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Email Marketing |
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Email Marketing |
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DEVELOPMENT DISTRIBUTION CONTACT
STRATEGY TRACKING ASSET
MAINTENANCE ASSET
MANAGEMENT
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ASSET MAINTENANCE
Feedback
There are
two primary requirements for the maintenance of an email list;
addressing the feedback and processing the removes.
Feedback through the email channel can come via reply button on
the email or from a customer service inquiry over the phone or on the
web. Feedback to an email does not always relate to a request for
removal. A reply might include a request for a catalog, or their order
information, or they might want to be contacted by a representative.
Consequently, a process should be in place to route the reply to the
appropriate person or department.
To limit this overhead, one option would be state in the email
that “No replies are taken at this address”. In the event that a
recipient tries to send a reply, an automated response would be
returned stating the same, “No replies taken at this address”. The automated response might go further and attempt to route
them to the appropriate mailbox that can process their request or
concern. If an automated response is sent to all replies, make sure
that the mail server is set up to sent only one automated reply to
each unique email address. Otherwise,
an auto reply from the recipient (i.e. “Out of Office”) could
bounce back an forth to the mail server, forever. Feedback
should be trackable back to a campaign level. This is particularly
helpful when multiple emails go out, with multiple panels, to multiple
groups, over a short period of time. For example, if the ABC Company
sends out 5,000 emails on Friday to four different groups of people
(each group containing 1,250 email addresses).
And, on Monday, the they send out a different promotion to
5,000 new people, followed on Wednesday with a newsletter to the list
of subscribers. All of
the emails are sent from the email@abc-company.com
email address. By Monday
morning replies start to come back, and continue through the end of
the week. People asking for more information, people asking to be
remove. Without campaign level tracking on the replies, it becomes
difficult to decipher which reply or remove is from which list or
mailing. A good
asset maintenance program starts with a well-defined process of where
different types of enquiries are to be forwarded. This includes a list
of departments, people, phone numbers and email addresses. A list
should also be created for the different types of replies that might
come back, and the actions to be taken. The list might look something
like the following: Email
Reply Routing
Virus
Attachments
While the routing list above is hypothetical, the
virus attachments are a common reply. Emails will come back to the
sender, on a regular basis, with viruses attached. Depending upon the
type of virus, its attachment to a reply might be intentional or
unknown to the sender. Some viruses will automatically re-email
themselves to every email address in a person’s directory. This
includes the email addresses from all emails that have been received.
On the other hand, a virus attachment to a reply might be an
intentional action of a frustrated recipient who’s request for
removal has bee ignored. In
either case, virus detection software should be installed on the
computer of the person who is reviewing the replies, as well as the
mail server that is processing them. Removal
Request Page
Requests for removal from an email list will come
from many different sources, all of which will need to be tracked and
routed to a suppression file. The most common source of removes will
come from the “remove me” link in the body of the email. While the
intention to funnel all remove requests to a ‘self service’ page,
many recipients will choose to notify the sender that they would like
to be removed, in a different way.
This is especially true if they have made earlier requests that
have been ignored. It is common to see remove links that are
specific to a type of email. This
way, the recipients can only remove themselves from one list at a
time. In fact, some companies will not have a way for recipients to
remove themselves from all email lists. Rather, the remove process
must be done one list at a time.
While this approach might seem effective, it can irritate a
large number of customers and generate a lot of negative feedback. The
best approach is to have the remove link bring up a web page where the
recipient can choose which publications or notification lists they
would like to be removed from. This will reduce the number of email
addresses in the distribution file, but increase the response rate of
the campaigns. Unfortunately, there will always be
‘non-solicitation’ communication that will need to be sent to a
customer via email, especially if they are unresponsive to other means
of communication. This
might include changes to an account status, verifications or
notification of problems. For this reason, it is not a good idea to
let customers totally remove themselves from all emails. Removal
Request Replies
The second most common remove request will come
in a reply to the email. Typically, the recipient will type REMOVE in
the subject line and hit the reply button. Prior to the popularity of
a database driving a web site, this was the preferred way of handling
the request for remove. The mail server is programmed to redirect an
email if a certain word or phrase is in the subject line. Hence, all
remove requests can be automatically redirected to one mailbox. Sometimes a remove request in a reply will not be
in the subject line, but rather in the body of email. This makes it
more difficult to automatically redirect on the detection of the word
‘remove’, because it might occur in the body of every email. For
example, if all emails have the text “click here to be removed form
this email list”, every reply would be redirected to a remove list
if the word ‘remove’ caused that action. This would include
customer inquires and bounces. Consequently,
when a recipient asks to be removed in the body of an email, this
becomes a manual task of sorting. Many email recipients will not attempt to click
on a remove link or reply to an email with a remove request. They will
simply call of fax in to the company with their demand. They may take
this approach because previous requests have not been honored, or
because they have been warned by their system administrator to not
reply to SPAM emails. In
addition, most SPAM sites will tell people to not reply to unsolicited
emails because many spammers simply guess at email addresses
(programmatically generated names) hoping that someone will reply with
at remove. Once a request
comes back, the spammer is able to confirm that the email address is
legitimate and they continue to send hundreds of emails. As a result,
remove requests will always come in from multiple sources and the
processes must be in place to direct them to the appropriate person. Suppression
List
The suppression list is an important component of the
asset maintenance function. This list is typically migrated to a
database file where notations are made on a customer’s profile that
they do not want receive emails. Tracking this information becomes a
little more complex when there are multiple email lists that a
customer can remove themselves from.
A suppression list can also be used for bad emails. As
mentioned earlier, it is a good practice to reattempt sending emails
that bounce back. After a threshold of unsuccessful attempts is met
(say four times over two weeks), these email addresses need to be
placed in the remove list, or suppression file.
This way, valuable time and money will not be lost by
continually sending emails to bad addresses.
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Copyright 2003 - Brent J. Dreyer, at bdreyer@iMarketingStrategy.com |