The From Line

Custom DNS – The Last Link for Your Reputation & Branding

Elie Ashery — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:36:43 GMT

There is a dizzying array of information, discussions and banter regarding the importance of sender reputation, however very little substance about how the process technically works. Even more surprising is the continuous debate among ESPs as to whether its better to have a client on a shared IP address verses a unique IP address. Please tell me how a sender establishes a good reputation using a shared IP address? I still haven’t figured out the risk logic to this yet. What’s most shocking is that very few ESPs offer their clients custom DNS. What is custom DNS you ask? It’s when you have the ability to send email from your own domain name such as weeklyspecial@click.mystore.com instead of your ESPs mail server domain such as weeklyspecial@mx345.myesp.com. This involves pointing certain DNS records to the unique IP address your ESP provides. The IP has to be unique since reverse DNS needs to be configured as well and only one reverse DNS is permitted per IP address. Instead, many ESPs allow their clients to “spoof” a sender email address, violating many ISPs acceptable use policies (however rarely enforced).

The importance of custom DNS stems from the fact that it’s the last link in ensuring your email sending reputation and one that is rarely implemented. In fact, if you don’t have a custom DNS and a unique IP address, you will not be able to participate in sender verification, white listing and reputation management programs. Also, many corporate phishing filters block links in messages that point to other domains other than the receiving authenticated domain. Meaning if you send an email from mx345.myesp.com and have a link in your message that is pointing to yourwebsite.com you have a higher probability of it being filtered in a corporate network environment.

So what’s a concerned marketer to do? The first step is to get a unique IP address. If you send a significant volume of email and your ESP doesn’t offer a unique IP address then its time to consider a new ESP. The second step is to ask your ESP to help you with your custom DNS. They should provide you with a string of DNS entries that include authentication. If your lists are relatively clean and branding is important, choose a derivative of your corporate domain name such as email.yourdomain.com or click.yourdomain.com. If your list gathering practices are even slightly questionable then you should purchase a domain specifically for email marketing. If your ESP tries to charge you an arm and a leg for this service kick them in the shins and demand that they do it for free. It should take an experienced network admin no more than 15 minutes to get your account configured correctly.

Custom DNS is the only way to go with email marketing. The setup process will take a little extra effort however it will pay dividends with email reputation management, branding and overall trust with your recipients.

Pre-Fab Email Templates Suck! Here's Why.

Elie Ashery — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:48:01 GMT

If you're a marketing manager for a mid-sized company and insist that your email service provider offer you a bunch a pre-fab templates you're lazy and should be fired! Pre-fab templates were great back in the day when email marketing was novel and a limited number of marketing mavericks experimented with the medium however the day of pre-fab templates for real marketers has come and gone.

Just think about it, email service providers that push pre-fab templates such as Constant Contact or iContact cater to hundreds of thousands of tiny companies sending to millions email recipients. Since there is only a finite number of templates that these email service providers offer, this means that a large number of companies have the same look and feel to their email marketing efforts without any differentiation to cut through the clutter. If you’re a marketing manager at a mid sized company do you really want your email marketing to look like Joe’s Bicycle Shop down the street? What if your boss subscribes to Joe’s Bicycle Shop email and you unknowingly use the same template? Do you think you’ll have your job for long?

I know lifting and plagiarism are common practices among marketers but for G-d sakes don’t copy something that’s sub-par and meant for people lacking creative abilities. And if you are a small company that’s serious about its email marketing it doesn’t take much these days to create a professional looking custom template. Any graphic design student at your local community college can create something far better then what an email service provider will give you. Remember, benchmark the best not crap!

Email Service Providers' Dirty Little Secret

Elie Ashery — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:20:12 GMT

There is a dirty little secret with email service providers (ESPs) and it’s about time it has been brought to the forefront of industry discussions. I learned about the intricacies of this secret while culling Gold Lasso customers that exceeded our spam complaint threshold. After politely showing a few of them the door, out of spite they revealed to me that they were simultaneously using the services of five other competitors unraveling a twisted web of ESP “switch-a-roonie” that promotes spam and hurts the industry. This dirty little secret is so obvious that I’m surprised it hasn’t been exposed by privacy and anti-spam advocates and used to smack the smug faces of ESP executives. Surprise! The dirty secret is that most ESPs have no economic incentive NOT to do business with customers who refuse to use good list practices. Let me say it this way: Email service providers make good money from bad customers who in some circles could be considered spammers. You might be scratching your head thinking most ESPs have strict anti-spam policies and lobby hard to clean up the industry. For the most part this statement is correct, however there are always a handful of bad customers that are tolerated because of the big checks they stroke. These customers come in the forms of traditional direct marketing agencies that have to blow their client’s budget, affiliate marketers, and idiots who have deep pockets but not a clue about how email marketing works. One thing these types of customers have in common is that they want or have to send large volumes of email and have either purchased an email list or have appended a purchased direct mail list.

Contrary to popular belief most ESPs don’t give their high paying bad customers the boot. Most try to force them through a reformation process, however if the customer continues to ignore best practices some ESPs will do one of the following; either isolate the customer on an IP block reserved for wrongdoers (a sort of purgatory) or mix their bad customer’s email across multiple IP addresses of customers with good sending practices increasing the bad customer’s chance of making it to the inbox. In the first scenario, the ESP milks the customer as they are well aware their email will either wind up in an ISP black hole or get bounced faster than an Atari Breakout ball. The bad customer, fed up with bad deliverability, will feverishly switch to a new ESP as soon as their contract is up. In the second scenario, the ESP increases the deliverability risk of their good customers. The attitude is akin to “so what if some customers get 90% deliverability instead of 96%. What’s 6%?” Eventually this attitude catches up with reality and good customers start complaining. This is when the ESP gives the bad customer the boot as their foot is already in the door of another ESP. Contrary to what Ken Magill of Direct Magazine says “a marketer can’t ride an ESP’s e-mail reputation, folks” a marketer CAN ride the reputation of an ESP’s customers… for a while at least. In either case the ESP is doing a disservice to not only their customers (good and bad) but to the industry at large.

The time has come for ESPs to get together and create their own blacklist of customers who they have booted because they refused to clean up their act. This would prevent these bad customers from trying to hop ESPs causing headaches and silently undermining the industry. The secret is out! Let’s do something about it.

Is Ken Magill Reading My Mind or My Blog?

Elie Ashery — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:41:22 GMT

Ken Magill of Direct Magazine does it again by exposing the dirty side of email. However this time a little bit of politics was added creating a cesspool of irony. His recent report “Prankster Pollutes Obama’s E-mail List” exactly makes my point from last night’s blog post. Even though politicians are exempt from the CAN SPAM Act they aren’t immune to best practices. As Hillary Clinton would have put it, “shame on you Barack Obama!”

Email Tries to Undermine Social Networking in Politics

Elie Ashery — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:33:06 GMT

As the 2008 presidential primaries come to a close, the remaining candidates’ staffers are making a mad rush to expand their social networking presence. Any medium to reach voters who were previously an afterthought in the last election has become the mantra amongst Clinton and Obama supporters in a tight Democratic primary. However no matter how much effort goes into harnessing the power of social networking in the name of politics, email is right around the corner as an opposition’s counter-measure to undermine such efforts.

One of the more popular smear campaigns this election has come in the form of an email claiming that Barak Obama is a Muslim. This viral email attempted to establish a link of faith between Barak Obama and his paternal ancestry. It was so successful that it garnered mainstream media attention forcing the up and coming presidential candidate to fight back and clarify false accusations. Another email aimed at African American voters claimed to be from NAACP Chairman Julian Bond entitled “10 Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary Clinton.” The Obama campaign picked up on the hoax’s momentum posting the email on the candidate’s website only to quickly remove it when alerted to its true origin.

Email smear tactics are nothing new in politics but in this election it sheds light on the staying power email has as a viral tool. As other Internet mediums such as social networking have gained popularity over the past couple of years, email marketers are failing to recognize email as a viable social medium. This is not to say that one should ignore the social networking revolution but to find new ways to leverage the two mediums in tandem to create the ultimate viral marketing tool.

Where Am I?

Elie Ashery — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:36:23 GMT

Have you been wondering where I am lately? Don’t worry, you and most other people could care less but I’m going to tell you any way. Instead of writing for my own blog I’ve been crafting words for the EEC and Media Post. So now the world is blessed with my insightful wisdom from three sources. More to come from The From Line.

Top Issues for Email Marketers in 2008

Elie Ashery — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:26:57 GMT

Below are the top issues email marketers should be concerned with in 2008. Some of them might seem trite as they have been issues email marketers have been concerned with in the past however 2008 will bring a different twist as new technologies are rapidly being adopted by ISPs, network administrators and consumers.

1. The Death of the ISP White List
For those lucky email marketers who previously relied on ISP white lists for superior deliverability will get a shocking wake up call this year. As ISPs rely more on reputation-based systems for discerning good senders from bad ones white lists are rapidly becoming obsolete as the mistake of false positives are less of an issue. This new technology and methodology of reputation-based systems levels the deliverability playing field for all email marketers eliminating the backdoor approach to deliverability. This also means that email marketers must continue to rely on best practices and monitor their reputation as a slip up can cost them dearly.

2. Email Rendering on Mobile Devices
As the mobile phone continues to become the main communications device, email rendering on mobile devices will become a serious issue in 2008. Since many mobile devices only display text emails, email marketers will have a challenging time separating their mobile users from their traditional computer receivers. This segmentation will be necessary to ensure proper rendering of their messages to non-HTML friendly email clients. It will also be difficult for email marketers to determine the true open rate of their campaigns because of this growing user base.

3. Authentication Technology Will Become Mandatory
DomainKeys, OpenSPF and Sender ID – if you don’t know what these things are find out fast! Mail server authentication both from a marketing and corporate admin standpoint will become a necessary defense in the spam war. It is estimated that only 30% of mail servers use these authentication technologies however this number will grow quickly as email marketers rush to take advantages of technology that will help distinguish their email from spam. In addition, it wouldn’t surprise me if the FTC made this a mandatory practice as part of compliance with the CAN SPAM Act.

4. More Legislation Might Be Around The Corner
According to the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) there will be 15 to 25 new Do Not Mail bills introduced on the state level that will attempt to replicate the Federal Do Not Call legislation. Although the federal government does have a legitimate business interest (US Postal Service) in not proposing federal legislation, Congress might be forced into taking action if a patchwork of state laws pass. What does this mean for email marketers? Legislation in one marketing medium usually finds its way to other ones as technology makes compliance and enforcement is less of an issue. Although I don’t think 2008 will bring any significant legislation to email marketing, the Do Not Mail bills could be a pre-curser to amending CAN SPAM from opt-out to opt-in.

5. Social Networking Sites Will Become The New Inbox Providers
When people think of social networking sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Linked-In, etc. they usually don’t think of email however this will soon change. I find it ironic when social networking pundits declare that the social networking will bring the death of email when the medium is totally reliant on email for viral marketing and alerts. Based on the wide adoption of social networking sites over the past few years, coupled with the fact that the average user is increasing the amount of time spent on these sites, it is only natural for social networking sites to include inter-network email as part of their service offerings. Get ready for MySpace, FaceBook and Linked-In to compete with Google, Yahoo and MSN for the inbox.

Overall 2008 should be a great year for email marketing. More businesses large and small will rely more on the medium as it claims a larger footprint in their Internet marketing mix. Happy New Year!

A Wake Up Call For Email Marketing Newbies

Elie Ashery — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:51:33 GMT

Last year I predicted that 2007 was going to be “the year of the mailman” for email marketing, meaning that everyone including the mailman would engage in the practice. This is evident in that Constant Contact now claims 150,000 small business customers. The word is out that email marketing returns big bucks and the little guys want in. True, email marketing does level the playing field between large and small online retailers since it’s an affordable medium and relatively easy to press the send button. However the newbies to the game need to understand that any monkey can click send and just as anything good in life, realizing a positive ROI from your email marketing takes time, effort, a little bit of smarts and an education. Yes, you got to get yourself an email marketing education. Don’t be dumb and buy into unscrupulous pie in the sky marketing that you’ll sell millions of dollars of your ill conceived widget by blasting some cockamamie email to a three million person list you bought for $300 from Raj in India. And don’t start crying that you didn’t sell anything in the first month of sending your weekly email of skateboarding products because you were too stupid to figure out your customers are parents who purchased from you when their little Johnny was going through his skateboarding phase.

As 2008 rolls in I welcome all newbies to the email marketing community and encourage them to seek the knowledge that will make them successful. Before you start “blasting” a hole in your list, please read some books, do some research and talk to other people who have been engaged in the email marketing practice for a while.

My Prediction on RSS Adoption Was Dead Wrong

Elie Ashery — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:10:53 GMT

This time last year I predicted that basic batch and blasters would start to look at RSS as an alternative to email because of cost and deliverability. Boy was I dead wrong. Now that I look back at my words, what the hell was I smoking? Most batch and blasters aren’t sophisticated enough to even figure out what RSS stands for let alone how to implement it. In my opinion RSS didn’t make the slightest ding into email’s market share and penetration in 2007. All the RSS proponents that declared the death of email in 2007, where are they now? They’re either jobless or banished to work in the coat closet since they cut their email marketing budgets in 2007 when email returned 48X for every dollar invested. Ha! Ha!

Don’t get me wrong, RSS is a power tool for content syndication… but it’s not replacing email. Not for the rest of 2007 and not in 2008.

What’s my prediction for 2008? I have another few more weeks to figure it out.

Don't Be Lazy - Start Segmenting Already!

Elie Ashery — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:18:08 GMT

The one size fits all mentality simply doesn't work anymore especially when it comes to selling online. Just when you think you're aiming your marketing and creative efforts at the right target market, think again and think smaller. Segmentation is the key to generating higher conversion rates from your website and email marketing efforts. From displaying the right product using geo physical data to creating the perfect offer based on previous email click patterns, segmentation will help to ensure the right offer gets in front of the right person at the right time. Mass customization is here to stay and you better have the right tools to make it happen with your website and email campaigns.

Almost all websites are categorized based on product or service type however segmentation is the magic step that results from understanding consumer behavior. By digging deep into your web analytics, you should be able to tell who buys what from where and how. For example, if you’re a sports apparel retailer just imagine how much more your chances of sale increase if you’re able to display a Clinton Portis jersey to a Washington Redskins fan on the front page of your website. You might be thinking how would this fictitious sports apparel retailer know if a website visitor is a Washington Redskins fan? Well, since online retailers know their website visitor’s IP address they can use geo targeting to display the jersey of an NFL team with the closest proximity.

The same principle applies to email as well. Every online retailer sends a weekly email campaign hocking their latest wares. But just because someone bought from an email campaign displaying digital cameras doesn’t necessarily mean they are interested in upgrading the camera’s memory card as a result of receiving subsequent email campaigns. When you integrate your email campaigns with your web analytics you get a clearer picture of customers click paths so you send customized follow up messages based on products they actually viewed or maybe have placed in their shopping cart rather than what you think they might purchase.