Sorting, Managing, and Replying to Emails
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The first thing I, and every other webmaster I know, starts his or her day with, is to check emails. You will also need to keep checking your emails several other times during the day.
Deliverability Deliverability is probably the most important issue in today's email marketing business. There are many spam emails and many legitimate emails are flagged as spam so they are not delivered. They are not getting thru ISP spam filters. Good deliverability ratio is the first step in successful email campaign because if your emails aren't delivered then you don't even have an email campaign! In order to ensure that your emails will have good deliverability you have to choose your email marketing vendors wisely. You have to check if they are on "Blacklist" or "Whitelist". There are different organizations like Spamhaus project and SpamAssasin that have their own lists which are used by ISP. If your email service provider is blacklisted your emails won't be delivered! Also, you have to ensure that your domain name isn't blacklisted. In order to maximize your deliverability it is recommended that your email service provider offers Habeas Sender Warranty Email Header.
Spam Filtering You will notice that you receive tons of emails, of which very few are actually of use. Most emails, called 'SPAM' will try to sell you something or the other. How do these people get your email address? The answer is simple. Your email address is posted on your website, in the message forums where you are a registered member, your newsletter subscriptions and a whole lot of other places. Fighting spam is a difficult task but you can reduce the extent of spam by using Spam Filters. A spam filter blocks emails with offending words. A good spam filter is the Norton Antivirus Email Protection. Other Spam Filters are also available. In most cases your hosting account will also provide some sort of Spam Filter which you can activate to protect yourself from spam emails. Spam Filters are not 100% effective. In addition to those, you can set up your own message rules in OE (Outlook Express). You can set up emails from a certain address or with certain words in their subject line to be deleted from the server.
HTML and plain-text versions It is essential to offer your visitors to choose if they want to receive your email newsletter in HTML or plain-text format. It means that you should regularly send both types. Sending HTML newsletters have more benefits than plain-text email newsletters. You can use email tracking only in HTML newsletter with image embedding, HTML newsletters have better click-thru ratio because they look like the real web sites. You can hide long URLs so that they will look professional. However, some people prefer plain-text versions and reasons are different. They use email clients that don't support HTML emails. Another thing is that HTML newsletter types are larger than plain-text newsletters. Also, one of the reasons why some people don't receive HTML emails is security. In HTML newsletters some people can embed malicious scripts or use them for phishing (when they pretend that they are representatives of one company and when people click on a certain link they are taken to their web site that is designed almost identically like original). It is mostly used in financial fraud attempts.
Writing/Replying to Emails Responding to Emails This will your most time-consuming, yet most important task every day. Sort emails in order of their priority. Respond to any new order or product enquiry first and foremost. Next, reply to any emails from past customers. Customer service is extremely essential in any type of business. Next comes any business proposals, joint ventures, website issues etc. Once the business emails are done with, focus your attention on other emails. You may have several link exchange requests. Visit each website and decide for yourself if it is worth exchanging links with and respond accordingly. There might be some emails with some feedback regarding your website, informal emails, general queries etc. They can be responded after all other emails have been sent.
Writing Emails Replying to emails is not the only task when you open your Outlook Express. You will also be required to write emails for several purposes. For e.g. you may need to submit a new article via email. You might need support from your domain or hosting company, your hired designer or webmaster etc. You may need to approach people for link exchanges, joint ventures and the like. Perform this important task and make sure to add an email signature containing your website address to every email. OE has an option by which it can automatically add your signature to every email that you compose or reply. This will help in promoting your website url with every email that you send.
Timing is everything Another very important thing in creating successful email campaign is timing. In almost every email marketing statistics you will find information about when to email your subscribers. So studies show that the best time for sending email campaigns are days from Tuesday to Thursday. However, it doesn't mean that someone can't have successful email campaign sent on Sunday. If you send your emails in days that are not "prime time" you can have a chance to avoid competition that will mail their campaign in prime time. Tuesday-Thursday are generally best days for mailing because, as you probably know yourself, too, not many people like Monday (remember that song?). After a good weekend, Monday is usually reserved for some consultation with the management about weekly plans and task. Friday is, on the contrary, favourite day for many people, because they are planning their weekend. People often come home earlier on Friday so your email can be buried in their inbox until Monday. And in Monday, to be deleted with many others (we have already wrote about Monday). On the weekend people usually don't work but many will still check their emails. Also, you have to decide how often you want to send your email newsletters. It will depend on your content. If your email newsletter about latest industry news you can send your newsletter once a month, because then it won't be latest news anymore. If you send a corporate email newsletter with news about company and useful articles from your area of expertise, monthly frequency is usually the best one. You have to make several email campaigns and see which ones get you best results. And when we talk about best results the next logical step is tracking.
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