October 1, 2007

Table of Contents   

Validate Your HTML
Validate Your HTML Code

If you are uploading HTML files for us to send out, are you sure that you have used only valid HTML code? Invalid HTML code could cause some pretty major problems in the rendering of your emails or even get your emails bounced. One way of checking is to go the W3C Markup Validation Service at http://validator.w3.org. Even if you are only adding a few lines of HTML code to one of the CoolerEmail templates, you can evaluate it here. This site doesn't tell you everything wrong with your email, but it is a good start. And better yet, it is free.
FREE MARKUP VALIDATION SERVICE
Grow Your List
How they can you grow your mailing list?

There are actually many ways to do it. But what better way to do it than "word of mouth." And combining word of mouth and email is even better.

Rita's Ices in State College, PA is embarking on a program that will both grow their list and generate additional business for them. First, you must realize that State College is the home of Penn State University. Consequently, while school is in session Rita's sends out an email every other week. As part of the email they include an offer: "forward this email to at least three friends who are not already on the distribution list and each one of them will receive a coupon for a 10% discount on their next purchase at the State College store...and you will receive a 30% discount on your next purchase."

Preliminary results look like they are going to cover the entire 41,000 student body faster than the year end grades are delivered.
Emphasize Your Address
Your physical address that displays at the bottom of of every email that goes out normally has a default look to it. However, you may want it to look differently, perhaps as multiple lines instead of only one or possibly highlighted in blue.

You can do this. All you need is the knowledge of a very small amount of HTML coding. If you place a blind return tag in front of your address, you can start it on its own new line. Or, if you want each part of the address to be on its own line, just put that tag in front of each part of your address. Or maybe you want your company name bold and in blue and everything else a slightly smaller font size and in green. You can do it. Below is an example of a more involved display of your address:


And why should you have your address at the bottom of your email broadcasts? Because it is the law. The Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 mandates that all commercial, mass email broadcasts have a "physical" address in their emails, where a recipient can visit them. This means that PO boxes are not acceptable. It must actually be a real physical address. But as long as you have to put your address at the bottom of your emails, they should at least look exactly the way you want them to look.

Last Month's Edition
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This edition of CoolerTips was written by Stephen Shore, founder of STADIS.net - A Permission-Based Email Marketing Service.

Cooler by Design

Send comments, or suggestions, to Bill Mitchell
Require CAPTCHA Authentication for Unconfirmed Opt-Ins
Almost all of CoolerEmail's clients are interested in growing their mailing lists.

This is one of several reasons why we provide you with the HTML code for a Web site sign-up form. Although we strongly recommend using the confirmed (double opt-in) sign-up method, we also make an unconfirmed (single opt-in) method available. Utilizing single opt-in scripts opens your account to unscrupulous Internet users who have "bot" scripts (robotic programs) that search the Web and add bogus email addresses to legitimate lists. However, if you insist on utilizing single opt-in forms, then we strongly recommend you implement CAPTCHA Authentication.

"CAPTCHA" is an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart," which effectively stops "bot" scripts from signing up invalid recipients to a user's list. The implementation is very straight-forward. First, you simply check the option in the My Account page for "Require CAPTCHA Authentication for Single Opt-ins" and add the following lines to each sign-up form (replacing the "@@@@@" with your site's name):

‹img src="http://emailer.@@@@@.com/captcha.pl?username=[USERNAME]"›
‹input type=text name=captcha_value value=""›



The final result will look something like the sign-up box above with a light gray box displaying several characters to be copied into the input box below it.
MORE INFO ON CAPTCHA CAN BE FOUND HERE
The Two Most Important Factors in Getting your Email Read
Think there is some magic in the content of your emails that makes some get opened by more people than others?

Then you are looking at the wrong things to get your emails opened. Recipients don't even see your content until after they have opened the email. What do they make their decision on? The only things they see in the morning when looking at that list of emails that arrived over night: your "From" address and your "Subject" line. And make no mistake about it, the From address is the more important of the two.

Given the large amount of spam that everyone receives these days, people want to be comfortable with opening an email. What makes them comfortable? Trust! They see the name of a person or company with which they feel comfortable because of their past relationship with it. Their relationship also effects how important they think this email will be to open and read. This is where you learn whether you have been treating your contacts right. No matter how good an organization you are and how clean your mailing list, if you have been sending out light weight information that has no real importance to your contacts, with each email the chances of being opened go down. However, if your content has been consistently useful to them, the probability of getting your emails opened increases every time they see your name.

Also, just because you are the president of your company, don't make the mistake of thinking that all of your customers know who you are. The name in the From line must be something unmistakable. Whether it is your self or your company is less significant than that it be recognizable. If you want to see what not to do, go to the trash folder of your email program to look at all of those "From" lines that your anti-spam program thought came from spam senders. One word names, all lower case or all upper case, misspellings, names that sound a little too much like famous people but aren't. These are all good examples of what not to do.

These days it is difficult to force someone to open your email with a great "Subject" line. The problem is that the spammers have used all of the great lines. If the line is too good, you end up getting relegated to the spam folder. Recipients determine if they are going to open your email based upon what is in your "From" line.

Does that mean the "Subject" line is now unimportant? Not at all. After all, the people you probably most want to reach are probably the busiest. Once they determine that yours is a message they want to read, they must then decide whether they will open it right now and read it….or put it off to some indeterminate time when they will have some free time to read it….and being put off means that they may never get back to it to read. You want it read right now. This is why your wording in the "Subject" line is also critical.

If you are sending out a monthly newsletter and your subject line is, "Monthly Newsletter", how much immediacy does that convey? To be honest, not much. It just says, "Here's one more piece of mail I'm sending to you in hopes you will generate some business for me." The key here is that they will see the email as being important to you….but not necessarily important to them. Your subject line must both be important to them and have the feeling of immediacy. And to make life even more interesting, given the number of subject lines they will probably be looking at at one time, it should be between 5 and 7 words long.

As examples: If you are an organization inviting members to your next monthly meeting, saying, "Come to the Next Meeting", is a bit too predictable. It has all of the info they need and gives them no reason to open the email. However, something like, "Vote on New By-laws at June meeting", gives them both a reason to open the email (What new by-laws? How will they affect me?) and a reason to attend the meeting. If you are selling feed to farmers, "New Feed Available" only tells them you have something else to sell while, "Yield Increases Seen with Improved Formulation", both has interest and tells them you are interested in how what you do affects them.

Next time you are about to send out an email blast, send it to yourself and then wait until the next morning to go into your email program to read it. Compare it to all of those other emails you see in your inbox….and especially the ones in your trash folder. Where would you put your own email and would you have opened it if you were someone else. This comparison will quickly tell you if you have learned the lessons of the "From" and "Subject" lines.

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