Forum Moderators: phranque
It's a sports ecommerce website that I manage. The email pieces listed above feature each 15 hot deals. Mostly parts and accessories.
My boss wants to start doing a 3rd email a month. This third would be more specific, like Clothing Blowout with only clothing deals, for example.
We have good response to our promotional pieces. Our userlist has 100,000 users, the email opening rate is %40 in average and totalize about 300 orders for each campaign.
DO you guys think that including a 3rd email will be bad? Users will Opt out?
Response will go down?
Probably response will go slightly down and more users will opt out, but we might be able to get an extra 200 orders a month. Right?
I would like to hear from you.
Thanks a lot!
I've scaled back to hitting the same list once every 3 months. With all the junk out there, e-mail marketing is pretty well shot.
Our opt-out rate stays pretty steady, which is a very low number, less than a half percent. The response on the ones that gets through the filters is as high as ever. So the customers don't seem to mind.
I use bluehornet as email management program.
I found out that 50% of the bounced will go through on the second time
You want to be careful with that. Too many bounces from the same IP will get you blacklisted.
You want to be careful with that. Too many bounces from the same IP will get you blacklisted.
I thnk the bounced emails are email from full mailboxes, mailboxes that doesn't exist anymore, etc...Or when some servers are down,etc...
I am not sure it has to do with emails being bounced because of spam filters.
From 100,000 email we send, we get like 1,000 or 2,000 bounced.
I am not sure it has to do with emails being bounced because of spam filters
It doesn't matter what the bounces are from. IP's now consider a high rebounce rate from the same IP to be a sign of a spammer. Since it doesn't cost anything for a spammer to send an unclean list, they will repeatedly send the same list, bounces and all. Plus, it costs money for an ISP to process those bounces, so even if you aren't a spammer, they don't look kindly on people repetedly hitting the system with bounces.
With all the junk out there, e-mail marketing is pretty well shot.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with that. Well targeted, double opt in, emails are working a treat. Given entertaining copy and heavy user-centic customisation - conversion rates are great. I think users are looking for two main things: 1. something they are interested in, and, 2. something that they're in control of (unsubscribe, customise, etc).
I think if you can give your users those two things then you're set.
It doesn't matter what the bounces are from. IP's now consider a high rebounce rate from the same IP to be a sign of a spammer. Since it doesn't cost anything for a spammer to send an unclean list, they will repeatedly send the same list, bounces and all. Plus, it costs money for an ISP to process those bounces, so even if you aren't a spammer, they don't look kindly on people repetedly hitting the system with bounces.
Do you think that bouncing just 2 times is enought to get blacklisted?
For my email marketing I use BLuehornet, it's one of the best email services available. It has the highest rank of deliverability. They also say they have agreements with the major ISPs, so that emails from their IP won't get blacklisted.
It has the highest rank of deliverability
First of all, that sounds like a line straight out of a marketing piece. All the good third party mailers have agreements with the major ISPs. Deliverability has as much to do with email content as it does with the mailer so unless they have a bunch of email filter super geniuses as their clients, their deliverability rate is comprimised by their own clients. Also, since none of the third party mailers are likly to provide deliverability rates to their competitors, I doubt that statement is made on any hard evidence.
I really don't mean to sound harsh, but email marketing is hard enough without companies ticking off the ISPs.
Many, many third party providers will not allow or only sparingly allow their clients to resend hard bounces. I know the one we are currently with has been round and round with AOL about the subject. The ISPs don't like it, period. They don't care if your emails are triggering their filters. They don't care if full email boxes are rejecting your emails. What they know if that the bounce emails you send cost them money and you don't pay them compensation for it.
To them, it's not bouncing 2X. It's bouncing 2X the number of bounces you sent, which in their books is 2X too many.
Your provider may have ways around this, such as rotating IPs that they mail from, or maybe what you are talking about is that they are determining a hard bounce from a soft bounce (which is a current standard practice for third parties).
Eventually, the ISPs are going to find a way to make us pay for the extra work we put on their systems.
Yes, most of the email sevices don't want people to know their deliverability rates.
But BlueHornet was audited! By PIVOTAL VERACITY
I know that email content has a lot to do with filtering. But many other services will have a low deliverability even for completely know-looking spamming content.
If you wan to know more about how their service compare to others in terms of deliverability you can look here
[bluehornet.com ]
I don't mean to say they are a bad company, they are probably great. I just mean to say, be careful. Resending bounces can get you into trouble is all. Maybe not you, but other people read these messages too.
If they don't have something I want, then once a month is too much and I opt-out.
The only case where email is actually rejected is when the mail server is blocked, or the email contains content that is recognized as causing too many complaints by AOL subscribers.
Being "white-listed" with AOL as an ESP means that there is a grace period for all of these things. They do a very good job notifying ESPs that they're over limits and give them a chance to fix it and make things better... essentially giving the ESP the benefit of the doubt.
The short:
As a marketer, realize that bounced AOL email addresses are not good anymore so you might as well not waste your money. AOL says that if an email bounces from them, the person won't be receiving email anymore from anyone.
Technically, if you resend bounced AOL subscribers: You will get blocked...
