At Elite Email we have dedicated email servers spread out across Canada and the United States so that we can offer our customers the absolute highest level of service with the best email deliverability.

After months of planning and preparation, each one of these servers has been beefed up and is running better than ever before.

To quote Kanye West, our email servers are now BETTER, FASTER, and STRONGER!

Emails will now send out faster, however everything is still tailored to specific ISP limits and guidelines. So, even though we’re eager to push the pedal to the metal we must ensure that we play nicely with others and follow the rules.

But, the good news is that this upgrade makes our sending infrastructure much stronger and all customers should see immediate benefits when sending email.

We already employ all forms of email authentication including SPF, Sender ID, Domain Keys, and DKIM. In addition to that, we have relationships with major ISPs around the globe and have active feedback loops with any ISP that offers such a service. And, of course, wherever possible, our IPs are whitelisted or on the Trusted Sender list.

But, even with all that, we are always striving to do more and be better. After all, as soon as we sit back on our heels, we risk slipping and we never want that to happen!

One of the issues that really bothers ISPs is when you try to send to a ‘hard bounces’ address over and over again. This shows poor list hygiene and is definitely contrary to best practices.

A hard bounce is usually the result of sending to an email address that does not exist and is permanently undeliverable. So, if you put yourselves in the shoes of an ISP, you can see why receiving multiple attempts over time to a ‘hard bounces’ address is contrary to the high email marketing standards we expect from all Elite Email clients.

Up until this point, our customers have always been able to clear bounces manually. You could simply click the “Clear Bounces” button on your email’s bounce report and everything would be cleaned for you. But, many customers were forgetting to do this, which we totally understand because we know how hectic things can get!

As a result of much customer feedback and the goal of constantly improving delivery, we have released a new feature that automatically removes hard bounces from your mailing list. This feature was released over the weekend and based on preliminary reports is working well.

Keep in mind that we only remove HARD bounces, so soft bounces (which could be ‘mailbox full’ or ‘temporary server error’, etc) are kept on your mailing list unless you manually remove them. This is because there is a chance that when you re-send to a soft bounced email address that it can be successfully delivered.

Stay tuned for more great features to boost your email marketing that we have planned over the coming months!

All day long we talk to our customers explaining them about email marketing best practices and how to conduct effective campaigns. So, when I see other people totally throwing some of the fundamental principles out the window, I can’t help but want to point it out.

This particular email marketing fail is really bad and I’m sure when they noticed it, they were really embarrassed.

Before going any further, I want to say that I am a proud graduate of the Schulich School of Business. I had a great experience and think it is a fantastic institution with an excellent student body and top-notch professors.

That being said, here is the email they recently sent out (click image for larger version):
(Note: I added the big red arrow)

Yes, this school that tries to attract top talent from across the globe spelled the word “AGAIN” incorrectly.

Email Marketing Rule #1: Proof read your content!

Amendment to Rule #1: This is especially important if you’re a prestigious business school!

In the good ol’ days (way long ago), you’d have to be glued to your radio and TV in order to stay on top of all the wheeling’s-and-dealings. But, now with websites being updates in real-time, social networks updated in seconds, and the ability to send rapid ‘news alerts’ through email, information spreads faster than ever before.

But, it seems some sports news organizations still don’t have a full handle on all the new technologies.

There was a serious EMAIL FAIL by Sportsnet.ca.

Here are 3 unedited “Hockey Central News Alerts” sent out by Sportsnet.ca yesterday.

——Original Message——
From: SPORTSNET.CA
To: XXXXXXXX
ReplyTo: email@sportsnet.ca
Subject: Hockeycentral News Alert – SPORTSNET.CA
Sent: Jul 1, 2010 12:33 PM

New York Rangers re-sign:

Length of contract: 2 years
Average annual value: $925,000

More at sportsnet.ca.

##

——Original Message——
From: SPORTSNET.CA
To: XXXXXXXX
ReplyTo: email@sportsnet.ca
Subject: Hockeycentral News Alert – SPORTSNET.CA
Sent: Jul 1, 2010 6:24 PM

Anaheim Ducks re-sign:

Length of contract: 5 years
Average annual value: $5 million

More at sportsnet.ca.

##

——Original Message——
From: SPORTSNET.CA
To: XXXXXXXX
ReplyTo: email@sportsnet.ca
Subject: Hockeycentral News Alert – SPORTSNET.CA
Sent: Jul 1, 2010 8:08 PM

Montreal Canadiens re-sign:

Length of contract: 1 year
Average annual value: TBD

More at sportsnet.ca.

##

Are you serious?

Sportsnet blasted out emails to their entire hockey mailing list and LEFT OUT the player’s name in the email?

I wonder how many Blackberry’s were buzzing yesterday only to have people look and find out that someone signed a contract, but they were not told who. How helpful is that?

My favorite is the last email above where an unknown person signed a 1 year contract for an amount to be determined. Wow… that email is just oozing with useful information!

Lastly, take a look at the subject. Am I the only one who thinks “Hockeycentral” is actually two words and might have deserved a space in the middle?

Sheesh!

[Many thanks to David B. for forwarding these emails to me.]

It is the content that keeps people opening your email each time and it is the content that ultimately prevents people from unsubscribing because they feel like they are getting some ‘value’ by spending time reading your email.

With that being the case, it’s pretty obvious that your first few emails to a new contact are vitally important because, as they say, ‘you never get a second chance to make a first impression’.

None of this is earth shattering and it’s all pretty obvious, but I guess maybe it’s not obvious to everyone….read on…!

I recently made a purchase at a Tiger Direct store and got an email asking me to confirm my subscription to their mailing list. (Good job so far Tiger Direct!)

After confirming my subscription, I got an email with the subject “Welcome to the TigerDirect.ca Stores List”.

Here is a full unedited screenshot of the email:

No need to check your eyes because this email is actually blank.

I’m all for brevity in a welcome email, but this seems a bit extreme!

I’d say this is an epic fail of the ‘content is king’ principal. I wonder if the next email I get will be blank, too? If it’s one thing I need more of cluttering up my inbox, it’s totally blank emails!

The main objective of this new release (aside from trying to gain market share from rivals Yahoo and Gmail) is to “address inbox clutter”.

Essentially, Microsoft has taken the position that although an email may not be spam, that doesn’t mean all messages are created equal.

Microsoft is trying to divide email using special filtered views that would allow you to see emails from your contacts, emails from social networks, email from company newsletters, etc, etc. They actually coined the term “graymail” to refer to email that is not spam, but also isn’t the top reading priority.

George Bilbrey wrote an excellent summary on Media Post that can be seen here. This post goes into more detail about the various changes and new features.

The key take away for marketers (aside from making sure your authentication is setup properly, which all Elite Email customers have by default) is to really focus on engagement. The goal isn’t just to get into the inbox, but rather have your email opened with some form of interaction.

This update also breaks away from the traditional model where the last message to reach a recipients’ inbox is displayed at the top. Now, with the Hotmail filters, emails are prioritized in different ways.

But, it never ceases to amaze me when such an epic email marketing fail is brought to my attention, especially when it’s from a company I know and respect. In this case, the company who made an epic fail and proved they really don’t have a clue what’s going on is Live Nation.

Here is the story…
A Simon & Garfunkel concert was scheduled for May 12, 2010 at the Air Canada Center in Toronto.
On April 29, ticket holders were sent an email from TicketMaster saying the following:

Dear Simon & Garfunkel Fan,
Simon & Garfunkel originally scheduled on May 12th 2010, at Air Canada Centre has been rescheduled to July 19th 2010, due to a vocal strain recently sustained by Art Garfunkel.
Tickets originally purchased for May 12th, 2010 will be honored, no action is required.
Customers who wish a refund may obtain one by one of the following methods:
…etc…

So far everything in the story is fine. We are seeing a good use of email to report a very urgent and time sensitive announcement to a mass amount of people.

And then things take a turn for the worse…
This morning (May 17), Live Nation sent out an email with the subject “Thanks for attending Simon & Garfunkel at Air Canada Centre!”

This is the email content:

UMMM… hey Live Nation… you didn’t realize that your concert didn’t happen?

No one thought that maybe under the circumstances (since the show was postponed) that sending out a survey asking for feedback might be a little stupid, embarrassing, silly, <insert adjective here>!

I don’t know who Live Nation uses as their Email Service Provider… and I’m not saying they should be dragged in the streets, but someone somewhere seriously screwed up because stopping an email campaign from sending is usually no more than a few clicks.

So, what’s the overall lesson: If you cancel a concert, don’t send out an email thanking people for attending and asking for feedback.

[Special thanks to my good friend Dean M. for bringing this to my attention!]

I bring this up because last night on Idol Gives Back (Donate Now Online), host Ryan Seacrest said that comedians Jonah Hill and Russell Brand begged and pleaded to organize a celebrity phone bank for the event.

The whole thing was a joke, of course, but when asked where all the celebrities were Hill said:

“The truth is, we emailed all those people, but the email might have gone into the spam file, because our email address is Viagraman182@gmail.com.”

I can only imagine that celebrities such as Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, etc, etc would have their spam filters set high enough to screen out ‘Viagara’ based emails… I guess celebrities really are just like the rest of us. =)

Although the whole skit was a joke, I thought it was interesting to see the issue of spam and deliverability brought up on such a highly watched show as American Idol.

Just yesterday I saw this scenario unfold and I thought it was worth highlighting…

A very good friend is running an American Idol pool this year (which I’m excited about!). He sent out an email to about 20 of our close friends explaining the format to them (you basically pick a team of 4 who you think will last the longest and then each week you submit who you think will be eliminated), the various deadlines, and a request to forward the email to other people who may be interested in joining.

It is this last objective that I am going to focus on.

It makes sense that he suggested that people forward the message to their friends, families, co-workers, etc. After all, the more people who join the pool, the bigger the prize. This request to forward the email is actually a ’strong call to action’ because it clearly tells the recipient what to do next.

The problem was that my friend accidentally forgot to put the cost of joining the pool. So, anyone who received the forwarded email (and who hadn’t spoken to him directly in the past to know the cost) would be left wondering how much it costs. Is it $1000, $100, $10, etc? This is fundamentally one of the most information pieces of information someone would need when deciding whether they want to join or not and it was left out. This causes a big communication breakdown and ultimately a roadblock for more people to signup.

Now what happens is anyone who received the forwarded email has to either respond to the person who forwarded it and ask a follow-up question or respond directly to the person running it (who smartly put their email address in the message) to get more information. Since people will often chose the least laboring approach, many may just dismiss the email and therefore not join the pool (which is opposite of the original desired outcome), even though if it included all the information they may have joined.

This really does serve as a great example of how leaving out the smallest detail can really cause one of your primary email objectives to fail.

Once I brought this to his attention, he sent out a follow-up email the next day. The follow-up email had the price in it, but did not include a copy of the original message or a re-cap of what was said previously. This is a whole other issue because now anyone who gets this follow-up email has two messages: One with all the core information and one with the price. Having two messages that they need to pair together on their own will severely hurt results because now you are asking the recipient to do extra work in order to take your desired action.

What he really needed to do was send out a follow-up email addressing the information he left out, but include the original message or re-state all the information. This way the recipient has everything laid out in one organized email that answers all their questions.

Even though this year’s American Idol pool will not be as big because of a serious flaw in the email strategy that will hurt registrations, I’m still excited about it!

We know and trust them. They know and trust us.

It is these relationships that ultimately benefit our customers and their customers through enhanced interaction and trust.

One thing that many major ISPs are coming to realize is that having a section of their website devoted to the “Postmaster” is incredibly helpful. This way the ISP can clearly communicate their policies, error codes, requirements, and the best way to contact them.

As anyone will tell you, the key to any good relationship is communication and by publishing a ‘postmaster’ page, the ISP communicates with the world not just the select few ISPs that are already in contact with them.

I mention all of this because BlueTie recently launched a new Postmaster page: http://postmaster.bluetie.com/

Many people may not recognize the “BlueTie” name, but most will recognize one of their largest domains, Excite.com.

I’m sure that soon all ISPs will have a page like this to communicate their mailing policies.