- Use the Test Send
- What's the difference between Hard and Soft bounces?
- Creating targeted address books
- The graphs - what they actually tell you
- Stay within the law
1. Use the test Send
It's free, so there's no reason not to! This lets you send the campaign to (say) work colleagues and personal email addresses to help check for any typos, grammatical errors and the like.
Both the HTML and the Text version will be sent, so if you've not created a plain text version you'll receive a blank email along with the HTML one. (We often get asked why this happens). Obviously when you do your live send, your recipients will receive only one email.
You can also use 'Test Send' to ensure that your email arrives as you expect it to. Your email may appear differently in webmail mail clients (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). For instance, some webmail clients strip out style sheets when users receive messages, so it's wise to carry out some 'Test Sends' to a variety of mail clients.
Basically, the Test Send allows you to see exactly what the finished product will be before sending your communication to the entire list. It will give you the confidence to create bigger and better campaigns… just remember - always check all copy for typos and make sure all your links are correct.
2. What's the difference between Hard and Soft bounces?
This is key to understanding why some emails go undelivered.
A Hard bounce back is logged when emailshot receives a definite failure code. There are industry standard codes for failed email addresses, dead accounts, where the email server does not exist (this could be down at the time of sending) etc. There's generally no point in resending these - use the reports to check the addresses manually (it might be a simple spelling mistake), and amend them if you can.
A Soft bounce back is logged when an email is undeliverable for temporary reasons, such as an out of office autoreply, a Hotmail account is full, etc. These are less likely to be dead accounts.
3. Creating targeted address books
Use the 'Tracked Links Clicked' report to create new targeted Address Books based on recipient behaviour. Clicking a keyword in the 'links' box on the reporting page allows you to export each list of 'clickers' to a new file. You have the option to 'pick columns', allowing you to choose the data you wish to view (including up to 10 additional data fields). The 'Hot Prospects' report is also a good way to easily target.
4. The graphs - what they actually tell you
Emailshot also provides graphs to give you an immediate overview of your campaign's success.
Tracked Email Opens shows what hour of any day your emails are receiving the most opens, helping you to decide the best time to send out your next campaign.
Links Clicked provides a breakdown of how many times a link was clicked and what the link was.
More graphs can be found by clicking on the graph icon next to Hard Bounce Backs, Soft Bounce Backs, Replies and Remove Requests.
The print friendly report button allows you to dash off top line statistics very quickly - perfect for integrating into reports.
5. Stay within the law
By following Best Practice you are on the right side of the law.
- Emails sent must explain where they have come from (i.e. contain you business name and address)
- Emails must contain a clearly visible unsubscribe link
- emailshot uses a permission based system. This means that all the email addresses within the address book must be permission-based; either collected using your own methods or from purchased reputable opt-in lists.
- Emails should state somewhere how the recipient's address was obtained. E.g. "you are receiving this email because…" Always keep a log of how and when you obtained the emails you use - this protects you in case you are accused of spamming. And you should always include some other form of non-electronic contact details in your email.
