• by Ross Fadner , December 29, 2003

Email marketing industry guides for standards and practices are a dime a dozen these days. It seems like every organization out there has published one or is in the midst of establishing one in an effort to become the industry standard. Of all the email marketing standards and practices guides reviewed by MediaDailyNews, EmailLabs' Best Practices, A Collection of articles on Email Marketing, is certainly the longest, if not the most thorough.

While much of the guide, particularly the "Quick Tips for Creating a Successful Newsletter" and the "Key Elements for a Successful Campaign," includes rather ordinary and at this point redundant suggestions such as: create clear, recognizable Subject and From lines, establish a clear purpose and voice for your newsletter, be sure to implement quality assurance testing, etc., the value of EmailLabs e-marketing strategies guide lies in the way it deconstructs email marketing myths and misnomers and examines the differences in ISP filtering technologies.

For example, how many times have you heard "never use the word 'Free' in a subject heading"? Well, according to author Loren McDonald, "by itself, the word 'free' will not cause any of the major spam or content filters to reject your email. In our experience across various clients, when used correctly, the word 'free' can provide a powerful boost to your results." McDonald goes on to evaluate the different ways ISP filtering techs like Spam Assassin and Microsoft's Outlook 2000 Junk Email Filter determine whether an email is legitimate or not.

Spam Assassin, a spam filtering algorithm McDonald claims that most ISPs model their own filters after, uses a point system to determine a given message's legitimacy. Spam Assassin assigns positive and negative points to email content and coding. The score is then totaled, and emails that exceed a certain level are then filtered. It is generally believed that most companies and ISPs filter messages after a total score of around ten, but Spam Assassin users can change the test score values and determine the level at which emails are filtered.

The EmailLabs report also examines when the best time is to deliver an email promotion or newsletter. Tuesday through Thursday is statistically the best time for delivery, as 80 percent of emails are received between 5 AM and 5 PM (PST) with roughly 62 percent of those opened between Tuesday and Thursday. This indicates that most business-oriented email users are more likely to open their mail during the workday, whereas regular consumers typically do so at any given point during the day.

If you know your specific user segment, or demographic segmentation, then it makes sense to tailor your email delivery and your email personalization to that segment. The study uses teens as an example. If you're trying to reach teens, then it makes sense to deliver your message right around the time they return home from school. Capturing demographic data, you can then create customer profile segments to receive emails with more specific products, offers, and messaging for, say, girls under 13 who watch the Disney channel when they come home from school.

The EmailLabs report, as mentioned earlier, is very thorough. It also addresses metrics myths, Subject and From line optimization tools, an in-depth look at the anti-spam measures ISPs have taken, and what this means for email marketers, clickthrough vs. conversion, and many other studies. Essentially, the EmailLabs Best Practices Guide is a collection of related articles and reads like one too, but email marketers will certainly want to take the time to read through it and take its advice into consideration.