DISTRIBUTION

After an email has been conceived, designed, created and tested, it is ready to be sent and there are two basic choices. An email can be sent internally, or by an outside vendor. Depending upon the format of the email, this choice might be obvious. For example, auto responds are typically sent by the entity that controls the website. This includes messages like, “ Your order has been shipped”. The decision between using internal distribution or vendor distribution is a function of technical capacity, ambition, workload, the complexity of the email and the number of emails being sent.

Technical Considerations

Part of the technical considerations of sending emails relate to hardware and software decisions. The possessor size of the sending computer will most likely be secondary to the bandwidth (Internet connection). Without special configuration, the average desktop PC can send between 1,000 and 2,000, plain text emails (2K in size) through a T1 connection, in one hour. This equates to about one email every two to three seconds. Numerous outside factors will slow down the distribution rate. This includes other applications running on the mail server, routers and switches in the Internet connection, Internet traffic and firewall filters. In addition, as the email file grows in size (i.e. HTML or email attachments) the rate of emails sent per hour, will drop. Most email vendors have software and hardware that has been specifically built to distribute large amounts of email, very quickly. Delivery rates of 100,000 emails per hour are not uncommon.

Despite the restrictions of speed, sending emails from an internal source is virtually free. Consequently, internal distribution is often used for smaller releases. The cost of software to manage an email distribution is inexpensive, ranging between freeware and a few hundred dollars. The cost of the software will rise in direct proportion to the complexity demands of the email program.

Tracking and Filtering

Aside form delivery speed, another important consideration is tracking and filtering. Software and coding must be in place to track the clicks of email recipients. Most vendors will track the number of people who open the email and how many click on it. Unfortunately, once the email recipient reaches the website, it is the responsibility of the sender to track what they do, what they buy, or who are they. Therefore, coordination must be set up with the Webmaster or web development team. There are exceptions to this where the recipient’s response can be directly attributed to a single offer. For example, if the email recipients are sent to a special web page (product, service, form, etc.) that can only be reached by the link in the email, then it is easy to identify the success of the email.

Filtering is another function offered by many email vendors. A filter is a database file that the email addresses are compared to before sending. This might be a list of people that have asked to be removed, or email address that are bad. A list of bad email addresses is referred to as the ‘bounce file’ because the emails keep bouncing back the server that sends them. Typically, multiple attempts are made to send the bad emails and the number of attempts is tracked. After threshold is reached (say 4 attempts) the email addresses are considered bad and then filtered from all future emailings. It is a good idea to ask the vendor how many times they attempt to send bad emails before they suppress them as bad addresses. Some vendors will offer a service to filter your email list against their own collection of bad email addresses. Depending upon the price, this might be a good idea because many vendors will charge to send bad emails, as well as future attempts. In fact, some vendors will even charge for bad email addresses, even if they are caught by the filter and not sent. These details should be identified in advance.

Bad Email Addresses

Bad email addresses might not be bad at all, rather, the connection to the recipient’s mail server might be down, or the connection is down. For this reason, it is important to make multiple attempts before filtering out an email address. Probably 1/4 of all bad emails do not reach the recipient due to improper syntax or typographical errors. This is particularly true if a clerk or sales person typed the email addresses in, rather than the recipient doing it online. For example, jsmith@Sol.com might have been valid as jsmith@aol.com. Or, Jdoe@AbeCompany.com versus Jdoe@AbcCompany.com. Sometimes the errors are even more obvious where the domain is truncated, like .co, or too long like .comn instead of .com. In any event, bad emails should be scanned for obvious errors, by a human, before being discarded.

Vendor Selection

Vendor’s rates for sending emails will vary, depending upon the sophistication of their system and the number of emails being sent. Like anything else, quantity equates to discounts. In general, vendors will charge between 5 cents and 10 cents per email, plus an account setup and job setup charges. The setup charges can be a few hundred dollars for simple, plain text emails, or a several dollars for multiple panels, HTML emails.

Setup costs and charges per email are only part of the consideration when selecting a vendor.. Delivery speed is important when a large number of emails have to be sent within a window of time. For example, if 25,000 emails need to be received by the recipient in the late afternoon of a specific day. To accomplish this, the vendor must have the job properly scheduled and they must have the capacity to send this volume in a short period of time.

Many times, an email vendor will hire a third party to send out their emails. If a third party is involved (the actual sender of the email), it may be more difficult to coordinate the details of delivery. Additional consideration must be given to the email address which will appear in the email’s “From” window. As mentioned earlier, the ‘From Address’ and the ‘Subject’ line are two critical components of an email’s success. If the vendor uses a third party to send the emails, then be careful that the emails willnot read “From” an uninviting address like Job123@BulkEmailHosting.com.

HTML Detection

The selection of a vendor should also consider the range of additional services that they can offer. A service of foremost importance is the ability to send HTML and detect HTML. Sending an HTML email with images requires an additional server to hold those images. If the vendor provides this service, then they may have the ability to detect if a recipient can see HTML. One trick used to get HTML emails to HTML recipients, is to send them both (plain text and HTML) at the same time, in the same email. The plain text portion of the email is put at the top, embedded inside of comment tags, suppressing it from being displayed by an HTML viewer. Hence, if the recipient can see HTML, they will not see the plain text. On the contrary, if the recipient is a plain text viewer, they will see the plain text version of the email, embedded at the top. The problem is, the plain text viewer will also see the cryptic HTML version occupying the bottom 2/3’s of the email, if they scroll down that far.

Another trick used to detect if a recipient can see HTML, requires two steps. First, all emails sent to plain text recipients, include an embedded image of a white dot. If they open it, and their email client can read HTML, a call is automatically made to the server that holds the white dot. Then, before returning the white dot, the server records who it was that can see the white dot with HTML. This information is compiled and the email list is updated with who can see HTML. When the next email campaign is run, the individuals that could see the white dot in the last one, gets the full HTML version this time.

Personalization

When an email list is distributed, a vendor should have the ability to offer personalization to the recipient. Basically, the vendor uses a template and a text file. The template for the email might say “Dear _____ of the _______ company. Your account _______ with us is up for renewal”. The text file would include the recipient’s email address, their name, their company and account number. As the email is being sent, the template is populated the appropriate information. Detecting HTML with the ‘white dot’ technique (described above) uses a similar approach, but is more complicated. It involves creating hyperlinks with the recipient’s email address embedded. The best way to do this involves encryption of the email address so that it is not obvious to the recipient that their information is being passed to the server.

If a vendor is passing sensitive information back forth to a server, they should also have a secure server setup using the https protocol. This protocol is popular for credit card transaction on the Internet and will add one more layer of protection for securing sensitive information being sent from an HTML email. Beyond credit cards, this might include account information, passwords and other personal information.

The quality of reporting and tracking is important when selecting a vendor. The better vendors will offer ‘real time’ reporting via a website that displays the live actions of the recipients, opened emails, clicks, bounces, removes, auto replies, etc. Historical results should also be visible, selectable by campaigns and or date ranges. It is also a good idea to receive notification when the email starts and when it ends, summarizing the delivery statistics.

Draft Review

All email campaigns should have a draft review process, regardless of the distribution type (internal or vendor) being used. Drafts should be circulated along the entire process, from the original copy to a test distribution of the email. The test distribution is the last chance to make corrections. At this point, the problems are not usually by typographical errors in the copy, but rather, broken links or non-functioning tracking. Every link on each draft each panel should be tested to make sure that it will take the recipient to the intended location. Correspondingly, the tracking for each link should also be checked to make sure that each click is counted and can be attributed to an action (a purchase, download, etc.).

Mistakes and Recourse

Notwithstanding all attempts to make sure that everything is perfect, errors will still occur on an email distribution. Either the wrong copy goes out to the wrong people, or HTML is sent to people that can only see plain text, mistakes will happen. Many times an error will be caused by a negligent action of the vendor. For this reason, it is a good idea to negotiate the recourse with the vendor in advance. What do they guarantee, what is their liability and what is the extent of their resolution? If a vendor sends out a bad email to a group of customers, it might be difficult to simply send them a new one. When email recipients receive multiple emails, from the same party, in a short period of time, the remove rate will increase. This is especially true if the first one was inappropriate, unreadable or misleading.

What if the recipient had asked to be removed, but the vendor failed to run the correct suppression list? Depending upon the circumstances, this action might put the sender’s name on an email ‘blacklist’. A blacklist is a publicly posted collection of known (or alleged) sources of unsolicited email, also known as SPAM. Blacklists are used by webmasters and Internet Service Providers to block all future emails coming from those entities. In either case, a reckless or inexperienced vendor can irreversibly damage an email list, directly impacting its value. For this reason, limits of liability and conflict resolutions should be clearly establish with a vendor, before any emails are distributed.

SPAM Policy

It is a good idea to check the SPAM policy of the email vendor. At the very least, most vendors will say that they do not send unsolicited emails, but how do they know? Depending upon the vendor’s financial position and length in business, they will probably send anything without any types of tests. If a vendor’s SPAM policy is ‘wait and see’, then they might wind up on a blacklist, caused by another client, in the middle of your email campaign. On the other hand, if a vendor’s SPAM policy is extremely restrictive, a simple allegation of unsolicited email might entail hours of research to clear your name.

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	Email Marketing

DISTRIBUTION

DISTRIBUTION