of the response rate in comparison to in-house lists. Therefore, they may not provide enough ROI to warrant the spam reputation that frequently arises. As new legislation is introduced, the risks involved in using purchased lists will increase. Using lists from existing contacts, business partners and current prospects will provide better response rates as they have already been contacted or are familiar with your organization. 20. Exercise caution when using email append. Email append lists are generally not recommended. However if used conservatively and your organization has had a long-standing relationship with the contacts, email append lists can prove to be effective. 21. Include the physical address of your organization within your email. All emails required by CAN-SPAM should contain the physical address of the organization from which the email is being sent.
4 © 2006 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
Last update: 1/10/06