Ahh, Christmas. The spammer’s favorite time of year. And this past holiday was no exception, according to Symantec. In fact, spammers upped their game by producing even more spam this Christmastime than last year. 

According to Symantec’s monthly “State of Spam” report, spam accounted for 75% of all emails. Last year, spam only counted for 72%. Even more disturbingly is how smart spammers have gotten at beating spam filters. Not only did the spammers use plenty of images with messages embedded, but also used holiday phrases such as “Merry Christmas” in subject lines and copy, perhaps hoping this more “festive” look would woo people into opening their emails. 

And sadly, executives from research firms claim that as long as spam remains a profitable business (and it is my folks), there will be a way for spammers to get around filters. And meanwhile, the legitimate email marketer struggles to get their emails in the inbox. Life simply isn’t fair. 

The one that really sticks out to me is list segmentation. How many of you email marketers out there are really segmenting your lists? Not many, I’d guess. Why? Because good list segmentation is work. You not only have to go into your reports and decide how you’ll segment your email list, but you need to shuffle things around to make another sub-list.  And ultimately, the more segments means the more emails that need to be created. You can get away with adjusting a single email template seven ways till Sunday if you really have to, but let’s face it: this is something you can get away with only part of the time. 

So as an email marketing professional in the mix, I suggest we all learn to work smarter, not harder. We cut back on the over-thinking and whingeing about doing it and just…well…you know the rest. Does Nike come to mind? After all, what is the point of being a direct email marketer when you have the work ethic of an email blaster? So let’s all promise in the New Year that we’re going to kick things up into high gear. And at the end of next year, when we all get misty eyed and wistful again, we can re-assess how well keeping this promise worked or even if it worked. It’s definitely worth a shot. 

email marketing tips on improving your email open rates. 

When it came time to unsubscribe from the newsletters of the two aforementioned major companies, that, let’s just say they rhyme with SutriNystem and MalWart, I was sent to a simple opt-out page. When I finished that procedure, I moved on, letting weeks go by, without signing in again. Lo and Behold, three weeks later, I open my email box to find SutriNystem and MalWart still sending their emails to me. When I contacted one, they folded and immediately unsubscribed me. But when I contacted SutriNystem and got on a LiveChat with an agent, I was told that I had to call an 800 number to unsubscribe to their newsletters, even though I did my due diligence and went through their unsubscribe procedure online.

The gist of this post is this: most email marketers assume that the ones breaking the rules are always small, ignorant operations. But in reality, the big, ignorant operations also mess up too. Most would not even think of asking unsubscribing customers to call a phone number to get taken off the mailing list. But you can see that it happens, even in the age of spam filters and good email marketing practices.

If you’re serious about starting and email marketing program, you must become familiar with the following terms and phrases. 

1)Opt-in permission 

Opt-in permission a fancy term that means getting customer permission if you to email them. This is probably the most important, effective and safe email marketing model to follow. How do you do this? Simple. You can use a ListBuilder or sign-up box on your Website, have customers fill out cards at your stores, create contests that encourage customers to subscribe to win a prize, the possibilities are endless. Regardless of how you get that permission, it must say, unequivocally, that your customers want you to email them.  

2) List Builder (also known as a sign-up box)

A ListBuilder is a small box you put on your site that customers can use to subscribe to your email. This box may ask for customers to only enter their email address, or it may lead to another page where they enter their name, address or other info. The ListBuilder is very important because it can help you easily build a permission-based list. You can even take things a step further: After customers fill out the info in your ListBuilder, you can automatically send them an email with a link that they can click on to confirm their subscription. This is known as double opt-in, confirmed opt-in and closed-loop opt-in. So, why go through all this trouble? If someone enters another person’s email address without telling them, the person who receives the email may take offense that you’re emailing them without permission. If they hit the spam button, it can ruin your reputation permanently.  

3) The federal CAN-SPAM Act

This set of rules, formulated by the U.S. Government in 2003, dictates good email marketing practices for both U.S.-based email marketing firms and firms from all over the world that email American recipients. 

Sadly these days, having multiple email boxes is almost like having different sets of silverware. You use the junky stuff day in and day out, barely look at it and hardly bat an eye if it ends up under the couch, but you take the fancy stuff out of the china closet drawer when company stops in. So, what’s the solution to this, when even the most law-abiding email marketers get thrown in with the fraudsters in the world? Nothing that I can think of. But let’s look at this from another angle.

When the people of this study say they are trying to avoid spam, I wonder how many of those “spam” emails are actually opt-in emails that

 recipients signed up for and are too lazy to unsubscribe from? Now, I’m certain that some of those emails in those inboxes are not following the rules. Some, indeed, are spam. But the vast majority are probably not. Some email marketers probably got those addresses when you or I hastily typed them into that *required* registration field with the asterisk next to it, the final, annoying barrier blocking that free ring tone or six month magazine subscription. So I suppose it’s the email marketer’s turn to be miffed. Go figure.

While some of this info is surprising, the bottom line is that email marketers need to create a uniform standard for their from lines. For instance, it behooves any email marketer to always send from the same company name. Switching back and forth between different from lines, like using “Joe’s Tire Shop” one week and “Joe’s Tires” or “Joe’s Shop” the next, is a recipe for disaster, plain and simple. Your goal, as an email marketer, is to train your recipients to recognize your emails time and again, establishing a routine and comfort zone, so that that they become confident about opening them and reading their content. Even the smallest tweaks can cause an upset, so pick a name, stick with it, and use it every time. 

But there is some significant hope.

According to APACS, the U.K. payment organization, the cash cow known as phishing appears to be drying up for fraudulent email marketers. Online banking fraud, which includes phishing, still remains a big problem, but it appears people are getting wise to the scheme and are keeping their wallets shut. Last January, U.K. phishing emails only brought in a bit more than 7 million pounds. This is down from 28 million pounds from 2006. It’s nice to know that the average email marketing recipient is getting wise.