In its recent whitepaper, Your Reputation Holds the Key to Deliverability, New York-based e-mail services company Return Path argues that e-mail reputation is becoming all about the numbers, meaning that the ISPs' fight against spam is moving away from e-mail content and toward data-driven examinations of commercial e-mailers.
Twenty percent of all valid e-mail is never delivered, and 77 percent of e-mail delivery problems, according to Return Path, were based on sender-reputation. To solidify your organization's e-mail reputation, Return Path suggests monitoring the following five data points that each ISP looks at:
1. Volume: Spammers and legitimate permission-based mailers both have high total volume numbers. To offset your high volume, it is key to keep your complaint, hard bounce and spam trap hit rates low. Monitor complaints, especially around peak sales times when some recipients, overwhelmed by a higher frequency in e-mails, will more likely hit "this is spam" than unsubscribe.
2. Complaint Rates: A complaint rate measures how often recipients hit the "report spam" button in response to your messaging. To avoid complaints, give subscribers detailed sign-up options so they know exactly which content they subscribed to. It also helps to confirm opt-in; provide instructions to subscribers on how to add your address to their address books; and sign up for ISP notifications so when subscribers complain, you can remove them from your list.
3. Hard Bounce Rate: Lowering the number of e-mails sent to nonexistent or unknown addresses will elevate your reputation. During registration, ask recipients to enter their addresses twice to avoid mistakes. You also can send a welcome message to all registrants and remove any bounced addresses right away.
4. Spam Trap Hits: ISPs activate dormant inboxes to trap spammers. Avoid mailing to spam traps with good list hygiene. Using purchased lists that have been assembled via questionable practices is the main reason many companies mail to spam trap addresses. If you receive a majority of complaints from one data source or purchased list, then stop using addresses from that list until further investigation or reconfirmation.
5. Authentication: Since spammers spoof e-mail addresses, letting an ISP know that the return address matches the actual sender will steadily improve your e-mail reputation. Urge your IT department to participate in leading authentication programs including AOL's SPF, Microsoft's Sender ID and Yahoo's DomainKeys Identified Mail.
By now we've all heard of the long tail of Internet search, involving highly specific keyword phrases as a low cost source for gaining new site traffic. However, in its whitepaper, Don't Get Whipped: Managing the "Short Head" of Search, Engine Ready Software advises marketers to keep paying attention to critical long-tail search, but not to the detriment of what it calls the "short head," or top five phrases in a pay-per-click program.
In both new and long-established programs, if you make the short head the focus of continual testing and analysis, your top five phrases can keep your SEO program competitive. Tune in to the short head of search with these three tips:
1. Calculate How Much Work the Short Head Does
Analyze your data to find out how concentrated your keywords are. In looking at its client's Google AdWords accounts, Engine Ready found that an account's top five phrases accounted for 52 percent of the total spend, while phrases six through 10 accounted only for an additional 8 percent of the total spend. That means the first five phrases were the strongest revenue generators, making a short-head focus extremely worthwhile.
2. Track the Top 10 Phrases
A few phrases determine the bulk of a campaign's success or failure. Search marketers need to identify the top 10 highest-spending keywords and flag them throughout campaigns. When testing variations in ad creative or landing page creative, be sure to trace the results back through to your top 10 phrases.
3. Apply Analytics
Look not only at all available reports detailing your top keywords, but specifically at your site's bounce rate, which indicates when users leave your landing page immediately after arriving without any further clicks. If your keywords are accurate, the bounce rate will remain low. Monitor the bounce rate for your short-head keywords to be sure they remain at the lowest levels. For e-commerce sites, revenue-per-click costs or return on ad spend also can show you the profitability of each keyword phrase.
Whether its customers walk into a coffee shop in Anywhere, U.S.A. and want to be able to simply look down at their chests to know if the building has wireless Internet service or those consumers want to exhibit a professional laser light show at home, ThinkGeek.com says it has the products they need. Plus, both the $29.99 Wi-Fi Detector Shirt and the $1,999.99 ProLaserFX Showcube purchases can earn them free gadgets, courtesy of the Geek Points loyalty program.
Shane Peterman, spokesman for the Fairfax, Va.-based company started in 1999 for techies by techies, explains the loyalty program that proudly labels its customers "geeks." ThinkGeek.com, owned by Mountain View, Calif.-based open-source software company SourceForge Inc., lets its customers determine how they want to throw off the point curve. With the 550 points resulting from the battery-powered T-shirt purchase, or the 10,000 points collected on the Showcube buy, the "smart masses" who frequent ThinkGeek.com can get freebies ranging from Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap to a cubicle playset - ideal for cubicle desktop silliness.
Target Marketing: What do you consider your loyalty program? You seem to have several: the rewards program, Geek Points, the ThinkGeek Bounty Program that pays customers for T-shirt ideas, the Submit Your Techie Haiku program and the Action Shot Winner reward.
Shane Peterman: I think it's a little bit of all of the above. It's obviously mostly the Geek Points program, just because that's something that regular customers will sign up for.
TM: How is Geek Points different from other loyalty programs?
SP: We do try to change the rewards out fairly often. So I think that's something that kind of makes it a bit different, because I know a lot of times you'll see certain Web sites that have reward programs that it's always the same things that you can get for free; whereas, we try to keep it fresh and move things in and out of the reward program from time to time.
TM: Can people use Geek Points for a portion of a purchase, then supplement with cash?
SP: Say somebody wanted to get one of the rewards that we have available, like a Micro Spy Remote, and they were ordering something else, as well ... if their order was $15 or more, then they could use the Geek Points and get the Micro Spy Remote for free.
TM: What sort of retention rates are you seeing?
SP: It's going really, really well. I mean, we've constantly got people that are asking about the Geek Points program. ... I'd say, probably, nine times out of 10 on orders, you're going to see that they are getting the Geek Points. I think a majority of people that we've got coming to our site are return customers, and I'd like to think that the Geek Points have something to do with that.
TM: You have $4.99 to $2,100 items. But right now, the most expensive thing you can earn with Geek Points is $80. Customers need to redeem 7,000 Geek Points for that. Do you stick to low-priced items so people can be rewarded more often?
SP: That's basically it. The [Green Laser Pointer II] is the highest [priced] item right now. ... We don't want to throw anything too high-valued in there, because it almost makes it unattainable. You know what I mean? So yeah, it is something where we'd like people to be able to redeem the points as often as possible. As the program name itself implies, we like to give people these points and rewards for continuing to support us.
It's contagious. It's bringing in new donors and extra funds. But it's unpredictable and hard to control. It's viral fundraising - when a story, e-mail, video, call to action or event catches fire online and is passed from person to person, creating a wave of response and giving. "It could be an e-mail. It could be a social network. It could be a video on YouTube. So when you use the term 'it went viral,' it merely means that people told their friends about it via word-of-mouth," explains Madeline Stanionis, CEO of Watershed, a San Francisco-based online fundraising and advocacy company.
While viral fundraising is an organic phenomenon, fundraisers can still prepare and be ready to take action when a news story or one of its Web 2.0 posts ignites a viral response. Below are tips from experts in online fundraising to position your organization to capitalize on viral marketing.
1. Build Support on Social Networks and Blogs
"You want a presence on the social networks. It might not have done a single thing for you in the past, but you want to have it in place so that when something does happen - when you get that Internet moment, what we call that 'watershed moment' - that you have it in place," says Stanionis. She also suggests building relationships with bloggers who are friendly to your issue so you can immediately reach out to them in the instance of a viral campaign. Heather Mansfield, owner of Los Angeles-based marketing firm DIOSA | Communications, points out the other benefits of social networks including brand building and gaining new online subscribers who marketers can call upon to spread the word in the event of a viral occurrence.
2. Create Content With Viral Potential
"Your chance of getting a video that goes viral on YouTube is probably one in a million," Mansfield asserts. "The biggest thing is having something that hits a nerve with people - that nerve can be funny or controversial. It's more just [about] finding a subject matter that will end up really pulling people back in on their own," suggests Paul Phillips, online fundraising manager for PETA. Phillips reports that a PETA video posted on MySpace exposing Chinese fur farms (where dogs and cats are killed for their skin) recently went viral. The video easily spread throughout MySpace and numerous outside blogs because it included embedding code. To drive viewers back to its site from the video, PETA also included a link to an advocacy landing page with more information on the issue and asked in several languages to encourage international viewers to donate.
3. Capture Outside Events and Run With 'Em
Be prepared to respond to viral influences from outside your organization. For example, at the time of publication, Planned Parenthood is focusing PR and marketing efforts around the thousands of unsolicited donations it's received in response to vice presidential and pro-life candidate Sarah Palin. "Thousands and thousands of people, completely without any solicitation, are donating to Planned Parenthood in honor of Sarah Palin right now. Planned Parenthood has never solicited that. It is truly, truly viral," Stanionis comments. To maximize an outside influence, be prepared to respond to a phenomenon and spin it in favor of supporting your message and encouraging future response.
4. Campaign Around Newsworthy Items
PETA released its Chinese fur farms video to coincide with the Beijing Olympics. "I think a lot more people were reading about China and its animal rights records, just as they were reading up about its human rights records," Phillips says. Another good example of finding viral campaign material in the news is how the Humane Society campaigned around Michael Vick's arrest for animal abuse. "All [the Humane Society] had to do was send an e-mail to [its] list ... it got picked up by hundreds of thousands of people, but it never would've happened [without] the news ... and [if] everyone wasn't all of the sudden outraged by this," Stanionis shares. "It really is about listening to and tapping into the emotion of what people are feeling when they read the newspaper that day and being able to respond to that in one fell swoop," she adds.
5. Have the Right Tools in Place to Respond
Web 2.0 donors are a different breed than traditional offline and even Web 1.0 donors who click a "donate now" button. "If something goes viral, you need to be able to respond to where people are coming from and in the language and the source they came in through," Phillips says. In addition to readying social media tools, Stanionis suggests prepping your e-mail and donation processing systems to handle an influx of activity. Mansfield points out that retaining a Web 2.0 donor may be impossible via traditional means: "The last thing they want is a print thank-you letter in the mail. They want everything to be done online, all kinds of communications inside of MySpace and Facebook," she says. In the hopes of building successful retention programs for Web 2.0 donors, PETA separately codes donors responding to viral events and tracks their response across other retention channels. "Hopefully in the course of a year, we can track how the people who have donated as a result of this video have responded to traditional fundraising material," Phillips concludes.