Mailpost

It is becoming extremely difficult to mail a letter these days, even if local delivery is only expected. The United States Postal Service has degraded to such an extent that they now routinely throw ‘undeliverable’ and ‘return to sender’ stickers on a large proportion of letters. It doesn’t matter what state you are in and what kind of letters you are mailing. The Post Office is now an enemy of small business and regular folks. In fact if you want to mail anything to anywhere, beware of the recent events transpiring all over the United States.

Don’t get me wrong; in terms of our post office being compared to the uninspiring postal services in nations around the world, we are near the top in efficiency. Scary thought since unfortunately this is a world where there are whole nations such as Nigeria, Egypt, Spain, Russia and Greece that routinely lose mail on massive scales. People who need something delivered in these nations either have to pray their letters or parcels get to the recipients, or use private companies such as Fedex or UPS, which can be expensive. Therefore the bar is so low in terms of efficiency that it is now at the pathetic level. To simply deliver the mail in any time frame is a challenge these days. Being the best in this industry then is no accomplishment to say the least.
American citizens used to have confidence in our Post Office. Benjamin Franklin who is the founder of the first organized national post office on the planet, would roll over in his grave if he knew how his beloved postal service has devolved.

Background and Founding of The U.S. Postal System

On July 26, 1775, members of the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, agreed “. . . that a Postmaster General be appointed for the United States, who shall hold his office at Philadelphia, and shall be allowed a salary of 1,000 dollars per annum . . . .”
On this day, Benjamin Franklin was appointed Postmaster General, the first appointed under the Continental Congress. He would serve in this post, shaping our Postal Services until November 7, 1776.
The Motto of the Post Office is:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
This motto is explained on the Post Office’s main website. The origin of the motto as explained by them is as follows:

This inscription was supplied by William Mitchell Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, the architects who designed the New York General Post Office. Kendall said the sentence appears in the works of Herodotus and describes the expedition of the Greeks against the Persians under Cyrus, about 500 B.C. The Persians operated a system of mounted postal couriers, and the sentence describes the fidelity with which their work was done.

The Motto No Longer Fits – FACT

Is there anyone who has experience using the postal services in this nation who likes their performance? I think not. One of my businesses is a C.M.R.A., which stands for Commercial Mail Receiving Agency, and I have a unique perspective on the inner workings of this inefficient relic of the past that we call the Post Office.

Here is a perfect example just this past month on how well they deliver mail. One of my offices is located in Florida and we mail the employee paychecks to that office. We’ve had problems with the post office going back to 1996 when I started up successfuloffice.com. Our complaints span years. Last week we had enough already as employee paychecks keep getting returned stamped “addressee not known, return to sender”. This would be funny if it weren’t so sad, but I actually made a video that will be up on YouTube shortly showing the post office letters returned with their stickers. Do a search there for ‘The Post Office Stinks’ Imagine if you will your own company sending you your paycheck, and the post office returning it stamped undeliverable. Our manager then goes to the local office which is located in Pompano Beach Florida and complained. They say all is fine so we re-mail the checks without opening them to keep the postal stickers on them. Three weeks later they come back yet again with another stamp on it saying addressee unknown. Is that sad or what? I had to Fedex the paychecks down there and then had the manager go into the Post Office to open the letter with the return to sender sticker on it, which also now contained the second letter also with the return to sender sticker on it.

Knowing this is going on, I advice everyone to no longer use the Post Office if possible. They are now at record levels of inefficiency and simply do not care about delivering the mail. Why should they as employees in the system can’t even be fired unless they kill someone. I know as I tried to have one such manager fired. I escalated it all the way to our local Congressman who stepped in for us in Florida 3 years ago. Even with Congressional pressure the offending manager was given the all too typical ‘paid leave’ for a month to cool things off and prevent a lawsuit. I did manage to organize many of the local businesses, all of us prepared to confront the Post Office legally. We were even told she was let go to placate us into not suing, only to see this person return to the Post office to harass patrons just one month later!
So here we are again, in the same position. In this day of videotape and audio I think it’s time we all stand together and take action. The Post Office is a legal monopoly. No private company may deliver regular mail, only special delivery items that UPS and Fedex and other private carriers may deliver. It is an archaic socialist system that is dying, and costing the people of this nation billions of wasted dollars a year.

Can anyone say Privatize?

The Post Office will never go for it. They know and have seen that if any private company were allowed to compete with them, they will lose. This is the way of the world. Private companies are always between 30 – 60% more efficient than anything run by the government. That’s why if you need something sent overnight, you would have to be crazy to use the Post Office’s next day service. We used them once and found out that 25% of the time their next day service took 2 days. Some guarantee isn’t it?
Private companies are the way to go, and the Post office must become efficient or it will continue to lose more and more of our tax dollars every year, while not even delivering the mail. It’s time we all stand up and say enough already.

Mailpost Business Franchise Opportunities

This article answers what is a franking machine, and why as a business person in the UK you should consider using one over using stamps.

Firstly let’s answer what is a franking machine or specifically a “frank”. Wikipedia define it as follows:-

Franking (or “franks”) are any and all devices or markings such as postage stamps (including printed and/or embossed on postal stationery), printed or stamped impressions, codings, labels, manuscript writings (including “privilege” signatures), and/or any other authorized form of markings affixed or applied to mails to qualify them to be postally serviced.

Franking machines can also known as postage meters, though this is more of a Pitney Bowes brand name as they are the original makers of the franking machine. Like we refer to vacuum cleaners as Hoovers (the original manufacturer).

But forsake the tasty nourishment to be had from the licking and sticking the required stamps for a large batch of post. And the reason to exit the office in order to buy more stamps; was all that kept me from going mad some boring afternoons.

Progress and automation are now compelling the Royal Mail to incentivise us with better discounts in return for moving to franked mail over stamped mail.

Quoting the Royal Mail website “Franking is the quick and easy way to manage your mail that can save you time and money while projecting a more professional image of your company. It’s cost effective and easy to use, with a flexible range of products and services, and because you can pay for credit as and when you need it, you’re in complete control of your postage.”

So what types of post is a franking machine used for?

Franking machines can be used for most Royal Mail services including:

* First Class * Second Class * Recorded Delivery * Special Delivery * Cleanmail * Mailsort * ParcelForce Worldwide Services * International / Airmail

You can also use franked impressions to pay for lots of other Royal Mail services such as Business Collections and one-off collections.

Show me the money! – How much can I save?

Based on an average basket of mail, mostly letters with the odd parcel thrown in about 15 -18%! And when you consider you’ll also gain time savings from not having to send someone out to buy stamps and apply them, add some nice marketing benefits (your franked mail can include your lovely colour company logo), and the humble franking machine offers sound commercial benefits.

If you want to break your savings down in more detail, the way this calculates is that the post office discount franked mail, because it’s easier for them to handle.

Save at least 3p on every 1st Class Letter you send Save at least 5p on every 2nd Class Letter you send Save at least 11p on every 1st class large letter Save up to 89p on every 2kg Parcel you send

Mailpost opportunities

E-mail marketing of course is the process of sending promotional and marketing e-mails to members of your opt in e-mail marketing list. One of the most difficult things about e-mail marketing is learning how to write effective e-mails. Your e-mails must be compelling, interesting, and induce the reader of the e-mail to click through to your website. However, your e-mails must also not be so strong that if the reader does not like the e-mail or the Web site which they click through, that they stop opening your future e-mails.

So you have to have a balance between e-mails that are compelling and effective, and e-mails that are too strong and induce unsubscribes or they induce people to stop reading your e-mails.

So how do you write an effective e-mail? The first thing to remember when writing effective e-mail is that you must write your e-mail as if it is written to one person. This goes far beyond personalization option in your autoresponder system. The person reading it must believe that you were writing directly to them. This means that you cannot use language like “you all”, “to my subscribers” “to all of my subscribers” and “to all of you”. You must use language like “you”. That is language that sells. That is language that is personal.

You must also not use the e-mail to sell. The e-mail is to promote the click. The e-mail is to recommend the click. If your e-mail is excited about the sales page itself, and the reader does not like the sales page, they will associate you with a sales page. The end result is that they stop reading your e-mails, because they no longer trust you. The key here is, no hype. No hype. They must trust you.

It is okay if they do not buy from a sales page, but is not okay if they do not like the sales page, and stop reading your e-mails.

Another note on this — if you are promoting somebody else’s stuff, take a look at the sales page. Make sure that is nonoffensive, and that it does not jive with types of things your subscribers like. It is too easy to lose a subscriber. Be very careful.

Mailpost Leadership

Following is my illustration of a current pyramid scheme. You get a letter that says, “I am an attorney blah, blah, blah. Then there is an illustration of how somebody got rich doing what the attorney said. That is giving a gift which “is legal.” (Well, giving a gift is legal but a pyramid scheme is not.) I add a special instructions letter to make the program more acceptable to the disbelievers.

“CAST THY BREAD UPON THE WATERS: FOR THOU SHALT FIND IT AFTER MANY DAYS.” Ecclesiastes 11:1
(Carefully read the attached instructions to prevent failure.)

Hello! My name is Cathy O’Brian. I’ve tried the “Cast Thy Bread” program over 20 times. WE were in debt. We have two kids and we were both working but could barely pay our bills. I got this letter in the mail and I decided to give the principal a try. I could lose about $30.00 but that was the only risk. (You may know about the attorney that started this “legal” gifting program.)

I sent the person in the #1 spot $20.00, put my name in the #3 spot after removing the name of the person in the #1 spot, made up 20 copies and sent them to folks that send me offers. I knew they were likely to try my program because that is what they do. After about two weeks, after my name had drifted up to the #1 position, I received, and this is no lie, $18,000.00.

To tell you the truth, we paid off bills with our first money. That made life better but I thought that we needed a new car. If your motor is burned out, you need a new car. This time I paid $35.00 for a mailing list of MLM participants and sent out 300 names. To my BIG SURPRISE I received over $150,000.00. I decided I was just lucky but I have kept using the program BECAUSE IT WORKS FOR ME. Like I said, I’ve tried the program over 20 times. Sometimes I have got less than other times but I’ve always made money–NOT LOST MONEY! It will only cost you about $30.00 to give it a try. HERE’S HOW:

1. Wrap a $20.00 bill in a piece of paper and on the paper write: GIFT. You should add your name and address and you may request the person to add you to his mailing list so he can send you his offers but–you don’t have to do that. Just make sure it says GIFT to make it legal. SEND THE PERSON IN THE #1 POSITION THE $20.00 WRAPPED IN YOUR GIFT NOTE. (This program is based on honesty–failure in life is CERTAIN for the dishonest.

Peter Kritas Mailpost

Direct mail marketing rules are made to be broken, or
so I’m told. So break this one and see what
happens.

Direct mail pundits, me included, recommend that all
your direct mail pieces have an offer. The offer, as
you know, is the incentive that you give prospects
to encourage them to respond.

Offers are usually bilateral. You promise to do
something if the prospect does something. “Buy two
blouses and we’ll pay the shipping,” for example.
Or “book your appointment before 16 November and
we’ll send you a free Sample Seed Kit.” If the
prospect does nothing, you do nothing. Both of you
must act if the offer is to work. Offers are
bilateral.

Break this rule by making unilateral offers once in a
while. Instead of asking the prospect to do
something, you do something instead. That’s what a
car dealer in Australia did a while back. He mailed a
letter to his customers and enclosed a crisp $50
note. “Your trade-in vehicle sold much quicker than
expected, so we saved ourselves a little money,”
explained the letter. The customer didn’t have to do
anything to get the $50 The offer was
unconditional, or unilateral.

You can see the value in offers that ask for nothing
in return. In this case, which car dealer do you
suppose customers visited the next time they were in
the market for a vehicle?

I received a unilateral offer from Christopher Knight,
founder and publisher of EzineArticles.com.
Unannounced, he mailed me a huge coffee mug and a
wee note thanking me for being an Expert Author. He
didn’t offer me the mug in exchange for anything.

I didn’t have to mail in a coupon or take a survey or
visit a website or refer my grandmother. Christopher
simply made me a unilateral offer. And yet I
responded by phoning him during a busy day to thank
him for his kind gesture. Plus, I continued using his
services. So his unilateral offer did generate a
response from me after all. Funny how that works,
eh?

Mailpost Franchise

When discussing Direct Mail Marketing we also need to discuss consistent targeting of customers. If you own a location-based business then you must consider where your customers come from and how far out you draw the customers from.

Does your business draw customers from a 15-mile radius or is your competition much closer and therefore you probably only draw from a 10-mile radius? Do you feel the your customer service is good enough to draw customers out of your competitors service market area? If so, perhaps you want to send direct-mail marketing into your competitors target area.

The key would be consistent targeting of those ZIP codes within your radius and sphere of influence. For direct-mail that probably means each area or zip code within the 10-mile radius is hit every three months with a direct-mail marketing piece. This of course includes the targeting of your competitors area or at least those areas in your competitors 10-mile radius, which are closest to you.

If you have three ZIP codes within your 10-mile radius then you should hit one each month; however, if you later find that one of those areas is yielding no long-term repeat customers then perhaps you should save your money and not target that particular zip code or area. Over time and with a little tweaking of your strategy you can make direct-mail marketing work for your business. So please consider all this in 2006.

Mailpost direct marketing

Companies and organizations have spent many billions on e-mail and other Internet message delivery mechanisms over the past decade, often at the expense of more traditional marketing methods, like direct mail. But in some respects e-mail has failed to live up to its initial promise. And marketers who are turning back to tried-and-true methods like “snail mail” report excellent results, often better than e-mail.

According to a 2005 Direct Marketing Association (DMA) comprehensive study of marketing tools, e-mail produces the best return on investment and is the cheapest and fastest direct marketing tool. But only a fraction of the average company’s prospective customers opt in to most rentable lists. And it can be against federal law to send commercial e-mails to people who have asked not to receive them. It’s spam. If companies play by the new rules, they cannot get their marketing messages to the vast majority of their prospective customers using e-mail.

So marketers are going “back to the future” by reinvigorating their marketing campaigns with renewed investments in printed and mailed materials to complement or substitute for e-marketing methods.

Why Direct Mail Works

In a recent article in B2B Marketing Newsletter, a publication of the Business Marketing Association, consultant Eric Gagnon described direct mail as the “workhorse” of every business-to-business marketing program. “While the buzz these days is all about Internet-based marketing–Google AdWords and e-mail marketing programs–direct mail is still the mainstay of most business-to-business marketing and lead-generation programs: where there’s a readily-identifiable mailing list of plausible prospects, and a mailing piece to send to them, there’s a profitable marketing project waiting to happen.”

Direct mail is effective at focusing marketing strategies on vertical markets that can be reached by renting targeted mailing lists. Says Gagnon, “The most important element of any direct mail project is the mailing list.”

Increasingly, marketers are finding that postal-mailed printed materials are better for prospecting new business because marketers can have access to entire lists, such as subscribers to a trade magazine or members of an association. Rarely more than a fraction of publication subscribers or association members opt in to a permission-based e-mail list. And the more “selects” required, such as job function, industry or number of employees, to carve out the best segment of the list to reach a particular target, the fewer names remain. Marketers who want to reach almost everyone who can be a customer must use direct mail in their multimedia mix.
For instance, only 31% of the subscribers to InformationWeek magazine agreed to receive e-mail, only 55% of Chain Store Age, and 65% of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. To reach all of the subscribers of these influential industry publications, you must rent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.

E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.

In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for legitimate marketing purposes. And marketers rarely know who didn’t get their message.

Messages trapped by spam filters are shown as delivered on e-mail transmission reports. That is, recipient e-mail servers do not reply back to the senders to notify them that the message was trapped by the spam filter. There are tactics that can be used to substantially increase the likelihood that the e-mail will avoid spam filters, but there is no guarantee.

Not every printed piece gets to a prospective customer either. Many direct marketing professionals acknowledge that direct mail can’t reach everyone on a list. But there is no such thing as a spam filter in the direct-mail universe and at least there are postal mechanisms for reporting which pieces cannot be delivered.

Ninety percent is the standard guaranteed delivery rate of a direct-mail list, but e-mail delivery rates are usually high, too, and you only pay for the quantity delivered. The problem is that you don’t know how many are trapped by spam filters.

Rich Carango, vice president of marketing agency Schubert Communications in Downington, PA, was quoted recently by DM News as saying flatly, “There is a souring about the feeling of how well e-mailing is working, mostly because of spam filters.” His agency also guides their clients more toward direct-mail tools like newsletters and postcards.

Direct mail “is kicking butt,” Laurie Beasley, president of Beasley Direct, recently told a Silicon Valley audience of mostly technology marketers. She strongly recommended its use along with effective e-marketing methods, which she says can be made more deliverable employing certain techniques her company uses.

Reports B-to-B magazine in its July 10 issue, “In a bright spot for traditional media, (forecaster Robert) Coen said, despite the postal rate increase in January, direct-mail advertising in the first quarter grew 3.5% over the year-earlier period to 20.6 billion pieces.” He said marketers’ renewed interest in gaining better ROI is driving them to use direct-response marketing methods.

Many young people who grew up on the Internet enjoy communicating by e-mail or instant messaging and have never learned the mechanics–and benefits–of direct mail. They have little experience with the complexities of list acquisition, distribution, printing and the strategies and tactics of direct-mail creative. This generational predisposition toward e-marketing tools often means that companies are not taking advantage of all the direct-marketing methods that are available to them. But the trend is changing.

The DMA, representing mail, phone and online direct marketers, in its 2005 response rate study demonstrated a noticeable growth in corporate use of direct mail, after some years of decline. In its review of 21 industries, from computers to agriculture, the DMA documented direct mail edging out e-mail response rates by 2.77% to 2.48%.

E-mail outperformed direct mail in the study as a lead generator 3.15% to 2.15%, but, again, the results are considerably diluted by the fact that only a comparatively small proportion of potential customers on lists agree to receive e-mail. A fairly higher percentage of those became leads, but the statistical majority of prospective customers have chosen not to get unsolicited e-mails.

In some important respects, direct mail bested e-mail in the DMA test. Direct- mail response rates were even higher than e-mail in the online-oriented computer and electronic products industries (3.14% over 3.02%). Direct mail out-performed e-mail in other areas, such as revenue per contact ($0.85 over $0.18), traffic generated (5.84% over 1.54%), fundraising (5.08% over 0.66%) and direct order (2.20% over 2.07%).

A June 2006 article in DM News entitled, “Mail Withstands BTB’s Online Shift” quotes mega-direct marketer Harte-Hanks SVP Matthew Rosenblatt as saying that in spite of the money gushing into Internet promotional vehicles, “mail remains very powerful, particularly when used in conjunction with online strategies.”

DM News notes, “Mail also is a better driver than e-mail when C-level executives are the target audience. At this level the best types of communication are either dimensional pieces or very simple personal letters.” Some direct marketers have observed that younger workers have a greater tendency than senior executives to opt in to e-mail lists.

Steve Middleton, EVP of Strategic Planning for international marketing services agency Publicis Dialog says “E-mail is still an extremely effective mechanism for campaigns sent to our customers’ internal databases. When it comes to using external lists, however, the response rates have dropped precipitously over the last five years and yet the price for the lists has remained constant. The result is that the cost per lead for e-mail has been driven up significantly. With many of our large, blue chip accounts who used to use e-mail as their primary lead generation vehicle, we are now seeing response rates and cost-per-lead ratios from direct mail that far surpass the results from e-mail.”

Marketers can draw from a wide variety of direct-mail vehicles to suit specific campaign objectives: letters, packages, promotional items, postcards, brochures and publications like newsletters.

Some companies have used newsletters as very effective lead-generation, cross-selling and relationship-growing tools, empowered by comprehensive databases compiled by list brokers. Newsletters are often the most effective type of direct mail because they are less likely to be discarded in corporate mailrooms than brochures. They reach targets’ desks–the first threshold a direct-marketing campaign.

Secondly, newsletters are often better read than brochures because they are perceived as more informational and less promotional, contain success stories of customers who use a company’s services and products, use compelling artwork and graphics, feature product information and useful industry news, drive prospects to web sites and can help gather marketing research. They can even have persuasive PR value when you send them to reporters, editors and producers who use them for article ideas.

Direct mail: Using graphics to market

A picture is not only worth a thousand words in marketing. It’s also worth a heck of a lot of money in increased response rates, say graphics communicators.

One frustrating thing about e-mail communications is a marketer’s inability to use many images to present information, particularly complicated information. E-mail limits the use of complex graphics, since long download times can be annoying to prospects and some graphics never reach targets at all.

Furthermore, it is difficult to get the kind of reaction from an e-mail subject line that you can get from an emotionally evocative image on a brochure or publication cover that works with compelling copy. With direct-mail pieces, you can get more of your message into the hands of your target audience. The challenge with an e-mail subject line is that you’ve only got a few short words, coupled with the “from” line, in order to influence the maximum two-second read or delete decision. At least with a hardcopy mailing piece, your piece gets into the recipients hands and has more “real estate” to persuade them to open it rather than throw it away.

Limitations on the use graphics in marketing deprive a communicator from using essential aspects of the marketing spectrum. In addition, it is challenging for marketers to completely control the final look of e-mail communications. Unless they are very carefully coded to ensure the proper use of HTML escape sequences, the actual image may vary when viewed from different browsers. For example, a question mark may appear instead of an apostrophe and graphic images will vary when viewed on different monitors or output on inexpensive desktop printers.

In contrast, printed direct-mail communications give marketers total control over the look and feel of the final piece–from the photo quality to the paper stock. The power of visuals is strong in our fast-paced society. Generations raised on television are influenced by visuals and are less inclined to read text-heavy communications. Striking visuals entice prospects to read and respond to printed direct-mail pieces. They also better explain complex subjects.

The DMA study also revealed very high performance rates from “dimensional” direct mail, defined as mailings shaped other than the standard envelop stuffed with letters and materials. In fact, dimensional direct mail pulled dramatically better than standard commercial marketing mail.
Dimensional mail can take the form of imaginative objects sent to creatively illustrate a marketing campaign, like a football or an orchestral conductor’s baton sent to an executive with a message tie-in. Average response rates on dimensional mail over letter mail was 3.67% compared to 2.77%. Dimensional direct mail produced lead generation results of 5.4% compared to 2.15% for traditional direct mail.

Mailpost Organisation

The biggest obstacle for most email marketers is generally message delivery. Messages that are either blocked or sent to a ‘junk’ folder by the ISPs (internet service providers – who manage incoming mail for their account holders) is a major waste of marketing resources and directly affects an organization’s bottom line. To fully maximize email delivery, it is important to understand why delivery can be a problem and what impacts delivery.

The following guide is designed for marketers who want to better understand the challenges of email marketing, and want to benefit from using the ‘best practices’ outlined by the email industry.

Why delivery can be a problem

Today, legitimate email makes up a very small fraction of the total email volume received by ISPs. One of the main priorities of ISPs is to protect their account holders from unwanted email. The ISPs are spending a lot of time and resources to ensure unwanted messages do not get delivered, and from the following statistics you can see why:

In 2002, 25% of the total mail volume received by the ISPs was considered spam
In 2009, 95% of total mail volume received by the ISPs was considered spam

Since the ISPs are often times implementing new technology, legitimate email marketers can unfortunately find that their messages have been flagged as spam, and are not being delivered to list members. The good news is that ISPs acknowledge the difference between legitimate and non-legitimate email marketers, and they are almost always willing to work with legitimate marketers on improving deliverability.

What impacts delivery

There are primarily four variables that impact email delivery:

1) The quality of the marketer’s list of email addresses is extremely important! The ideal situation is to send emails only to a clean list: A list with minimal invalid addresses; every address on the list has requested (opted-in) the sender’s message; and the list has been mailed to regularly.

Make sure the following has been done – especially when switching to a new email marketing solution:

All addresses that have previously bounced as invalid or nonexistent are not mailed to again.

All unsubscribe requests are honored and not mailed to in the future.

Role account email addresses are not mailed to. Role account addresses are email addresses that normally do not (or rarely) subscribe to mailing lists. Examples include abuse@, admin@, billing@, info@, jobs@, news@, postmaster@, sales@, support@, and webmaster@. These types of addresses are usually harvested directly from websites.

Always know the direct source of any email addresses added to your mailing list. Many poorly maintained lists contain spam trap addresses. A spam trap is an email address that exists solely for the purpose of luring in spam. The trap is to have addresses that are not used for communication (so they would never opt-in to a mailing list) readily available to marketers who purchase email lists or harvest email addresses from the web. Once the spam trap is sent to, the ISP or reputation monitoring service presumes the marketer is not using legitimate list building practices. The presence of even one spam trap can cause major delivery problems. The only way to prevent the presence of a spam trap address is to only mail to addresses that have directly opted-in to the actual list that is doing the mailing.

There is no list of known spam trap addresses. They are always kept secret, so removing them can be difficult. The removal process consists of building a new list with addresses that have either opened a previous message or clicked on any link within a message (spam trap addresses will never open a message or click on a link within a message), and then re-opting-in every remaining member of the list.

Sending to a purchased or rented list will almost always result in poor delivery. List vendors sell or rent the same lists to numerous people, so complaints will be high and open rates low.

2) Email content and design also play an important role in message delivery. Message design should have a professional look with the sender’s brand clearly and quickly identifiable. The content has to be relevant to the person receiving the message, and the message should be presented in an organized manner. Make sure the subject line matches the content and its purpose. And lastly, the ‘from address’ needs to be recognizable by the recipient.

3) Spam complaints are the next important factor in email delivery. ISPs monitor complaints very carefully, making this the number one reason why emails will not get through to major ISPs.

What is a complaint?

A complaint is generated when someone who has received an email reports it as unwanted, unrequested, or for whatever reason considers it as spam. Many ISPs such as AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail make it very easy for their account holders to report a complaint with just the click of a button.

Major ISPs now have a reporting mechanism called a Feedback loop. The member, who doesn’t know you as a sender or does not want your message, simply clicks on the Spam or Junk button, and then the ISP communicates this back to the Email Service Provider (ESP).

An email marketer’s complaint rate needs to remain below 0.1% – that is only 1 complaint per 1,000 messages sent to any single domain. Higher complaints can result in delivery problems.
Reasons for complaints are fairly straightforward:

Message was not requested – Only send to people who have directly requested your mailings

Poor subject line or unfamiliar FROM name – Don’t try to trick someone into reading your email

Irrelevant Content – The user is not interested in what you are sending

Long lag in communication – You haven’t emailed your list in a long time

High email frequency – Sending too many emails in too short a period

4) Your sender reputation as an email marketer has now become a key factor for successful deliverability.
Email filtering is designed to stop the bad emails and let the good ones through. So if you have a reputation for sending legitimate emails, then your emails will get through to the inbox. Reputation is based on two areas: your company and the domains associated with your company, and the IP addresses used to send your emails. Building a good sending reputation takes time, and the only way to build it is by sending only legitimate emails and following these best practices: Send legitimate emails to clean lists and don’t get complaints.

Recipient engagement has a big impact on a sender’s reputation. Engagement is measured by certain actions a message recipient takes that show the ISP whether the message was wanted or not.

Positive engagement:

Recipients are marking the message as ‘not spam’ if it goes to the spam folder

Recipients are opening messages. The ISPs know if any message has been opened.

Recipients are clicking on the links in the message.

Recipients are adding the sender’s ‘from address’ to their contact list.

Negative engagement:

A high percentage of recipients are hitting the spam button to register a complaint.

A high percentage of messages are being deleted without being opened.

A low open rate

Following these tips will give your message a better chance of not only being delivered to the intended audience, but also absorbed by the people with whom you want to connect!

Mailpost Peter Kritas

Are you frustrated by the lack of response to your voice mails and the impact it has on your cold calling efforts?

You can increase your odds of getting a return call by integrating e-mails with your voice mails. Here is a simple, easy to use 3-Step combination that you can adapt and use in virtually any industry. It combines polite persistence with a touch of humor to compel the prospect respond.

Step #1: 10 Minutes of Your Time Voice Mail and E-mail Combo

Assuming that you have made several attempts to reach your prospect live, the first step in the process is to leave a simple voice mail message using the template below. The key to the message is the request for a 10 minute chat:

“Hey Dan, This is Mike Wray calling from Logistical Shippers. We work with freight handlers who are frustrated with late and delayed shipments. Dan, the reason for my call is to arrange a brief, 10-minute chat to learn more about your situation and to see if we can reduce some of the hassle associated with shipping delays. Please call me at ____. In the meantime, I’ll send you a brief e-mail.”

The subsequent e-mail you send echoes the voice mail message by providing a visual message to the audio message you left. It begins with a good subject line,

Re: Dan, request for 10 minutes of your time

The subject line contains the prospect’s name and references a ‘request’ for 10 minutes of time. It not only echoes the voice mail message it creates a degree of curiosity especially if the prospect has not yet heard of the voice mail i.e., ‘what request?’ ‘Did I miss something?’

The body of your e-mail should contain elements of your voice mail:

“Dan, as I mentioned in my voice mail, we work with freight handlers who are frustrated with the hassle that delayed shipments can cause. We have a simple solution that virtually eliminates these headaches.

Could we chat for about 10 minutes so that I can better understand your situation and needs, and to see if we might be able to make your job a heck of a lot easier?

My number is _______ or simply reply with a time and date.”

The e-mail provides a lot of ‘teasing copy.’ It references both the ‘pain motivator’ (frustrated and hassle) and the ‘gain’ motivator (a heck of a lot easier) without belaboring either.

Step #2: 8 Minutes of Your Time Voice Mail E-Mail Combo

Persistence is the key to make this process work. Wait three days for a response before leaving your second voice mail/e-mail combo. Three days courteously gives the prospect enough time to reply and helps avoid the “stalking syndrome” that typically occurs if you follow up too soon.

“Hi Dan, Mike Wray calling from Logistical Shippers. Dan, I am following up on the e-mail left about setting up a telephone appointment to review your freight handling needs. I asked for 10 minutes of your time but I suspect you’re busy – perhaps dealing with a late shipment or two. Kidding aside, how about 8 minutes of your time?

I’ll send you a quick e-mail with some additional information. In the meantime, my number is…”

It is vital that the tone of your voice is light and easy. Notice the request for time has diminished to 8 minutes. It’s a light hearted message that acknowledges the importance of the client’s time. Also notice the fun little jest, “dealing with a late shipment or two.’ This is a brief reminder of a possible motivator.

The e-mail follow up continues the theme in the subject line:

” Re: Dan, how about just 8 minutes of your time?”

As you can see, reduced time request is emphasized once again. This is deliberate. It’s what makes the message unique and catches the eye. It also has a playful ring to it. The body of the e-mail looks like this:

“Dan, I know how busy things are in the freight business. I deal with handlers every day…so I’ll only ask for 8 minutes of your time instead of ten.

In that time, perhaps we might be able to explore some ways to help streamline freight tracking and delivery.

Sound reasonable?

In the meantime, my number is _____ or simply reply to this message.”

The message is very brief and colloquial in nature. “Sound reasonable?” is an incomplete sentence but it gives it that ‘off the cuff and no big deal’ flavor to the message.

Step # 3: 5 Minutes of Your Time Voice Mail/E-Mail Combo

The final step in the strategy is to wait another 3 business days and give the prospect time to respond. If that doesn’t happen your third voice mail/e-mail combo should follow the same pattern as the first two messages by making an easy quip about the time
required.

“Hi Dan, it’s Mike Wray calling from Logistical Shippers.

Okay, it sounds like you’re super busy so here’s my one last shot. How about 5 just minutes of your time AND I promise you it will be the best 5 minutes you spend this month. My number is…”

There are a three things at work here. First, is your persistence. You have made two sets of five follow up contacts spaced about six business days apart. By now the prospect will realize you are tenacious.

Second, you create ongoing interest – and maybe even amusement- by whittling away the time that you’re requesting.

Third, is the sincere promise of the chat being “the best 5 minutes you’ll spend this month.” Delivered with conviction, this is a bold and confident statement. Let the prospect hear it.

The follow up e-mail has the following as a subject line:

“Re: Okay Dan, here’s my last shot: only 5 minutes of your time?”

If your prospect reads nothing else, he’ll read the subject line and remember you. But your subject line also reveals a graceful way of saying you won’t pursue him beyond this message. This can help buy some good will and perhaps urge the prospect to respond.

The body of the message does not have to be elaborate but it should maintain the easy nature of your earlier messages.

“Dan, here’s my last kick at the can: 5 minutes of your time.

No more.

Promise.

But kidding aside, if you can spare just 5 minutes of your time there is a very good chance that we can help reduce or eliminate the hassle and headaches of delayed shipments.

Using a simple process, we take the checking and verifying out of your hands and put it into ours. It’s all we do. And that gives you time to work on other more significant matters.

5 minutes?

Please give me a call at ________ or simply reply to this e-mail. Otherwise I will call you next quarter.

Note the layout of the message. Short sentences. Lots of white space. Easy to quickly read and understand. The ‘look’ of your e-mail reflects what a quick 5-minute look might feel like. Also take note that there is a reference to the solution you offer. It’s not a pitch but just a broad overview. And finally, the message points out that if there is no reply, you’ll call next quarter. In effect, you are saying this is the last chance they have to respond.

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