DIGITAL MARKETING LEVEL 1

EMAIL MARKETING AND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

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Email Marketing

QuIck Email Marketing facts: Email opens on mobile devices increased by 34% from April 2011 through september 2011 as compared to the previous six-month period. mobile email usage is at its lowest on monday, desktop email usage is at its lowest on Sunday, and webmail email usage is at its lowest on wednesday. “Finance” and “shopping” show above average webmail views as compared to other industries, at 49% and 48%, respectively. the industries leading the way in mobile email views are, not surprisingly, “social networking” (27%), “publishing” (26%), and “entertainment” (27%). Source: Return Path Report Whether you are new to email marketing or have been refining your email strategies for years, there are seven initiatives that are essential for your continued email marketing success. 1. Increase Your Segmentation Efforts Email marketing data offers incredible segmentation power and the ability to take advantage of small audience segments that might otherwise be financially or technically difficult to reach. If you haven’t started segmenting your list and sending more targeted messages based on recipient data or behaviors, start today. Most of the research in the email industry indicates that segmentation yields significant gains in email conversions. Some typical strategies for segmentation include: Geography—This is an easy, fairly obvious segmentation strategy. For example, your customer in Florida is unlikely to be interested in a snowmobile. And your customer in Minnesota probably isn’t interested in a jet ski—in the winter, anyway. Geography can also be a powerful indicator of buying patterns and other influences on the purchase cycle. Take the high tech industry, for example. In high 2

tech pockets like Silicon Valley early adopters are far more common. Demographics—This is another easy one, and can make a lot of sense. For example, we know men and women can interpret information quite

7 Email Strategies 1.Think differently. Younger vs. older audiences take in information in different ways as well. Job title and function—Are you emailing potential users with no—or all the—buying power? An owner or CFO may want to know about ROI. A middle manager may just want to make his or her job easier. And an engineer or programmer wants to find better ways to work. And so on. Purchasing frequency—Less frequent purchasers may require a time- sensitive offer to encourage them to act. Or maybe you want to reward frequent buyers with exclusive privileges via email. Monetary spending—Adjust resources so you’re dedicating your efforts toward customers who spend the most money with your company. If you have been segmenting your email audiences, don’t stop. Try to find new ways to segment and look at segmentation based on historical email activity, perhaps treating people who are frequent “clickers” or “openers” differently. 2. Rethink and Refine Your Opt-in Campaigns Perform a check-up on your opt-in processes. Review everything from the data fields you’re collecting to the confirmation email you are sending afterwards. Small changes can mean big gains in new audiences, as well as setting the proper expectations for subscribers. • Can you increase opt-ins by reducing unneeded data collection? • Are you prominently directing Web visitors to sign up for email? Can you place this on more pages, or in locations that are more visible?

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• Do you clearly define significant and relevant benefits for subscribers signing up for your email? Does the email you send confirming the opt- in restate the benefits? • Do you set expectations and ask subscribers to “add this address to your safe list” in the opt-in process? The language you use, the support graphics, and the staging techniques you employ can make a huge difference—between being totally ignored and creating an evolving, dynamic relationship that can enhance database precision, enrich dialogue, and help you showcase a larger scope of services. Furthermore, if you’re not using strict opt-in policies, start now. As recipients continue to tire of unwanted email, you’ll continue to see declining response rates if you are not using an opt-in-only process. 3. Clean Your Lists and Try to Maintain Them Perform a thorough cleaning of your email lists. This does not necessarily mean blindly deleting a bunch of names, but rather using segmentation strategies to treat historically inactive recipients differently than people who are actively opening and clicking on your email messages. Here are some suggestions for periodically cleaning house: • Take a close look at your lists and list segments. Are there some list segments you are never using? If so, clean them out. • Review lists of people who have not responded to messages in the past few months and contact them in a different way than the rest of your list. If they still do not respond, consider removing them. Remember, today’s email success is about quality and not quantity. • Review any new list segments you may want to make. Are there any ways to segment and strengthen messages to various groups? If so, segment them now and start communicating more effectively to those groups. 4. Design for Disabled Images and Preview Panes Audiences are increasingly looking at your messages without images turned on. (It may not be their choice, but rather the default of their email client.) Make sure your messages are still readable and compelling without images. This may mean designing messages using fewer images, or including a short list of articles at the top of your newsletter. This technique works well for people who are viewing your message through a preview pane as well. Making 4

sure enough content is placed in the upper right hand of the message to give recipients something to act upon will be important to success rates. Without designing your messages with this in mind, your campaigns may end up looking like this to recipients: 5. Institute Authentication Standards Email authentication has reached critical mass, and will continue to grow in importance for email delivery. If you haven’t already, make sure you set up SPF records, Sender ID records, and mail using Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication whenever possible. Proper use of these authentication methods will help your deliverability and will contribute to building a positive reputation for your domain. Your IT department and/or email service provider should be able to provide specific steps on how to set up these authentication methods. They can also verify which authentication methods are set up already if you’re not sure. 6. Expand Your Email Testing Efforts One of the best ways to refine your email strategy is through testing. If you’re a beginner at this, the simplest form of testing is splitting your email list into A and B segments, and sending each segment a message where one element, and only one element, is varied: subject line, copy, image, layout, offer, call to action, etc. Then analyze the results to determine which variation was more successful in increasing response, and optimize future messages accordingly. Whenever you’re testing, remember the six steps for email testing success: 1. Ask a question 2. Form a theory 3. Create the test 4. Segment the list 5. Measure and analyze results 6. Make changes If you’re already a testing pro, or have performed some tests in previous years, keep refining what you have learned to continually 5

improve your campaign performance. As with many of the other initiatives we’ve outlined, small and continual gains can provide major dividends. For more information about email testing, see the chapter “Email Testing: A Checklist for Success.” If you’ve run out of testing ideas, call SubscriberMail and we’ll be happy to work with you to develop some new ideas! 7. Rethink Tired Campaigns Marketers are increasingly seeing the power that email marketing can have when used properly as part of the marketing mix. We encourage you to go beyond the status quo with your over-arching email efforts and aggressively build your campaigns to deliver better results and new opportunities. Rethink campaigns that have run for awhile, and look at analytics to uncover new avenues of content or functionality that your audiences may respond to. Email offers a unique platform to quickly and cost-effectively change campaigns for the better. Take advantage of these unique abilities to maximize your efforts.

Easily Elicit the Information You Need At signup—Collect information and ask your subscribers what is most useful to them while they’re signing up to receive emails from you. This can be handled several ways. 1. Make the info required in order to sign up. This is advisable only if the information is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, you risk losing signups. 2. Include the additional fields but make them optional. However, be careful not to add too many fields to the page or the mere length of the form may scare people away. 3. After they’ve signed up, ask them to provide additional information on a separate page to avoid losing signups. Re-register—If you’ve been publishing for a while, periodically ask subscribers to re-register. Advise them that you want to make sure their info is up to date. This is also a good way to make sure your list is fresh. 6

Survey—Send an email and ask subscribers to complete a short survey. To increase response, offer a premium or fun prize.

Images Images are obviously an important aspect of your design as they draw interest and help communicate your message. So the bigger the better, right? Not necessarily. There are several factors to consider when using large images. One is load time. Large images take more time to download than smaller images. While a growing number of Internet users connect to the Internet with broadband, you will certainly annoy and possibly lose the interest of someone with a slower connection who has to wait for your images to download. One way around this is to slice a large image into smaller images. Another aspect to consider is how your email message will look to someone who has images disabled in their email client. If you don’t have any text “above the fold” and your reader has images disabled, all they will see when they first open or preview your message is a large gray box. For readers to even view your message, you are relying on them to take an action and enable images to be downloaded. If readers don’t have a compelling reason to do so, they may very easily discard your message without reading it. Consider interspersing text with images and using tags. To be sure your message accomplishes its goal in all situations, preview your message with images off so you know exactly how other people will see it, and make any necessary design changes.

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Introduction

If you send enough email campaigns, you’ll inevitably run into spam filter issues. According to ReturnPath, only about 79% of permission-based emails sent by legitimate email marketers reach the inbox. Spam filters and ISPs are working harder than ever to reduce inbox irrelevance, so it’s important that you understand what spam is, how spam filters and firewalls work, and some of the steps you can take to avoid being flagged.

What is Spam?

There are a variety of definitions and interpretations of the word itself, but at its core, spam is unsolicited, irrelevant email, sent in bulk to a list of people. For example, let’s say you purchased a list of email addresses from a local business organization. On the surface, that list of addresses seems like it could contain some great prospects for your business, and you want to send them an email with a relevant offer they can’t refuse. But, since those people didn’t give you explicit permission to contact them, sending an email to that list would be considered spam.

Spam laws

As an ESP, we are required to enforce spam laws, not just because it's a legal obligation, and not just because it's the right thing to do. Spam negatively impacts deliverability rates, and we want to make sure your emails reach their recipients. We have some very strict rules that must be adhered to in all countries, but you may find that your country has additional requirements. We’ll cover the laws in the United States and Canada in this guide, but please refer to this article for details on MailChimp’s requirements and requirements of the laws in place internationally. If you have any questions regarding the details of the laws or any potential legal ramifications, we encourage to you to consult an attorney who is familiar with this topic. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 became law on January 1, 2004. According to the FTC, if you violate the law, you could be fined a lot of money for each offense—that means you'll incur a fine for each email address on your list. ISPs around the country have already successfully sued spammers for 8

millions of dollars under this law. If you send commercial email (generally sales or promotional content), you should familiarize yourself with the requirements of CAN-SPAM. A few key points of the law include: • Never use deceptive headers, From names, reply-to addresses, or subject lines. • Always provide an unsubscribe link. • The unsubscribe link must work for at least 30 days after sending. • You must include your physical mailing address. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) went into effect on July 1, 2014 and carries penalties of $1-10M per violation. CASL is very similar to the CAN-SPAM Act, but has some minor differences and covers all electronic messages, not just email. This article details the basics of CASL.

Spam Filters

Spam filters consider a long list of criteria when judging the spamminess of an email. They’ll weigh each factor and add them up to assign a spam score, which helps determine whether a campaign will pass through the filter. If the score exceeds a certain threshold, your email will get flagged as spam and go straight to the junk folder. Each spam filter functions a bit differently, though, and “passing” scores are typically determined by individual server administrators. This means that an email could pass through Spam Filter A without issue, but get flagged by Spam Filter B. As for that list of spammy criteria, it’s constantly growing and adapting, based on—at least in part—what people identify as spam with the Mark as spam or This is junk button in their inbox. Spam filters even sync up with each other to share what they’ve learned. There’s no magic formula—and spam filters don’t publish details regarding their filtering practices—but there are steps you can take to avoid landing in your subscribers’ junk folder. • Campaign metadata: Spam filters want to know that you’re acquainted with the person receiving the email. We recommend using merge tags to personalize the To: field of your campaign, sending through verified domains, and asking recipients to add you to their address book. • Your IP address: Some spam filters will flag a campaign if anyone with the same IP has sent spam in the past. When you send through MailChimp, your email is delivered through our servers, so if one 9

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person sends spam, it could affect deliverability for our other users. That’s why we work vigilantly to keep our sending reputation intact, and it’s important that all users abide by our Terms of Use. Coding in your campaign: Spam filters can be triggered by sloppy code, extra tags, or code pulled in from Microsoft Word. We recommend using one of our templates or working with a designer. Content and formatting: Some spam filters will flag emails based on specific content or images they contain, but there’s not an allencompassing set of best practices to follow or things you absolutely need to avoid. But, we do have a few recommendations. • Design your campaign to be clear, balanced, and to promote engagement from your subscribers. • Make sure your subscribers have opted-in to receiving your emails. • Be consistent. Try not to stray too far from the content and design that your audience already associates with your brand, website, or social media channels. • Test, test, test! Use A/B or Multivariate Testing to learn how changes with your content affects delivery and engagement.

Email Firewalls

Firewalls are a lot like spam filters in that they are designed to regulate incoming email based on a set of rules that have been established by the email server. Think of them as gatekeepers. They’re used by ISPs, large corporations, and small businesses alike, and they all communicate with one another to help identify spam and stop spammers. But how does this server know what spam is? Your own recipients teach it. When you send an email to your list, and someone on your list thinks it’s spam—or doesn’t remember opting-in to your list, or if you never had permission in the first place—that recipient can report you to SenderBase, the world’s largest email monitoring network. Your ESP should be registered at SenderBase, so they can properly investigate every complaint generated in response to their users’ campaigns. MailChimp’s staff receives copies of any complaints that come in, so we can disable the sender’s account and investigate immediately. Firewalls rely on reputation scores to block emails before they even get to the content-based spam filters, and they all calculate sending reputation 10

differently. Once you’ve been reported, you’ll remain on the radar of these firewalls; this helps prevent someone from switching between different email servers to send more junk after being reported. These gatekeepers will know to block all emails with your name in it from now on, no matter who sends it or where it comes from. The Basics: Four Measurable Actions in an Email Message Opens Reporting opens would seem like a simple task. If someone opens your message, an “open” is recorded and counted. Not necessarily so. An “open” can really only be defined by how it is measured. A small, invisible image is placed on every message sent. That image references a specific source—the message it was placed in. When that image is accessed or downloaded, an open is recorded for that message. In terms of what that means to your open rate, there are some substantial if ’s. If the person viewing your message has images disabled, the open is not recorded. If the person breezed through their inbox, set up in preview pane view, and passed over your message with images enabled, an open is recorded—though the person may not have more than glanced at your message. In any case, an open can never guarantee that the message was actually read. Opens are generally reported as two stats: total and unique. Total opens count every time that the tracking image was downloaded by all recipients. Unique Opens only count the first instance the image was downloaded per recipient. Clicks Clicks show a specific activity on a link and are therefore a much more accurate and telling measure of your message. When someone clicks on a link in your message, that link is first directed to a page that records the click, then instantly redirected to the link location. This brief intervention occurs so quickly that usually the recipient doesn’t even know it has happened. Clicks are far better metrics to watch than opens because they show a specific interest and a related activity. A click confirms that some additional activity has taken place as well, most often a visit 11

to a Web page. To further evaluate click activity, you can use that first click as the starting point in analyzing web traffic. You can see where that person who clicked went in your Web site, how long they stayed, where they ended up, and more. Clicks are generally reported as two stats: total and unique. Total clicks count every time each link was clicked by all recipients. Unique clicks only count the first instance each link was clicked per recipient. Most email service providers can provide specific link activity for each individual recipient. Bounces Bounces represent some kind of transactional failure with the email address you tried to send a message to. That failure can be either temporary—which results in a soft bounce—or permanent—which results in a hard bounce. Bounces can indicate inactivity and list maintenance needs. A soft bounce can indicate that the recipient’s email server is busy, or that their mailbox is full. A hard bounce can indicate that the email address does not exist any longer or that the domain does not exist. In some cases, the email address was simply mistyped and correcting the address can solve the problem. In all cases, bounces should be reviewed to assess list health and hygiene. It’s important to note that sometimes people will refer to “delivered” messages as the number of sent messages minus the number of bounced addresses. This is not what “delivery” means as it is defined by the email marketing industry. A bounce indicates that the message was delivered, but was not accepted. Unsubscribes The unsubscribe link is required for CAN-SPAM compliance, but can also give you valuable insight for successful marketing. Unsubscribes can indicate that someone is no longer interested in your organization or offering, and that your marketing budget is better spent on other, interested people. Understanding why someone unsubscribed can indicate that your email efforts just need to be slightly revised or redirected.

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Brand awareness similar to newspapers, newsletters create a certain anticipation in readers. whether it is a daily newsletter or a weekend communication, you get into the habit of receiving it. If you enjoy the content, you will most likely stay subscribed to the newsletter and look forward to getting the next email. by building a habit in your email subscribers, you enable them to recognize your brand and associate it with a positive sentiment. Newsletters generally contain information that you have already published. many companies do quick summaries of their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their newsletter. In this way, they bring subscribers back to the company website and engage them with more company content. Diverse Content Email newsletters give you the freedom to include different types of content that might be important to your organization. For instance, the same newsletter can contain a popular blog post, a new offer, an announcement of an upcoming event, information about a discount and a link to a survey.

disadvantages Diluted cAll-to-ActIoN due to their format--a compilation of information--newsletters can be overwhelming and ignorant of a specific call-to-action. If you include a series of blurbs or article summaries, the attention of your recipients will most likely be spread across these tidbits of information as opposed to staying focused on a certain element. of course, you can address this by prioritizing the most important information at the top 13

of the newsletter and include a clear call-to- action after/alongside each block of text. Design with newsletters, the layout becomes a much more complicated task than it is with dedicated email sends. you’ll have to spend some time deciding on the right placement of images and text, alignment and prioritization of information. thankfully, there are a bunch of websites out there to help you with these efforts. mailchimp, for instance, offers a package of 36 basic, flexible templates you can use to get started.

prospects customers Newsletters are great not only for marketing to prospects, but also for nurturing your existing customers with company news and events, product announcements and feedback requests. such ongoing communication will help you retain happy customers and collect valuable insights about them. what are the tidbits of information they click on the most? can you upsell to them at all? don’t forget that your existing customer base can also spread the word about your company and share resources that you publish with their network.

stay focused on the goal As you work on your newsletter layout and content creation, stay mindful of your goal and make sure you are working towards meeting it by prioritizing calls-to-actions at the top of the email. complete that action. For instance, if you are signing up for emails are the messages that get triggered by a specific action your contacts have taken and enable them to webinar, you will fill out a form and then receive a transactional (thank-you) email, which gives you login information in order to join. If you are using a double opt-in, people 14

will receive an email asking them to click on a link in order to confirm their registration.



transactional are also the messages you receive from ecommerce sites like Amazon that confirm your order and give you shipment information and other details.

Bounce rate DEFINITION the percentage of total emails sent that could not be delivered to the recipient’s inbox, known as a “bounce.”

HOW TO USE use this metric to uncover potential problems with your email list. there are two kinds of bounces to track: “hard” bounces 15

and “soft” bounces. soft bounces are the result of a temporary problem with a
 valid email address, such as a full inbox or a problem with the recipient’s server. the recipient’s server may hold these emails for delivery once the problem clears up, or you may try resending your email message to soft bounces. Hard bounces are the result of an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address, and these emails will never be successfully delivered.

DEFINITION the percentage of
 emails that were actually delivered to recipients’ inboxes, calculated by subtracting hard and soft bounces from the gross number of emails sent, then dividing that number by gross emails sent.

Delivery Rtae HOW TO USE your delivery rate sets the stage for email success or failure. to have any chance of engaging a customer or prospect with an email campaign, that message has to get delivered to their inbox. look for a delivery rate of 95%
 or higher. If your delivery rate is slipping over time, you may have problems with your list (e.g. too many invalid addresses). If one particular campaign has a lower than average delivery rate, examine the subject line and content of that message. perhaps there was some element that may have been flagged as 16

spam by corporate firewalls or major ISPs, causing many more message than usual to be blocked.

The Entire Email process

 

Very Simple Overview

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The Entire Sending & Receiving Process Very Simple Overview

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The Entire Sending & Receiving Process Even More Simpler

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A closer look at the setup 20

The Ten Most Important Tips for Email Marketers Let’s begin with the most important information first. Here is what we feel are the ten most important tips for anyone managing the email marketing process. 1. Only send emails to persons who have requested to receive them. 
 2. Only include content relevant to the type of content the person has requested. 
 3. Be consistent with your sending frequency. Pick a schedule, whether it is weekly, biweekly, or monthly and as often as you can stick to that schedule. 
 4. In most cases it is best to send business to business emails Tuesday through Thursday. We’ve found that the best times of the day to send are just after the start of the day around 9:30am or just after lunch around 1:30pm. It is best to avoid sending business to business emails after 4pm or on weekends. 
 5. In most cases it is best to send business to consumer emails either between 5pm and 8pm Tuesday through Thursday or between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. 
 6. To improve deliverability, add a message at the top of your emails that says something like: “To ensure receipt of our emails, please add [email protected] to your Address Book.” 
 7. Make the From Name for your messages either your company name or the name of a person at your company. Once you choose a From 21

Name, keep it consistent. During the split second decision subscribers make whether to open your email, the most important factor in their decision is whether the From Name is familiar to them. 
 8. Be sure to include both a plain text and an HTML version of your newsletter. iContact will automatically detect which subscribers can view the HTML message and which can only see the plain text message. If you don’t include a plain text message, around 5% of your recipients will see a message with nothing in it. 
 9. Don’t use all caps or multiple exclamation marks within your subject line or body. Doing this will trigger spam filters. See our section below on Deliverability Best Practices for additional words to avoid. 
 10. Build your list at every opportunity you have. If you have a retail location, add a point-of-sale sign-up form. At conferences or events, bring a paper sign-up form or have a laptop with a sign-up form set up and available for interested parties. Finally, add your newsletter signup form to every page on your web site. 


What is Permission-Based Email Marketing? Before we proceed any further, let’s define exactly what permission-based email marketing is. It is important to note that there are two types of email marketing. One can either send unsolicited email promotions or send out emails only to persons who have requested to receive them. Unsolicited email is, of course, called spam. Sending spam will ruin any legitimate organization’s reputation and brand value faster than mold grows on bread that is left outside in the middle of summer. Rule number one of becoming an intelligent email marketer is to not send unsolicited email. Permission-based email marketing, on the other hand, is used effectively everyday by hundreds of thousands of organizations to build the value of their brands, increase sales, and strengthen the relationships they have with their clients and subscribers. The key difference, of course, is that these 22

senders are only sending messages to persons who have requested to receive them.

Five-Step Process of Permission Email Marketing 1. Start using a permission-based email software, such as iContact, that allows you to easily create newsletters, automatically manage subscribes, unsubscribes, bounces, and view reporting statistics like opens and clickthroughs. 
 2. Decide on the type and frequency of email communication you will be sending. We recommend sending at least a monthly newsletter. You can certainly send multiple newsletters if you sell different types of products. You can also send promotional messages offering a discount or coupon for a product or service. 
 3. Add a signup form to your web site so you can start collecting subscribers and import any existing lists of subscribers that have already requested your communications. 
 4. Create a good email template by using a template provided within the email software, having your in-house team create one, or using the custom design services of the email software company. iContact provides over 275 design templates within the software that can be used free of charge and can also develop a custom template for a nominal charge. 
 5. Develop quality relevant content for your newsletter or message and send it out to your list. Continue sending your newsletters, announcements, or promotions with consistent frequency. As your list grows, you will notice increased traffic (and if applicable, increased sales) on the day of and the days following an email send. 


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Email Marketing Best Practices Now that we’ve explored the importance of sending permission-based email, let’s take a closer look at some of the techniques and practices that the most experienced email marketers use. These best practices can make the difference between rapidly growing your list through word of mouth, increasing your sales, and building strong relationships and losing subscribers to list attrition, aggravating customers, and getting your messages blocked before they even reach your recipients.

From Names & Subject Lines For most people, a majority of emails received are junk email. As a result, each of us has developed a little ritual we follow when checking our email. Initially, most people looked first at the subject lines to determine whether to read a message. Today, however, studies have shown that recipients glance at the “From” field to see if they recognize the sender’s name or email address. Then, only if they recognize the From Name do they look at the “Subject” field to see if it’s of interest to them. This is why we recommend using a From Name that is either your organization’s name or a well-known person within your organization—and to keep that name consistent with every mailing. Regarding subject lines, we have found a good strategy to be having one part of the subject line be consistent, and the other be variable. This way recipients can recognize your newsletter when it comes in as well as get a small taste as to what type of information might be featured for that issue. Some examples of bad subject lines are:

1. The Permission-Based Email Marketing Monthly for September, 1 2009 from iContact This subject line is simply too long. We recommend keeping subject lines between 20 and 50 characters whenever possible. This 80 character subject line is likely to get cut off in most email clients and could cause the message to have a higher chance of being blocked by a content-based spam filter. 24

2. [FNAME]’S ENTREPRENEURS CHRONICLE FOR SEPTEMBER This subject line is in all caps, which will increase the change the message will get blocked by content-based spam filters.

3. Garden Tips This subject line doesn’t provide any information as to what the message is about. We would recommend adding at least what month the message is for.

4. Oxy-Powder Special – Save $10 Today Only Buy Now!!!! This subject line includes both a dollar sign ($) and multiple exclamation points. Both of these things would cause the message to have a higher chance of being blocked by a content-based spam filter. Here’s is a revised version of each of these subject lines:

1. Permission-Based Email Marketing Monthly for September 2.

[fname]’s Entrepreneuers’ Chronicle for March


3.

Garden Tips Monthly – Are Year Round Orchids Possible?

4.

Oxy-Powder Special: 15% Off

By following these tips on From Names and Subject Lines you can maximize the chance of your message being opened by your end recipients.

The Six Key Provisions of CAN-SPAM 1. The email message must not have misleading of falsified header information. 
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2. The message must not have a misleading subject line. 
 3. The message must come from a functioning return email address. 
 4. Senders must remove all unsubscribe requests within 10 business days. 
 5. Commercial email must display the physical postal address of the sender. 
 6. Any unsolicited emails must clearly identify that it’s an advertising message, and contain a prominent notice that gives the recipient the opportunity to decline further emails from you. 


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Elements that contribute towards Good and Bad Deliverability



Authen'ca'on | Reputa'on | Content 

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Are you, who you say you are? 

#1 Authen'ca'on

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email validaton system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses. SPF allows administrators to specify which hosts are allowed to send mail from a given domain by crea+ng a specific SPF record (or TXT record) in the Domain Name System (DNS). Mail exchangers use the DNS to check that mail from a 31

given domain is being sent by a host sanc+oned by that domain's administrators .

#2 SenderID Are you, who you say you are? Authentication Sender ID is an antispoofing proposal from the former MARID IETF working group that tried to join Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Caller ID. Sender ID is defined primarily in Experimental Sender ID tries to improve on a principal deficiency in SPF: that SPF does not verify the header addresses that indicates the sending party. Such header addresses are typically displayed to the user and are used to reply to emails. Indeed such header addresses can be different from the 32

address that SPF tries to verify; that is, SPF verifies only the "MAIL FROM" address, also called the envelope sender.

“What is your reputation?”

Reputation

It’s

built and not acquired!

IP reputation score, how to manage it? Track record of Sending volume| Spam Complaints | Blacklisted history | & User Engagement

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IP

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Spam Complaints received





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17% of Indian’s access emails through smart phones. 1. The subscriber hits the ‘report spam’ bubon (or equivalent) in their email applica+on. 2. The subscriber sends a message complaining about a sender to the postmaster group at the ISP.
 3. The subscriber sends a complaint to a filtering 42

applica+on (like Cloudmark’s SpamNet) or a complaint-driven blacklist like SpamCop.
 4. The email was voted as “Junk” during a Windows Live Sender Reputa+on
 Data poll.



0.1 percent spam complaint rate (one complaint per thousand e-mail messages sent) is when deliverability problems begin.

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Spam Traps Recycled email address ISP will reactivate (recycle) the address, convert it to a spam trap
 and allow email to be received by the email address. If a sender is sending to an address that has been deactivated and later reactivated, it can be indicative of data maintenance issues 45

Unknown user This is a type of hard bounce that indicates an address is invalid,

True Spam Trap God only can Save you!

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Engagement took place from MobileCombo

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Email Marketing Course



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Types of Design



Fluid Design: The text always takes up 100% of the width of the window, so as you change the width of your email with your browser, it automatically reflows 53

and fits in the window – whether it’s for mobile, tablet, desktop etc.

Skinny Design !Skinny design. No reflow here, so as you change the width of the window, nothing changes within the content. Companies such as Coke tend to design their email narrow to 500 pixels wide so it works on a mobile first, but there is some compromise when viewed on a Desktop device.

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Scalable Design !Scalable design: No reflow of text or fluidity here. For example, an email is designed to roughly 630 pixels wide, you zoom out to fit on a mobile (approx 426 pixels wide) then the email is still useable. All images and headings are still large enough to 55

be displayed when zoomed out to normal display  



Responsive Design ! Responsive design: Email changes dynamically to reflect the size of display. For example, the text or images jump down if the email is viewed on a mobile and sometimes the call to actions can be reduced 56

for different devices.There are also two less commonly viewed types. Dedicated designs for specific devices which aren’t really used anymore and adaptive design which you may be familiar with, when an image is displayed at the time the email is opened, and according to the device.

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Use Deeper Links for CTA  



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Repeat CTA as P.S  

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Usage of Secondary Links  



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Secondary Links







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Asking Questions  



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Time to Design? Things to Keep in Mind...AA ! Design for the preview pane of email applications
 ! One giant image is not a good idea
 ! Never put important information (or the call to action) in an image ! Avoid large blocks of text — use headlines for increased “scan-ability” ! Provide a link to a webbased version of your email (at the top)
 ! Align content to the left to accommodate narrow preview panes
 ! Test your HTML emails in multiple browsers before sending   

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!  In a nutshell, a well designed email is more readable, attractive, and effective 67

at relaying information. 
 !  HTML vs Text: Which one jumps out at you more? Which is faster for you to read? What’s the most important information in the email? 


Office Depot  



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Home Depot  



Case studies with A/B Testing results 

How the right tone in message copy increased lead inquiry   69



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Sales Tone Customer Service Tone

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How email relevance increased revenue  



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Content Testing  

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“Email” reliance group  



Now let’s check for Alpna J. Doshi’s email address. String: 79

“@relianceada.com” “alpna J doshi”  





Patter Guesses  

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What does the the “J” stand for? Let’s run a check on Google 81

 



Example: Locate mailing domains : String: “email” “pi industries”  



"@* *ibm.com" "Peter muller" 82



"email * * companyname.com" “name”



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SEO

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Over 5 billion
 Searches Everyday.





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Being Current. 





Processing Natural Language. 92





Structured Data : Schema.org

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Combine Explicit Search Queries with Implicit aspects

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Personaliza tion Context

Personalization 95





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Two Primary Functions of Search Engines 1. Crawling & Indexing 2. 2. Answering Machine

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Two Types of Search Results

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What Is SEO? The art and science of “optimizing” your website (both internally and externally) so that it ranks higher in the natural/ organic listings of a search engine.

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Before we optimize

our website, we must...

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1

Understanding Market Trends • Google Trends - 
 google.co.in/trends/ 


• Rising demand for credit cards : a signal of economic growth and banking sector development. 


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Exercise – Google.co.in/trends • See who is more popular

“tom cruise” or “Salman Khan” !Over the past 10 years
 !In 2015
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!Worldwide vs. India
 !Different states & cities

in India

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On-page Optimization The art and science of “optimizing” your website (both and externally) so that it ranks higher in the natural/organic listings of a search engine.

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1. Quality Content, which is Indexable • Your most important content should be in HTML text format. 
 • Images, Flash files, Java applets, and other non-text content are often ignored or devalued by search engine spiders 




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2. Crawlable Link Structures





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••••

reachable: Content behind forms Links in JavaScript

• Search forms 


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• Links in Flash / Java 


Some reasons why pages may not be • 100’s of Links on page Links pointing to pages blocked by Robots.txt

3. Keyword Usage & Targeting Use the keyword in the title tag at least once. Try to keep the keyword as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible. More detail on title tags follows later in this section. Once prominently near the top of the page.



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At least 2-3 times, including variations, in the body copy on the page - sometimes a few more if there's a lot of text content. 3. Keyword Usage & Targeting

At least once in the alt attribute of an image on the page. This not only helps with web search, but also image search, which can occasionally bring valuable traffic. At least once in the meta description tag. Note that the meta description tag does NOT get used by the engines for rankings, but rather helps to attract clicks by searchers from the results page, as it is the "snippet" of text used by the search engines. 111

<META name="description” content=“keyword“ >

4. URL Structure





• Employ Empathy 


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• Shorter is better 
 • Keyword use is important (but overuse is dangerous) 
 • Go static 
 • Use hyphens to separate words 


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OFF-PAGE SEO Off-page Optimization The art and science of “optimizing” your website (both internally and externally) so that it ranks higher in the natural/ organic listings of a search engine.

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Create remarkable content Remarkable = New Remarkable = Well Researched Remarkable = Educational Remarkable = Share-worthy Remarkable = Regularly posted

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Using the Keyword Research Tool

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Sorting Keywords based on Search Volumes & Competition

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Keywords have been sorted based on Local Search Volume and Competition (scale 0 to 1, 1 has higher competition) 122

The low hanging fruit. Easier to rank for low search volume keywords since most competitors would want to focus on the high search volume keywords.

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Why we should not ignore the Long tail Popular Search Terms • Consist of 30% of daily search volumes 
 • Highly competitive 
 • Searcher is probably browsing, not ready to buy. 


Long-tail Keywords • Consist of 70% of daily search volumes • Less competitive 125

• Searcher is almost ready to buy 

 Assessing Keyword Value

• Is the keyword relevant to your website's content? 
 • Will searchers find what they are looking for on 
 your site when they search using these keywords? 
 • Will they be happy with what they find? 


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• Will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals? 


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Keyword Research, Onpage SEO & Technical Optimization "  Keyword Research Process: Discover/Find

keywords, Segment by Search Intent, Get Keyword Metrics, Create content strategy & map keywords 
 "  On-page SEO : Freshness update, Direct

Answers, Vertical Search 
 "  Negative on-page SEO: Thin content,

cloaking, hidden, KW stuffing 
 "  SEO-friendly web design: Business

Objectives # Website Goals #KPIs 
 "  Technical Optimization: Page Speed,

Canonicalization, Broken Links 


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Off-page SEO / Backlinking The art and science of “optimizing” your website (both internally and externally) so that it ranks

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higher in the natural/ organic listings of a search engine.

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Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own .

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Outreach • Tell them why they should care

about you • Leverage your content hooks • Tell them what action you’d like them to take • Sharing content on Social Media 
 • Embedding Infographic / Presentation 
 • Accepting guest post 


• Show that you’re genuine and not a spammer

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• Use their name 
 • Proper subject line, email signature 
 • Mention something about their work 
 • Use genuine email address 
 Follow Ups



Hey XYZ, I just wanted to follow up on the email I sent a few days ago (pasted below) regarding the ultimate guide to backlinking that I’ve put together. It would be great to get your feedback, if possible, and see if this is something you’d be interested in sharing 135

with the readers of your blog. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks! MM

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Local SEO “optimizing” your website (both internally and externally) so that it ranks higher on local search results

Google Business Listing

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https://www.google.com/business/



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SEO Tools



SCREAMING FROG – SEO SPIDER http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp https:// www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/#download

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SITEMAP GENERATOR



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WEBSITE.GRADER.CO M

Webmaster Setup 141

Google Search Console

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Link Building " Key Content Marketing takeaways –

Remarkable content (visual, informative), Think SoLoMo, Measure content, People still matter. " Link building – Acquiring hyperlinks from

other websites to yours • Good links: Natural editorial links, manual content outreach 
 • Bad links: Self-created non-editorial links 
 " Link building process: Goals # Identify assets # Identify types of links #Content hooks#Find link targets / websites#Contact details #Prioritize link targets#Outreach#Follow up 


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Google Panda "  Launched in February 2011 
 "  Affects websites with Poor

content 


quality (Thin Content)

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"  It’s a value that feeds into overall

Google Algorithm 


"  Earlier Panda updates affected

duplicate content 


Google Penguin " Launched In April 2012 " Affects websites acquiring bad

links (buying links, directory submission, article submission etc.) " Sites that have taken action to

remove bad links, through
 the Google disavow links tool or to remove spam may regain rankings.

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Google Hummingbird " Launched in 2013
 " Powers “Conversational Search”

more

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effectively
 " Richer, more meaningful search results.

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Google Analytics Basics

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SEO Audits Conduct a quick Page Speed audit



Mobile responsiveness check 152



Security Certificate check

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Check Crawlability

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• Did they just copy the

robots.txt file? Search Engine Optimization

Check On-page : Titles • Page Titles do not use

Keywords



Check On-page : H1 & H2 155

• H1 & H2 do not use keywords





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Check On-page : URLs



Check On-page : Broken Links

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Exercise • Strategize a Link Building

Campaign for http:// www.speakingtree.in • What would be your goals? 
 • List some assets that speaking tree has to leverage • Identify some link targets (list of influencers, websites) 
 • Go one step further : Prioritize link targets based on domain metrics, likelyhood to backlink, social media influence. 
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