Pinpointe - Business Email Marketing Blog » Email Response Rates

What is a “spam honeypot” or Spamtrap?

Pinpointe — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 02:28:48 +0000

ISPs and spam tracking services like Spamhaus and SORBS rely on spamtraps or ‘honeypots’ to catch spammers – but what exactly is a ‘spam honeypot’ and how do you avoid hitting them? The bulk of the spamtraps and honeypots today are from dormant email accounts and/or closed domains. The logic is simple: a ‘dead email inbox can’t opt-in to receive email’, so anyone sending email to one of these spamtrap addresses is likely sending unsolicited email. ISPs (Yahoo.com, msn.com, gmail.com for example) review their list of email boxes regularly and disable accounts that have been inactive for a long period of time. They allow the addresses to sit disabled for six to 12 months – during which time any legitimate [...]

DKIM Email Authentication in 2011

Pinpointe — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 03:11:37 +0000

Email authentication is a way to say, “This email is from Pinpointe’s servers, but it’s being sent on behalf of me, so you can trust it.” It basically prevents your email from looking spoofed (like a forgery). DKIM is the e-mail authentication standard developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force to address one of the Internet’s biggest threats: e-mail fraud. As much as 80% of e-mail from leading brands, banks and ISPs is spoofed, at least according to the Online Trust Alliance (www.otalliance.org). DKIM is an important step in rebuilding consumer confidence in e-mail, because DKIM makes it hard (i.e., almost impossible) for evil, fraudulent spammers to send emails where they pretend to be someone else – like your bank [...]

Webinar: How a SPAM Firewall Works

Pinpointe — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:32:44 +0000

Our first webinar - ‘Email Marketing 101′ focused on tips to improve delivery with a concentration on email content. In this Webinar, (aka “Why Good Emails Go Bad“) we take it up a notch and explain in detail, the end-to-end trials and tribulations of an email message as it flows from your outbox to (hopefully) the recipients inbox. This webinar is more technical. Our goal is to not only leave you with a dozen or so specific tips, but to help understand all the places where your email can get tripped up before finally hitting the recipient’s inbox. The topics include: How current Enterprise Email Filters work Tracking an Email from send to delivery: possible pitfalls along the way Designing for the [...]

How do I know if I’m on a SPAM Blacklist?

Pinpointe — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:45:23 +0000

We often get the question: “How do I know if my company is on a SPAM Blacklist?” Followed by “If my company is on a SPAM blacklist, how the heck do we get unlisted? There are several hundred SPAM blacklists but luckily, there are a few tools that can help you check most of them quickly. We’ve included here a handy reference with the sites that you can use to check your blacklist status. We’ve also highlighted one or two of the more prominent SPAM blacklists. What you need to know to check Blacklist status Most SPAM blacklists track the reputation of the email servers that are being used to send outgoing email for your domain, so to get started [...]

Webinar – Use Split Testing to Improve Email Responses

Pinpointe — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:43:12 +0000

Watch Webinar This is our third in a series of webinars for your business email marketing. Based on analysis of thousands of Business to Business email campaigns and a few hundred million emails that have been sent through Pinpointe’s B2B email marketing platform, we share results of several email split tests to help you improve your email marketing results in a business to business (“B2B”) environment. Join us in this interactive webinar session that includes question and answer sessions throuhhout. Topics covered include: Which is better: Sending from a person or from your company address? Can you lift response rates using personalization? What does subject line length have to do with response rates? The accompanying slides and Q and A summary [...]

Webinar: Writing Tips to Improve Email Responses

Pinpointe — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 05:44:08 +0000

This is the SECOND in our series of Webinars on Email Marketing deliverability. Which is more important - a great subject line, or a fantastic graphic design and witty content? Will having more links in your email increase your email response rate, or decrease it? We'll explain in this 'Email Writing Tips' webinar .

Based on analysis of 100's of millions of B2B emails and thousands of email campaigns that have recently been sent through Pinpointe's email marketing platform, we'll cover specific writing tips that will help you to improve email response rates. First, we'll break the email down into sections, including the subject, send-from, introduction, body and signature. Then we'll cover email writing tips for each section to explain what you can do to maximize responses.

Join us in this 50 minute on-demand Webinar, where we cover:

The Top 9 Best / Worst Performing Email Subjects
What content should all good emails have in common?
Optimizing your Subject Line
Embedded Link analysis - how to optimize links in your email

The accompanying slides and Q and A summary are below... And hey, please Diggit, Fave or Tweet about it!

10 Worst Performing Email Subject Lines

Pinpointe — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 04:39:21 +0000

We already covered the top 10 Best performing headlines – so read, review and emulate. Since no top 10 ‘Best’ list would be complete without the corresponding ’10 worst’ list, here are the subject lines associated with the 10 worst performing emails campaigns, along with our opinion of what the recipient may have thought when they skimmed through their inbox.. and decided to delete the email instead of open it. Join Us for a FREE Webinar on April 2 2011! - Webinar about what? Why? From Whom? Aren’t most Webinars FREE? Shop Early and Save! - Oooh. Yet another promotional email. I’ve only received 219 of these today. - What will I be shopping for? Early for what? Save how [...]

Webinar: Tips to Improve HTML Email Response Rates

Pinpointe — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 02:00:08 +0000

This is the first in our series of Webinars on Email Marketing deliverability. The interactive session demonstrates tips to improve delivery and email response rates for your well crafted HTML emails. We also cover tips to help ensure your email gets read once it actually makes it to the inbox. Email Marketing 101 focuses on email content and covers the following topics: Designing for the Inbox: Think "Above the Fold" 21 DOs and DON'Ts - Tips to Improve Email Delivery The on-demand version, accompanying slides and 10 page Q and A sumamry are included.

If an Email is Forwarded, Are Click and Open Stats Tracked?

Pinpointe — Sun, 17 May 2009 06:41:55 +0000

There are two ways one of your campaigns can get forwarded. The first is simply that an excited recipient thinks your email is useful, they forward it directly onward. In this case, the entire original email along with the trackable links and embedded ‘beacon’ image that is used to track HTML email opens are forwarded to the recipient in its original form. When the recipient opens the email or clicks a link, this will register as an open or click for the original recipient. When reviewing statistics, what you’ll see is repeated opens (or clicks) registered for the same recipient. Here’s an example from Pinpointe’s reporting: The second way an email can be forwarded is when the email includes an embedded [...]

9 Tips for Writing Email Subject Lines That Work

Pinpointe — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:25:36 +0000

Every copywriter and journalist knows the importance of a powerful headline. The same applies for email subject lines, because as much as 40% of a recipient’s decision to open an email is based on the email subject (and sender). Despite that, many still underestimate just how important the email subject line is. So here are some anecdotes, facts, and guidelines that can help you write even better subject lines (and remind you how much you should focus on them.) The 50/50 Rule of Email Subjects According to some of the best copywriters of all time, you should spend … half of the entire time it takes to write a piece of persuasive content on the email subject. The same tip [...]

The Ideal Email Subject Line Length

Pinpointe — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:23:00 +0000

We ran multiple experiments on subject lines and summarized one particular case study example in our recent webinar: “Use Split Testing to Improve Email Responses (you can download the slides and view the on-demand version). Here are the email subject variations: 1: %%First%% – [Webinar] Split Test Case Studies (Feb 4) 2: %%First%% – [Webinar] Split Test Case Studies (Feb 4) *Note 3: [Webinar] Case Studies Webinar: Using Split Testing to Improve HTML Email Response Rates (Feb 4th) – Please Join Us 4: [Webinar] Split Test Case Studies (Feb 4) Notes: In version #2 we personalized the email introduction and used the recipient’s first name in several parts of the email. In the subject lines that have squarre brackets – [...]

10 Best Performing Email Subject Lines

Pinpointe — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:28:43 +0000

Our customers ask for advice on how to write killer email subjects. We point them to our advice here “Tips for Writing Email Headlines That Work” where we explain the different approaches to an email promotion and describe top strategies for crafting winning email subject lines. This is an excellent starting point and anyone who takes the 20 minutes to read and apply these common sense guidelines will improve results. But ‘guidelines’ – whether for email subjects or any other topic – are meant to be a first step to point you in the right direction. Never underestimate the importance of measuring your campaigns in order to fine tune results. Split testing with a few variations can easily help you [...]