Email Marketing Basics & Best Practices

If you’re new to email marketing, we should go over some basic principles before you
start sending campaigns. We’ll go over best practices, legal issues, and how to measure
your overall performance...
The Definition of Spam
If you get an unsolicited email from someone you don’t know, is that spam? Not
necessarily. If you get an email that was obviously sent to a whole list of people, is that
spam? Not necessarily. So what’s spam?
Spam is when you send an unsolicited email to a whole list of people.
So let’s say you just bought a list of email addresses from some local business
organization. These are great prospects for your business, right? You want to send them
an email with a relevant offer they can’t refuse…
It’s spam if you upload that list into MailChimp (or any other email service provider like
us) and send that list an unsolicited email.
It’s not spam if you take that list, and write personal, one-to-one emails to each
recipient, and the content is unique for each recipient.
If your immediate reaction is, “but what if…” you will probably get yourself reported for
spamming. You simply cannot send unsolicited email to a list of people you don’t know.

Check Different ISPs, too

If possible, check your emails when they’re sent through different ISPs. Different email
servers will alter your messages before they even get to the recipient’s email application.
For instance, some ISPs use email servers that will strip any content below a line in your
email that starts with a period (I know, weird, huh?). We’ve been surprised at how
differently email looks when checked in Outlook 2003, but received through:
o Comcast
o Bellsouth
o Earthlink
Send tests to friends and co-workers
If you can’t setup a few test computers, keep your designs really simple, and send each
campaign to a few friends or office-mates. Just ask them to let you know if anything
looks “off” or broken to them.
Or, just use MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector
If you choose to setup your own test machine, and all those test accounts with the
different ISPs, you could easily spend a couple grand. If you also want to check your
campaigns against the big server firewalls (like IronPort, MessageLabs, and Postini)
those are several thousand dollars just to get setup. If you’ve got the money, go for it.
But who has the time to maintain all that stuff?
You can save yourself a ton of time and money by just using our Inbox Inspector. Here
are some screenshots of what you’ll get (it costs less than what you’d charge for one
hour of your time):

Testing Browser-based Email Services

You might want to setup accounts with all the browser-based email services. They’re
usually free, so it’s easy to setup lots of test accounts. You especially want to look at
how browser based email services alter your HTML and CSS.
Also, since these services are used by bazillions of people, their anti-spam filters are set
really high. We listed them below in order of most-to-least popularity (according to a
recent survey across all MailChimp managed lists). When you setup your test accounts
with these services, leave their “junk mail filter” settings to “default.” It really pays to test
on these accounts before sending your campaign...
Yahoo!Mail
Pretty aggressive anti-spam filters (understandably). Other than that, they do the typical
browser-based email stuff, like stripping your BODY and HEAD tags.
Yahoo!Mail Beta
A much richer browser interface, with a preview pane. So far, support for HTML email
looks great.
Hotmail
Similar issues as Yahoo!Mail, where BODY and HEAD tags are stripped, so background
colors and embedded CSS are lost. At one time, Hotmail was “expiring” hyperlinks in
emails that were open for 5 minutes or longer.
Gmail

Testing & Troubleshooting Your Email Designs

After you’ve finally figured out how to design and code your first HTML email template
(and, of course, your plain-text alternative version as well), don’t just plop in your
content and start sending campaigns to your list. You need to test your template first.
Make sure it’ll work in all the different email applications out there. Once you’ve found
all the little bugs, and your template is “rock solid,” you can start sending.
Web Designers: emails aren’t the same as web pages!
If you’re a web designer, you’re probably used to testing web pages in a few different
browsers, like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Mac’s Safari. And you’re probably
familiar with a few annoying inconsistencies between all the browsers, and you have a
couple hacks to make things look right.
Multiply all that by ten, for email design. There are tons of email applications out there
that you need to test on, and they all render HTML email in their own annoying ways. Do
you need to test every single newsletter across every single application, every single
time you send? Of course not. Just setup a good, simple, rock solid template and test it
as much as possible. Then all you do is swap out content. Here are some tips for testing
your email designs...
Testing in Different Email Applications
In the past, the only way to test your campaigns was to setup a bunch of accounts at all
the major ISPs, setup some test computers with different operating systems and email
programs, and send test campaigns to them. It would take hours to do all this, and it
really took all the fun out of email marketing.
That’s why we created our Inbox Inspector tool. You build your campaign, and click one
button. We’ll generate screenshots of how your campaign will look in every major email
program, and we’ll tell you if any of the major spam filters and email firewalls will block
your message, and why. We’ll point out what content you need to fix in order to not get
blocked. We’ll even check for typos and HTML coding errors. Learn more about the
Inbox Inspector at:
If you prefer to test your campaigns yourself, here are some email applications you
should install, and what to look for:
AOL
Their free CDs are everywhere, and they offer some very cheap $7 per month plans if
you call and ask for them. They’ll only give you 2 or 3
hours a month, but that’s good enough for testing.
AOL takes spam very seriously. So check to make sure
your emails don’t get filtered. Also, notice their
“Report Spam” button. You’ve got to make sure your
emails look relevant, or people will click that button (even if they opted in to your list!).
At the time of this writing, AOL 9 has an extremely tiny “preview” pane. It’s about 194
pixels wide, so make sure that your branding shows up okay under those circumstances.
If your email is too wide, and your logo is right-aligned, your recipients will never see it,
and they may never realize who sent it.
AOL’s “preview pane” is tiny! Does your logo peek out enough?
Apple Mail
This is Apple’s free email application. You get a nice big preview pane here, and they
don’t do much image blocking at all (yet). Images seem to be blocked only if an email
ends up in its junk folder. Apple Mail comes with its own spam filtering system that
“learns” so you should test your emails for any deliverability issues.
Apple’s Entourage
Kind of like Microsoft Outlook, but for the Mac (it comes with Mac Office). Their HTML
email support is fine, but we noticed in earlier versions of Entourage, if you send an
email in HTML format, but it consists of nothing but text and hyperlinks (no graphics or
tables), then the links actually display their URL next to them. Kind of odd. But if the
email actually contains a graphic or table, then the links work as coded. The issue seems
to be fixed in the latest version of Entourage 2004.
Microsoft Outlook 2003
Outlook 2003 has better spam protection, so watch whether or not your emails get
filtered. Also, this one’s got 3 vertical panes, so your emails have less room in the
preview area (see below).
Three vertical panes in Outlook 2003 leave little room: Make sure you fit!
Microsoft Outlook 2000
There are lots of business users who haven’t upgraded to Outlook 2003 yet. This
version of Outlook predates all the vicious worms, spam, and viruses that we’re used to
now, so more of your emails with flash and videos and crazy stuff will actually work
here. Don’t let it build your confidence. That fancy stuff won’t work in other programs.
Microsoft Outlook Express
This is the free version of Microsoft Outlook, installed on all Windows machines. Used
mostly by “at home” recipients. Not really many HTML email issues, besides the usual
“block images by default” feature that’s on just about every email application these
days.
Microsoft Outlook 2007
For Outlook 2007, the big change is that Microsoft is switching from using Internet
Explorer (a web browser) to render HTML email to using Microsoft Word (a text editor) to
render HTML email. Obviously, HTML email would render a lot better in a browser than
Microsoft Word, so this is kind of a bummer. Microsoft says they’re doing this because
they want their customers to have more control over editing HTML email. Whatever.
Here’s what you need to know about Outlook 2007:
Background images won’t work.
Most CSS won’t work.
Flash definitely won’t work.
No forms
No animated Gifs
Lotus Notes 6.5.3 and 6.5.4
If lots of your recipients work at very large companies, you’ll need to check your emails
in Lotus Notes. This is probably the most frustrating email application out there. It does
the strangest things. You’ll need to keep your layouts very simple. Even still, Lotus will
find a way to mess things up. I’m still baffled about how they managed to make a cell in
my table blink red. There are even big differences between Lotus Notes 6.5.3, vs. 6.5.4.
Go to our MonkeyBrains blog, and search for “Lotus Notes” for all the different things
that can go wrong in Lotus.
Eudora 6.2
Eudora has good, predictable HTML email support. We don’t see too many issues to talk
about here.
Mozilla Thunderbird
A free email application that’s gaining in popularity. Does some odd things with alt-text,
and image blocking (search for “mozilla thunderbird” at the MailChimp Blog), but for the
most part supports HTML email great. Thunderbird 1.5 has a feature that tries to detect
“scams,” where they look for hyperlinks that claim to point to a website, but the code
actually links you somewhere else. If it detects a potential “scam,” you get a warning
across the top of the message, saying “Thunderbird thinks this message is a scam.” You
can click the “Not a scam” button if it was a false alarm. It’s a nice idea, but it seems to
give lots of false positives, especially when you use click tracking in your emails (all your
links will point to a redirect script, in order to track clicks). In the Thunderbird support
forums, they say that the feature is still kind of new, and they’re working on refining it.
We don’t think it’s much of a problem, as long as your emails look nice and
professional.

Tactics for Avoiding Spam Filters

So now you know how a lot of anti-spam systems work. You really have to “think like a
spam filter” when you design your emails. Just like you “think like a search engine” when
you design web pages. Spam filters read your emails, and look for similarities with
known spam. You don’t want to do things that’ll get you accidentally thrown into the
junk folder.
And the best way to learn what not to do is:
1. Open up your junk email folder.
2. Look through all that spam you got. Really read it. Look at how they design
things, and look at how they write their copy. Notice all the similarities?
3. Now, don’t do what they do.
Okay, okay, to be more specific, here’s some stuff to avoid:
**Using bright red fonts, or going crazy with colors, styles, and formatting. Check
out the article, “Let’s dissect some spam!” at our MonkeyBrains blog to see what I
mean.
**Yelling with lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!
**YELLING WITH ALL CAPS!!!!
**Using spammy words, like “mortgage, viagra, etc.”
**Saying, “free” or “click here!” or “click here now!” or “act now!” or “limited time!”
(be especially careful of your unsubscibe link, where you might say something
like, “click here to unsubscribe.”
**If you use a WYSIWYG to code your HTML email, make sure the HTML code is
“clean.” WYSIWYGs often throw in lots of useless code that’s invisible to the user,
but spam filters look at it, and think you’re a sloppy spammer who doesn’t know
HTML.
**Don’t use “dummy text” in your message, even if you’re sending a test
campaign. Spam filters get suspicious of all that “lorem ipsum” stuff. When
sending test campaigns, use content that’s as real as possible. Don’t type in one paragraph, then copy-paste it ten times. Spam filters can see all the duplicate
content, and they think it’s spam.
**Don’t use the word “test” in your subject line.
**Don’t get too creative with your spelling, because the spammers do that all the
time (how many m0rtg4g3 ref1nanc3 spam messages are in your inbox right
now?).
**Don’t make an HTML email that’s just a bunch of pretty graphics. You need some
text in your message, too. Otherwise, the spam filters will have nothing to read,
and will think your message is junk.
**Don’t send the HTML email by itself. Always include that plain-text alternative
message.