May 2013
Digital Marketing Insider
10 Common Questions About The Google Content Network Will Social Media Make You Money? How To Get Your Emails Delivered Into Inboxes
A Note From The Editor
First a warm welcome to June’s edition of the Digital Marketing Insider, produced by ROARlocal If this is the first time you’ve received this a hearty welcome to you! We’re justifiably proud of the DMI and the great profit producing information found within it. Well I’ve had a VERY interesting month this month! We had a request from a certain far right political party with nazi leanings, to help them look after their online marketing. I’m fascinated with politics and would relish the opportunity to further the causes of things I believe in, but racist bigotry is not one of them, so we politely turned them down. Nicola was a bit worried in case they caused any bovver for us ;-) We’ve launched a new SEO division at ROARlocal and we’re starting small with our first test client, I’ll let you know how we get on. Finally we have a BRILLIANT interview this week with another rock star mentor so be sure to check that out. I know you’ll get a ton out of his pearls of wisdom as you will the rest of this months magazine, it’s jam packed with our usual level of brilliant content and, as always, if we can help you in any way please get in touch Neil Asher CEO ROARlocal Brighton, Sydney & Melbourne (and growing!)
About Us
Contents
We create great looking online advertising campaigns that enhance your brand, we use scientifically proven online advertising methods to drive visitors to your website and adverts and then we optimise your site to make sure those visitors become paying customers that tell all their friends and come back for more.
01 / A Note From The Editor
Our team is different, we live in the UK so we understand how & what brits love to buy. We’re successful online entrepreneurs, world class copywriters, website optimisation specialists, online advertising mavericks and the geekiest SEO people!
07 / Will Social Media Make You Money?
02 / Why I Hate The Forbes.com Websites 03 / 10 Common Questions About The Google Content Network
09 / How To Get Your Emails Delivered Into Inboxes 10 / Entrepreneur Insights 11 / Get In Touch Plus Credits
01
Why I Hate The Forbes.com Websites
by Neil Asher
I have been an avid reader of Forbes Magazine for over 7 years now, I love their reporting and up to the minute news. It is without a doubt my fave magazine. BUT I hate their website! Why, you may ask? Well it violates rule No 1 on my list of: annoying things not to do on your website.
There are so many negative things that happen on people’s websites that can all be easily avoided, these elements will make your prospective clients and users bail out of your site at a very early stage and if (sorry, but I really hope that isn’t ‘if’) you have a look at your analytics you will see the bounce rate rising. There are many more reasons than these 10, but these are the ones that I think have the most impact on people leaving your site far too early? In fairness, nearly all websites have issues, as it isn’t easy to create a beautiful, brilliant user experience, but have a look at the following negative factors, as, more often than not, they are avoidable…Try to eliminate them and you might find you get some stickier web users.
3 / Slow load times.
9 / Out of date.
Now, I paid a lot for my home broadband package and your slow loading pages are not helping my patience.
I love to see a ‘news’ or ‘blog’ section on a homepage. It shows that there are some signs of life on the site. But if your latest ‘news’ is dated ‘January 2004’ then I won’t hang around for long.
4 / Prioritisation of ads vs content. I suppose this could be a major reason for slow load times but some websites will load the ads first, banking that ad revenue, and then leave me waiting for the content of the site. 5 / Poor navigation. This has to one of the worst errors you can make as a web professional. Navigation needs to be intuitive, descriptive and straightforward. It has to be said at this stage that Flash-based sites tend to be among the worst for this.
10 / Boring vs unprofessional. Website design and development needs to have some serious thought given to it to make the site interesting, relevant, and on the button with your brand/ target audience, otherwise it will be uniformly dull. Boring and unprofessional can both mean the same for your bounce rates. These are the top 10 for me. Have I missed anything?
1 / Autosound.
6 / Immediate registration demands.
What annoys you and make you turn off a website?
Okay this has to be the most annoying of them all, I hate going to a site that instantly bombards you with a cacophony of nasty sounds, whether it be on the actual website or from one of the adverts that is on the site. Forbes, are you listening? Those annoying AutoPlay ads and interviews… Don’t… just don’t.
Have you not heard of teasing the end user? Think about your timing. And, getting a form for me to register on the site as soon as it loads is gonna make me leave immediately!
Want us to design and build a non annoying website for you? Then get in touch to tell us about your project.
2 / Pop-ups. Again, if I go to a site that starts bombarding me with pop-up,s I’m going to want to leave. Now don’t get me wrong, pop-ups with relevant information are tolerable, but first give me 30-60 seconds on the site to see that what you are saying/selling is what I want to hear.
7 / Too much ‘stuff’ happening. Back to the web design… Make it clean and crisp, as well as the navigation. Things like flaming logos, 360 degree twirling call to actions, animated GIF advertising in all colours… I’m out of there! Its too much to take on board and I have no idea where to look first. 8 / Typos. Attention to detail, if you can’t be bothered to check for typos and use poor grammar, you really aren’t sending the right signals to me that you care. There are no excuses. What kind of message does that give out?
02
10 Common Questions About The Google Content Network
I LOVE making money for our clients! It’s my second favorite thing to do Whenever we get a new client, one of the first things I do is put in place a systematic way for them to get new customers for their business. More customers usually means more money. One of the best places to get more customers is Google, both the search network and content network. Most of our clients understand search. A prospect goes to google.com and types in what they want, for example “weber BBQ”, and then Google shows them ads all about buying a BBQ. And, before you know it, you’re throwing a few shrimps on the BBQ! BUT The content network is a mystery to most, and whenever I bring it up I get LOTS of questions…
1. What the heck is the Google Content Network (GCN)? The GCN is a collection of over 2 million websites worldwide, from massive sites like www.forbes.com right down to tiny blogs and forums that most of us have never heard of. Each website owner has decided they want to monetize their site. By allowing Google to put ads on certain pages of their site, the website gets a cut of the revenue those ads generate. You have the option – from within your existing AdWords account – to show ads on any of those pages! Most importantly, you can show ads all over the web with the same precise level of control that you have with your normal search campaigns. This means you can choose to only show ads to people within 50 miles of London on a Tuesday between 3 & 7 pm (if you want to), even though they’re looking at a blog – if you think visitors to that blog are your ideal target market. It’s important to note that it’s a totally different type of person you’re getting in front of. With the Google Search Network, you know exactly what that person is looking for, you serve them the most relevant & precise ad and take that visitor to your website. With the GCN, the people aren’t actively searching for your products and services. They’re browsing a page on the web and you’re essentially interrupting them and hoping that they find your offer interesting enough to click on it. So in order to improve your chances of success, the first thing you’re going to do is target web pages that have some relation to your product or services. 2. What types of campaigns can you set up on GCN? There are a number of targeting options available – again all through your existing AdWords campaign. Some of the most popular are: Managed Placements – You simply give Google a list of websites that you want to show ads on. If those sites are in the GCN & your bid is high enough, your ads will appear there within hours. For example, perhaps you’re interested in showing ads on www.dailymail.co.uk or www. thesun.co.uk, or you want to target a section of a site like www.forbes.com/business.
Be aware that there is no published list of the 2 million sites and that they’re being added to all the time. You can get some info on the top sites from Google’s AdPlanner tool, but for the most part you need to know that a site is in the GCN before targeting it. As such, many people start with other types of GCN campaigns, where Google does the heavy lifting. Contextually targeted – Instead of a list of sites, you give Google a list of themes. Themes are about the content of a particular page on a site. So, these campaigns are about asking Google to find pages that match your list of themes & getting to show ads on those pages. For example, you sell wine, so you might choose cheese as a theme. This is a great example of something that doesn’t work with Search, because a wine ad isn’t relevant to someone searching for cheese. But on the GCN this is perfect. Someone is browsing a site about cheese, you can show your wine ad & only pay if and when someone clicks. In this way, GCN gives you the ability to market on tangents that you just can’t do on Search. Topic Targeting – Every single page of the 2 million sites has been categorized by Google and organized into around 1,750 categories. This includes big general topics like ‘business news’ down to specific topics like ‘cookware’, with many pages categorized into multiple topics. You can give Google a list of topics & then get it to find all the pages matching that topic and place ads there. In short – contextual targeting is more work and gives you more precise control, whereas topic targeting is easier and quicker to set up but needs more management to ensure great results.
03
by Neil Asher
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You need to be able to track conversions, it’s not good for businesses that don’t have any way to track conversions on their website. 3. What are the 3 biggest mistakes you see people making when managing Display Network campaigns? #1 Not setting up a specific GDN campaign. Typically in the past, when you signed up for a new AdWords campaign, Google showed ads on both Search and Display Networks – so, many didn’t realise they were actually opted in for the GDN! While this wouldn’t harm your search campaign, not having a specific GDN campaign gives you no opportunity to optimise it. Given it needs a completely different set up and management approach, that’s not good! This is less of a problem now as Google is (finally) changing the way you set up campaigns. But many people still don’t understand the differences. #2 Limiting reach by not having enough AdGroups This is particularly relevant to Contextual Targeting, which most people use, and results from not giving Google enough themes to work with. For instance, many advertisers will set up their GDN campaign with just one AdGroup – effectively telling Google there is just one theme. For best results you need to give Google multiple themes, so it has lots of ways of finding the types of pages most likely to work. Limiting your potential reach by not having enough themes means you’re not showing your ads to enough people and limits your ability to test and find success. #3 Not managing your GDN campaigns A GDN campaign is definitely not set and forget.
Regardless of the approach you choose for a campaign, there is going to be a lot of junk traffic along the way which you constantly need to be getting rid of. Due to this, a big, big mistake is not managing your campaigns on an ongoing basis to get the best performance and ROI. The combination of these three mistakes is definitely why many believe that GDN isn’t profitable. To begin with, they didn’t set it up properly, then didn’t use it to its full potential and finally, they didn’t put in the time to manage it properly so they’re not going to get the best results. 4. What types of businesses/campaigns is the Display Network particularly wellsuited for? Because there are so many different variations on the approaches to setting up a GDN campaign, essentially any business could be suited to the GDN – it’s definitely worth testing. Image ads (banner ads) work particularly well when you’ve got a very visual product, or you’ve got a great offer that will grab people’s attention. Particularly if it mentions the word free! Be it a free DVD, a free chapter of your book, a free webinar etc. In terms of product vs service, the general rule of thumb is that the GDN works better for services than it does for e-commerce, however, done well, it can be very profitable for e-commerce too. 5. Are there certain businesses/campaigns that the Display Network probably isn’t a good fit for (and, if so, what are they)? GDN doesn’t work for businesses with really, really small budgets because in order to manage it, you need data, and to get data, you need clicks. In addition to clicks, you also need to be able to track conversions, so it’s also not good for businesses that don’t have any way to track conversions on their website. There needs to be some way of measuring what success is on your website – be it a simple form prospects complete or a product added to your shopping cart – because otherwise, you have no way to find out what’s working & what’s not.
6. Conversions obviously have a lot to do with the landing page, but can using image ads have a big impact on conversion rates? If so, can you share an example or two of how changing an ad has boosted conversion rate? The biggest impact that your image will have on your conversion, other than the offer that it contains, relates to the consistency between the imagery in your display ad(s) and your landing page. The image essentially pre-sells to the person, so if they click on it and then come through to a page with the same or similar imagery, they feel that little bit more at ease. If this is the case, they’re more likely to stick around for that extra few seconds to orientate themselves and hopefully do what you want them to do – ie. buy a product, fill out a form etc. If there’s a jarring difference between the image in the ad and the image on the landing page, alarm bells are going to start going off for the user, which will lead to high bounce rates and wasting a lot of money. The other big benefit of using image ads is the ability to test multiple images to see which attract the most people to your site. This is rarely done – most businesses just run 1 ad (maybe 2) that the CEO or graphic designer has chosen. But that’s typically NOT the ad that performs the best. Take this to the next step… Once you’ve tested 10 ads, now take your 2 winners and create 2 new landing pages that specifically match these images to see which converts better. It’s a great way to truly test the market – it’s market research, not opinion research. You’re testing your prospects, but they don’t know they’re being tested!
Continued on next page
04
10 Common Questions About The Google Content Network
7. Would you recommend having different landing pages set up for Display Network campaigns vs Search Network campaigns in AdWords? What you need to remember about the GDN is that you’ve distracted this person, which is why for the most part, these Ads contain more hype than a search ad. Your landing page needs to be consistent with your ad, so there is certainly an argument for tailoring the landing page for display vs search. Going back to the wine & cheese example – if you’re selling wine via search, then you’re most likely going to have your imagery and text on the landing page revolving around wine. However if you’re targeting cheese lovers on the GDN, you may find it works better to include wine and cheese on your landing page to tie the theme back in, and perhaps use a different headline. There might be subtle differences, however, for the most part, I don’t recommend clients initially set up separate landing pages if budget and resources are limited (which is 99% of the time!). But of course – always continue to test! 8. When you’re running a Display Network campaign, what are the top 3 metrics you’re looking at to gauge how well the campaign is performing and what are you looking for in each?
You can measure this at many levels: campaign, AdGroup, ad creative, & these days, even the keyword that caused the ad to show. It all depends on how granular you want it to be managed. But, keep in mind that the more you manage it, the more profitable your campaign will become. CPA = Total cost / Number of conversions #3 Profit per impression (PPI) This metric doesn’t exist anywhere in your Google AdWords – you have to pull your information from Google and then work it out in a spreadsheet. However, it’s an important metric to know, because it’s the only true way you can accurately judge whether one ad is better than the other as it gives you the complete picture. The following example will show how using CTR or CPA alone can lead you to draw an incorrect conclusion about which ad has given you the best bang for your buck. Which of these ads do you think is better?
#1 Click through rate (CTR) I never judge the overall success of the campaign based on CTR as I don’t know what a good CTR should be from one industry to the next.
#1 – Looking at either Clicks or CTR rate alone, the obvious answer is A.
However, where the CTR rate is important is when you’re testing a raft of different ads, as it gives you information on what ads appeal the most to your customer – what ads do they want to click on. This is only relevant if your ads have big enough differences in them. It’s not ‘testing’ if you have 10 ‘different’ ads but they’ve all got the same hero image, headline and there’s only a few pixels difference!
#2 – Looking at additional CPA (or Cost/Conv) data, I imagine you’ve now swung towards B as it has the lowest Cost/Conv.
CTR% = total clicks / total impressions #2 Cost per action (CPA) This can also be known as ‘cost per lead’ or ‘cost per sale’ and it represents ‘how much each lead costs’
#3 – To get the final profit per impression (PPI) figure, you do need to know your breakeven point (BE) for your conversion. Your breakeven amount is the point at which sales no longer become profitable.
05
by Neil Asher
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Any agency that tells you that GDN is too hard and/or doesn’t work … run away from them, and fast!
I’m a strong believer in using your internal resources in the wisest way possible, and due to the time and effort it takes to become proficient and remain up to speed with the ever changing AdWords landscape, I think your best bet is to use a professional agency for the set-up and ongoing management. How do you pick a good agency? Look for a professional who has expertise in AdWords, a proven track record, and if possible, is recommended by others you know. Any agency that tells you that GDN is too hard and/or doesn’t work … run away from them, and fast! ROARlocal would obviously be delighted to help you with your next GDN campaign.
So if you sell a $100 item that physically costs you $80 to get from your supplier, your breakeven is $20, assuming no other costs. If your cost per conversion is higher than $20 you won’t make a profit running that ad. If however, you sell an eBook for £27 and your actual cost to provide that is essentially zero, then set your breakeven at £27 (as long as you make sales for less than £27 you’re making a profit). Now you know your breakeven (BE) you can work out Profit Per Impression (PPI) using the formula below:
10. Do you have any favorite software/tools that you use to help optimize Display Network campaigns? In addition to your AdWords account and analytics tools such as Crazy Egg and Google Analytics, we use 3 main tools: •
AdWords Editor – a freely available application you can get from Google that not enough people know about and will save you a lot of time.
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Excel - yes, the humble spreadsheet! Pivot tables in particular can be scary to some, but if you’re running AdWords properly, you need the information this will provide.
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ROARlocals’s very own beta testing tool – as this wasn’t available, we had to make one ourselves!
PPI = breakeven – cost per conversion / total impressions (in thousands) As you can see, depending on your BE, the question of which ad is better can look remarkably different to what it did using CTR or CPA alone. Here Ad C is the most profitable, but just how profitable changes depends on the break even point. For example, with a break-even point of £2, advertisement A’s arithmetic would look like this: (2 – 6) / 80 = £-.05 but advertisement C would look more favorable with the following: (2 – .56) / 20 = £.07
3 Big Takeaways
9. What resource(s) do you recommend for someone wanting to learn how to set up and manage a Display Network campaign?
Here are three key points to takeaway from this…
If you want to learn it yourself, then I can recommend Shelly Ellis’s course which is available here and gives you all the information you’ll need to get started with the GDN & the other AdWords features.
1. You can use the GDN to reach prospects who you may not reach using the Search Network, and who are a totally different type of person you’d reach via Search (which requires a very different strategy).
However, there are pitfalls to doing it yourself. As I’ve already mentioned, an incorrect set-up is one of the biggest mistakes people make with GDN, which leads to poor performance and worse, wasting your precious marketing dollars and paying what’s been called ‘AdWords stupidity tax!’. So if you are keen on managing it yourself, at the very least I’d recommend outsourcing the setup to a professional agency such as ROARlocal. Once you’re set up, keep in mind that it’s not just set and forget. You’re going to need to invest a considerable amount of time into training so that you know the AdWords system well enough to make the best possible use out of it, or else you’ll fall victim to another one of the biggest mistakes – not managing your GDN campaign properly. And again, this will lead to poor performance and wasted money.
2. Don’t just run 1-2 ads in your campaign. Run 10 and then take the top 2 performing ads and create new landing pages highly targeted to each ad. 3. Metrics like CTR and CPA are helpful, but can be deceiving. Take the time to calculate PPI to get the complete picture. Want us to look after your google marketing? Then get in touch and tell us how much money you’d like to make!
06
Will Social Media Make You Money? This article is written in response to a heated discussion my business partner Nicola Cairncross and I had about social media… I wrote it to back up my position that social media is not right for most businesses, but as you’ll see I ended up with something MUCH different. First up I think it’s important to say that this is a long(ish) and slightly in-depth article. If you want the short version skip to the bottom For those of you that want the science behind this, then lets begin. As search engines make deals with social sites like Twitter, it’s obvious that social media affects SEO. Matt Cutts, who works in Google’s Web Spam team, once said:
And Google said:
I filmed a video back in May 2010 where I said that we didn’t use “social” as a signal, and at the time, we did not use that as a signal, but now, we’re taping this in December 2010, and we are using that as a signal.
Based on their answers, you can assume that social media plays a role in influencing the search engine results by giving preference based on the authority of the author and the number of times a piece of content is shared on social networking sites.
So the question really isn’t if social media affects SEO. It’s more so on how it affects SEO, right? I’m going to give you a VERY clear and visual demonstration just how it affects things in just a mo, but first, more back ground. In December 1st, 2010 Danny Sullivan interviewed Bing and Google representatives on how Facebook and Twitter may impact search engine rankings. One of the questions he asked was the weighting of Twitter users and links shared in their tweets… Bing responded with: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results.
We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.
And that just makes sense right? All the search engines want to deliver search results that are relevant to the searcher. It’s obvious that the amount of people using social media now will create opportunities for search engines to better understand the intent and the authority of an article based on its interactions through social media. With all that in mind I decided to conduct a simple experiment. My hypothesis was “Given that social cues affect search engine results then it follows that when I am logged out of all my social media accounts I should get different results” So with that in mind I set up 2 computers, one I was logged into my social media accounts (Google +, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest) and one where I was logged out of everything. To make sure that the search results were not influenced by my IP address, I “borrowed” someone else’s WiFi network so I’d be on their network and their IP address. Here are my searches and their results: The first was for “plumber in Manchester” this is a great test as the term is competitive and most good plumbers are using some social media. Up first is the logged in:
Now for the non logged in:
And Google responded with: Yes, we do use [tweeted links and RTs] as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universally by marking how many people shared an article. And in response to the question, “Do you track links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages?” the search engines had the following to say… Bing said: Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages. The most surprising fact is the complete loss of 90% of the results from the logged in. That and the Gumtree listing ranking no 2 (note to self include Gumtree in our clients SEO). What do you draw from this?
07
by Neil Asher
Next I wanted to test a product vs a service (products tend to get less social signals than people). So I chose “indesit washing machine Birmingham” as my search term. Here’s the logged in SERP: and the logged out:
Social media is impacting search engine results and if you want to get more traffic from search engines, you need to: •
Build an active, engaged presence on social networking sites – this isn’t exactly rocket science… If social media engagement is a new ranking factor, you simply can’t benefit if you aren’t there. If you haven’t already, now is the time to build profiles on these sites and invest time in connecting with your followers.
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Optimize your sites for social media sharing – if your sites are built on WordPress, installing a plugin like Sharebar (like the one we have on this post on the left) to enable social sharing is something you have to do. Don’t rely on your users reading good content on your website and then taking the time to navigate to social networks to share it on their own. Instead, you have to provide them with the tools necessary to get the job done in the easiest way.
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Encourage your readers to share your content – smart marketers know that assuming people will take the action you want without you explicitly telling them to do so is a lost cause. You have to use strong calls to action in your posts, encouraging readers to share your content via social networks if they found it useful.
Again VERY interesting results! This time Yell steals the show (again note to self, get products onto Yell). Ok, my final test. This time I wanted to see if social signals would affect an industry where they are traditionally secretive and don’t go online to social media much, so I chose lawyers My reasoning was that if social plays a role then it should make no difference at all if I’m logged in or not, I should get the same results: logged in:
and not logged in:
And most importantly, this doesn’t mean you should give up on traditional SEO. On the contrary you should use traditional SEO in conjunction with social. Everything counts. There will always be people who hate social networking or refuse to build their Google Profile. These people will only ever see the traditional search engine results, so you still need to follow all of the regular SEO best practices.
Just as I suspected no difference at all. Now if you’re a lawyer reading this, here’s a tip. If you want to dominate Google SEO, start using social media, the field is wide open for you! Conclusion You need to get with the times and start expanding your presence on social media sites, instead of endlessly chasing the latest SEO tricks. If you don’t believe me just think about the following quote from Matt Cutts: Don’t look at us where we are today, but look at the direction we are moving and what we are focusing on, the big five are the mobile web, local search, social, blended results in the search engine results and HTML5.
There’s no doubt that traditional SEO is slowly fading in importance when you compare it with the new social optimization indicators. So if you aren’t yet active in the social media world, you better start running because you don’t have time to walk. If you’re not doing social media then you may want to check out our social media services, we have Inga doing an incredible job for our clients.
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Encourage your readers to share your content.
08
How To Get Your Emails Delivered Into Inboxes
by Neil Asher
Most e-mail marketers measure open and click-through rates to gauge the effectiveness of their e-mail marketing campaigns. But too often they overlook factors that reduce the percentage of e-mails that make it into a recipient’s inbox.
Major providers of e-mail addresses to consumers are increasingly focused on rewarding good e-mails by ensuring they land in consumers’ inboxes rather than just blocking bad e-mail. (Those e-mail providers, such as Yahoo, Microsoft and Google are typically called Internet service providers, or ISPs by e-mail marketing experts.) In the past, for example, ISPs were more likely to block a high percentage of a sender’s e-mail if some of its recipients clicked their spam button. But now, if that same sender also takes proactive steps to show its e-mail is legitimate and engages the recipients, ISPs are more likely to deliver a higher percentage of e-mail to the inbox even if some recipients are hitting the spam button.
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Invalid addresses – E-mails that bounce because they were sent to invalid and inactive e-mail accounts.
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User complaints – Recipients click the Report Spam button because they don’t recognize the sender, they don’t remember opting-in to a marketer’s list, the content of the message is no longer relevant to their needs, they don’t like the sender’s e-mail frequency, or they want to unsubscribe from the sender’s list.
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But you still need to ensure you’re taking the right steps that result in better treatment from ISPs. Sender reputation remains the cornerstone of deliverability. Here’s what we’ve learnt about getting e-mails delivered. I’ve laid it out, in what I believe is the order of importance, the following factors ISPs consider in scoring a sender’s reputation.
Domain – Most ISPs augment their IPbased reputation systems with domainbased reputation services that rely on DK/DKIM, or DomainKeys/DomainKeys Identified Mail, which is used to validate the domain name associated with an e-mail message. Under the DK/DKIM system, ISPs can check the coding a sender places in the e-mail header with information the sender has registered with the Domain Name System, to ensure that the e-mail is being sent from the sender’s web address. This is used to guard against e-mails that, for example, may be sent by criminals who attempt to use variations of legitimate domain names in phishing attacks that lure consumers into revealing confidential information like credit card details or account passwords.
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Frequency – ISPs favour senders whose frequency follows regular patterns. Sending too frequently or infrequently will damage a marketer’s reputation.
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Volume – Sudden bursts of high volume can lead to penalties. You should segment your e-mail list into small groups and stagger delivery patterns so that all e-mail marketing messages don’t hit ISPs at the same time.
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Size – E-mail messages should be 10 to 60 kilobytes and never include attachments (plain text consistently gets the best results for us).
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Content – Even though ISPs’ text filters are not as strong as they once were, words such as “free” can prevent an e-mail message from getting delivered, especially if the other tips on this list are not followed.
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Third-party reputation services – ISPs rely on certification and accreditation services to vouch that a sender is legitimate.
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Engagement – ISPs monitor the number of recipients who open and click on a sender’s e-mail messages, along with the number who ignore or delete the sender’s messages. Thus, sending messages to inactive subscribers can hurt a marketer’s reputation and deliverability rates. Message – PURGE your list. The days of list size being equated to dick size are long gone.
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Spam trap hits – So-called spam traps are old e-mail addresses that their users have abandoned. ISPs monitor these e-mail addresses even though no one uses them, and sending to these addresses results in a lower effective delivery rate for the marketer.
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Sending infrastructure – Marketers can help to maintain good reputations with ISPs by sending e-mails compliant with RFC standards and ensuring content and links are not misleading or otherwise inappropriate. RFCs, or request for comments, is shorthand for rules for e-mail and other Internetrelated operations.
As you can see there is a LOT you can do to improve your sending reputation. 100% of people reading this can go to their email client and delete all the bad e-mail addresses. Just doing that will result in a 20 – 25% bump in deliverability.
09
Entrepreneur Insights
This month you are interviewing Rockstar mentor John McKeown John started out in financial services in 1982 before running his own Independent Financial Advice business for 20 years. He has helped launch a number of start-up businesses, including an innovative retailing service for one of the world’s biggest and best known logistics operators. He is currently working with the tax experts at a leading UK accounting and business advisory firm, using his financial experience to help SMEs
What one thing about your childhood, personality or upbringing do you think had the biggest influence on your becoming an entrepreneur? I remember being a child of the richest family living in the slums of Birmingham and then moving to a “New Town” Council estate and becoming the poorest overnight. Albeit, I was then 10 years of age and it was my first experience of an Inside toilet and bathroom! – I hated being poor and resolved never to be poor again How did you do at school and what did you most love or hate about school? I was Ok – nothing special, I went to senior school on the council estate in the “New Town” but I do remember during my Sociology” A” level course looking at “Social Mobility” I was told by the teacher that I would never move up more than one social class level and earn decent money or have assets. He said that the empirical stats dictated that I had 5% chance of becoming a millionaire. I have never forgotten it What would you say was the ONE THING that made the difference in your professional success? I am stubborn and should know better when to give up and change tack – I just never seem to “give up” I do however listen! What ONE THING would you do differently, knowing what you know now? I would have believed in myself a lot earlier and trusted myself more. That is not to say that I am right or even making correct decisions, it is just about listening to your finer voice and trusting your own judgement a wee bit more What really gets you buzzed NOW about being in business? What fulfills you most? The buzz I get is being out there running a business that I want to become more successful and in business you have good days, bad days, days when you think everything is fantastic to get knocked back again 24 hours later – To be honest, it is the thought of failure that motivates me every day, I want my business to work!
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