• The physical address can now include a PO box or Mail Stop, as long as the USPS recognizes it.
• In CAN-SPAM speak, “person” is now defined not just as a human, it can also be a corporation, non-profit, etc. This is who is responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance when sending a commercial email. Business entities (as well as individuals) are now responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance in regards to all commercial email they send. (For the most part, businesses have been treating CAN-SPAM as if this were the case all along.)
• Even if your name is in the From Line, you must also have your company name in the actual email with a link to your website. If not, your partners and/or your advertisers will be responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance. This mainly applies to companies that send emails or coupons to their list on behalf of their partners. For example, if company A sends an email to their list on behalf of company B, company A has to not only have their name in the From Line, but also have their name and information about their company and a link or web address to their own site in the email. If not, Company B is responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance. If you are Company B in this example, make sure you follow-up with the company sending email on your behalf to ensure they’re up to date with CAN-SPAM so you’re not responsible for their compliance.
• The process of unsubscribing cannot require a purchase, taking a survey, or be complicated. You can only ask for the email address and user’s email preferences (i.e. do they want to receive email or not).

CAN SPAM reiterates:

• that all commercial emails must have a working reply-to address or other conspicuous web-based opt-out mechanism for the company listed in the From Line
• emails can’t be false or misleading
• email subject lines can’t be deceptive
• emails must comply with the “sexually explicit” label where applicable

So, what do you do? Do you send the correct version? How do you explain what was wrong with the first email? Do you draw attention to the mistake? Or do you let it slide…maybe your readers won’t notice. Well, it depends on the mistake.

• If it was just a spelling typo or grammatical error, don’t send the email again (just use Mustang List’s built-in spell-check feature next time). If the typo was on the price of something (or if you just made a mistake with the price), you should resend the email. If the incorrect price was too high, you could lose sales (not the point of the email, I’m sure). If the price was too low, you could lose money or, at best, you could have some customer service issues on your hands.
• If there is an incorrect link, whether to resend would depend on the importance of the link in the email. Is the link the main call to action, or a link among many? Is the link the focus or purpose of the email (like you sent an email about an online survey for your readers to fill-out but you gave out the wrong link)? Can your readers accomplish the desired task despite the link being wrong—are there other links to the same place in the email? If the email ends up meaningless and your readers will not be able do what you want them to do (i.e., there are no other links to the survey, or the hot deal you want them to check out) you need to resend with the correct link—just put a little note at the top of the email noting the correction of the error. Use humor when and where you can, but keep things concise; you don’t want to waste your readers’ time.
• If the malfunctioning link is the unsubscribe link, resend and explain the link in the new email works. The readers who want to unsubscribe need to be able to do so. Although it might seem a bit much to resend the whole email, the people who wanted to unsubscribe will be able to and those who weren’t planning on unsubscribing will be relatively unaffected.
• If your email contained the wrong date, you should resend—you might lose customers who decide they can’t go (and so don’t click the link) based on the date in the email; and you’ll confuse the ones who click and find the date on the website different from the one in the email. It’s worth clearing up this potential confusion.
• If you omitted or made an error in your From Name, you should resend if the error will prevent recipients from knowing who sent the email.
• If your error was that you sent the email to the wrong list or group of people, decide on the impact. If the email is going to be totally irrelevant to the recipients, or if it’s going to be confusing and elicit calls to your customer service line (i.e., you confirm attendance to a seminar or event to a group who hasn’t been invited to attend the event), you should resend the email. If it’s merely a matter of targeting to the wrong group, and the email won’t be completely irrelevant or meaningless, you can let it go—there’s no need to clear something up that wasn’t confusing in the first place.

Here’s how:

• Take a portion of your list and create two categories for your test groups. You won’t want to do this if you use Mustang List’s Subscriber Update link because these categories will appear on the Subscriber Update Page if you enable categories. Another option would be to create two small test lists. If you go this route, make sure that these members are not also on the main list, or they’ll get your emails a second time after you choose the winning subject line and send the final version to the main list. You probably want your total test group to be 10-20 percent of your list size. So each of the two test groups or categories (or lists) should have 5-10 percent of the subscribers on your list.

• Create your email. You’ll want to test your subject line one or two days before you’d like to send the final email. Send the email to one test category with one of your proposed subject lines. Send the email with the other proposed subject line to the other test category. If you created 2 small test lists, you’ll need to copy and paste the email message into those lists for sending the tests. Over the next 12-24 hours, monitor the open rate. The subject line with the most opens is the winner. Prepare the final email. If you created two small test lists, then you’ll need to put the final email in the list you’ll ultimately send to. Be sure that the members in your test lists do not also appear in the main email list or they’ll get the email a second time. If you created test categories within the same main list, it’s easy to exclude the test categories from the final mailing: just click to exclude your test categories under Advanced Sending Options when sending the final version.

• You can also use your test groups (or lists) for split copy (parallel testing) testing of other aspects of your emails. Test the wording of your offer: send one offer worded one way, and send the same offer worded another way to the other test group. Try different offers by wording them the same way, and putting them in the same design, making the only variance the actual offer: free shipping versus 10% off, for example. The offer that gets the most clicks wins. You can also test design this way. Make sure the subject, the offer and the copy are the same and change up different design elements (test these one at a time): the layout, color, call to action buttons vs. hyperlinked text, etc. The design that yields the most responses (gets the most clicks) wins.

The amount of testing you do will depend on the size of your list, your mailing frequency, and your response rates. Steady response rates might not warrant frequent testing and changes, but slipping response rates can be boosted by testing and implementing small changes. You can test subject lines every mailing or every other mailing; while you could test design every 6 months to one year. Test offers whenever you have two viable offer ideas or when you are relying on the email to pick up sagging sales numbers on your website at the end of the month. And don’t forget to revisit your results. List trends change—just because a certain tactic tested favorably at one time, doesn’t mean that the other tactic won’t be effective down the road. Retest from time to time to check in with your subscribers and see if their behavior is trending differently.

Start by doing what you can. There’s nothing wrong with emailing a targeted message to a small part of your list and a generic newsletter to the rest—you’ve got to start somewhere and there’s no better time than now.

You can start targeting by using a category, or a region, such as state. Begin by making sure you have email addresses added to the category to which you’d like to send the targeted email. If you will be sending the email to a specific region, ensure you have some addresses to mail to in that region.

Let’s say you run a non-profit organization and you send out a monthly email newsletter. For your July newsletter, you realize you could target a message to your donors in the Chicago area. First, we’re assuming that you’ve been collecting city and state as well as other information. You either import this information with the email addresses, or you collect the information on your sign up form.

Create your regular generic email newsletter and create the newsletter for your Chicago recipients. Test each email by sending it to your personal email address(es).  When it’s time to send your message, send the targeted message first. From the Send Message screen, you’ll want to show the Advanced Sending Options. For this example, we’ll target the list by region by selecting IL or Illinois (or both) from the drop down list for state. It’s a little broader in reach than Chicago, but it’s considerably more narrowed down than sending to your whole list. Send your message. It will go only to the members on your selected list that have the state IL in their profile.

How do you send the generic message to the rest of the list? From the send message screen show the Advanced Sending Options. This time you want to choose all states except IL. An easy way to do this is to CTRL click or Shift click to select all states and then CTRL click on IL to “de-select” it. Ensure that every state except the state(s) you already mailed to (IL) is selected. Because your subscribers can only have one state in their profile, you don’t need to worry about the message going to the recipients who received the first message. This message will only go to everyone that you selected and not to the recipients of your first message—the subscribers with IL in their profile.

Or, say you have a Category set up for people interested in donating their time to your organization. Set up the generic email and the email targeted to the subscribers interested in volunteering. When sending the message, show the Advanced Sending Options. Send the targeted message first and select the category that you want to include (the category for volunteers). Send the message. To send the generic message, you exclude the subscribers who got the first message by excluding the volunteer category—click the category for volunteers under the heading Exclude these Categories. This way, subscribers receiving the first message (those in the volunteer category) are excluded and won’t get the second message, but everyone else on your list will.

Even this very simple targeting can be a great enhancement to your email program. The important thing is to just start—get your feet wet and more targeting ideas will come forth in no time. Also, watch your open rates and click rates to the targeted groups rise—seeing real, tangible results might give you just the boost you need to think of more ways to target your subscribers.

Consider this: Many websites have Contact Us pages with a form users can fill out for more information or to make a comment. In addition to having a field for the comments or inquiry, there is a field for the email address of the person making the inquiry/comment so that you can respond. When people enter their email address on a contact form such as this they are not expecting to be added to your email list. They are offering their email address so that you can reach them; but nothing in the interaction implies they are interested in receiving communication from you other than a response to their inquiry/comment.

When you take this email address and sign them up to your list, it’s tantamount to spam. And more importantly, you’ve failed to manage your customer’s expectations in filling out the form. If you want add their email address to your list, provide a tick box where they can explicitly opt-in to receive marketing email or your newsletter. Or tell them clearly on the page that by contacting you, they can expect to be added to your email list.

What other common expectations do your customers have when they interact with your business?

You will be respectful.

• You will ask for permission.
• You will not email them “a lot.” Yes, that’s vague and in the eye of the beholder. You should be very clear about how frequently you intend to email them when they sign up—and then stick to it.
• You will send them what they signed up for. If they signed up for a “hot deal” email, they are not going to get a weekly newsletter with articles and tips.
• You will let them unsubscribe.

You will be transparent:

• You won’t share their email address with other companies unless you explicitly state you will and get their explicit permission to do so. This pertains to third parties as well as other business groups within your company.
• You will email them as the company name/brand they signed up with.
• If you ask for a birthdate, they expect that you’ll be using it for something. If it’s just for your own demographics, then you should consider sending a Happy Birthday email to fulfill your customers’ expectation that you’ll use the information (in some way that benefits them).
• Same goes for other personal information: your customers want to know why you want the information that you’re asking for and how you intend to use it.

You will not be complicated.

• Customers expect to be able to change their email address, subscribe, and unsubscribe easily and quickly at any time.
• You will confirm a signup, unsubscribe, and other actions by an on-screen confirmation message or via email.
• Your email will open and be legible in their email client or browser.

Here are some things you can do using APIs:

• Put a sign-up box on your homepage and have the email sign-ups go directly to Mustang List
• Deploy a welcome message instantly upon sign up
• Create a Customer Preference Center where customers to subscribe to and unsubscribe from multiple newsletters
• Maintain a CRM database and sync it with Mustang List for sending emails
• Integrate third party software systems to Mustang List (for example, you can intake an email address at the point of sale on your POS system and have the email address sent to Mustang List automatically—no need to manually export the addresses and import them to Mustang List)

You can use your own programmers to integrate your systems with Mustang List using the APIs, or you can use Mustang List’s custom programming services to customize your site to talk to Mustang List via the API.

So how do you rent or buy an email list that’s legitimate? Carefully. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. You don’t want to buy a list. If someone is offering to sell you a list, that should send up a red flag. If the list is valuable, why would they sell it? A list will only remain valuable if the use of the list (how many and what type of emails are being sent to it) is carefully managed. Use of a list cannot be controlled if copies of it are being sold.
2. You want to rent a list. List owners who’ve been given permission to send emails from third parties can legitimately rent their lists. They’ll also be careful to manage the use of the list so that it remains valuable—in other words, they’ll be more careful about how frequently the list is emailed to and if the emails will be relevant to their subscribers. For example, a travel company might send a third party email from a hotel chain, but would most likely decline to send a third party email for a home-improvement store. This is good for you because there’s a better chance the recipients will be receptive to your offer.
3. Try and be included in an existing email newsletter. This gives you the opportunity to reach out to a new audience within the context of an email newsletter and company that the recipients know and open. You don’t risk creating a negative impression of your brand as there is no confusion on the part of the reader as to whom the email was sent from and why they are receiving it.
4. You want the list owner to introduce your product or service to their list. If the list owner will send a separate, dedicated email for you, ideally you want it to be in the context of a partnership or an endorsement of your product. Sure, the owner might be allowed to send a third party message, but will it make sense from the eyes of the reader? Your product will not be presented in the best light if your message lacks meaningful context—if there is no attempt to connect your company to the company whose email list the reader subscribed to.
5. The “From” address should be the list owners name—this is who the readers have a relationship with. This will also help give your email the context of being endorsed by the list owner. A list owner who wants to put your name in the “From” address field should also send up a red flag. If your name were in the “From” address, you would look like a spammer as the recipient didn’t sign up to receive email from you and may not know who your company is. That’s a negative brand impression that you could do without.
6. Remind people why they’re getting the email. Sometimes, you will be handed over a list of email addresses: there are some organizations (often at colleges and universities) where the members agree to receive email from other members of the organization. Sometimes the organization will handle sending emails to the list, and other times they’ll give the list to the members. In this case, remind the recipients that they’re receiving the email as a member of the organization. But be wary of sending in this scenario, too. Joining the organization to get access to the email list might not end up being fruitful if the email list is just handed over to whomever wants it; if there’s no oversight as to who can join and the use of the email addresses, your time and money might be better spent elsewhere.
7. Remember this word: Co-Registration. You can also work with third parties who have websites with relatively high traffic. They will ask for the opt-in and collect email addresses specifically for your newsletter or email list. This is an excellent way to grow your list as the people on the list know what they’re signing up for and will be anticipating your email communication.

For more information about working with third parties in your list building efforts, contact Mustang List.

The process goes something like this: I click the link to unsubscribe. I’m taken to a log-in page. It’s very clear that if I want to “sign up for or unsubscribe from eOffers” I need to enter my email address. I enter the address, but I can’t remember the password. Of course I don’t remember it. I must’ve been forced to set it up to make a purchase over a year and a half ago. There’s a link “I have forgotten my password.” Great, I click the link. I’m now on a page where I enter my “registered” email address again and they’ll email me my password. A message comes back to me saying  “Sorry, but the email address you entered does not appear to be registered. Please go back and check your typing carefully.” Of course the email address is registered, that’s why I’m getting these emails.

Why is the unsubscribe behind a password? Well, the sign up and unsubscribe are rolled up into the member profile which includes active bookings, profile information, etc. Log-in and you can view and change flights and make other profile changes. There is a certain logic and convenience to this. You register for the site and decide whether or not you want to sign up for email all on one page.

The problem is that the unsubscribe process is more than just a click or two away; at best, unsubscribing can become tedious, at worst, impossible. Obviously it’s just a glitch in the system, no big deal, right? But glitches happen. And they certainly shouldn’t prevent a customer from stopping unwanted mail. At the very least there must be another way to allow the unsubscribe take place without logging in. Maybe do it old-school and allow a response email with Unsubscribe in the subject? Or create a page where the log-in isn’t required; one need only retype the email address receiving the unwanted emails and the unsubscribe can be processed.

Mustang List has an easy to access unsubscribe page that does not require a password. But if you use the Mustang List APIs, you can create your own subscription center. When you do, carefully consider whether or not you want to make such a page password protected and the impact it will have on your customers and subscribers if you do.

• Use your company logo. Place it at the top of the email, and design it so that it doesn’t take up valuable space, but still has visual impact. Keep this logo and its placement the same from email to email. By using this consistent placement, if you switch up other aspects of the email from mailing to mailing, the email is still quickly recognized as being from your company.
• Image to text ratio. 30/70 images to text is a good mix. If you create image heavy emails, or emails comprised of a single large image, you increase the chances you’ll end up in the junk folder. Also, single image emails work very poorly when images are turned off…the recipient basically gets a blank email.
• Keep the images under 25k. Larger images take longer to load and you might lose your more impatient readers who will skip to their next email.
• Use moving images sparingly or not at all. Moving images pull focus—this is great on a busy website, but on an email it’s distracting and can make your email look like a circus. Either use the moving image carefully or design your email so focus goes where you want it to go without having to resort to an image that moves.
• Make images clickable. People expect to go somewhere when they click an image. Fulfill that expectation; put a link behind your images. Put your homepage behind your logo.
• Use call to action buttons. In addition to having embedded links in your text and links from graphics, include buttons like: Buy Now, Click Here, Sign Up, Check Availability. These create a more compelling call to action and can increase your click through rate.

• Images Off. Remember to take into account Images Off when designing your email. See past blogs for design tips for Images Off.
• Create a positive impression. Remember that your design should be welcoming and that it represents your company. You want it to reinforce your brand and compel subscribers to read the email further or take action.
• Design around an obvious focal point. Make this focal point “above the fold” and viewable in the preview pane so that your offer appears even to readers who don’t scroll.
• Use tables. You must use tables in your email if you want it to look like you designed it to look. The various email readers your subscribers use can render your email wonky if you don’t use tables. Plus, when the images are turned off, the email still renders properly and looks good.
• Make the email easy to read. Keep the fonts legible, not fancy. The email should be easy to scan and quickly read. Add white space between elements. This helps give the eyes a rest and gives the mind a micro-pause before moving onto the next idea.
• Keep the font for your company name the same. Just like you keep your logo the same from email to email, keep the fonts for your company name the same.
• Consider the amount of copy. Use more copy for newsletters as people sign up for newsletters to read and learn. When you’re sending an email about a sale, special promotion, or an invitation to an event, keep the copy short and to the point with a strong, clear call to action.
• Avoid using too many exclamation points. Spam filters don’t like exclamation points and the likelihood of your email going into the spam folder can increase.
• Avoid red type. Although red is a good color for call to action buttons, red text can be difficult to read.
• Avoid white letters. Using reverse type in small graphic elements can look good and be very useful. But it’s very hard to read white letters on a black or colored background, so it’s best to avoid using reverse type throughout your email. Plus if the background color is stripped by the email reader or browser, your readers will be looking at white text on a white background.
• Use color for emphasis, not because you can. Color should draw attention to an offer or focus the reader on a call to action.
• Use colors that support your brand. This doesn’t mean you have to create an email that matches your logo, but using colors that look good with your logo and using a logo color as an element in the email creates a visual connection between the email and your company. Can you imagine Southwest Airlines sending an email that doesn’t include red and/or orange? No.