It is estimated that 30% of email lists turnover (become inactive) per year. Simply divide 30% by 12 months, and you will realize that upwards of 3% of your list could be deprecating each month. Sadly, a list generated from an event last week will already have some invalid email addresses. That means you need to update your email lists before you enter them into your marketing automation or email sending platform—so that you don’t negatively affect your email deliverability rate and compromise your sender reputation.

So how do you clean up lists before you load them? The best way is use an email validation service. They are easy and inexpensive (usually between .005 and .008 cents per email), and the best way to maintain the quality of the lists going into your email systems—or to validate a list you haven’t emailed in awhile (it happens!).

How to Interpret the Results of Email Validation Services

About nine different email validation services are available, and they all do approximately the same thing. They vary in their ease of loading data and understanding their reports. Here’s the ones we’re aware of in no particular order:

• Kickbox
• Snov.io
• ZeroBounce
• NeverBounce
• FindThatLead
• BriteVerify (by Validity)
• Bounceless
• Voila Norbert
• Hunter.io

The two we’re most familiar with and like a lot are NeverBounce and BritevBerify (by Validity). Once you load your list into either of these tools, you’ll almost instantly get a report showing the quality of the list. The report shows in a dashboard that gives you an idea of the list overall health, and then each email address is given a value. NeverBounce and BriteVerify have slightly different values, so we’ll talk about them separately:

NeverBounce

The dashboard report for NeverBounce looks like the image below (Figure 1). It gives you an overall report of how many emails were Valid, Accept All (Unverifiable), Unknown, Disposable, and Invalid. We explain what those values mean below.

Figure 1.

NeverBounce report dashboard.

BriteVerify (by Validity):

The dashboard report for BriteVerify looks like the image below (Figure 2). It gives you an overall report of how many emails were Valid, Invalid, Unknown or Accept All. The values are very similar but a bit simpler than NeverBounce, which we like because quite frankly the extra detail in NeverBounce results isn’t that useful. We will explain what those values mean below.

Figure 2.

Briteverify report dashboard.

What the Deliverability Values Mean for Both NeverBounce and BriteVerify

When you get your list back from either of these services an “email status” column will be added to the list giving each email a deliverability value. When we first starting using the tools, the values seemed a little confusing to us and frankly hard to get clarity from their websites, so we’ll put a definition for the values for you below to save you time and aggravation. This will guide you on which emails to keep and which ones to think about not sending … or sending very carefully.

• Valid
• A valid email address has been verified as a real email that is currently accepting mail.
• SAFE—These emails exist and have been verified for safe sending.

• Invalid
• An invalid email address has been verified as a bad recipient address that does not exist or is not accepting mail. Invalid emails will result in a bounce.
• DON’T SEND—These emails do not exist and are not safe for sending.

• Disposable
• Disposable emails are temporary accounts used to avoid using a real personal account during a sign-up process. Common providers of disposable emails include Mailinator, Guerilla Mail, AirMail, and 10 Minute Mail.
• DON’T SEND—These emails are fake or temporary emails and are not safe for sending.

• Accept All (Unverifiable)
• This is also known as a “catch all”. This is a domain-wide setting where all emails on this domain will be reported as an “accept all”. There is no definitive way to determine whether this email is valid or invalid.
• An accept all address is commonly used in small businesses to ensure a company receives any email that has been sent to them, regardless of typos. Additionally, these are also found in larger government, medical and educational organizations. Oftentimes these are in fact valid emails. However some organizations may utilize this setting as a security feature to prevent unsolicited emails.
• SAFE—If you have a dedicated email server with your own IPs, accept all emails may be safe for sending dependent on the overall health of your list.
• DON’T SEND—If you use a third party email provider that requires a bounce rate below 4%, these emails are not safe for sending.

• Unknown
• We are unable to definitively determine this email’s status. This email appears to be OK, however the domain and/or server is not responding to our requests. This may be due to an issue with their internal network or expired domain names. Unknown addresses are checked up to 75 times before this result code is given.
• SAFE—If you have a dedicated email server with your own IPs, unknown emails are normally safe for sending.
• DON’T SEND—If you use a third party email provider that requires a bounce rate below 4%, these emails are not safe for sending.

The “accept all” and “unknown” emails are the two grey areas marketers struggle with the most because they can make up 10 to 15% of any given database validation effort. We’re often asked our opinion on what to do with those. The easy answer is don’t send them. The nuanced answer is you can try sending them little by little by breaking them into small bits such that if they all bounced your undeliverability rate for that email campaign would not exceed 10%. That takes some reverse math to figure out how big of an overall good deliverable email list to mix your questionable emails into. You have to decide whether it’s worth the effort and risk.

With email list verification tools like we’ve discussed here you can overcome email list churn and improve your deliverability. You might even be able to revive some lists that may have laid dormant during the pandemic and start emailing like a champ again. The tools are out there. Go for it!

by Laurie Beasley

Need help with your email lists or email marketing? Contact us.

The post How to Use Email Validation Services—and Understand their Results appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

One thing we’ve learned in over 20 years as an email marketing agency, managing email campaigns and regular e-newsletter sends for clients, is that assumptions and opinions don’t matter—testing matters. When exploring why a campaign or e-newsletter isn’t performing to expectations, we find that everyone in the marketing department has an opinion on the things they think will get a better response. We invite that input, but often we find that the things people think will work don’t always pan out. Ideas for one particular B2B client’s e-newsletter included adding a splashy big image at the top, making subject lines “snappier,” and including an introduction to “lure” the readers in. We tested each of the ideas and will share the results with you below. Some of the ideas worked and some didn’t. And, admittedly, some of the results surprised even us veterans here at the agency. The bottom line: testing assumptions trumps instinct and opinions every time. Read on to see what we learned.

2. The big banner image at the top hindered response.

Our client started their email template out with a very large banner image at the top with the articles below the image. The image was so large it took up nearly all of the preview pane of the email. We suggested removing the image or move it to the side, so that more article content appeared higher up. We were met with hesitation—they thought the image made the e-newsletter feel friendlier.

From testing with other clients we knew that making the image shorter, so that more article content would appear in the preview pane, would improve results. So we advocated to at least make the banner shorter. Making this adjustment did increase click-through on the articles. But we were not satisfied. We suspected that having a banner image at all was an impediment to response. So later we did another A/B test. Test A had the banner image. Test B had no image, just the introductory copy under the company name and logo. Victory! The results were as we predicted, test B had a significantly higher click-through rate. After a couple of re-tests, the large banner image at the top was eliminated altogether. See Image 1 below.

Image 1: Test A had the big banner image at the top and Test B did not. Eliminating the banner image increased click-through rates significantly.

This fits in with tests we’ve run with other e-newsletters and regular emails. Because B2B email is often viewed on Outlook, which blocks images by default, images are rendered as a white box with a red X until they’re downloaded by the reader. This creates a significant obstacle to the reader to find useful or interesting content in the email and ultimately suppresses click-through rates. Having smaller images, or no images, allows more of the text content to appear higher in the email, thus inviting more clicks. Also, downsizing or eliminating images helps when viewing emails in mobile, so that more e-newsletter article content can fit into the top of the view port.

3. An introduction at the top of the newsletter didn’t help response.

Once we had dealt with eliminating the banner image on our client’s e-newsletter, we wondered if their long introductory copy to the articles was necessary. Our client was of the opinion it was too abrupt to just offer the articles without a banner image and certainly without an introduction.

We asked if we could do a test. Test A had the introductory copy at the same length and type of content as always. And Test B had no introduction—just the articles with the first one at the top under the logo. Test B did so much better it even surprised us. So we proposed re-testing this a couple of times on subsequent e-newsletter issues. The same results came in each time.

We have a theory on this. When people are scanning their inbox, they’re looking for quick hits, things that need immediate attention, or articles that quickly pique their interest. The introductory paragraph may have pushed the article content down too low and hindered folks from getting to the article content promised in the subject line. And on mobile, it pushed the first article below the first view port. See Image 2 below.

Image 2: Test A included an introductory paragraph and Test B had none. Eliminating the introductory copy allowed more article content to show higher in the email and thus resulted in more clicks on the articles.

4. A subject line hinting at multiple topics did better.

We tested several subject lines over time. The default at the beginning of our involvement was a subject line that identified the email as the corporate e-newsletter:

June 2016 e-Newsletter: Healthcare Industry Expertise & Top Consultant Insights

We wondered, however, if hinting at the topics of the e-newsletter wouldn’t get us a better open rate. After all, we’d learned through our other testing, the article content really mattered, and we needed to remove obstacles to folks seeing/knowing what that content was. We also thought something snappier than the subject line above might move people to open it more. So we did an A/B test. Test A was the original subject line above, and B tried a variety of subject lines that hinted at article content:

Subject line A: May 2016 e-Newsletter: Healthcare Industry Expertise & Top Consultant Insights

Subject line B: May 2016 e-Newsletter: Learn how to confront change more effectively in your health care organization

The subject line in test B was a definite winner in trying to improve open rates.

And finally we decided to test a hybrid subject line that hinted at all article content separated by pipe delimiters. We got this idea from a few marketing industry roundup e-newsletters we receive that got us to dive into at least one or two articles consistently. Here are some samples of the hybrid, multi-topic subject lines we tested for our client:

September e-Newsletter: Reduce Complex Project Risks | Lean in to Merger Success

October e-Newsletter: Keys to a Great Audit | Fire up Your Training | Here’s to Compliance

These multi-topic subject lines have increased the open rates of the e-newsletter even more and have now become our default. Though we must caution that if the article content isn’t interesting, that can be a game-stopper. On occasion we’ve had a strange dip in open rates. We attribute this to lack of interest in the topic itself. So we’ve been trying to mitigate this by reviewing web traffic on the blog to make sure the article content is getting broad traction before we put it in the e-newsletter.

5. People really like news.

We added a News section at the bottom of the e-newsletter somewhat as an afterthought. Our client had been mentioned in a Business Times article, and one of the consultants had been interviewed by an industry publication. Also, a few new employees had been added to the team. Wow were we surprised at how many clicks these news articles received. Even though they’re not mentioned in the subject line, they often get more clicks than the articles. We have found this to be true on LinkedIn posts as well. Company news often gets more likes than informational articles. People really like to know what’s new about you, and that may rise above their interest in anything else you have to say.

Conclusion.

Assumptions and opinions may have been a good starting place for this client’s e-newsletter, but testing helped us dramatically improve results. We learned that big images can interfere with your text content, so make them small or push them to the side. People are skimming your email, so make sure they can get to your article content right away without any obstacles or belaboring with introductions. The more you hint at your content in your subject lines, the more opens you will get, as long as the topics are interesting. And don’t forget to satisfy those news hounds with information on what’s happening at your company. All of these tried and true ideas will get you more opens and more clicks on your e-newsletter.

Need help with your email marketing? Review our email marketing and marketing automation service offerings here.

Find more case studies and white papers at https://beasleydirect.com/resources/white-papers

By Laurie Beasley, Co-Founder and President, Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.

The post Five Big Things We Learned Through Extensive Testing on a B2B Client’s Email Newsletter Template appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

HEAT Software had eGuides and white papers they wanted to promote, however their off-the-shelf Marketo email template seemed a little choppy in the presentation of the offer.  And, it didn’t contribute to a consistent representation of the HEAT Software brand as it was presented on their website.

Their existing Marketo template also was not programmed to be mobile responsive, which they were sure was suppressing their response rates. They tasked Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., to re-design their Marketo template for a better brand presentation and mobile responsive design.

The original Marketo email template.

Re-Designing the Email Template for Mobile Responsive Design

Our new creative strived to solve several problems at once:

1. We introduced better use of subject line and pre-header copy.
2. A new hero image style was suggested, to be eye-catching but not so large that the size would be an obstacle to reading the copy in Outlook if images are blocked.
3. The new email format was mobile-responsive and designed to be easy to skim and respond. The desktop was 700 pixels wide to fit nicely on any desktop, and re-sized to 320 pixels, and shifted the right column down on mobile.
4. Copy direction drove readers to each offer, and multiple clickable graphics and text links to get the downloadable eGuide or white paper offer.
5. The overall structure used the HEAT Software brand’s distinctive red color in a consistent manner across emails and their landing pages.

The new Marketo email template in both desktop
and mobile sizes.

Template Design and Blocked Images

We also made sure that the headline was HTML text, and in fact all of the copy on the email is HTML text, so it can be viewed in Outlook when images are blocked. It’s tempting to think that if you’re designing your emails to be mobile responsive, you’ve solved all of your email creative problems. However, when you’re doing B2B email marketing you still have to worry about one thing:  Outlook.  Outlook blocks images by default. So if your email is primarily images or text within images, it won’t be readable until someone downloads the images — which will be a small percentage of people as they’re skimming emails.

Images are blocked by default on Outlook, which is the browser a high proportion of B2B emails will be viewed on.
Source: The Ultimate Guide to Email Image Blocking, by Lauren Smith

To be compatible with Outlook, we suggest you use images to complement your copy and add visual interest to the email, but make them small enough so it is not blocking the ability of your reader to see the text with images off.

The Registration and Thank You Pages Carried the Visual Theme Through to the End

The registration page was designed to carry the same visual theme as the email, so no one would feel visually lost when they landed on it. It quickly repeated the eGuide offer and benefit for reading it.  The registration page was designed to keep the registration fields within the first scroll on mobile. You’ll notice that the benefit copy shifted to the bottom of the mobile email.  We did this using @media commands,  to keep the registration fields up high on someone’s phone, and the benefit copy was there if they wanted to scroll down to learn more.

The new Marketo registration page in both desktop and mobile sizes.

The Thank You Page

The Thank You page carried the same visual theme through to the end, and made it easy to download the requested asset.  It also used some extra real estate next to the primary asset to offer two related other assets: a webinar and a report.  By using the grey shading behind the two extra assets, it was easy to see that they are separate from the main offer.  The Thank You page re-sizes beautifully on mobile.

The new Marketo Thank You page in both desktop and mobile sizes.

Best Practices and Successful Results

By incorporating all of our best practices into the new mobile, responsive templates, HEAT Software had a great foundation for their lead generation campaigns. The templates were easy to replace text and images, which allowed for quick creation of new campaigns in their Marketo marketing automation system.

If you need help with re-designing your Marketo email templates, we can help. We research and design high-converting custom email templates. Contact us for a free consultation!

The post How we Re-Designed a Marketo Email Template for HEAT Software — for a Better Mobile Experience and Presentation of the Brand appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.