Patrick Griffin - 19/25 - RocketResponder

So What Exactly Is Email Spam?

March 12, 2014March 23, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

What Exactly Is Email Spam

Anyone who sends email for business should want to avoid spam at all costs so what exactly is email spam?

It is perhaps the one thing about business to business emails that annoys people more than anything else.

But just what is email spam and how can you avoid sending it out by mistake?

Spam can actually mean different things to different people.

For example this is how Wikipedia defines email spam:

Email spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email, is a subset of electronic spam involving nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Clicking on links in spam email may send users to phishing web sites or sites that are hosting malware.”

That is not necessarily true, or more accurately, not always true in every instance.

For example if you have a list of people then is is perfectly acceptable to send the entire list an identical message with only perhaps the greeting changed.

The key point from the above definition is the word “unsolicited” and it makes all the difference.

If someone signs up to your list then they want to (or at least accept that they will) receive emails from you so that is not spam.

But sending out exactly the same email to a group of people who never agreed to receive email from you is spam. This could happen, for example, if you bought a list of email addresses.

Also don’t be fooled into thinking that just because someone is on your list that you are free to email them about anything you choose.

Say you have a blog and you got people to sign up for “regular updates” but they end up getting ten marketing emails for each blog update then that would almost certainly be considered by many to be spam.

Some other examples of spam could include:

A newsletter sent out to a list of people whose details you obtained from attending a conference 18 months ago.
A promotional offer you are sending out to a list of email addresses you bought from someone else. Clearly you don’t know who these people are, they have no relationship with you and might reasonably be expected not to want to receive marketing emails from you.
Marketing emails you send to people whose emails you obtained in the normal course of doing business with you but who were never asked whether they wanted to receive such emails from you in the first place.

If A Message Is Worth Sending, It’s Worth Sending Again

March 10, 2014June 15, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Email marketing tips and tricks: There are times when it is helpful not to be timid in your email marketing.

Let’s say you have an important announcement to get across to your subscribers.

It is something you know they would be interested in, or at least you hope that they would be interested in it.

This might be a brand new launch, a cool new product or a special promotion that you want everyone to be aware of.

So naturally you send an email to your RocketResponder list telling them about the cool new thing you know they will love.

The problem is that people being people, not everyone will actually read your email.

And this will include some of the people who might be really interested in the contents of your email.

Now it has been shown that if you send an email multiple times to people the following could happen:

you will annoy your subscribers and turn them into unsubscribers (very bad)
they will still not read your email (bad)
they will become interested enough to find out why you are sending so many emails that they will open one and (hopefully) take action.

OK so there is a more subtle way to minimize the chances of the first two events happening.

If you have a very important message to get across then devise an email series just for this one topic.

So if you want to send three, five or seven emails to promote the launch, event or new product then send three, five or seven related emails on the subject. You could, for example, talk about the new product or promotion, explain some of its main points in the email series or give a series of hints or tutorials if appropriate.

Obviously you don’t want to hammer home the message every time you send an email but there will be times when you really want to ensure that your message gets read and understood by the maximum number of people.

Why Your Emails Keep Going To Spam Part Three

March 7, 2014March 23, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Emails Keep Going To Spam

Today RocketResponder’s Tim Linden concludes his three part look at the issue of spam. Let’s take a look at why your emails keep going to spam.

In the previous two posts he explained why emails you want to see in your inbox might go to spam and what practical steps you can take to avoid that happening.

In today’s concluding post Tim explains just some of the things that RocketResponder do to ensure that your emails get into the inboxes of those who have subscribed to your list…

So I’m sure you’re wondering what we do at RocketResponder to ensure your emails aren’t being filtered because of other users.

Well we do a few things:

We send the emails from your email address.
We use a different sub domain for every member for all links in the emails themselves.
We monitor engagement and group similar senders into different sending IP groups.
We monitor all our IPs against blacklists and feedback loops and get notified every few hours of changes.

If you aren’t using RocketResponder then you should give it a try, we give you 30 days to try it out without paying or entering credit card info or even creating a Paypal subscription.

You’ll also save some money too, we charge $20 per 10,000 subscribers which is a huge bargain. Most other guys charge in 1000 subscriber increments, and they charge for unsubscribed users!

Via: TimLinden.com

Why Your Emails Keep Going To Spam Part Two

March 5, 2014March 22, 2015 Patrick Griffin Leave a comment

Emails Keep Going To Spam

There is no doubt understanding why your emails keep going to spam is one of the major headaches of email…both for senders and recipients alike.

Here RocketResponder’s Tim Linden continues his look at the issue of spam and gives come practical examples of how to avoid genuine emails getting wrongly filtered as spam.

Open your emails

One way of helping ensure that emails you want in your inbox don’t get marked as spam is to actually…open your emails! This one is less known, but Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc monitor which emails you open.

They care less about the content and more about engagement. If you want marketing type emails and are opening them, they want to put them in your inbox. The best way to help show your emails are wanted, is to actually open them yourself. Every email you don’t open is just re-confirming that you don’t really care if you get the email or not.

Click links to avoid spam

Click links in your emails! Similar to opening, they actually track if you are clicking links or not. Hotmail will go as far as to warn you if you click a link in an email that looks spammy and ask if you’re sure.
Click yes you’re sure, it’s your email and it confirms that it’s legit.

Writing good emails

Send emails people want! Obvious? yes but still people have this concept that if you “blast” enough emails you’ll get enough clicks to warrant the time sending the email. If this is your view, you’re going to get your emails filtered.

What people don’t seem to understand is that most email providers use reputation systems. For instance the from email address you are sending from. Or the links in your emails. I’ll bet they even track the address line that’s required by CAN SPAM. It’s no longer solely the responsibility of the ESP to get the email to the inbox which is why so many sketchy senders are finding their emails not going as far.

Next time: What RocketResponder does to help ensure your emails get delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes.

Via: TimLinden.com

How To Integrate Twitter Lead Generation Cards With RocketResponder

March 4, 2014March 22, 2015 Patrick Griffin 1 Comment

Twitter has rolled out a new service called Lead Generation Cards which will be of interest to anyone who is actively building a list. This article will show you how to integrate Twitter Lead Generation Cards with RocketResponder.

Basically it is a tool which helps advertisers find people who are interested in the goods or services they provide.

So for example you could sign up to a blog, website or newsletter just by pressing a “sign up” link without even having to enter your email address.

Pretty awesome stuff.

Twitter said:

Marketers regularly talk to us about their goals, and for many it boils down to one major theme: generating leads, and ultimately driving purchases.

With those goals in mind, today there’s a new addition to our suite of Twitter Cards, one which helps brands drive highly qualified leads: the Lead Generation Card.”

Outdoor gear and apparel company Rock/Creek reported gaining more than 1,700 new email contacts in under a week when it used the Lead Generation Card in a Promoted Tweet campaign.

RocketResponder’s Tim Linden set up a Lead Generation Card to gain sign ups to his blog.

This is what it looks like:

How To Integrate Twitter Lead Generation Cards

And here is another example:

Here Tim explains how to get subscribers to your blog using Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards.

If you’re a Twitter Hot Shot then you’ll LOVE this. You can now create Twitter Lead Generation Cards that let your followers easily subscribe to your list with one click. It integrates perfectly into RocketResponder, so get excited!

Step 1: Create a Lead Generation Card

This is actually the hardest part, finding the page to do it on. You have to go through the Twitter Advertise page. Up top they have Creatives, and Cards is under there. Create your description, upload your image, make your call to action. Easy

Step 2: Integrate with RocketResponder

Change the Twitter Card “Data Settings” to the settings below. This will integrate directly with RocketResponder so when users hit subscribe they are on your list! Click to view it bigger. The only difference you’ll need is highlighted in yellow, that’s my list’s permalink, you’ll want to use yours!

Step 3: Tweet your new Lead Generation Card!

Wow, that easy! The team was all confused when they clicked the button. They were like so how do I get on the list? It just did it? Wait it was that easy? It’s awesome when it works sooo easy people think they missed a step 😉