My Email Campaign Bombed!

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Permalink Reply by Matt Vernhout on April 7, 2009 at 1:06pm

Where did you get the list?

Are you able to share more about the campaign? The content might have caused some of the issue - the subject line would not have killed it on it's own...

Matt
@emailkarma

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Permalink Reply by Sue Lewis on April 7, 2009 at 1:13pm

Hi Matt - We compiled the list ourselves from telemarketing & website research. Does a service exist that filters email addresses as there are for mailing addresses??

I included 5 links to different product pages on our website - there was no attachment to the email. I created the email on one of VR's templates, so I don't think I included any graphics that would have sabotaged my campaign. I'm at a loss!

Sue

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Permalink Reply by Chris Ewald on April 7, 2009 at 1:42pm

Hi Sue,

Did the people on the list you compiled opt in to your list -- in other words, did your recipients know you and ask to hear from you? Curious about what you mean by "compiled the list ourselves from telemarketing and website research."

--Chris.

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Permalink Reply by Sue Lewis on April 7, 2009 at 1:45pm

Hi Chris!

No, they were not expecting the email. We asked for email addresses during telemarketing phone conversations and some addresses were found on on-line company directories. I figure if they are listed on the company websites they are fair game to send to. Right?

Sue

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Permalink Reply by VR Delivery Team on April 7, 2009 at 3:15pm

Sue,
It is a policy of VerticalResponse that all email sent through our system be mail that the recipient has specifically opted in to receive. Our Terms of Service that must be agreed to with every email upload states:

"Please Note: Sending unsolicited commercial email (spam) through iBuilder or any VerticalResponse systems is strictly prohibited...

...Customer may not access or otherwise use third party mailing lists in connection with preparing or distributing unsolicited e-mail to any third party..."

Finding addresses in online company directories is technically called "harvesting", this method of list building is not allowed by law. According to the CAN SPAM Act of 2003, a message cannot be sent to a harvested email address. We try to strict control the type of email sent from our system and sending to this type of data source is definitely not allowed and would generally result in account termination. I urge you to remove the portions of your list that have not specifically opted in to receive email communications.

The fact that your recipients were not expecting the emails would be a significant reason for the low open rates. Email recipients readily skip messages that are not from a recognized sender for fear of it being spam or a more maliciously intended message.

You also stated that you had a 40% bounce rate, this is also alarming. My first questions would be around the age of the data. Jupiter Research published a statistic this year stating that the annual attrition rate for email address is 27%, so nearly one third of email addresses become invalid every year, there can be even higher rates of churn with lists that target B2B domains as people change jobs and email addresses.

Email Networks block email when they see that a significant number of invalid or expired email addresses are being mailed to. The rate that could trigger a block could be below 10%, it doesn't take many invalid addresses to be penalized by receiving networks. We do not like to have users send to lists that are over a year old and will often work with users to develop a sending plan that reduces risk to our network if mailing to list that has not been mailed to in over a year.

The Forum as well as the VR Blog, http://blog.verticalresponse.com/, contain many great list building ideas. I encourage you to engage these resources to build up the volume of your data sources with recipients who have specifically opted in to receive your email communicates and you will find a much more engaged and receptive audience. This would enable you to take full advantage of the great delivery rates and inbox penetration sending from VR will provide you.

Thank you,
Kiersti Esparza
Email Delivery Manager with VerticalResponse

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Permalink Reply by Sue Lewis on April 8, 2009 at 5:12am

Good morning Kiersti - thanks for your response - I'll research this all further through your site and on our end.
Sue

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Permalink Reply by Steve on April 8, 2009 at 5:47am

Sue,
When you send out unsolicited commercial bulk emails using your company email addy, like as an example if your company web presence was Widgetco.com and your email addy was Sue.Lewis@Widgetco.com you run a great risk of getting your company's web site backlisted as a spammer. Better read up. All emails from your company could end up in the spam folders. http://www.twowriters.net/spam.htm Federal Spam laws are getting tougher

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Permalink Reply by Sue Lewis on April 8, 2009 at 6:56am

Steve - good point. I'm bagging this whole idea until I can research further and sticking with our opted-in distributors and end users. Have a great day and thanks for the feedback.

Sue

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Whiting on April 8, 2009 at 7:44am

All of the above reasons you came up with are all very likely, I'd agree. What was your subject line? I've found that trying to be gimmicky tends to turn customers off. People like the subject lines to be straight to the point and crystal clear.

I'm also curious what format you sent the email campaign out as. Was it html or text? Was it text-heavy or saturated with pictures? That might also give a little insight to your success rate.

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Permalink Reply by Sue Lewis on April 8, 2009 at 7:55am

Good morning Sarah - my subject line was Improve Productivity and Profitability and the email was sent as html. The email was separated into 3 parts and each part did include a small photo, but I wouldn't consider it text heavy. I think sending the email before 4/1 and the virus scare might have been a bad idea. It was a combination of things, including my list, that lead to the demise of the campaign! Thanks for feedback,
Sue

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Permalink Reply by Bridget Thomas on April 9, 2009 at 9:16am

I have similar open rates. I would be interested to hear what rates others have - maybe my 8-15% isn't so shabby?
I recently started my position and did a couple of email campaigns right away to check our data. I too found that 40% bounced. Apparently my predecessor didn't care to keep records updated? Anyway, since I cleaned the data, we only have 4-5% bounce now.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Stefanski on June 5, 2009 at 10:59am

I am assuming that the email recipients are no longer working for their respective firms but, on a side note, you may want to try and pull out your list (to sort in excel) or scan your list to make sure there are no false characters in the email addresses. I also suggest to split your list into a 2 or possibly 3 segments and try different subject lines. List segmenting can really help to determine better subject line and times of day to send larger bulk emails. Keep in mind the current state of the economy, the last months have not exactly been kind to the workforce so many of the email addresses that you complied may be working at different firms or even worse unemployed.

Question to VR gurus: Does VR bounce email addresses with an extra character (a blind space) on the end of it? If so, this may contribute to email addresses that look correct to actually be invalid.

Matt Stefanski

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