Email Rendering

Email is a very versatile medium that can include customer acquisition (lead or sales), retention, cross-selling, up-selling, and more. But most everything out there that provides guidelines, best-practices, and advice on the application of the channel to your marketing efforts are largely geared toward bigger businesses.

DNS Records

Technical standards through which ISPs and other mail gateway administrators can establish the true identity of an email sender. Examples of proposed authentication standards include: SPF (PO Box, AOL), Sender-ID (Microsoft), DomainKeys (Yahoo), and DKIM (Cisco and Yahoo)

SPF - SPF (Sender Policy Framework) compares an email sender’s actual IP address to a list of IP addresses authorized to send mail from that domain. This list is published in the domain’s DNS record.

(v=spf1 mx a:72.72.722.722 -all)

Sender-ID - An authentication standard proposed by Microsoft, that compares an email sender’s “From” address to the IP address authorized to send email from that domain.

DomainKey - Email authentication system proposed by Yahoo! that checks an encrypted “key” embedded in each email sent against a list of public records to positively confirm the identity of the sender.

(a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; q=dns; s=key; d=domain.com; b=MK7Xo4FZvHKocEBGdLGS
ivZYLKkQGdBHIg5lzMsOhpdkDmdFR2g4U9J/FgJbFHIZFePGsqrOjbadxW2fQUt5KVDv4VwxjNLz3VH7g
cxaP6gXEV2pzjkJewpqUw1AqonZZBar4xfSDNQcbk7P5zO8IWcNxR2LfmUp3dMNVVaNmSY=;)

DKIM - Domain keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a cryptographic email authentication method, making it possible to detect email forgery (“phishing”) by validating that the message actually comes from the domain that it claims to have come from. Signing outgoing messages with DKIM helps senders protect their domain and brand reputation against deceptive abuse by spammers.

(v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; s=key; d=domain.com;
h=Date:From:Reply-To:To:Message-ID:Subject:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding;i=newsletter@domain.com;bh=l/x9QxOt7C4DFAVVxMLIMWJFDbc=;
b=S/rTNu+o1XGpUkApy/nkyQZFl7K5HF1teOVFNW5uWKqmrbp6EuJ2gPuUYn68U7CjpVTBoyJTLlP6
5HN7lxA6f94W7zoI5uXbI5tbgiRVDNoH9Gkx0pC1DZyZh6N6iKDyXli+lwkcIWe+hgicKqcBGUtK
ewXD15bEE055GmpiiwA=)

Layout and trends

The layout of an email is as important as any other communication. Usually, an email appears in portrait requiring the recipient to browse down the page. Keep your layout simple and free from complex tables by avoiding unnecessary embedded rows and columns.

Size - Given the differences in access to the internet, it is sensible to keep emails small to keep download times to a minimum. Despite the increasing prevalence of Broadband it is still a good idea to keep the weight of your HTML emails down as large messages are more likely to get caught in Spam filters. As a guideline messages should not exceed the 100k in total file size.

Coding - It is advisable to create a test list which should include an Gmail account and Outlook as well as the top 10 email domains or ISP’s (Yahoo, Hotmail, Thunderbird etc) on your list. Be mindful of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Don’t link to external style sheets. Also use an HTML validator. HTML validators make sure your message uses properly formed HTML.

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="650" align="center">
 <tr><td height="20"></td></tr>
 <tr>
  <td width="650">
   <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="650">
    <tr>
     <td valign="top" width="10" style=""></td>
     <td valign="top" style=""><span style=""></span></td>
    </tr>
   </table>
  </td>
 </tr>
</table>

Email ‘Width’ (650 / 750 px) - Most email clients have a ‘preview pane’, which can usually be found below or to the right of the list of emails. When this pane sits below the email list you have on average around 400 pixels of the newsletter’s content visible before you have to scroll below the email fold or click it open to reveal all the content. This 400 pixel-space is the most important area for promoting your content.

  • 400 px (the preview pane)
  • 650 px (the content)
  • 100 px (the space, borders, shadows etc.)

Email Glossary

Delivery rate - The percentage of email that gets delivered as intended. Used to measure deliverability and list hygiene.

Open rate - The percentage of delivered email messages opened by recipients. Tracked over time to measure customer interest or engagement.

Click-Through Rate - The percentage of recipients who click on one or more links in the email. Measures customer interest, offer quality and engagement. Total number of clicks on email link(s) divided by the number of emails sent including multiple clicks by a unique user.

  • Total - the total number of times a link has been clicked
  • Unique - the number of recipients who have clicked on a link
  • Viral - click-throughs resulting from forwarded emails

Referrals - Expressed as a total number or a percentage of delivered emails, the number of times recipients clicked a forward-to-a-friend link in the email. Measures customer interest, word of mouth and offer quality.

Call to action - The link or body copy in an email message directing the customer to the action. Actions may include click, download, submit, or purchase.

Conversion rate - A conversion can be defined as a lead, a sale, or a download. Take the total number of conversions, however you define a conversion (e.g., a sale, a downloaded whitepaper, watched a video) in an email campaign, and divide it by the total number of delivered emails.

Confirmed Opt-in (Double Opt-in) - The process that double-checks the desire to be included on an email list after a primary registration occurs. This is typically executed via an email that requires the subscriber to click on a confirmation link, which also serves as a method of positively confirming the validity of the email address.

Opt-out - Process of declining to receive email from a business source or unsubscribing if the recipient is already on a mailing list.

Spam - Widely-used slang reference to unsolicited commercial email messages (examples: first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries).

SPAM Complaint Rate - Spam complaints happen when the recipients of your emails click the “Reports as Spam” link, sending off a signal to their ISP that your email was not wanted or asked for. Monitoring your spam complaint rate meticulously to make certain that the rate stays down and knowing what caused the jump if it makes a spiral climb, is very important.

How looks a SPAM complaint? Click here (RO)

Feedback Loops - A reporting mechanism whereby an ISP provides the sender with data including unsubscribes and spam complaints

Bounce - An email message not delivered promptly is said to have bounced. There is a variety of reasons why emails can bounce, including incorrect email address, full mailbox, offensive content, etc. See hard bounce and soft bounce. The percentage of sent emails that failed delivery. Tracked to measure deliverability and list quality.

Hard Bounce - A message sent to an invalid, closed, or nonexistent email account.

Soft Bounce - Email sent to an active email address but is not delivered. Often, the problem is temporary — the server is down or the recipient’s mailbox is full.

Whitelisting and Reputation

Permission is the key to all deliverability. Permission based email marketing can be a powerful business and online marketing tool but it does need to be done properly and ethically.

Whitelist - Advance-authorized list of email addresses, held by an ISP, subscriber, or other email service provider, which allows email messages to be delivered regardless of spam filters. See also enhanced white list. A list of trusted IP addresses and domains that allows all mail from these addresses to be delivered, bypassing spam filters.

Blacklist - A list of e-mail addresses, for example, of unknown senders, to which somebody does not want to permit access. Many companies use blacklists to reject inbound email, either server level, or before it reaches the recipient’s in-box.

Reputation (Sender reputation): ISPs use a company’s reputation to determine whether to deliver its messages to the inbox, the junk folder or not at all.

Postmaster

AOL - AOL continually evaluates standards that provide enhancements to spam fighting for AOL members and the Internet community as a whole. Since the significant majority of spam is forged, AOL uses Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records.

You can visit http://postmaster.info.aol.com for more information.

Hotmail/MSN - The company is embracing email authentication technologies like the Sender ID Framework (SIDF) and continues to invest in antispamming, antispoofing and antiphishing initiatives. Microsoft uses a new content filtering technology called SmartScreen, which has a sophisticated filtering system.

You can visit http://postmaster.msn.com for more information.

Yahoo - Yahoo uses a content filter called SpamGuard. SpamGuard automatically directs messages that are considered unsolicited bulk mail and puts them into a separate, “bulk mail” folder within their member’s mail account.

You can visit http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster for more information.