The From Line

BOING!

That was the sound of your email bouncing.

As a publisher, or anyone involved in email marketing, you might feel there is no worse sound. Except there is. It’s the sound of silence.

It’s the silence of your email never even reaching the recipient’s servers - or reaching the mailbox, and being swiftly and silently escorted to the spam folder by the automatic filters. Because there was no BOING! - you never know.

The percentage of sent emails that actually make it to the inbox (your deliverability rate), is the metric by which email campaigns and email newsletters live or die. It’s not just related to that one email, either. One email campaign with outstandingly bad deliverability (think 40-50% of your emails never made it to their destination) and your future campaigns start with a mark against them.

The buzz word of the year is most definitely automation. Everyone uses it, in almost every industry. Of course, I can only speak for the email technology industry where automation has reached new heights. Automation features in email are now available to even the smallest of publishers. The cost to automate email newsletters has dropped substantially, leaving no excuse NOT to automate.

As publishers, we’re obsessed with content relevance. However, with audience fragmentation it has become quite the challenge to remain relevant since multiple audiences often exist on a publisher’s list. Although there’s  a lot of interest overlap, it’s difficult to hold the interest of an entire audience without losing the attention of a few.

Gold Lasso conducted an email engagement study with 32 publishers that send one column newsletters.  Our findings concluded that the majority of newsletter clicks happens on the first two stories, with almost half going to the top story.  This interesting statistic repudiates the idea of "the more content the better," and should encourage publishers to shorten their email communications.  

In my last post we talked about the D.A.R.T. framework used to mold subscriber’s engagement. Although Design, as discussed, is the heaviest variable in training your subscriber’s to engage, the three other pieces of the puzzle are crucial as well. 

You’ve got an untapped resource right at your fingertips – your audience. The wealth of knowledge and perspective your audience can offer is priceless. Email surveys are one of the fastest, most efficient ways to get to know what’s on their mind. You have questions, they’ve got answers. The feedback you generate can shed some light on things you’ve never considered.

1. Ask what they think of your organization, your products or services. You may not always get the answers you’d like, but you can use this information to learn more about what your audience is looking to get from your relationship.
2. Evaluate the competition. Do you know how to compete? What products or services have they used before and what did they like or dislike about them?
3. Learn from them. Ask for things they’d like to see in the future. Ask how you can do things better.

There are a few best practices to keep in mind while creating your survey.

• Keep it short – it shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes to complete
• Make it clear – have a third party read your questions to ensure they are concise.
• Tell them what to expect – let them know how many questions there are, how long it will take and if there is an incentive waiting for them at the end.

So there you have it, all the ins and outs of creating an effective survey. For instructions on how to use Gold Lasso’s survey module, please visit the Survey section in our Knowledge Base. It’s the perfect time – gather the information you need to start 2015 off right! For information, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or contact your Account Manager.