Archive for the ‘Email Industry News’ Category
Posted by admin on July 22nd, 2011
When Google unveiled Priority Inbox for Gmail last year, email marketers of the world took notice. Recently, Gmail introduced a method for displaying sender authentication details and additional inbox options that could once again impact the way users engage with marketing messages.
Being able to see sender authentication details will help users minimize the risk of opening a malicious email such as a spoof, phishing email (see example below), or even a virus. There will also be warning messages if Gmail suspects the message to be part of a phishing scam. For more information see Google’s blog post, “Protect yourself from scams by knowing who really emailed you.”
Gmail will also introduce a new option to “Try on a new inbox.” This feature will gives users the ability to view their inbox with different levels of filtering applied: Classic, Priority Inbox, Important First, Unread First, or Starred First.
- Classic – This is the default inbox style most people are used to. In the Classic inbox, messages are ordered chronologically, with the most recent email at the top.
- Priority Inbox – Important and unread messages appear at the top of your inbox, then starred messages, then everything else.
- Important first – This style puts important mail at the top of the page (both read and unread messages). Everything else is in its own section at the bottom of your inbox.
- Unread first – Simple: unread mail at the top; everything else at the bottom.
- Starred first – Starred messages at the top; everything else at the bottom.
For email marketers, this should serve notice that inboxes are becoming more and more intelligent in an effort to ease the sense of email overload so common to recipients. Hotmail, for instance, offers a similar option to toggle between different variations of the inbox, in addition to a “sweep” feature that lets users quickly sort all messages (and future messages) from a sender into a designated location.
Features such as these offer both a unique challenge and potential benefits to marketers. Not only have recipients become more knowledgeable about how email works, but their inboxes have made it much easier to sort through their messages. Keep sending messages with valuable content to achieve “priority” status with your recipients, and let the Spammers weed themselves out of view with a little help from today’s intelligent inboxes.
Posted by Matt Rotroff on September 29th, 2010
Earlier this week we went over the ins and outs of Gmail’s new Priority Inbox. The biggest challenge the new inbox will pose will be continuing to get your message seen by your email subscribers. Many of the tried and true email marketing best practices that you should currently be using will increase the likelihood of your message being seen by your audience.
Consistency - Be consistent with how often you’re sending as well as the “feel” of your content. Everyone likes something they are familiar with and can rely on.
Relevancy - How many email messages do you get daily that you consistently check? Probably not too many, but there’s a reason you check the ones you do, they interest you. Once again put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and make sure each mailing is not only consistent with relevant content, but also widespread enough to catch the eye of people interested in different areas of your services or products.
The Basics – Don’t forget where we started. Your reputation, delivery and use of best practices need to stay intact while focusing on the points above. You need to make it to the inbox before worrying how to save your heated seat there.
Overall, Gmail Priority Inbox is another flavor of categorizing your email messages. It gives the user the ability to separate what they feel is important and leave the rest to either be deleted or read at some other time. The mailbox being separated into different sections may steer early interests away – people are for the most part still used to the traditional list style of their inbox. Whether the new Priority Inbox becomes widely used or not, it is still wise to make sure your email campaigns are as effective as possible.
Posted by Matt Rotroff on September 27th, 2010
So how is Gmail’s new Priority Inbox going to affect you? Well, the concept is not new, we’ve been hearing about engagement and relevancy for a while now. The new Hotmail, general smart filter implementations and now the new Priority Inbox at Gmail all reinforce the need for relevant and engaging content in your campaigns.
If the release of Priority Inbox tells us anything, it’s that the challenge to get your email messages seen by subscribers will become increasingly difficult. Over time, most email clients will give the ability to categorize mail or mark some as relevant and leave the rest to decay. That cold and lonely decay box doesn’t sound very appealing. You want the heated seats while you wait for your clicks and opens, and the way to get there is by supplying relevant content.
The new inbox consists of 3 tiers, an ‘Important’ section, followed by a ‘Starred’ section and lastly an ‘Everything Else’ section. Gmail uses your recent mailbox behaviors to decide what gets flagged important. Your email priority can be manually raised by the user, allowing emails that Gmail missed to be placed in the important folder. The priority function works on a simple ‘+ or -’ system, allowing the user to raise or lower the importance of an item. Items rated with high importance will display with a small yellow tab next to the subject line and moved to the ‘Important’ folder after refreshing.
The second tier down is your ‘Starred’ section. Only emails that you manually mark with a star will show up here. Moving an email to the ‘Starred’ section does not place it in the ‘Important’ category.
Lastly is the ‘Everything Else’ section, which will consist mostly of email messages that are not interacted with on a regular basis.
The main topic that stems from all of this is, of course, how to keep yourself out of the “Everything Else” category. Check back later this week for part two, to learn about the best practices that you can utilize to keep your messages important in the eyes of the recipient.
Posted by admin on July 7th, 2010
SubscriberMail has announced plans to adopt the new eec email marketing standards that will standardize the terms and definitions used in measuring email marketing reporting and provide consistent metrics throughout the email industry.
Currently there is no standard definition for most industry measurements in email campaigns. Most email marketing providers develop their own definitions for some of the most commonly used metrics like render rate and click-throughs.
The eec has worked over the past two years with more than three dozen email service providers and industry professionals to develop the standards. The standardization will help create a common language amongst providers and make it possible to create benchmark results, compare data between systems and brands, facilitate testing across systems and databases, and gain internal resources based on industry-wide data.
SubscriberMail was included on the eec Reporting Leadership list and plans to have complete adoption by December 2010. For more information on the eec email accuracy standards, click here.
Posted by Matt Rotroff on May 28th, 2010
The inbox is changing again, and Hotmail’s plethora of new features is returning the spotlight to inbox engagement. Users wanted a cleaner inbox experience and that’s exactly what they’re going to get. While the new mailbox at Hotmail is made up of many unique and convenient features, there are also a few that will challenge your expertise in email marketing. Microsoft SmartScreen, a virtual broom called ‘Sweep’, and the 10-day junk mail decay will certainly leave you “earning your place” for rights to that inbox.
In Microsoft’s walk-through of the new Hotmail, we see that even opt-in mailings are being treated as “legitimate junk”. We’ve talked about it for months now, a good reputation isn’t the only thing you need anymore to stay on top of the email game. It’s time to re-evaluate your mailing practices and incorporate relevant content.
Keeping yourself in the front row of the recipient’s mailbox is now going to require interaction, you know… that thing everyone talks about? Inbox engagement. That means stepping back and taking a look at the campaigns you’re mailing out today, and deciding are they as relevant as they can be? Would you click on the links? Is your subject line going to entice someone to open? It’s important the answer to those questions is yes. So get your ESP ready and round up your Marketing team – It’s time to engage!
More on the new Hotmail
