Coast Digital Blog

Last week I attended Usability Week 2008 in London. For those who don’t know Usability Week marked the London-leg of a ‘world tour’ by the Nielsen Norman Group – the usability experts. The tour also takes in San Francisco, New York, and Melbourne, so I felt quite privileged.

I went to an all-day session on writing for the web, here’s a round up of some of the points covered*:

• Web users are goal-driven; they aren’t reading for pleasure. So don’t waste their time.
• Users read 25% slower from computer screens than from paper.
• 79% scan rather than read word-for-word.
• Users rarely read whole passages. Their eyes track across pages in an F-pattern.
• It’s important to create an effective visual hierarchy with descriptive headlines, using headings and links to create road signs.
• For emails; users scan text, mostly skipping the intro, and spend an average time per newsletter of 51 seconds.
• Write for the most frequent visitor type – but ensure that new users are accommodated.
• Writing for a lower comprehension level helps everyone – but there’s no need to ‘talk down’, just simplify.
• The optimum reading level or age to aim for is 13-14 years old (12 years for a homepage and overviews).
• Write for fast comprehension, using simple language and chunk content into concepts.
• Non-descriptive links are useless, such as ‘click here’. Links that are blue and underlined are the most recognised.
• Links and URLs should be descriptive and identify the content they link to.
• Write to be printed; ensure printouts contain all relevant info, company name, contact details, URL etc.
• If you’re repurposing offline content – cut it by 50%.

*Source: Nielsen Norman Group.

I was recently prompted for my view on the best time to send a marketing email and I have to admit it’s a tough one. On every course or seminar I’ve attended ‘experts’ have insisted there’s no specific or optimal time to send. But as a user I have to disagree.

B2B
When I was using email marketing for B2B I was almost fanatical about sending at 11am on a Tuesday.

Why? Because as a receiver of email in the workplace I found that to be the best time, although Wednesday and Thursday also follow hot on its heels for me. 

So why not send on a Monday or Friday? Well, I always worry that in amongst the mass of emails people receive my message will just get bypassed if I send it first thing on a Monday. And I think the same is true for Friday, as people tend to take Fridays off whenever possible, or use it as a day to cram in everything prior to the weekend.

On reflection, statistically the highest viewing time always occurred over lunchtime [admittedly that could partially be attributed to my mostly sending email in the morning, so it would arrive late morning... in time for a lunchtime read (though that was not my tactic)].

B2C
Well, this is a different kettle of fish altogether and as such has to be tailored to the specific offering and the consumer, taking into consideration dates such as pay day.

For example, a colleague recently mentioned a job site that seemed to be targeting its weekly email to deliver on a Sunday – what a great idea, very timely, and perfect for those who choose to reserve job-hunting for the weekend.

I advocate looking at your email schedule and considering the impact national holidays and seasonal occasions will have when planning your sends. In some cases this will be a pro, and in others, very much a con.

Overall, as with most things, it’s about putting yourself in the position of the recipient and working out when would be the best time for them to receive the specific content you’re sending.

And most important is that prized Subject Line, Sender Address and Content – get these wrong and it won’t matter what time you send your email.

With the loss of 25 million data records by HM Revenue & Customs towards the end of 2007, there are increasing calls from the UK Information Commissioner (ICO) for a tightening of our data protection laws.

With continued growth in online these issues are extremely important to anyone working in marketing & communications. Security scares & changes in legislation will affect us all; from reluctance from potential customers to surrender personal data to the imposing of stricter guidelines on how we treat data once it is in our possession.

But as a firm believer in the power of permission-based marketing I’m grateful that some positive good might emerge from such a monumental mishap.

We all need to take great care of the data in our protection and of course, of how we chose to use it. Following the HMRC debacle, news stories about loss of personal data have increased & there is rising concern among the public about privacy issues. The government is under pressure to do something. I predict that we’ll see changes to data protection legislation this year.

But what can I do to ensure compliancy with current legislation?
Online marketing is covered by the Data Protection Act & the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations. In relation to the latter the ICO website states:

“Unsolicited marketing material by electronic mail (including email, text & picture messaging) should only be sent if the individual has consented to receive them, unless the individual's details were obtained in the context of a commercial relationship & the marketing is for similar products or services.

The individual should always be given the opportunity to opt out in every message.

The ICO is working with its European counterparts & the US to try to reduce spam. There is currently no specific legislation to cover email sent to business addresses.”

In relation to the above it is essential that privacy statements are clear, concise and easy to understand. And of course it is absolutely essential that data is kept clean & up-to-date.

With the possibility of new legislation there’ll be a real chance that databases might shrink as we’re all impelled to remove obsolete records. I’d welcome such a move as both a marketer and a consumer.

Cleaner data offers the chance to build better relationships. Permission-based marketing results in more intelligence about customers and their needs, enabling far greater targeting. It should be a win/win situation. Data is so valuable it’s imperative that it is kept secure and protected from misuse at all times.

In this day and age you can’t go 5 minutes with out spam creeping into your inbox! Luckily for us at Coast Digital we use top-of-the line spam filters which catch 90% of these emails before they get too close.

But unfortunately this also means we have to fight even harder to ensure delivery of marketing messages. In fact it’s a huge challenge to guarantee delivery of genuine emails. As spam filters become ever-more sophisticated, deliverability has become the number one issue for email marketers.

Here are my top tips for getting emails to your customers’ inbox.

1. Choosing the right email system
The system you use to send email plays a large part in how many of your messages get through. There are lots of systems out there offering an abundance of features to ensure your emails are as targeted as possible.

More importantly, the majority of them will be white-listed with all the major email providers. So it’s worth asking who they’re white-listed with, and if you’re sending high volumes, how many emails they can send to these providers (safely) in an hour?

2. Double opt-in
To comply with data protection legislation you should only ever send emails to people who have opted-in to receive your communications. And to increase the quality of your list - if nothing more - you should also use a double opt-in.

In this way not only do users have to sign-up on your site, they also have to click on a link in the email you send confirming their wish to receive your electronic communications: the double-opt in.

And while spam filters don’t actually take opt-ins into account, this approach gives you the opportunity to ask users to add you to their “white list”. Which leads nicely to my next point.

3. Encourage users to "white list" you
At every possible opportunity you should encourage users to “white list” your email address. If a user white lists your address, it means that each piece of correspondence you send will always get through to their inbox.

You can ask users to do this from a very early stage, i.e. directly after their initial sign-up, and follow up with a double opt-in email, and in then again in any future correspondence.

In fact a lot of big brands offer a page on their website with step-by-step instructions on how to “white list” them for most of the most major email providers (hotmail, gmail, etc). And they’ll offer a link to this page in all their email communications.

4. No attachments
Whatever you do, don’t send attachments with your emails unless you can guarantee that your messages will be delivered (even then I wouldn’t recommend it). Attachments can contain viruses and so will always attract a lot of attention from spam filters.

5. Send HTML emails with an alternative plain text version
Always send a plain text version of HTML emails. This means even if the user can’t view or receive HTML emails, then they’ll still be able to view your plain text version.

And if you’re really not keen on creating a plain text email then use it to link to a (website) hosted version of your HTML email. This way, the user will still see the HTML version, but via their browser rather than their email client.

6. Watch out for trigger words
Spam filters scan email content for trigger words and use this information to determine if a message is spam. Obviously words like Viagra (and other sex-related words) are an absolute no-go, but there are words that seem quite relevant that can still cause problems. See here for a good list: http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/spamwords.htm.

Always run your content through a spam checker before sending. A good spam checker will generally pick up on any problem words.

7. From address
Watch out for trigger words in your from-address. Even if the sole purpose of your email is to promote special offers from your website, don’t send it from special-offers@domain.com.

This is an easy mistake to make, and one that can be easily overlooked even by spam checkers.

8. Subject line
The subject line is the most important line of text in any email campaign. If you get it wrong your open rate will take a big hit even if your message makes it through the spam filters!

Make sure your subject line doesn’t contain any trigger words. And make it enticing and relevant so that the user will really want to open the email.