Category Archives: Best Practices

Let’s face it, email terminology can be really intimidating. With so many acronyms and interchangeable terms, it’s hard to know what’s what. To help you make sense of it all, we’ve defined some key email terms for you. Complaint: When an email recipient identifies an email message as spam or junk by clicking the “report spam” or “mark as junk” button within their email reader. A sender’s complaint rate is calculated by dividing the total number of emails received [by the ISP] by the number of complaints reported by that ISP’s customers. Blacklist: A list of IP addresses that are…

Regardless of what type of email you send—marketing or transactional, you should always follow email best practices to make sure your emails get delivered to your subscribers. The following is a high level overview of the key elements you should be thinking about when you send email through your web application. 1: Customize the “From” line: Avoid using “no reply” in your from line. Instead, personalize it in a way that makes it easy for your customer to identify you as a sender. 2: Write Clear Subject lines: Make the purpose and content of your email obvious. If you are…

As one of the three major mailbox providers, Windows Live Hotmail is key to reaching over 286 million customers worldwide – a portion of which is probably a part of your email file. Reaching Hotmail inboxes can be achieved if you focus on sending relevant content, practicing good list hygiene, removing complainers, and having a sound infrastructure. However, in addition to following standard best practices, Microsoft recommends you also do the following to get delivered to their email inboxes: Authenticate your mail with Sender ID: Using Sender ID protocol will help Hotmail better identify you as a legitimate sender. By…

As you know, transactional email is exempt from requiring unsubscribe functionality by the CAN-SPAM Act. However, there are two sides to this story. Some believe that a subscriber should always control their ability to receive email, while opponents argue that transactional email has a specific purpose and value that is required in order to facilitate the nature of the initial transaction. So who is right and who is wrong? It probably depends on the nature of the transaction and the content. No surprise there. For instance, messages that contain order confirmations, purchase receipts, shipping notifications and system alerts should probably…

We love to share examples of email done right. This referral announcement from business intelligence platform, Cyfe, is a perfect example of how sometimes, less is more. What Works: Cyfe relies on simple plain text email messages to communicate key information to their user base. In this case, they are announcing a new customer referral program that will help them acquire new users while rewarding their most valued customers. These three simple lines communicate the benefit and provide a clear call to action that can be easily read in any email reader or on any device. We also like that…