Last of the boring stuff!

Last week I wrote about why it makes sense to outsource your eMarketing to a professional company. But let’s say that you want to send out just a few emails and you don’t want to hire Travelwatch to do it. Here are a few tips to use so you don’t get stuck in spam filters. No guarantees… but its somewhere to start.

• Don’t try to be ‘tricksy’ and dump a bunch of names as a
   cc or a bcc. Your ISP will only deliver to the first 50 addresses. The remaining addresses will be ignored, sorry!
• Ensure the fonts are a standard size and try not to vary the size of fonts within the email.
• Colors in images don’t really matter, but the colors of text and links should be limited to black and blue.
• SUBJECT LINES: Subject lines should never sound like spam, so stay away from the hard sell and don’t fool recipients into opening
   the email by making the subject line sound like a reply or a personal message between friends. In particular, your subject line should stay away from: 
   o Swear words 
   o Sex 
   o Money 
   o Profit 
   o Special 
   o Girls 
   o Power 
   o Powerful 
   o Discount 
   o Over 18 
   o Your debt 
   o $ signs or other currency values 
   o Exclamation marks!
   o Click here (use visit the site or follow this link)
  o Go here 
  o A series of symbols or punctuation marks (#*!)
  o The excessive use of punctuation “…???”
   o Don’t use CAPS
   o Spelling errors
   o Grammatical errors

• And finally, consider Text only – I send my periodic touch emails on behalf of my travel agent customers as text and not HTML for a few reasons…I think it’s more professional, the graphics are wasted on people that receive their mail in text (approx 33%), it often makes a mess when sent to a blackberrys and there is a larger chance of getting stuck in email filters.
  That’s it! I’m happy to announce that Michelle and I are off to Huatulco for a week starting Friday. We can’t wait although
  Paco won’t be too happy to see us go!

behave,
Frank

This is really boring stuff…

I caution you, reading this is about as much fun as chewing on tin foil but it falls into the ‘you need to know’ category.

So…why would I run a business that sends emails on travel agents’ behalf when they can do it on their own for free?

1. Because they don’t! (Most of the ones that tell you they do are either exaggerating or sending sporadic blasts because they’ve read that email is cheap marketing)
    
2. Because if you send more than a few dozen emails at a time, they generally don’t reach the intended client and the ones that do, are generally labeled as SPAM.
    
3. Because the agents that have thought it through and have welcomed direct e-marketing as part of their marketing strategies know you can’t execute effectively from your office computer without spending money and dedicating time and resources.
    
4. Because it’s not your core business. You sell travel.
    

I don’t often do this but… this is an 8 second Travelwatch commercial. “We jointly (with you) design email campaigns, we deliver the campaign properly with measurable results and we price our products based on the realities of the retail travel industry.”

But let’s say you don’t believe me and you’re going to do it in-house rather than outsource it. Here’s what you’re up against.

All e-mail sent via the Internet is routed through ‘port 25’ (computer talk) so when you send an email through your computer, it always uses port 25 to transmit data. Most large North American ISP’s (Internet Service Providers – i.e. AT&T, EarthLink, Bell Canada, Rogers etc…) block ‘Port 25’ so no bulk/multi emails can be sent from a single computer. They’re not just being nasty to you, blocking the port is part of your ISP’s arsenal to fight spam unfortunately; it tends to punish the innocent along with the spammers.

But my messages are getting out you say! Yes they are, but without you knowing it, your email is actually being sent by your ISP’s servers and most large numbers of emails sent by a single address get dropped into a black hole and neither you nor your intended receiver are aware that it never got delivered.

But wait, there’s more…

Another weapon in the anti-spam arsenal are the black lists. These lists stop email from being delivered if the sending address has previously been identified as sending spam. This can be as innocent as the kid next door sending 10,000 invitations to his birthday party. I don’t want to get into technical detail but suffice it to say that you can be using a black list address and not be aware because these (IP) computer addresses are in most cases grouped and arbitrarily assigned by your ISP.

And finally there’s corporate or personal anti-spam software. This is a tough one because the parameters can be changed by individuals so the software can label your messages as spam and your e-mail ends up in a folder that will probably never be read or is totally deleted.

So, the Port 25 and Black list issues can be dealt with by using companies like mine or by doing proper research on your ISP but the anti-spam software can be mostly bypassed by developing a few simple habits that I will tell you about next week.

Stay tuned and behave,

Frank

It’s all very doable

Last night I went out for way too many drinks with an old buddy of mine from the west coast. She and I go back to the beginning of our travel careers at a tour company long since dead and buried. Most of us that worked there have remained fast friends and although some have moved, reunions are always a blast.

Teresa (not her real name) has become very successful, her travel agency is known far and wide especially in suppliers’ circles. Teresa’s company has managed over relatively few years to amass a very large email list, I mean huge! She achieved this goal by making the collection of emails mandatory and a measurable part of her human resource strategy. As the company grew, so did her staff and as a result, so did her client email list.

This was just one of her strategies but in discussing her success it quickly became evident that it was based on:

• Development of a business plan with a sound strategy (not rocket science, just common sense and proper market end competitive research)

• Ensuring that everyone who had anything to do with the company was dead clear on their part of the plan  

• Sticking to the plan and reviewing/adjusting periodically

• And, adopting all the benefits that the internet and email technology has to offer.  

Today, 95% of Teresa’s business is related to email marketing and internet strategies and yet, her colleagues at conventions continue to ask her whether it is possible to compete with the internet behemoths.

So, the Teresa’s of the world are making tons of money with happy clients while the rest wonder….

Behave

Frank

Travelwatch