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In what we believe to be the first collection of bounce codes in one public location, the Get Satisfaction site is now the official home to the eec’s Deliverability Roundtable bounce string project.  It is the culmination of many months worth of effort from industry veterans with experience in email deliverability and the technical aspects of sending and receiving email.  We decided to place it here since the site allows for dynamic updates as codes change in time and also provides a forum in which users can discuss deliverability issues and receive insight from folks in the industry. 

Why is this useful?
The most common form of communication for an ISP to communicate with a sender on a one-to-one ratio is a bounce message.  If an email is successfully handed off to an ISP, a success bounce is issued (250 ok).  However, if the message is not successfully handed off, an ISP will usually put pertinent information into a bounce message letting you know what the issue is and, in an ideal setting, what you need to do to avoid that bounce in the future.  The more failure bounces you collect, the less mail is getting through to your recipients.  If you’re concerned about the highest level of delivery penetration, you’ll review the bounce codes to spot trending and actionable items you can do to get your mail through to an ISP.  That’s where this site comes into play.  We’ve amassed a list of the following ISPs that have standard bounce codes you should be aware of.  If you see a bounce from one of them, you should check the Get Satisfaction site to see if more information is available. 

• Hotmail/Live
• Comcast
• ATT/BellSouth/SBC
• Yahoo
• AOL

Who should use it?
Anyone who has a responsibility around message delivery, most likely your IT or development team, will want to take a look at this.  Bounce messages are collected at the email server level so, unless your email application allows easy access to data in a useable format, you’ll need to have someone review the bounce messages at the server level to see the actual ISP message. 

How do I use it?
Let’s say you send out a mailing today.  After watching the initial delivery numbers, you see that Yahoo has taken a dip in delivery (meaning there’s a delta between the delivery numbers you’re seeing and what you usually expect).  Either by using the ESP’s delivery tools or by having someone on your team provide the information, you discover there’s an accumulation of the following bounce strings queuing up on your outbound email server. 

“451 Resources temporarily not available - Please try again later [#4.16.5]” 

You then go to the new bounce site and search for this string.  You should find the following match: 

“What does bounce code 451 Resources temporarily not available - Please try again later [#4.16.5] from Yahoo mean?” (check it out). 

After you click on the link, you see that this is a bounce message Yahoo! will serve up if their servers are over capacity and are pushing back on mail to allow them to catch up.  This is not a sender related bounce but rather a Yahoo! infrastructure one – all you can do is retry the message later and hope Yahoo! has some available cycles at that time (which you should be doing on most soft bounces anyway). 

See?  It’s that easy.  And in most cases there’s a link to the ISP’s postmaster page which will provide further information on what to do or context around why you’re receiving this bounce. 

How can you help?
There is no uniform standard amongst ISPs mandating that certain bounces be stated a certain way.  As such, you see a huge variety of bounce messages and what information an ISP will provide.  Also, as ISPs deem necessary, bounce codes change over time making existing ones outdated and adding new ones.  Please help the email community stay on top of the changes by contributing to the GetSatisfaction bounce project site when you see new bounce codes that aren’t listed or know one that’s already listed has changed.  By making this an industry effort, we can ensure all of us are up with the latest news.  Feel free to ask questions on the site as well.  We have a few deliverability folks monitoring it.

Who put this together?
The following folks were involved with this project and we extend our gratitude!

• Joshua Baer - Founder & CEO - OtherInbox/Chief Evangelist - Datran Media
• Dennis Dayman, VP, Privacy, Eloqua
• Michelle Eichner, VP, Pivotal Veracity and Co-Chair, Deliverability Roundtable
• Stephanie Miller - VP, Global Market Development - Return Path
• Jack Sinclair - Co-Founder, COO & CFO - Return Path and Co-Chair, Deliverability Roundtable
• Chris Wheeler - Director of Deliverability - Bronto Software
• and other members of the eec Deliverability Roundtable

- Chris Wheeler, Director, Deliverability, Bronto Software and Member, eec Deliverability Roundtable

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Not every email marketing best practice is an obvious one. In fact, in our experience at ClickMail Marketing, there are quite a few best practices that companies seem to look over or deliberately ignore. The result? The opposite of best practices, or what we kindly call “common email marketing mistakes” rather than worst practices.

In an industry where a half a percentage point can make or break a campaign, it’s our opinion that tweaking and optimizing every possible factor is worth the effort. With that in mind, I asked our staff to compile a list of the top 10 mistakes they see when deploying email campaigns on behalf of clients. The good news is that they only came up with nine. And the even better news is that these are all easy best practices to adapt and adhere to.

Below are the common mistakes seen by the staff at ClickMail, and what you can do to avoid them:

Common email marketing mistake #1: Sloppy Copy

• Check your spelling. Copy and paste into Word and run spell-check if you need to. Also check the spelling in your links. If your URL is wrong, so are you.
• Read the copy. Don’t scam, skim or skip over. Reading is the only way to ensure proper use of language like “their” vs. “there” vs. “they’re”, missing words, incorrect punctuation or poor sentence structure. Best practice: Print it out to read on paper. Even better best practice: Read it out loud.
• Employ a second set of eyes for final review. Once you’ve written, read and edited the same piece of content many times, it is no longer fresh to you and errors are easily overlooked. Ask someone else to run spell check and read the copy. You may be surprised to see what you missed.

Common email marketing mistake #2: Crummy Coding

• Set the pixel width to 600. This prevents the need to scroll to the right—and the potential to lose interest if someone feels they have to do too much work to read your email.
• Don’t use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in your HTML coding. It is stripped out by many ESPs, meaning your message can be lost. Even if you’ve spell checked it and done all the best practices described above!
• Many ESPs also suppress images by default, as do email clients (about 80%). Do not create your email message out of one big image or your subscribers may only see a blank page with a little, tiny red X. If you use any images, to be on the safe side, utilize a View Online feature so they have another way to see images if they are suppressed.

Common email marketing mistake #3: Cold Calls to Action

• Your call to action (CTA) should be in text format, not an image because—as mentioned above—images are suppressed by default by many email service providers and email clients.
• Include two to three instances of your CTA above the fold (in the first 300 pixels). Make sure to include at least one graphical and one textual CTA.
• The top one-third and the left-most area of your emails are the most valuable real estate. Try to place a CTA those areas, in text and as minimal images.

Common email marketing mistake #4: Poor Subject Lines

Your subject line should be seven words or less (or 35 characters). Most people know this but might not know that the following conditions in a subject line can be flagged as SPAM:

• Percent of Capital Letters: Too many uppercase letters compared to lowercase letters
• Repeating Capital Letter: Too many upper case letters in a row (e.g., SALE)
• Gaps: When the words have gaps between letters like s*t*y*l*e
• Repetition: When letters or characters are repeated (*****)
• Special Character Flag: Overuse of special characters (e.g., & $ # @ ( )[ ] !)
• Punctuation Flag: Too much punctuation (…) or the type of punctuation (!)
• Word/Space Ratio: Spammers use blank spaces to catch the recipient’s attention resulting in a high ratio of spaces to words
• First Character Flag/First Word Flag: Subject lines starting with a special character or punctuation. Words like “Free”, “hey”, “Sale” etc.

Common email marketing mistake #5: Obscure “From” Label

Your From address is key information used by subscribers to determine if your email is spam or not. If it’s not relevant or recognizable, they may mark it as spam, or just delete it without opening it.

Common email marketing mistake #6: Floating From Address and/or Domain

Keep a static “From” address and/or domain, and ask to be added to the recipient’s Safe Sender list at the top of each email.

Common email marketing mistake #7: Lazy Lists

• Utilize the Forward to a Friend (FTF) feature to organically grow your list.
• Practice good and consistent list hygiene. Most people know to honor opt outs in 10 days to be CAN-SPAM compliant but you should also clean your list(s) of hard bounces after each send, plus monitor soft bounces and remove from your list as needed.

Common email marketing mistake #8: Competing Links

Don’t include competing links, period. Unless it’s a newsletter, most emails should be single subject with a single call to action. If it’s a sale, link to the appropriate sale items. If it’s an invitation, link to the registration page etc.

Common email marketing mistake #9: Unfair Unsubscribe

The unsubscribe link must be the first step, per CAN-SPAM. Don’t make people jump through hoops to opt out.

Now, I hope you read the nine common email marketing mistakes above and nodded your head in agreement, confident you’re innocent of all.  If not, if even one of those nine listed tripped you up, go fix it now and increase your ROI later as a result.

- Marco Marini, President & CEO, ClickMail Marketing

Marco Marini is an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

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Gmail reported in their blog this week that they have developed a way to provide their users with an opportunity to report spam and/or unsubscribe from emails they receive in their Gmail accounts. The article, titled “Unsubscribing Made Easy” is a positive change for Gmail, but still falls short of where most legitimate senders want to see.

Like many complaint feedback loops (also known as FBL’s) offered by a number of ISPs, Gmail’s new functionality is mostly a good thing. I applaud their effort, and it certainly helps when there is this cooperation and transparency in the sender/receiver relationship. It is better for everyone. This is why the Abuse Reporting Format was met with applause by senders when it arrived a few years back.

Here are the good parts. First, Gmail’s new feature provides the subscriber with a chance to mark a message as spam, which should allow Gmail to better filter their email. Second, in addition to the option to just report spam, the end user may also choose to “unsubscribe and report spam.” This second option apparently is just provided when Gmail deems the sender to be reputable. See the image below for an idea on what the subscriber sees.

In his blog, Brad Taylor outlines the reasons Gmail pursued the development of this new feature.

“For those of you senders who are interested in this feature, the most basic requirements are including a standard "List-Unsubscribe" header in your email with a "mailto" URL and, of course, honoring requests from users wishing to unsubscribe. You'll also need to follow good sending practices, which in a nutshell means not sending unwanted email (see our bulk sending guidelines for more information).

With an easy way to unsubscribe, everybody wins. Your spam folder is smaller, and senders don't waste time sending you email that you no longer want.

Update (1:50pm): If you want to unsubscribe without reporting the message as spam, click "show details" in the top-right corner of the message, then click "Unsubscribe from this sender."

It is this piece that leads me to a bit of concern on the implementation. If Gmail is doing their usual checks on authentication, reputation, content etc. to determine which senders are legitimate, why then force the end-user to either mark something as spam, or go through “show details” (which nearly no one will do) to unsubscribe? Why not also provide an unsubscribe button on the interface in addition to the “report spam” button?
I can understand why Gmail would forgo providing the email address back to the sender at the user’s discretion. However, even the FTC has a study showing that unsubscribing from spam doesn’t really lead to more spam. In the FTC’s 2002 study, they report that “In no instance did we find that any of our unique email accounts received more spam after attempting to unsubscribe.”

Gmail has the opportunity to educate their subscribers on legitimate and unsolicited email. Why not provide just an “unsubscribe” button for legitimate senders, and explain why they are doing it, rather than propagating the unfounded fear of unsubscribing?
Also, other ISPs have gotten around this privacy concern by not passing back the actual email address back to the sender. Many senders use other forensics to determine which subscriber complained so that this subscriber can be removed from the list.

Engagement Matters
We advise clients to look at all sorts of engagement metrics, and unsubscribes and complaints are equally as important as opens and clicks. When possible, I’d like to know the ultimate intent of the subscriber when they choose to get off of a list. I always say I’d rather have someone unsubscribe from my email than ignore me.

As for which email this is enabled for and which not, the folks over at Word to the Wise looked at this a bit deeper and do some testing. They found that:
“Conditions where the unsubscribe option is presented include:

• The mail is authenticated
• The sender has a good reputation
• The email has a mailto: option in the List-Unsubscribe header
• The recipients marks the message as spam”
  

Read more about their tests here http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog/0/0/gmail-offering-unsubscribe-option or here http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2009/07/gmail-offering-unsubscribe-option/.

Either way, legitimate senders do benefit from this, but it is fun to dream of having both unsubscribe and report spam options available to subscribers.

- Chip House, Vice President, Industry & Relationship Marketing, ExactTarget

Chip is responsible for industry research and relations, and owns the targeted marketing programs that ensure the satisfaction and success of ExactTarget's client base.  Chip also manages the teams responsible for marketing research, deliverability compliance, and privacy initiatives.  As an established industry leader, Chip writes regularly for online marketing publications and was named to BtoB Magazine's 2005 “Who's Who in B-To-B” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email. Chip brings 20 years of direct marketing and twelve years of internet marketing experience to ExactTarget.

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Sometimes email is too inexpensive for our own good.  It sure is tempting and certainly is very easy to send too frequently or assume permission or “just mail that generic sale notice/product announcement to everyone.”  

Now, I get a lot of postal mail that is not that interesting to me.  And surely most of the tweets I see are not that relevant.  Even search results can be off target.  Yet, there is a penalty for not respecting and delighting our email subscribers that does not exist in other direct channels:  It’s called the "report spam" button.  Even a small number of those spam complaints will get all your messages blocked by the ISPs like Yahoo!, Gmail and Hotmail, as well as corporate systems. 

It happens to the best of us.  Turns out that, despite all we’ve learned about email marketing best practices and the rules of engagement  for getting past the spam filters, the average inbox deliverability is still only about  80% according to a new Return Path study.

Leaving 20% of your marketing messages on the spam pile is like leaving 20% of your revenue behind.  Don’t stand for it.  Complacency or thinking that “it’s the other guy” is just not valid.  This study looks at commercial senders like you and me – branded companies with permission grants and a desire to do the right thing.  And we still lose an average of 20%!

The good news is that averages can be beat.  Respect your subscribers, curb your frequency, target and customize, keep your list clean, authenticate, process bounces correctly and maintain a solid infrastructure.  You will lower complaints and improve your inbox reach.  When you reach the inbox, you can earn a response and revenue.

- Stephanie Miller, VP, Market Development, Return Path, Inc.

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Man. It must be tough to be a financial institution in 2009. I'm not referring to the current financial crisis. I'm talking about trying to convince consumers that the email you are sending is legitimate (not spam, not phishing).

My wife and I recently moved into a new home in Salt Lake City. We used Bank of America for our mortgage. A few weeks after signing the paperwork, I received the following email

eec Superstar, Lisa Harmon has written about the preheader in the past. Fellow Smith-Harmon guy, Chad White also talks about it often. However, I've never seen a company use that valuable real estate to tell people an email they are about to read is NOT spam. Interesting.

Why This Technique May Work
Hey, you've gotta give credit for Bank of America for not giving up on email marketing as a engagement channel. While I may have historically marked this as spam out of habit, I didn't this time. Was it because of the timing of their email (I just secured a B of A Mortgage)? Was it because they told me the email was NOT spam? Who knows.

I wonder what their open vs. unsubscribe/spam ratios looked like for this campaign. Did they do some A|B testing on that big red box telling me "This is NOT spam"? Maybe that phrase works for some, maybe for the majority. So, Bank of America - did this work?

Why This Technique May Fail
Telling me something is NOT spam makes me think even more that it IS spam. That's what spammers and phishers do. "Please trust us. We're the good guys, the guys with the white hats." Yeah, right. I trust you. Also, if you have to tell me something is NOT something I think it may be, well...you're already starting behind. As mentioned above, that preheader / above-the-fold area is what usually is seen first. Bank of America wants me to complete the survey, but I may be caught up on the fact that this email is or is NOT spam.

A Few Other Thoughts
1. Using the data: Bank of America sent me a few of these survey emails. Notice the subject line leads with the word "Reminder." I love this. Ideally, they are using data to know I haven't completed the survey yet. They seem to be using this information to remail me (and others?). A great strategy.

2. Images on vs. off: Using a link as opposed to a button ensures that I'm more likely to see it with images off. Yes!

3. Copy (the good): I liked that they started by congratulating me. I realize this is not "personalized" per se, but it was a nice way to start. They build upon my feel-good attitude with a thank you in the first paragraph. The email continues by setting my expectations around time (10 minutes) and why they are asking me to complete ("measure and learn"). Finally, it closes with a signature from Peggy, the SVP of CEE. Good touch.

4. Copy (the bad):

• I realize mergers & acquisitions can cause marketing headaches. They are tough to communicate and can be confusing to the consumer. I applaud their effort to make me aware of the Countrywide acquisition, but I'm now a bit thrown off. I've never heard of Countrywide.
• "Please do not reply to this email" - a big pet peeve of mine. They just spent a ton of copy congratulating and thanking me, then asking me to take 10 minutes out of my life to complete their survey. Yet...now they don't want me to reply as they are "not able to respond..." Oops.
• Bank of America wants me to complete the survey. However, the link to the begin is at the bottom. Toss in the link in the preheader. Or, how about adding a link within the body copy? Don't make me work for it. Remember, I'm doing you a favor.

Dear Bank of America - If you are listening, we'd love to talk more. Are any other financial institutions attempting this approach? Do share...

- DJ Waldow, Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

DJ Waldow is the Director of Community at Blue Sky Factory, an Email Service Provider based in Baltimore. With over 4 years of experience in email marketing, DJ is active in the twittersphere (@djwaldow), on blogs (blog.blueskyfactory.com), and in the social media space. He's an regular contributor to the Email Marketers Club and other email-related social networks. DJ resides in Salt Lake City, Utah where he can be found thinking, eating, and breathing email.

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