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Over the years we have been seeing basic improvements with Constant Contact’s online emailing tool. Recently, after some major upgrades, YourHost.com has began offering Constant Contact as a economical alternative to the Market Manager – Blue Hornet solution. Both systems have their place, but Constant Contact is by far more user friendly and less frustrating to the basic user. Write us if your you want info on the differences.

Last month we rolled out the unique Constant Contact – ShopSite Pro API integration tool. We are now offering this tool to our customers  Constant Contact.  CC API allows their ShopSite customers who purchase products to be automatically added to email list at the Checkout. This will save the web developer many hours of export – import time.

In addition to the API tool, we have found that Constant Contact can be very fluid yielding a positive customer experience. In testing and supporting Constant Contact, we want to point out one item that can come up that the average person might miss when sending out the final email. First thing you want to do is to add your friends or office associates to the test group and then start composing your email. Remember, before you send, test, test, test your emails. A real pro takes from 2-7 hrs to prepare, test, and send out a quality offering or newsletter. When you’re done composing an email you might find that the "text" part of the message receiveds into the inbox appears jumbled-up and does not look professional. This is a common occurrence with any good email system as it is just that "text" which the system is electronically producing text by stripping out all the HTML from your composed email… get it? Don’t worry about it as you soon will and just follow the next steps. What you need to do is go to your Constant Contact text editor, select the "advanced" link and turn on text editing. Then reformat your text so it looks decent with the proper spacing and layout. Then, pick a person in your test group, select to send text only, and send a a number of tests emails until it looks good. We are also finding out that Constant Contact offers  city and statewide classes to teach the  basic and advanced usage and most of which are free. It is ok to pay for some of these as you know you get what you pay for.  We are encouraging our readers to use a  good solid email system so you can regularly touch your groups of customers and organizations. Enjoy your use of Constant Contact and happy emailing.

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Every time we turn around the cost of sending a letter has gone up. 41…42….44 cents. Bulk mailing has also increased in price.

More and more people have email on their phones and PDA’s, which helps you to keep your customer’s informed about the products and services you are offering. Email can cost as little as 1/2 cent  per email to send, which is far less than postal fees.

How do you write a good email or newsletter? There are many factors that go into continuous successful email campaigns. It all starts with the email system that you use. ISP’s are keeping close track on who is sending junk and abusing the way they get mail. You want to find a host that uses a system that has a good solid ISP reputation.

Bounced emails? Most people gauge the quality of your sending email system by how counting many get successfully opened and how many get bounced. Now days most ISP’s , Corporate systems are filtering email that have bad reputations into a type of "Black Hole" that does not show up as a bounced email. They also build their own database of who does not play well in the sandbox, and make sure they are penalized for it.

So, how do you make sure your system is working properly? Test it. There is only one true way to test it how effective and safe your system is and that is by letting your hosting company send emails from different seed email boxes. Sounds complicated? It is not but it really opens your eyes to how successful your campaigns can be.

So, Don’t Go Postal on your Customers, use a good solid email system that uses best practices and has a good reputation.

We will talk more about Reputation, and sending.

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Trivia -

Question: How long does it take to make a solid email campaign from start to finish, not including testing?

Answer: 6-12 hours!! Really? Yep it does.

Email blasts, Email, email filtering, Marketing, sending, traffic

Previously I touched on a few common things that SPAM filters look for in all  incoming messages. Understanding how these filters work is the first step in learning how to reach your customers and avoid having your good emails deleted along with the bad. One of he big things that can get an email marked as SPAM is content filtering.

Content filtering is when emails can be named as spam based on the words that are in either the email or the subject line. Check your own personal email junk box and see how many of those emails have the word “viagra” in them. That’s content filtering at its finest.

What about spammers who try using clever ways of spelling things. Luckily these filters over time become smarter and smarter. In the past words like “mortgage” and “refinance” would automatically get you filtered. Now these filters will monitor the emails you send to your junk box and adjust themselve to filter out similar content.

How does this affect someone sending emails? Once you are aware of the pitfalls that go into email marketing you will know exactly what to do to reach your loyal customer base. With YourHost.com on your side you can have succesful email marketing campaigns.

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How do SPAM filters work? Spam filters are ever changing automated programs that use algorithms (or complex rules)  to determine if words are SPAM or not. BTW What does SPAM stand for? -”Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act”. ”

Regarding SPAM the rule is,  ”If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it’s a duck.”, then it probably is SPAM.

The ultimate goal is to understand the classic SPAM triggers are so we as editors and senders can avoid them getting caught in SPAM or Content Filtered Traps (Content Filtering In part II).  Some of the most common SPAM triggers are and not limited to;  Large Email broadcasts sent from unapproved lists (Opt-In Part III), SPAM Traps, Spam Complaints, sending emails to Unknown email boxes, Subject line words and characters, and Open or incorrect HTML tags (Part III). These are all small pieces to the larger puzzle of inbox delivery, coupled with Content Filtering rules.

Be cautious in changing your quantity of email sending habits known as “Volume Triggers” because you can get BlackListed from this. This is one of the number one important factors to consider when sending newsletters. As the volume of emails grows major ISP’s use volume triggers to keep monitor the senders activities. Even if a sender were to get white listed, if they sent 500 emails one month and then sent 50,000 the following month, the ISP’s filter would be alarmed and your emails might get blocked or throtttled (seriously delayed).

Spammers have developed programs that can electronically crawl the internet and look for exposed email addresses in the HTML content, especially in Forms. As a defense for this  major ISP’s have what they call SPAM traps. Most companies, like Gmail and Hotmail, who offer email addresses require that they be checked on a regular basis. When a subscriber cancels their service or does not log in for an extended period of time the email service provider will take that email address and turn it into a spam trap. Providers will also at times make email addresses for the soul purpose of using it as a spam trap. Sending mail to a spam trap will automaticaly hurt your ability to mail to that particular ISP. You could even get Blacklisted.

Some website have places where the visitor is forced to put in an email address. In these situations more often that not the visitor to that website will protect their information by entering a fake email address. I know this because i do it all the time.  If you send to an email address that is not valid you will receive a permanent bounce. Those are known as unknown users and mail sent to them can get you put on an ISP’s blacklist.

It is very important to keep a clean list. I have spoken about list hygiene in the past. It really can make a huge difference in how your email marketing campaign performs and is something that should always be kept in mind.

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The more email address you have to send out to the greater your ROI right? WRONG!

A large part of what helps your company make it into a customer’s inbox is what’s known as list hygiene. An accurate list will not stay active forever. The SureSend feature in the Bluehornet email marketing system allows you scrub your list. Doing so removes any and all unknown users which will greatly improve deliverability as well as effectiveness of your sending’s.

There are two main types of unknown users. They are those that were on your list who may have changed email service providers or just cancelled their service all together and those who gave out a fake email address to begin with.

Whats the danger? Sometimes an ISP will take an old unused account and turn it into a spam trap. Consistently mailing to such an account can negatively affect your digital reputation.

At times websites will require an email address in order to use a certain feature. To protect their information people will at times put down fake email addresses. This can be avoided but using a double opt-in system but having bounced emails negatively affects your deliverability.
BlueHornet’s suresend tools can scrub your list and remove these harmful elements. Doing this not only helps keep your deliverable high but bear in mind that your list will become more effective. If you have any questions about how you can streamline you email list be sure to ask one of the knowledgeable email specialist at YourHost.com.

Happy Sending!

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Keeping in communication with both your potential and current customers has been and still is a vital aspect of business. Sending newsletters, notifications, and general letters just to let customers know you care, should be a general practice for all companies.

However those SPAM filters that protectour inboxes from day to day can at times act like a duel edged sword, filtering out some good mail with the bad. “How do I show the ISP’s that I am not a spammer?” you may ask.  The answer is by using best practices to protect your Digital Reputation.

What is a digital reputation?

Your company is represented by what you send. Reputation has more importance on it than content filtering did in the past. Just like you own credit rating can affect your ability to make certain purchases your online reputation will follow you around for a long time and affect what you can and can’t do.

How is reputation built?

Your digital reputation is built and changed each and every time you send and are based on a number of factors such as; Your email system, the server it’s being sent from, links and text within both the email and the header, the ISP’s gateway server, bad email addresses, span complaints, spam traps, the mailing volume, unknown users, blacklists, list management practice, IP authentication and reputation, co-registration, unconfirmed opt-in, unsubscribe rate, and 3rd party redirects.

In Order to be a low risk sender with a good reputation you must continually assess the changing standards and your email marketing standards. A few ISP’s will now actually allow you to access information about how your sending look to them.

In a shared environment you share a reputation with everyone you’re sending with. Would you let someone share you social security number? Of course not! When picking a service to email from I would be wise to take in consideration the standards the company sending company upholds.

About now most people would be thinking “Wow is there anything I can’t do to positively affect my digital reputation?” It does take some time but you can build up a good reputation. All of these standards must be looked at as a protection and not a restriction. With out them each of us would receive so much email each day that you wouldn’t be able to easily find anything of interest to you.

Integrity should be a big part of every business. If that integrity carries over into collecting and sending emails, then with a little help from YourHost.com you can have high deliverability and successful email campaigns.

Happy Sending

Brandon McKinney

Email best practices, digital, Email, Marketing, reputation, sending