MustangList.com Blog

A couple of months ago I ordered a part from a cooking website. Today I found out that I was added to their email-marketing list by virtue of the fact I ordered with them. I clicked the link at the bottom of the email so I could unsubscribe. I landed on a “Subscription Center” page, not unlike the kind you can set up in Mustang List. But the page had some glaring problems.

First of all there were anchor links at the top of the page for the items “On This Page.” I don’t understand why, as you could do only two things on the page: Change Subscriptions or Unsubscribe. Except that the unsubscribe option was almost pushed out of view by the (pointless) anchor links, you could see both of these options fairly clearly without scrolling. These links took up space, did not help clarify the purpose the page, and were visually distracting.

The other problem on the page was under the “Available Publications.” There was a list for All Shoppers—this is the list I was a part of and why I know I was added to the list as a “shopper.” The name is not a very public friendly name—it’s clearly the internal point of reference for the list. There was a list for in-store events, which I’d guess is the “real” opt-in email list. And the final list was a Test List. Test List? Yes, I could’ve subscribed to the company’s test list and received whatever and how many drafts they send out for each email blast.

What impression does all of this leave me with? No one has looked at the page. It’s a system-generated page, and it appears that a system-generated link goes into the emails that are sent. Even the anchor links seem to be auto-generated. After all the time spent in creating an email and checking it twice (or twenty times) how could someone neglect to simply click on the unsubscribe link (to make sure it works) and check out the page?

Mustang List users should remember they can enable a link to appear in emails that goes to a Subscriber Update page similar to the one described above (click Subscriber Change Link under Advanced when sending). But before you enable that link, be sure and set the Subscriber Update Options—this page will let you control what will and won’t appear on your Subscriber Update page. You can control whether or not categories appear on the page; but when you allow categories to appear, you allow them all to appear. If your categories are for internal you only and you don’t have them appear on your Subscriber Update page, you have nothing to worry about. But if you’d like to have a Test Group, and you also have categories that you want to appear on the Subscriber Update page for your customers to edit, you’ll need to create a separate list in Mustang List for this Test Group. Otherwise, your test group will appear among the other groups/categories in your list and your page will look sloppy, too.

Double check everything and pay careful attention not just to your emails, but to your supporting pages as well: subscription pages, thank you pages, unsubscribe pages, etc. I know if the person in charge of the email program saw the page I saw today, the Test List would be removed immediately. No one wants that to appear to customers on a Subscriber Update Page.

You know you can use Mustang List to send your email newsletter and other promotional emails, but have you considered the system’s transactional applications? You probably already send a confirmation email that is auto-generated from your website when a customer makes a purchase. But what if you want to contact that customer later to find out how their shopping experience was? What if you want to send them a small series of questions or a survey so you can find out how you’re doing? Mustang List’s Response Form and Recurring Message features can combine to create a powerful customer communication management tool. Find out how you’re doing by sending an email that includes a link to a short survey a few days after your online sale. This is not a confirmation email, this is an email that you can send a few days after the sale to stay in front of the customer and solicit feedback. Here’s how:

1. When a purchase is made on your website, use the API to have the purchaser added to a list in Mustang List. You’ll probably want to create a list like “web purchasers” for this purpose. You cannot add these customers’ email addresses to your regular newsletter list unless you explicitly asked for and received permission. Be sure to carefully manage this new list to avoid mailing them marketing emails.
2. Set up a survey of the questions you’d like to ask the customer using Mustang List’s Response Forms.
3. Set up a Recurring Message to send a fixed number of days after the Sign Up date (the Sign Up date being the date they were added to the list by the API, the date of purchase). You should already be sending a confirmation email immediately upon purchasing, so give the customer a few days’ break before you send this email. Depending on the types of questions you ask, you might want to anticipate the number of days it would normally take for the item to ship and send the survey after the customer would most likely have received the item.
4. After the purchaser is added to the list, the clock will start ticking on your recurring message and X number of days after the date they were added to the list, the email with the link to the survey will be sent.
5. After you receive your first response, you can view the responses online in Mustang List or export the responses to a CSV file for viewing in MS excel and other applications. You can also view the bounce, open, and click rate data in Mustang List (something you can’t do with web-generated emails).

Keep in mind:

• You can absolutely send an email to a customer that’s transactional in nature, but DON’T market to them as they might consider the communication unsolicited commercial email (aka SPAM).
• DO carefully manage your list of web purchasers list and purge it occasionally to avoid accidentally sending marketing emails to these customers.
• DO include a shout out and link to sign up for your newsletter. Sending a “How are we doing” email and survey is a great way to build your email list if you properly solicit and receive permission.

In the last blog we discussed how to use alt tags to optimize your email for when images are turned off in different email services. Here are a few more tips:

• Don’t create Image-Only emails. Include some text copy. Emails that are comprised only of images (or that have very little text) often get tagged for junk mail. This is partly because the spam filters can’t “read” the content and protect the recipient by automatically sending the email to the junk folder. A ratio of 30/70 text to images is a good balance to keep in mind. Plus, when images are turned off, there’s some text in the email to go along with your alt tags so content of the message comes across more clearly.
• Add the height and width to all images to ensure that the size of the blank placeholder images doesn’t throw off your design.
• Make sure the offer is above the fold. If you use a big image, it can push any copy below the image further down the email. Your readers will be looking at a large empty space where the image is blocked. So be sure to use Alt Tags, and consider putting some copy above the image. Also test your email design in a Preview Pane.
• Make sure your images are clickable. People expect to go somewhere by clicking an image: fulfill this expectation. When images are turned off, your alt tag will be clickable, so make sure the image, the alt tag, and the landing page all make sense together.
• Consider your background color. If you make an image clickable, but that image is turned off, the alt tag will be clickable. And if you use a background color, you have to be careful that the hyperlinked alt tag will show up against this background color. If it’s hard to read, your subscribers miss your message and you’ll have wasted your time writing alt tags.
• Alt tag product names and prices. If your email features images of products, don’t forget to alt tag the brand, the name, and the price of products. If images are turned off, this will make the product more clickable. And when images are turned on, it’s great for readers to see the name and price of a product when they hover their mouse over the image.

Have you considered what your email looks like when it arrives in a Gmail account with Images turned Off? Or when images are blocked in Hotmail? Did you know that the default view in Gmail is to have Images turned off—even if your email address is added to the customer’s address book? Sure, recipients can turn the Images On, but what if they don’t? Make sure that your emails look good whether images are on or off by using Alt Tags.

When you mouse over an image text pops up for the image: this is an alt tag. And when images are turned off, the alt tag appears as text in place of the image. It’s basically a text description of your image. But using alt tags effectively means reinforcing the image’s purpose or message, not merely describing what the image looks like. For example, the company logo that appears in an email could have an alt tag of “MustangList logo.” But the more effective alt tag would be “MustangList—Easy and Cost Effective Email List Management.” When the images are off, this reinforces the company sending the email, and it reads well to the subscriber—it doesn’t look like some weird back-end of things meant for the designers.

Because it’s this text description that displays when images are turned off, you can use the alt tag to reinforce the message or the call to action of the image. Say you have an email promoting a big Memorial Day sale, and the email is comprised mainly of graphic banners. In the banners you convey the details of the sale (where, when, what, why). You could have alt tags that say “MemDay Sale image1,” “MemDay Sale image2,” etc. Or you could choose some of the more important images and use alt tags to describe the details of the sale: “Huge Memorial Day Sale: Save 20% on all items with this promo code: memday08.” You can choose just one image’s alt tag in which to convey this information, or choose a few images and separate the information among different alt tags.

Be sure to consider the placement of the text when the images are turned off: if you provide alt tags for every image in the email, the text could be redundant and difficult to read. Based on the location of the images within the email, carefully choose which images you will leave blank and which images have the best placement for displaying and reading the alt tag text when the images are turned off. And if the images are more ornamental and don’t convey important information, then leave the alt tag blank— there’s no reason to make an alt tag that’s purely descriptive (“girl reading a book”). In this case you’ll have adequate text copy in the email to get your point across and it will be safe to leave the alt tag blank.

By making sure the alt tags are very descriptive and contain all the information communicated in the images, you can ensure the message of your email comes across even with images off.

With Mustang List’s easy to use Response form tool, you can collect registration information from your subscribers for your next event or seminar. Imagine the ease of an online sign up process and the ability to send a confirmation and reminder email all within one system. Here’s how:

1. Set up a Response form in Mustang List. This will be your event registration page. When the form is complete, a url will be generated for your new form that you’ll copy and paste into your email creative or onto your website.
2. You want to make sure that you have all the information for the event on this page: event, date, place, and time. Use descriptive text for the button to submit the form: “click here to register,” or something similar.
3. The Response form should include the fields you’d like to collect for the sign up, for example: Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Company, Title, and Phone Number.
4. When you create the Response form, you’ll also create a Thank You page. Use this page to confirm the registration was received and thank your customer. You might also reconfirm the date, place, and time of the event in case the customer chooses to print the confirmation page.
5. When the Response Form and Thank You page are complete, save the form.  A url will be generated that you can copy and paste into your email creative or put on your website that will take customers to your registration page.
6. Once you begin to receive registrations, you can view the responses online. You can also export the responses to a CSV file making it easy to share the final list of attendees with others involved in the event. If you need to snail mail the registrants, or if you need to prepare collateral before the event like name tags, you can easily import the CSV into other applications.
7. Although you cannot add your recipients to your normal email list (unless you explicitly requested and received an opt-in), you can email the recipients to confirm their registration and the event details. Use the CSV file of registrants’ email addresses and import them into a separate list in Mustang List.
8. Email the recipients once again a week or a few days before the event as a courtesy reminder of the date, place, time, and other relevant details. This (and the confirmation email) is a transactional email and you need not have an opt-in to send this type of email. Include a link in these emails so they can sign up for your email list. You might also include a note that the bottom explaining that the email is sent to event participants as a reminder. Be sure to keep this list separate and purge it after the event to avoid accidentally mailing it marketing email.

Detailed instructions for how-to set up Response Forms are in the Mustang List Knowledge Base.

The From Address is the name and email address that will appear in the From line of the email header when your subscribers receive your email. It is important that this email address clearly indicate your company name (the sender) to increase the likelihood of your subscribers opening your email. People are less likely to open emails from senders they don’t recognize.

A From Address will have a format similar to the following:

My Name <myname@mydomain.com>

Note that the two parts of the From Address in the example above that say “My Name” do not need to be the same. You could have the “name” of the publication be the part before the < as in:

My Company’s Weekly Deals <mycompany@mydomain.com>

Often, the part in the < > doesn’t show in the recipient’s inbox From line. You’ll want to be sure that you include your company name in the portion before the < so that your recipient knows who the sender is. In our example above the portion before the < is “My Company’s Weekly Deals” and not just “Weekly Deals” for this reason: “Weekly Deals” does not tell the recipient who the sender of the email is. Alternatively, you could set up the email address as:

My Company <weeklydeals@mydomain.com >

Many companies also set up their From Address as an email only, with no name. This format looks like:

myname@mydomain.com

In this case, they don’t add a name in front of the email address and so they don’t enclose the email address in the <>. When you enter your From Address this way, the actual email address (myname@mydomain.com) is what will appear in the recipient’s From line on the email header.

If your company name changes, you need to carefully handle the name change in the From Address. Subscribers need to be eased into the new company name or your open rates might suffer as they might not recognize the new name as the company whose email they subscribed to. Start with an email sent from the old company name announcing the name change in the subject line. Then for a couple months send mail displaying a From Address with both company names, until eventually you eliminate the old company name. If you need to change the actual email address and domain that’s sending the email, again, move slowly; try and get your subscribers to add the new domain to their address book and be prepared for a dip in open rates. Depending on the subcribers’ settings, the messages from the new email address could go to junk mail until the subscriber notices and adjusts their settings.

Whatever method you choose for your From Address, it is recommended that you authenticate your From Address domain name with Domain Keys and SPF. Having these records will help your email deliverability and can also help your domain from being spoofed or forged. If Mustang List hosts your domain, this is set up for you. If Mustang List does not host your domain, then consult with Mustang List or contact your domain service provider for assistance.

Have you seen the link in Mustang List for Response forms? Ever wondered what they are? A Response form is a way to collect information from your subscribers; it is a form that will accept responses from your readers. With Mustang List’s easy to use tool, you can create a webform and a thank you confirmation page. You link customers to the online form you’ve created with a url you paste into your creative and you can view the responses in Mustang List.

Here are two ideas you can implement with Response Forms:

Run a Survey. Find out what your customers are thinking.

• Want to know what you can do better?
• Do you know what your customers like, what you’re doing right?
• Want feedback on new email creative or an updated website?

Opening lines of communication with your customers is always a good thing. Create a survey with up to 12 questions or fields, paste the link into an email or onto your website and wait for the responses to come in. You might consider offering an incentive in exchange for your customers’ feedback. Offer a free service or gift card for the first ten surveys received. Or enter all of the respondents in a drawing for a free product. If you try this approach, make sure that one of the survey fields is an email address so that you can contact the respondent with the special incentive you offered them. Alternatively, if you do not provide contact information fields in the response form, the respondent is anonymous when you review the responses, which could also be useful.

Hold a Contest. If the prize is good, your customers will target their friends and family and do your marketing for you.

• Offer a prize for a new name for your e-Newsletter.
• Generate hype for a new product by giving it away in a contest.
• Build your email list by asking for an opt-in to your e-Newsletter on the entry form.

Contests are a fun way to promote your company or brand and increase name recognition. The Response Form can double as an online contest entry form. Ask for contact information in the 12 fields as well as anything else you want to know—for the contest or otherwise. Be sure to list the contest rules in the Message Content or in the Footer. Use Enter Now! or similar text for the Submit Button Text so that’s it’s clear that clicking the button is required to submit the form and enter the contest. When you randomly choose a winner, double check whether or not the entry form was filled out completely and correctly and qualifies to win. If not, randomly choose again until the submission drawn fits the entry criteria.

Detailed instructions for how-to set up Response Forms are in the Mustang List Knowledge Base.

No, not offer testing, or testing new design—though you should do that, too—the testing we’re referring to here is basic nuts and bolts testing. Why? To make sure the email you’re sending is perfect, of course. But you Previewed the message, isn’t that enough? No, not really—it helps to see and interact with the email again in your inbox; and not everything appears in the actual email as it does in Preview (i.e. personalization tags). You really can’t test enough when, for example, a bad or forgotten link can easily cost you sales and cause the failure of your campaign. Testing is grueling work, but it has to get done every time you send an email.

Here are some things to look for when testing:

Test appearance.

• Make sure it looks ok in the email client your company uses. This is important because this is where many of your coworkers and supervisors will see the email.
• If you can, also check the rendering in different email clients. How much trouble you go through to do this will depend on the likelihood of your customers receiving email in these different clients—i.e. Microsoft’s Outlook, Mozilla’s Thunderbird, and Apple’s Mail.
• Test the appearance of your email in different Web-based email services. Sign up for a few different free email addresses with Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. so that you can see how the email renders/looks in these different webmail providers. You can get a picture of the webmail providers you should prioritize testing by reviewing your email list for the domains the majority of your customers’ emails are with.
• Check these web-based email accounts in different browsers if you can (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari)
• Ensure any personalization code you’ve used resolves.
• See how your subject line appears—can you view the whole thing, or is it cut off? If it’s cut off, is the break acceptable or do you need to rewrite it to make more sense?

Test functionality.

• Make sure all your links work.
• Make sure the links go to the desired landing page.
• Double check open-tracking and link-tracking.

Double-check for errors.

• Make sure the From address and From name are correct.
• Check once again for design errors and typos. Seeing the email actually in your inbox can give you fresh eyes to look at it yet again and catch any mistakes.
• Ensure the footer info like company address, unsubscribe links, etc. are displayed correctly and that they work.

You’ll probably find you need to test the email more than once. For the final round of testing (or for what you hope will be the final round) you might consider setting up a “test group” (or Category in Mustang List) of test email addresses you’ve created with different email service providers. Then you can send the email once, but receive it at several different accounts and quickly check the email’s appearance. You’ll also be able to see the email as your subscribers will see it when it’s sent “for real.” For example, when you send yourself a test email by entering your email address in the Test Address Field, you will not see the personalization your subscribers will see—you’ll still see the code. To see the code populated with data, you must send the actual email to your list or to a category of the list.

Consider including in this “test group” the email addresses for supervisors and co-workers who need to sign off on the email. Since this email will be the closest to the version subscribers will receive—with any/all code populated with data—sending a test email to a test group in the system is a great way to get internal approval on the final version.

Think having emails with compelling content requires spending hours writing content for it? Thing again. Here are some ideas for creating email formats that are sustainable and don’t require a lot of writing.

• A picture can be worth a thousand words. Design an email template that employs images and banners that reinforce your brand and has a limited amount of space for writing.
• Let your products do the talking. If your products comprise most of the content, there’s little for you to write. Have several product sections in a publication. Here are some examples: sale products, seasonal products, featured new products, favorite or most often purchased products.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Get content from your website. Rework a webpage of content to suit an email and you’re good to go.
• Let others do the writing. If you find a great article online write a little review of the article and why you think it’ll interest your readers. Then provide a link to the actual article (you can’t paste the content in your own email—you need to link to it to avoid copyright infringement).
• Tips and Hints. You are an expert at your business. Talk about what you know and do best. It doesn’t need to be long; sometimes just listing tips is enough. Break down what you know into bite-sized chunks and you might find you have enough content for several emails. For example, a real estate agent could fill several emails with tips for selling a house: how to spruce up the outside of the home, how to arrange the furniture inside the home, fix-it jobs that should and shouldn’t be done before selling, etc.
• Customer driven content. You can get your customers to provide content for you. Use customer reviews of products and customer testimonials to promote your products for you. Run a contest for images or articles provided by your customers.
• Run a Survey. Create a survey to help you get to know your customers better or to get their feedback on something you’re considering implementing. Explain the purpose of the survey in an email with a link to the survey (you might consider incentivizing responding to the survey with a discount code or an entry into a contest). After the survey is over, the questions in the survey can provide content for future emails, as you can share the responses and findings with your readers.

Do you let your subscribers go too easily? Do you offer them alternatives when they attempt to opt-out? Have you considered how you might be able to save the subscriber and prevent an opt-out from taking place? Although you cannot make the unsubscribe process difficult, following these tips might help you gain value from the opt-out process.

• Clearly indicate how to unsubscribe. Just because a customer chooses to opt-out of an email you send doesn’t necessarily mean your relationship with them ends. There is no reason to turn off a customer with a difficult or lengthy opt-out process.
• Offer different publications. If you send different types of emails to the same list, but these emails cannot be subscribed to individually, you might be risking losing subscribers who want some but not all of your emails. Consider allowing your subscribers to subscribe individually to publications such as your weekly deals and your monthly update newsletter. You might find your readers attempting to opt-out remain signed up to at least one email publication.
• Offer different frequencies. Maybe the subscriber doesn’t want to receive email weekly. Let them choose to receive email at a different interval: maybe two times a month or once monthly. Be sure to come up with a plan for mailing at the varying intervals and keep your subscribers properly segmented.
• Confirm the opt-out. Show a confirmation page after the opt-out that confirms the opt-out took place. Be sure to communicate with your customer the time frame within which the mailings will cease. Provide a link on this confirmation page to sign back up in case the opt-out was a mistake. And provide a link back to your homepage.
• Solicit feedback. Either provide a field on the opt-out page to ask why the customer is unsubscribing or provide a link to a survey for more feedback. This can turn an opt-out that can’t be saved into an excellent diagnostic for you and your business.