Most commercial e-mail messages are sent in HTML or a multipart format and include images: logos, header images, product pictures or sender’s photos. Many all e-mail marketers host images on a web server and specify the path to them in the message. To load the images, a call is made back to the hosting server. Many ISPs and some e-mail clients block this call. This is done primarily for security reasons. Using image blocking capabilities people can prohibit adult images from loading and prevent spammers from knowing if the message was opened.

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The "Email Admin Center" is becoming a regular practice in permission-based email marketing. The “Email Admin Center” is the area of an email put at the bottom of the message where the sender includes all the administrative information such as an unsubscribe link, profile update link, company contact information, privacy information or link, and other.

Why add the "Email Admin Center" to your email newsletters?

Firstly, the admin center allows you follow best permission-based practices which imply that you must provide simple and clear privacy and email policies in your newsletter.

Secondly, you can respect the CAN-SPAM Act that requires, among other things, to include a working unsubscribe option (reply to or link) and a postal mailing address.

Thirdly, you can provide the recipients with an easy way to change their email address or profile details by adding “Update Profile” link to the admin area.

The "Email Admin Center" lets the email marketers present all of the above information in a single easy to find location within the email message.

The "Email Admin Center" makes your email newsletter look more professional and assures people that the email is coming from a reputable company which cares about the subscribers. Building trustful relationship with the subscribers is as much important in the email marketing as the legal compliance with CAN-SPAM Act.

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This statement is taken for the rule by many email marketers. Despite of a magic power of this word that prompts the recipient to immediately act on your email, it’s generally believed that "free" is a pure spam word. Yes, there is a truth behind this. Every other spam message contains the word "free". But what is the most important is the environment this word is used in, i.e. the whole phrase with the word "free" matters.

Let’s look how two popular spam content filters – Spam Assassin and MS Outlook 2000 – work and handle your emails.

Spam Assassin, one of the main “test” spam filters, assigns points – positive and negative – to the message content and HTML code. Positive points mean potential spam, negative points mean the message content and code are not generally used by spammers. The score is calculated and if it exceeds a certain level, the message is filtered as spam. It’s about the Spam Assassin user to determine the level at which emails are filtered. It is generally believed that most companies/ISPs use a total score of around 10, but that some may go as low as 4.

In the Spam Assassin the phrases with the word "free" do get fairly high scores – 1 and higher. But the phrases commonly used in legitimate emails such as “free report”, "free download", "free upgrade", “free e-book” and “free newsletter” are not affected.

Unlike the Spam Assassin, MS Outlook 2000 Junk E-mail Filter uses a pass/fail method. It looks for “junk and adult” content in the message and directs suspicious messages to the Outlook’s Deleted Items folder. The common things that trigger the filter are the use of an exclamation point and the word "free" in the message Subject line.

The bottom line: Use the word "free" in your email newsletters wisely and test, test and test your message before sending it to the whole list.

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Since email marketing is the cheapest form of marketing, many email marketers focus on building as big mailing list as possible believing that the bigger list they have the better results they get. Of course, obtaining new subscribers or customers is a good thing. But a smaller list of active, interested and motivated subscribers or customers is really what you should aim at. At least, take time to clear your list from invalid emails and reduce the energy you spend on your inactive members.

Here are a few tips how you can get the most out of your active members:

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OK, we’ve just described best email practices you should follow to pass as a good email marketer and get better delivery results. But you know there is nothing constant on the Internet. New methods are being adapted; old ones go out of date. Email delivery practices change as well. Email practices that were widely and successfully applied yesterday may not be so effective today. 

With all that said, we feel it’s reasonable to get you familiar with email sending tactics that are no longer good. If you are using any of such tactics or may just be thinking about applying any of them, you may consider changing your mind and not engage into them.

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Email marketers have always experienced troubles while communicating with America Online (AOL) users. Since AOL’s subscribers make 20-25% of email lists for most business-to-consumer marketers, optimizing email messages for AOL subscribers’ preferences is important for improving your email campaign performance.

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If your mailing list contains a considerable amount of AOL subscribers, it’s important for you to be aware of the AOL service and email software specific features. You should get familiar with how AOL handles incoming email messages to be able to tailor your newsletter and overall email marketing process to the AOL specific requirements and issues. Below is a list of what you should take into account.
 

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Accurate and detailed statistics on email campaign performance is one of the advantages of email marketing. However, there are several misconceptions concerning email tracking that pervade the industry. It’s important that email marketers understand their email statistics properly before making key decisions or evaluating their email campaign’s performance.

To help you navigate in the dark waters of email metrics, in this chapter we’ll explore a few of the most common misbelieves in email tracking such as:

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Email marketers often use a technique that implies segmenting the email list and sending different versions of the same email to each segment. Such split tests help compare the effectiveness of different subject lines, creative approaches, offers, etc. During the next campaign marketers often send the version that had either the highest open or click-through rate (or both) believing that this version is more effective. However, the true is that the email that resulted in a higher open or click-through rate may not be the version that produces the best results. In some cases the email with a lower click-through rate can lead to a higher number of transactions because it was of greater interest but to fewer people.

Read more on Email with Higher Open and Click-through Rates Wins…

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