While this form of collection is relatively quick and easy, it’s important to note that address and email capture in stores can be a cumbersome process, and the pressure to capture data as quickly as possible can negatively impact accuracy, reputation, and ultimately deliverability. The benchmark for POS email capture bounce rate is 20%, a large percentage based on the fact that the total bounce rate across all clients at Experian CheetahMail for 2011 was 1.5%.

In-store POS address collection generally occurs at the cash register. Upon collecting the address the cashier should read back the submitted address and possibly re-enter for verification. Even better, the cashier/retail outlet should have the customers themselves verify the email address submitted with a keypad/touchpad. In some instances, retailers have even started building their customer email list by asking each customer if they’d like a receipt emailed to them. Additionally, Quick Response codes or QR codes are becoming popular and easy ways to capture customer data accurately.

As an email address is captured, the address should be validated to prevent bad data/unknown users from entering your customer database and corrected for domain miss spellings or typos from POS entry. One way to do this is through email list management tools – utilizing services such as Experian QAS to validate and/or correct domains in real-time at the point of registration. Utilizing QAS email solutions can increase accuracy, reduce bounce rates from emails captured at POS, and standardize email addresses across the entire retail operation. For more information visit http://www.qas.com/

Data quality and validation can also be improved by sending a welcome confirmation or welcome series. A real time welcome email reinforces subscriber opt-in recognition. Additionally, a welcome series increases a subscriber’s affinity to your brand and increases likelihood of engagement.

Once captured and validated, to manage list file health, deliverability and reputation, subscribers should be kept within a regular promotional marketing stream if they have opened and clicked “x” (x is an agreed up number) emails within a reasonable time period. The majority of new subscribers will click a client’s email within the first thirty (30) days (approximately 4-6 campaigns). If a subscriber has not opened in a ninety (90) day period (common for retailers), the email address can be deemed inactive. CheetahMail’s Deliverability team and Strategic Services Group can assist clients with the process of identifying and defining inactive subscribers by:

1. Establishing the  cause of inactivity i.e. is the address hard bouncing due to email account inactivity?  If so, these addresses will be purged from client’s list.
2. For the balance, develop and target subscribers with either a reconfirmation message or reactivation program. Those subscribers that are reactivated or confirmed will then be folded back into the regular marketing promotion stream.

Clients that take the proper steps to overcome POS email acquisition hurdles and identify early on and tackle inactivity will reap the rewards of better deliverability, stronger reputation, subscriber loyalty and increased engagement.

POS email collection practices may also expose retailers to other, compliance-related risks. Please stay tuned for a follow up post by the Compliance Team about POS compliance and privacy related issues.

1. Referring users must feel comfortable during the process, which begins with consent practices. Never use the recipients’ email address with subsequent marketing campaigns unless they provide their own consent. For example, Victoria Secret offers referrers a clear statement that their friends’ email addresses will not be added to their email list during the referral.

• If you want the recipient to be your friend too, then ensure transparency with your content. Here are some quick tips with managing content:
  • The friendly ‘from’ address can and should be the friend/referrer. It’s advised that the commercial sender is NOT included in the ‘from’ because the intent is still for the friend to be the referral, and otherwise it may appear to the recipient as an unsolicited commercial email and lead to a spam complaint.
  • Include some language in the email introduction about why the recipient is getting it and what information will and will not be collected.
  • Make sure the subject line is tied to the friend and not misleading. Successful campaigns such as the Saks Fifth Avenue example below put the friends name in the subject line leaving no confusion as to why the referee is receiving the mail.

• Offering incentives is a great way to entice referrals ( Eg; through cash, coupons, discounts, awards or additional entries in a sweepstakes) However, in doing so, the sender must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. In addition to including an opt-out option in the email the sender must run that referral friend's email address against the senders' suppression list to make sure the friend was not previously unsubscribed. Even if there is no incentive, it is still a best practice to apply prior suppressions and include an unsubscribe link in the email to help mitigate potential spam complaints.Since these RAF emails may be deploying off the same IPs as the senders’ bulk email messages, abuse complaints from RAF campaigns can lead to IP reputation issues at various ISPs and cause bulking/spam foldering issues in the future. Don’t give the ISPs any more reasons (abuse, spam traps, bad data, etc) to bulk or block mailings by skipping this step.

One of the most important issues for email marketers is making sure the message makes it to the “inbox” of the intended recipient. An often overlooked key aspect of mailing delivery — in addition to IP reputation — is the actual subject line of the email. Not only does the subject line play an important role in getting delivered, it is imperative to accomplish the main objective of getting your marketing message opened and read by the user and keeping your list active. As such, here are some subject line best practices to follow to ensure your legitimate email is not filtered as spam.

• A subject line should be as short and descriptive as possible. The subject line should be informative and true. If your from name and address are not branded, the subject line should also provide assurance that the email comes from a trusted source. A general rule of thumb is to keep subject lines between 30-50 characters.
• A strong offer can be put right in the subject line. Evaluate your content to understand the likelihood of your message hitting spam filters, particularly if a high percentage of your list is at corporate domains. Corporate domains rely more on phrases or words that have been “tainted” by the spamming community. The major web-based email clients focus on your reputation more than your content.
• The from name and address can be as important as the subject line. A strong offer can be put right in the subject line, but it is important to use punctuation and grammar carefully to ensure that you are not perceived to be a spammer by the receiving ISP.
• The ‘from’ name and subject line should work in tandem. The ‘from’ line should communicate who you are as the sender. Do your best to not change this entry frequently and make it recognizable so that recipients understand that the email was sent by a reliable source.
• If you are cross promoting a sister brand, use the subject line to introduce the sister brand and do not change the ‘from’ address of the originally subscribed-to brand. Any other ‘from’ address is likely to increase complaints. For more information on cross promoting sister brands, please see our recent post on promoting sister brands.

That said, spammers use various tactics to fool people into opening their emails. Spammers often use words that announce a big incentive or urgency. We suggest testing certain keywords or alternative words to optimize your subject lines.

• Some key words and phrases such as “act now,” “trial,” “quote,” and “guarantee” can be tested against “complimentary,” “estimate,” “be our guest,” and “giveaway.”
• While “Free” performs well in subject lines (see Experian CheetahMail’s Free Shipping Report) you might try using “our treat” or “on the house” to see what works best for your brand.
• Avoid excessive punctuation — exclamation points, multiple periods (…), dollar signs ($$), etc.
• In the past putting full words in ALL CAPS was considered equivalent to shouting. Using all caps is a practice used by spammers. Test the use of all caps and monitor any drops in open rates potentially due to filtering.
• Using ‘Re:’ at the beginning of a subject line falsely leads the recipient to think the email is a reply to a previous email. This is a misleading tactic. This tactic is not CAN-SPAM compliant and creates a poor customer experience. If the recipient feels duped into opening an email, you might see an increase in abuse rates or unsubscribe requests.

Just a few little words/phrases in your subject line can make or break the success of your email marketing campaign, not just by impacting open rates but affecting deliverability too. To learn what works best, test. Following these subject line best practices can save your client from losing both excellent reputation and good subscribers.

From a deliverability perspective, this feature once again proves that building a good sender reputation that includes regular customer engagement is of the utmost importance. If users are consistently marking your mail with increased priority, then the sender’s reputation will likely improve. If users are consistently marking mail with decreased priority, the sender’s reputation will likely degrade. While the importance of these new priority settings are mainly user-specific, if too many people push the ‘less important’ button, then Gmail’s algorithm will take this into account and may push those senders email into the “Everything else” section or possibly into the Spam folder.

How Priority Inbox works:

Priority Inbox analyzes incoming mail, giving it a ranking and sorting it into four customizable sections: “Important and unread” (or just “Important”), “Starred” and “Everything else.” “Important” messages are intended to be the most relevant or relationship-oriented, and sit at the top of the screen. Next is the “Starred” section which are messages the user manually flags or sets up as a recurring indication of importance. “Everything else” includes those messages that may not be from an established contact or regularly engaged with before.

Gmail will automatically determine which of your messages are ‘Important’ based on their algorithms and a few other aspects, including:

• Who sent the email. For example, if you email Bob a lot, it’s likely that messages from Bob are important.
• What keyword terms it includes. If you always read messages about soccer, a new message that contains those same soccer words is more likely to be important.
• Other actions such as: replying, using ‘Stars’, archiving, regularly opening, and deleting.

It will also be important for the user to interact and train the new Priority Inbox by using the + and – buttons or the ‘important’/’less important’ buttons. This will help the Priority Inbox learn which messages the user cares most about, in addition to teaching the algorithm about mistakes with mail marked as more or less important.

The new feature, like many of Google’s platform enhancements, is free to all Gmail users who opt-in. It is important to note that the Priority Inbox is a feature that can easily be disabled and is fully customizable for each user. From the Priority Inbox tab on the Settings page, a user can decide how many mail items each section should display (5, 10, 25, or 50), and which view is default. Additionally, even if the user keeps the Priority Inbox enabled, a tab for the ‘regular’ Inbox is still a choice on the left navigation pane and can be referred back to at any time.

If the user has not customized any of the settings and then opens a message within the “Important and unread” section, those opened emails will then move to the “Everything else” section once the window is refreshed. A user can change this by customizing the settings so that even unopened email that would normally be in the “Important and unread” section are listed in the “Important” setting instead. This process is illustrated in the two screen shots below:

What it all means:

In general, the Priority Inbox should help senders reduce abuse complaints and default Spam foldering since users will have more options to express their preferences with Inbox placement instead of pressing the ‘Spam’ button. In addition, Gmail should now find it easier to deem questionable email (aka; ‘bacn’) as ‘Everything else’ as opposed to placing it by default in the Spam folder. However, for senders whose email is usually prioritized in the Inbox, yet is now in the “Everything Else” section, this change may hurt messaging performance. Over the next few months, the CheetahMail deliverability team will track delivery performance changes at Gmail and report back on any noticeable differences Priority Inbox has made on client delivery efforts.

For more information, refer to: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/priority-inbox.html

Some of the new features that should have a positive impact on email deliverability include:

• Trusted Senders Icon — Hotmail will now help visually identify ‘trusted senders’ in your inbox, particularly banks and other senders most commonly impersonated in phishing scams, by putting safety logos next to those senders recognized as legitimate. While the exact details on this feature are limited right now, it will most likely be based on a combination of authentication and a consistently positive mailing reputation.
• Tabs — Organizational tools will appear at the top of the inbox that will allow the user to display messages received from specific contacts, certain social networks (such as Facebook notifications), pre-selected email groups, or all of their mail. In addition, “Quick Views” will be available that will automatically sort four types of emails into their respective folders: Flagged, Photos, Office Docs, and Shipping Updates. These tabs can benefit senders by addressing inbox overload issues.

One of the new features that should have a negative impact on senders and deliverability as a whole:

• Time Traveling Filters — Microsoft’s filters can retroactively remove messages that were placed in the inbox if the reputation of the sender later turns out to be poor and the recipient has not yet opened the message in their inbox. That means there’s no longer a guarantee that a message delivered to the inbox will actually stay there until the recipient acts on it.

In addition to these two deliverability enhancements, there are also some new user interface features and ‘behind the scenes’ developments that can have either positive or negative effects on senders. These include:

• Preference auto-learning/prompts — Subscribers that delete messages without opening them multiple times will be prompted if they want to unsubscribe from that sender (assuming the sender is populating a ‘list-unsubscribe’ setting in their transmission header). This will have positive and negative affects for senders; it will undoubtedly reduce list size by some amount, however, it removes recipients who are no longer engaged which should improve open and conversion rates.
• Sweep — This feature allows users to clean out their inbox in one ‘sweep’ effort. In a single-click, a user can select a single e-mail sender, or multiple senders, and automatically delete or move every message from that sender out of their inbox. A positive byproduct of this feature is that senders whose mail is swept should not suffer any impact to their reputation since the number of unsubscribes and spam complaints should decrease as more recipients use sweep rather than unsubscribing, deleting or complaining. However, it’s important to remember that just because a complaint rate is low doesn’t mean that the sender’s reputation and deliverability is good. Hotmail will still check email quality, engagement and other relevant statistics to further identify legitimate messaging. Additionally, the sweep function remembers user preferences, so if a user sweeps a sender’s mail once, Hotmail is likely to continue to sweep that sender’s mail to the designated folder until the user intervenes.
• Delete all of them? — Upon deleting a single email from a sender, users may be prompted to “Delete all of them?” with the ability to block all future messages from that particular sender. This action should have the same positive/negative effects as the Preference auto-learning/prompts.

These enhancements to Hotmail can have both positive and negative effects on senders. These changes are primarily designed so that fewer true spam messages will appear in your subscriber’s inbox, which will allow the subscriber greater time to interact with legitimate messages from legitimate senders.