It can be difficult to successfully perform a direct marketing campaign over the Internet. Not only do companies have to design an e-newsletter or promotional piece, without it appearing to be spam, but companies also have to take steps to ensure that the e-mail will also be able to get past spam filters.
The prevalence of spam, which is the abuse of messaging systems to send unsolicited mass e-mails, has increased in the past few years, causing an overall drop in e-mail open rates, said Tom Snyder, president and chief executive officer of Trivera Interactive, a Web development company in Germantown.
Non-spam e-mails have a greater chance of not being opened by the recipient if the e-mail looks like a spam message, is lost in a group of messages marked as spam or is identified as spam by a spam filter and never actually delivered to the recipient.
Companies launching mass e-mail campaigns need to take steps to keep clean e-mail lists, reflect their brands into the overall design of the e-mails and make sure that the e-mails do not have qualities similar to those of spam messages.
If e-mails have a high spam quotient, meaning the content within an e-mail appears similar to a typical spam e-mail, or if a company has a dirty e-mail list including some e-mail addresses that do not exist, the company can be blacklisted. Being blacklisted means no mass e-mail campaigns are delivered to any recipient located on the Internet service provider (ISP) that the company was blacklisted from.
Trivera has taken many steps to avoid any and all of these scenarios for its clients, Snyder said. Trivera maintains working relationships with all major ISPs and it has developed an e-mail application called TriveraMail that is a bullet-proof system for e-mail marketing campaigns, Snyder said.
“The best practice is to have a closed-loop, double opt-in system, which proves that an e-mail address that ends up on the list was sent in by the person who owns that e-mail address,” Snyder said.
A closed loop double-opt in system is when an individual must submit an e-mail address to gain entry to an e-mail list. Once the e-mail address is entered, an e-mail message is instantaneously sent to the e-mail address with a confirmation link. The individual is asked to click on the confirmation link to activate the account.
When the confirmation link is clicked on, TriveraMail records the date, time and computer Internet protocol (IP) address of the clicked link.
TriveraMail was launched just last year into the market as a stand alone Web-based product, but the application is already in its sixth version. Trivera has been developing and improving the product since it was originally launched as a feature on the Web sites it designs and hosts for customers, Snyder said.
Features include: open rate and click-through tracking; the availability of a full raw log of everything that happened to every e-mail on the list, including whether the recipient opened the e-mail and which links were clicked on; the ability to have multiple lists; the ability to have trigger e-mails for birthdays and anniversaries; and the advantage of Trivera’s relationships with ISPs and its knowledge of spam laws and compliance issues.
“If an e-mail server sends a message back saying an e-mail does not exist, we make sure,” Snyder said.
The cost of TriveraMail is a one-time set up fee of $1,200 with additional fees for upgrades or a subscription rate of $99 per month in which upgrades are included in the price.
If a customer wants Trivera to set up an e-mail template, including designing the e-mail background to reflect a customer’s logo or Web site, there is an additional $500 fee per template. Customers pay one half of one cent per sent e-mail, in comparison to the 1-to-3-cent per e-mail industry standard, Snyder said.
Matt Willms, president of Mequon-based Quant IX Software Inc., sends out e-mail marketing information as a way to keep in constant communication with customers and prospective customers.
Trivera developed and hosts Quant IX’s Web site and Willms has used the TriveraMail feature for more than five years, he said.
Willms has multiple e-mail contact lists of individuals and companies that he sends periodic e-newsletters to with how-to information, education on investment trends or as a follow-up to individuals who had previously requested demo versions of Quant IX software.
“We give people how-to tips for investing, but we also send e-mails to remind them that their support is about to expire for the software,” Willms said. “I can track how effective the e-mail was by seeing the number of click-throughs I am getting. It is a great feature.”
Tom Taubenheim, president and co-owner of Milwaukee-based AE Graphics, has used Trivera for Web hosting and TriveraMail for about nine months. AE Graphics is a reproduction graphics company for the architecture, engineering and contractors industries, but the company also works with lawyers and marketing agencies for printing purposes, Taubenheim said.
Because of TriveraMail, Taubenheim has been able to adjust aspects of his company’s newsletters to make them more popular based on the tracking function offered by TriveraMail. He easily added a no-charge customer profile feature to the newsletter that attracted more attention and increased open rates.
“We pushed out one piece that was just a one page e-mail about the Milwaukee office moving last August, and it was opened by 95 percent of subscribers, which is unheard of,” Taubenheim said. “On average, our newsletter is opened by more than half of subscribers. From what I understand, it is rare to get over 30 percent.”
With access to the click-through rate of his newsletters, Taubenheim can monitor which stories get the most hits and mold the editorial content of the newsletters around topics that he sees firsthand that his clients are interested in.
“We are sending out the newsletter every other month, but we are thinking about doing it monthly now, because it is so successful,” he said.
Elizabeth Hockerman is a reporter for Small Business Times. Send technology news to her at elizabeth.hockerman@biztimes.com or by calling her at (414) 277-8181, ext. 121. Technology news can also be sent to: Elizabeth Hockerman, Small Business Times, 1123 N. Water St., Milwaukee, WI 53202.
