Deliverability

Average open rates at 6:00am are nearly 12% compared to 3% at 4:00pm

Visual.ly

Once you’ve crafted the perfect email template, it’s time to send it out into the world. But how can you make sure that it gets seen?

When to Send and How Often

We’ve been asked this question many times (and have asked it a few times ourselves) – when is the best time to send a marketing email to get the most attention from its recipients? There are a few widely accepted rules for sending marketing emails:

Avoid nights and weekends

For most B2B marketers, it’s best to send your email when your audience is at work and paying attention. This may not be true, however, if you are marketing to a consumer group that is active after hours.

Avoid Mondays and Fridays

Most marketers typically avoid sending an email on Monday for fear of it being deleted by busy readers jumping into their weekly workload. Similarly, Fridays are avoided for the opposite reason – readers are anxious to wrap up for the weekend and may not give your email the time and attention you’d like.

Mid-day, mid-week emails are the most successful

Tuesdays and Thursdays in particular are the most popular days to send marketing emails. And getting that email in the reader’s inbox between 8:00am and 1:00pm seems to be the sweet spot.

These generalities are important to keep in mind, but they don’t need to be followed to the letter. There is not one “perfect” time to send an email; it depends on your audience. And if you market to different demographic groups, countries, or time zones, it can be nearly impossible to reach everyone at the same time.

Vary email sends and compare send statistics

If you send an email on a regular basis – such as a weekly newsletter – try sending it on different days or times each week to see which send gets the highest open or click rates. Or if you plan to send the same email more than once to the same marketing list – an event invitation/reminder, for example – vary the days/times for each email send and evaluate the results.

Keep in mind that if your emails contain different content (i.e. two different weekly newsletters), the content will also affect the click and open rates, not just the delivery time. However, trying out different times may reveal a preference with your audience.

Keep an eye on trends

This can be particularly important if you market to an audience that is younger or highly tech-savvy. While many users still open emails on their desktop computer, mobile open rates are steadily increasing. This could mean that your email is opened later at night or during the weekend as readers are using their mobile devices outside the office. Watching social media to see when your followers are the most active could be helpful as well. Your readers may be likely to interact with an email sent during the same window of time.

Through a little observation and testing, you should be able to get a feel for when your emails have the most impact with your readers.

Improving Deliverability

Effective email marketing relies on excellent deliverability – getting your emails to your recipients’ inboxes – and excellent deliverability requires making sure that you establish and maintain an excellent sender reputation.

As an email service provider, ClickDimensions works around the clock to monitor and maintain our email systems’ reputation. We

22% of marketing emails sent with subscribers’ permission never reaches their inboxes

I8% of messages were either blocked or went missing

4% of messages were delivered to subscribers’

spam or junk folders

ReturnPath use leading techniques and testing to ensure that our platform provides the best deliverability possible. However, deliverability relies as much on your efforts as on ours. There are a few simple things you can do to help improve email deliverability:

Read through the content with a critical eye

If your email consistently comes in as spam, double-check your content. A careful read-through can help you spot potentially problematic words and phrases. Words like “discount,” “pharmacy,” and even “spam,” as well as large numbers or amounts of money can make your message seem less credible. Using professional language and punctuation as well as providing relevant content with an appropriate subject line will also help boost the legitimacy of your communication.

Include a text version of your HTML email template

The text version provides additional support for your template so that anyone who cannot or wishes not to receive HTML in emails can still read your email. Including a text version will also decrease your spam score.

Use the appropriate CNAME

We’ve all gotten phishing emails before. You know, the ones that say that they come from one sender, but when you hover over the links in them, you can see that they’ll take you elsewhere. It is disconcerting to get an email from your bank and hover to see that the links will take you to some other web site. No thank you.

ClickDimensions avoids this issue by letting our customers set their email links to match their web site domain. After all, the emails you send for marketing should have your web site address in them and not ours, right? To do this, your webmaster simply needs to create what is known as a CNAME (canonical name) record to redirect a subdomain of your web site URL (e.g. elink.yourdomain.com or www2.yourdomain.com) to our link address for tracking. Recipients of your emails will see your web site address and feel better about clicking on your links. More importantly, your overall deliverability will improve since your emails will also not look suspicious to spam filters.

ISPs and mail providers want to keep unsolicited and dangerous email out of their customers’ inboxes. This can often lead to an audience missing emails that they want due to an overactive spam filter. Here are some tips to get your email to your audience:

Practice permission-based email marketing

Start by making sure you are talking to the right audience and that they actually want to receive your email. If they don’t want it, and it gets caught in their spam filter, then the spam filter is doing its job!

Ask your audience to add you to their “Safe Senders” list

Most email applications have a way to add a sender to a whitelist or a safe senders list to ensure that future emails don’t get filtered out. If your audience wants your communications they’re more likely to add you to their safe senders list, so ask them.

Be consistent

Once you’ve gained someone’s permission to communicate with them, keep the channels open – don’t blast them with a dozen emails on day one and then send them nothing for six months. Keep your communication levels consistent.

Provide a way to opt-out

ClickDimensions enables marketers to include unsubscribe links or subscription preference links in their emails. Always include these in your emails.

Test your email against spam filters

ClickDimensions users can run a test on their email that will return a SpamAssassin score. This test will give you a good idea of how your email might be perceived by spam filters. The score will come with rules that will tell you what about your email is raising your score; you can check the SpamAssassin website to see what exactly about your template you should tweak in order to get a lower score.

SpamAssassin Report: Common Rules

When you use ClickDimensions to test your email, the results of the report are generated by the Apache SpamAssassin Project. Each rule is worth a different number of points, and they add up to the Spam Score. Try to keep your spam score below a 3.0 for better delivery results. Below are some of the common rules – try and avoid them from the start.

HTML_MESSAGE: This will appear every time and adds nothing to your score, do not worry about this one at all.

HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG: Problem: There are no <html></html> tags in your template Solution: Open the full screen editor of your email designer and go to the HTML tab. At the very top, before all the other text, type <html>. Then go to the very bottom of the text and type </html>. Save and re-test.

FREEMAIL_FROM: Problem: The “From” email address is from a free provider like Google (@gmail) or Yahoo (@yahoo). Solution: Use a different email address with your company domain. MIME_HTML_ONLY: Problem: There is no text version. Solution: Include a text version for people who may not be able to read HTML on their device.

HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08 or HTML_IMAGE_ RATIO_08: (Note: the number (08) may be different depending on the ratio) Problem: The ratio of images to text is too high (there are too many images and too little text). Solution: Either increase the amount of text or decrease the amount of images. On this one, also pay attention to the number of points it’s giving you – if it’s lower you don’t need to worry about it as much.

Note: There are a couple of other rules that are a result of this same issue, including DKIM_ADSP_ CUSTOM_MED and NML_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED.

For more information, see our article on how to set up an SPF record.

For more information about the CAN-SPAM Act, visit https:// www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/businesscenter/guidance/can-spam-actcompliance-guide-business.

Create an SPF record

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records are a way to tell ISPs that an email service provider such as ClickDimensions is authorized to send email for you. Gmail and many other mail services and spam filters will check a domain’s SPF record as one of the many factors used in judging if an email is spam or not.

Anti-Spam Laws

Laws governing email marketing vary from country to country. It is important to review legislation in any area where you do business to ensure that your emails are meeting applicable requirements.

CAN-SPAM Act

In 2003, the United States passed the CAN-SPAM act to prevent citizens from receiving unsolicited and disrupting spam messages through email. The following is a basic summary of the major points of the bill.

All emails must have:

An obvious unsubscribe link A truthful and accurate subject line and from email address The street address of the company sending the email Warnings for adult content (if applicable) Additionally,

Emails must be sent through legitimate means to legitimately acquired email addresses. Unsubscribes must take effect in 10 days. Suppression lists must be used properly.

Canadian Anti-Spam Law

Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) requires businesses to obtain either express (opt-in) or implied consent to send any electronic messages (i.e. emails or texts) that are sent in connection with a “commercial activity.” This includes electronic marketing communications

For more information about CASL, download our white paper http://www.clickdimensions. com/sites/default/files/PDF/ WhitePaper-CASL.pdf.

For more information about the EU Opt-In Directive, visit http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ uksi/2003/2426/contents/made. like advertisements, event invitations, and new product/service announcements. There are three general requirements for sending a commercial message to an electronic address:

1. 2.

3. You must have expressed or implied consent. You must clearly and simply identify yourself and anyone else on whose behalf the message is sent. In every message you send, you must provide a way for recipients to unsubscribe from receiving messages in the future.

EU Opt-In Directive

The EU Opt-In Directive (2002/58/EC) covers all direct email marketing messages. Requirements include:

Email messages may be sent only to recipients who have given their prior consent (opt-in). Every message must include opt-out instructions. Disguising or concealing the identity of the sender on whose behalf the communication is made is prohibited. Companies must state their company details on every electronic business communication sent from their organization.