Cut Through the Clutter How to Create an Awesome Marketing

Cut Through

the Clutter

How to Create an Awesome

Marketing Email

A Lasso Whitepaper

Published: March 2013

Copyright © 2013 Lasso Data Systems Inc. All Rights Reserved.

For more information visit www.LassoCRM.com, call 1.866.526.9955 or email

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Email Marketing is Alive and Well

Over the past five years, homebuilders, real estate developers, and sales and marketing companies have increased their email marketing budgets and refined their strategies for two simple reasons – email is cost effective and it works. Email allows marketers to engage with their target audience, establish brand loyalty, and build relationships with relevant information in a non-disruptive manner - all at a very low cost.

In 2012 alone, 144 billion emails were sent daily, and that number is expected to continue climbing.1 _{With marketers and advertisers of every industry vying for}

consumers’ attention, email must be implemented correctly and responsibly in order to be noticed and read. This is where Lasso CRM can help. Email marketing is built right in to our software, and is one of our most popular features (every month Lasso sends millions of emails to consumers on behalf of our clients). We know email marketing, and we can help you implement your own campaigns, or you can tap our expert resources to do the work for you. Though we are here to help, this whitepaper is all about helping you create awesome emails. In it, we’ll discuss the opportunities for homebuilders to leverage email marketing, and suggest specific strategies to create awesome emails.

Table of Contents

I. Planning your Email Campaign Pages 3-6

II. Creating Your Email Pages 7-11

III. Anatomy of an Awesome Email Page 12

IV. Before You Press Send Page 13-14

V. Reporting and Metrics Page 15

VI. Next Steps Page 16

VII. Professional Emails Yield Results Page 16

VIII. Email Marketing Checklist Page 17

IX. Glossary of Email Marketing Terms Pages 18-19

X. About the Authors Page 20

XI. References Page 20

In 2012, 144 billion emails were sent daily. The goal is to be

noticed and read.

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I. Planning Your Email Campaign

Too often, businesses hurriedly throw together a couple of sentences about their latest product or release and send the email to their entire database. This is the “Throw it Out There and See What Sticks” strategy. This, however, is not the best use of time, talent or valuable inbox real estate. With your database, you have a captive audience waiting to receive interesting, relevant information that will engage them. One size email does not fit all.

Treat email campaigns as you would any other marketing initiative. Think about the answer to each of these questions: What is your goal? What is your message? Who do you want it to reach? What action do you want people to take? How will you measure results?

Look at Past Campaigns

To start, take a look at your past email campaigns to determine the following:

 Are you exceeding the real estate industry average of 20% open/view rates? If not, why?

 What is the percentage of failed email addresses vs. successful email delivery?  What percentage of prospects has opted out or selected “No email” as a contact

preference?

 Examine past email templates – why did one have a higher view/open rate than another?

The average open rate for real estate is 20%. How well do

your emails perform?

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I. Planning Your Email Campaign (cont.)

Develop a Calendar

Include email marketing in your overall media schedule. Just as you would plan when to run a print ad, and what it would say, do the same for your emails. Consider the

following when developing your calendar:

 Events - including prospect, broker, homeowner and marketing events.  Seasonality or sales cycle

 Email frequency

 Other communities – there may be opportunities to send one email about multiple communities.

Once you have determined when and the type of information to send, prepare your emails in advance so they can be reviewed and edited before the deadline.

Automated Email Campaigns

An automated campaign is a series of pre-scheduled emails that are sent based on a “trigger,” such as website registration. Campaigns are a great way to deliver timely messages to your prospects as they advance through the sales cycle (Lasso offers users the option to send automated email campaigns).

Email Management

Mass mail should be coordinated and managed by the same key individual(s) within your marketing team. This ensures that proper branding guidelines are followed, helps control email frequency, and improves message relevance to your audience.

List Management

Your database is the life force of your email campaign, and keeping it updated is crucial to success. How many valid leads are in your database? If they’ve been there for a while, are they still looking for a new home? Are their email addresses current? What type of information are they interested in now?

Develop an email calendar just as you would for any major

marketing initiative.

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I. Planning Your Email Campaign (cont.)

List Management (cont.)

Not only do peoples’ needs change, but it is estimated that 34 percent of email addresses change each year.2 _{Sending email to bad addresses not only skews results,} but is also used by email providers to determine if your future emails will be marked as spam. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) refer to this as your “sender reputation.” If you constantly try to send email to invalid domains or to recipients who don’t open your email, or too many recipients mark your email as spam, it negatively impacts your sender reputation.

Today, many ISPs and inbox providers determine the quality and credibility of senders based either completely on reputation or on a combination of reputation and content. It is important to not only manage failed emails, but to also determine the interests of the prospects in your database.

Build your lists carefully.

Ultimately, your goal is to have an extremely targeted database that includes prospects who are interested in purchasing a new home, and brokers who are actively working with clients. Here are some tips to achieve this:

• Make it easy for your prospects to register on your website. Be sure that the

“Register Now” link is prominent on every page along with a basic web form requiring first and last name, and email.

• Capture pertinent information from sales center walk-ins by having them fill out a

registration card or iPad form that feeds directly into your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

• Use a double opt-in process to confirm that your prospects want to join your lists.

Studies have shown that opting-in twice increases the total open rate by almost 76 percent.3 _{It also results in fewer hard bounces by validating the email.}

• A smaller, segmented and qualified list will produce better results than a broader, unqualified list. Quality over quantity.

• To reduce the amount of spam entering your database, consider installing a Captcha code to confirm the registrant is an actual person.

• Ask your prospects what type of information they want to receive. Provide them

with the ability to update their profile information. In Lasso, this feature is called a Self-Serve Registrant Update.

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I. Planning Your Email Campaign (cont.)

Clean your lists frequently.

Databases can quickly become stale, especially if your community has a sales life of several years. Email addresses change and people move on, so it’s important to keep your lists fresh and up-to-date to ensure accuracy and deliverability.

• Label inactive subscribers so that you don’t send them regular email and to help you report campaign results more accurately. Use other marketing channels to keep your brand in front of them; when the time is right, they will re-engage.

• Update your list each time you send an email. • Remove or update email addresses that have failed.

• Remove distribution accounts such as sales@, or info@ on your email lists. Including these types of email addresses on your lists will likely create spam complaints.

Segment Your Lists

Your database is only as effective as the information you put into it. When it comes to following up with prospects – both online and those who have walked into your sales center – it’s important to rate, label and tag leads so that sales and marketing teams can segment lists to provide more focused follow-up. It is estimated that 39 percent of marketers who segment their email lists experienced higher open rates.4

A good CRM system will allow you to assign a grade or rating, multiple source types and contact preferences to each prospect in the database. But in order to reach these prospects with the kind of specific and timely information that will spark their interest (and prompt engagement), think about additional details you’d want to remember, such as last event attended, whether or not they have a pet, or which floor plans they’re interested in. Using this information, you are able to send highly targeted, relevant information to those who will find it most useful.

6

39% of marketers who segment their lists experience higher

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II. Creating Your Email

How an email looks is as important as what it says, so you must ensure that your emails are received in the intended format. If best practices for HTML design are not followed, your message may be misinterpreted as spam or junk. Additionally, think about the goal of your email and be sure you are providing prospects with the right content and links to accomplish it.

Plan the Layout

about how you want it to look. Reference your own inbox for creative inspiration. What formats are easiest to read? How do they translate to mobile? Do you want to use one column of text or two? How many images do you want to incorporate? A great tool to use is your email marketing system’s template library, which Lasso offers as a built-in feature. These are pre-built templates that are designed to look good and read well. You simply drop in your own text and images.

‘From’ Name

audience – if they don’t recognize it, they may delete the message. It’s often said that a recipient will decide whether to delete the message by looking at the sender name, and whether to open the email by the subject line.

Subject Line

words carefully; make it appealing, concise and relevant. The subject should always relate to the content of the email.

• Avoid spam trigger words like Free, Offer or Deal.

• Include your company or community name to create credibility and familiarity. • Be mindful of using all upper case letters – this gives the appearance that the sender

is screaming.

• Don’t use excessive exclamation marks, question marks, or special characters as many ISPs identify these tokens in their spam filters.5

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II. Creating Your Email (cont.)

Pre-Header

image in your email. It’s a shortcut for users to either click through to whatever you’re promoting (such as an event RSVP), or to a web version of the email if they are unable to read it on their mobile devices. This is especially useful if you send similar emails often; for example: a series of events. Also, many email applications have a preview pane that can show up to the first three lines of text before the recipient opens it. Choose your words carefully.

Header

description in case the image cannot be displayed.

Layout

email that is visually appealing and that the eye naturally follows (left to right, top to bottom).

• Use tables in your HTML code for maximum control over placement of text, images and the width of the message.

• Keep HTML emails no wider than 600 pixels.

• If you choose to use images in your mass mail, ensure there’s a good balance of text and images. The images should help to convey the message of the email.

• Remember, images are often blocked once they are in the recipient’s inbox. Make sure the message can still be understood even if the images are not visible. • Place the call to action above the fold, meaning in the top half of the screen. • Avoid cutting and pasting text from Microsoft Word into your HTML editor. Instead,

cut and paste text from Word to Notepad and then into your editor. Format the text in your editor. This will avoid any unusual coding that can cause rendering issues. • We do not recommend converting a PDF flyer to a JPG to use as your marketing

email. Flyers are meant to be printed and handed out, and do not translate well to email for numerous reasons: links do not work, copy cannot be read if the entire image is blocked, copy is often small and illegible, and colorful backgrounds and text can be hard to read. Your email should be built specifically to be opened in email browsers and on mobile devices.

Use HTML programming to keep your emails visually

appealing.

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II. Creating Your Email (cont.)

Images

them to your email template. This ensures they will fit perfectly and have the correct resolution. Lasso offers photo-editing options within the application, but here are our recommendations for additional programs:

• Snag It (Basic) – This is an application that can be downloaded on either a Mac or PC and allows you to capture images from the web or your computer, and edit them. www.techsmith.com/Snagit

• Snipping Tool (Basic) – This application functions much like Snag It and is part of Windows; there’s no downloading required.

• PowerPoint (Basic/Intermediate) – Many know this as a desktop publishing tool, but it’s very easy to create and edit images using PowerPoint. It’s especially helpful if you want to layer text or other images on top of an image. www.microsoftstore.com

• Photoshop (Intermediate/Advanced) – This program has all the bells and whistles of photo software, and some editing knowledge is required. The result is beautiful , custom images. www.adobe.com/Photoshop

Content/Relevance

content of your email. The tone should be consistent with your branding and audience. The information should be relevant and specific to the people you are sending it to (this is where list segmentation is important.)

Personalization

with your prospects. We’ve already discussed segmenting lists to make sure your email content matches the audience. But there are other ways to personalize a mass mail, such as:

• Create Buyer Personas - By creating 2-3 personas of members of your target

audience, you are able to craft marketing messages that are specifically in line with their interests. For example, you could create a story of a young couple purchasing their first home, including their motivations and interests, if this is your target audience.

Personalization goes a long way to connect and build

relationships with your prospects.

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II. Creating Your Email (cont.)

• Ask the Right Questions on Your Web Forms - And in your sales presentations.

Make sure the answers are populating to your CRM system and use that information to match email content to the prospect.

• Use Merge Fields – This may be the simplest way to personalize a marketing email.

Start off your emails with “Dear Allison” rather than no salutation at all.

• Send from a Person, Not a Company – Pay careful attention to which name is in the

“From” field. Consumers are more likely to open an email from someone they recognize – like a sales agent or manager they’ve worked with.

• Include Specific Information – For example, use the fields provided in your CRM

system to segment lists by last visit date, and incorporate it into your email. This is a memory trigger for the prospect and gets him or her thinking about your

community.

Calls to Action

always be to engage the reader. You can accomplish this with calls to action (CTAs). If you want your audience to RSVP for an event, be sure to include a link to a form that says, “RSVP Here.” Invite them to explore your website with a CTA to “View More Floor Plans.” Use action verbs, offer several opportunities to engage, and make it clear which actions you want them to take.

Social Media

community news, happenings and events online. Make it easy for users to share your message on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Google + and other social networks.

Signature

community’s phone number, physical address and website. Make your signature a brand standard so that it is consistent across all emails. Having contact information increases your credibility and invites engagement with prospects.

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II. Creating Your Email (cont.)

Designing for Mobility

never been more important. Eighty-eight percent of people now check their email on mobile every day.6 _{Sixty-three percent of Americans would either close or delete an} email that is not optimized for mobile.6 _{Fortunately, Apple devices (which account for} 85 percent of all mobile email opens) resize images and text to be legible in the smaller format, but to make sure your email message is legible on all devices, consider the following:

• Font size should be no smaller than 13 pixels. • Use a single column of text.

• Have a balance of images and text – one or two images per email is fine, but be sure they are no more than 600 pixels wide.

• Limit the amount of colored backgrounds and text. A high-contrast layout, such as black text on white background, works best.

• If you use a mobile website, be sure to include appropriate coding on your links so that the reader can view web page information in full, rather than an abbreviated mobile format.

88% of people check email on their mobile devices every

day. Is your email optimized correctly?

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III. Anatomy of an Awesome Email

Email Subject Line:

Quattro – Only 2 Weeks Remain To Take Advantage

Overall:

• Balance of images and text

• Nicely laid out

• Designed in a table

• All links to website contain tracking tokens

1. Preheader

2. Header & footer images link to website

3. Personalization

4. Creating Urgency (in email subject also)

5. Click to view larger images (indicates interest level)

6. Signature with contact info.

7. Map to sales center (links to Google Maps)

8. Links to social media sites

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IV. Before You Press Send

Legal Information

These days, it takes more than a clever subject line and well-formatted layout to have a successful email. You must abide by SPAM legislation that has been enacted in the United States, Canada, and other countries. Prospects must be able to opt-out and unsubscribe from your emails, and you must honor their requests immediately. When someone no longer wishes to receive your email, most CRM systems will automatically exclude that recipient from receiving future emails. Here’s what you need in order to be compliant with most spam legislation:7

• Don’t use false or misleading header information – including the originating domain name.

• Don’t use deceptive subject lines – they must reflect the content of the emails. • Identify the message as an advertisement.

• Provide a valid, physical mailing address of where you are located.

• Provide an easy, clear way to opt-out from your emails, and honor those requests immediately.

• Be responsible for your own content, even if a third-party is sending on your behalf.

Test for Deliverability and Performance

Testing your email before it is sent is critical. Testing will help you determine A) that your email looks the way it should, B) what type of information is more likely to be read, and C) when is the best day and time to send it. Some email marketing platforms, such as Lasso’s, has testing built right in to the software. Otherwise, here are some ideas for testing:

• Send the email to yourself as well as a test list of emails from various ISPs. Set up free accounts with Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and other free mail services. You’ll see what potentially could land in junk mail, what is getting blocked by ISPs, as well as how your email renders with other providers.

Governments are becoming stricter with anti-SPAM

regulations. Make sure your emails comply.

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IV. Before You Press Send (cont.)

 Check how messages render in preview panes with images turned off. By default, most of your recipients will receive the email with their images turned off. Ensure that the message can still be understood.

 Confirm that your sending domain has been authenticated. Email

authentication sets the stage for improved delivery and defines who can send email for a specific domain.

• Simple A/B testing allows you to determine if one subject line or header is more engaging than another. Send small test groups the same email with two different subjects. Use the subject that was most engaging (most opened emails and click-throughs) for the larger mass email.

• Experiment with which day and time works best for your audience. Typically, in real estate, you’ll find that a high percentage of emails are read on Tuesdays,

Wednesdays and Thursdays, but don’t be afraid to send on other days of the week. Although these days have traditionally seen higher open rates, try a test on

weekends or on Fridays. Some communities have found that Friday can be a good day since fewer business emails are sent. Weekends can be positive too as this is when a prospect may have more time to read your email.

A Note About Frequency

Sending email infrequently can be just as damaging to your marketing efforts as

sending too many emails. You don’t want your audience to forget about what you have to offer, but sending too frequently could mean a higher unsubscribe rate. Also,

different groups will require different frequencies of communication. Rely on your website registration form and CRM to guide you here. An inactive prospect who has requested the newsletter might receive fewer emails than someone actively looking and closely following sales activity.

In real estate, most emails are read Tuesdays, Wednesdays

and Thursdays. But don’t let that limit you.

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V. Reporting & Metrics

The beauty of email marketing is that it is easy to measure program efficacy and return on investment. Your email marketing provider should be able to provide you with a mass mail summary report that shows the statics of each email sent, including bounced emails, open rates, click through rates, forwards and unsubscribes. It is important to review these stats after each mass email so you can continue to refine your strategy based on what works.

Determining a Successful Mass Email

The real estate industry typically experiences about a 20 percent email open rate. If your open rates are less than that, some research may be in order to figure out why. However, open rate should not be the only metric by which to judge a successful email. You’ll want to look at other business-related metrics such as click-through rate

(remember those calls to action?), website activity, walk-in traffic, and event

attendance. If an email received just a standard number of opens, but the ones who did became very active on your website and showed interest in specific floor plans, then that email could be considered a success. Going a step further with the use of website analytics, you can continue to narrow your prospects’ interest and deliver even more targeted information.

Here are some other useful benchmarks for real estate email marketing:8

Average Click through Rate 2.90% Average Unsubscribe Rate 0.32%

What Do I Do with All This Data?

As you would with any other marketing analytics, look for trends and patterns. What types of emails are prospects opening? Do emails sent at a certain time of day get more opens or click-throughs? Use the data to better execute your next marketing email and improve your campaign.

With email marketing, it’s easy to measure program

efficacy and ROI.

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VI. Next Steps

Part of effective email marketing is having a solid follow‐up strategy in place after an email is sent.

• Will sales agents follow up personally with those who opened the e‐mail? • Is there a plan to contact those prospects whose email addresses bounced? • Is there a follow‐up email ready to be sent to all those who opened the email? • Will the email be resent to those who did not open it?

• Were your goals accomplished? If not, what should you do differently next time?

Email marketing doesn’t stop once you hit ‘Send.’

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VII. Professional Emails Yield Results

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VIII. Email Marketing Checklist

Spell check the body of the email as well as the subject line.

Make sure your images have titles - this way, when the images are blocked, the

recipient can read text instead of an ‘x.’

Read and re-read the email – then send it to someone else to read and review. How

does the email look in the preview pane (can you still get the gist of the message)? Review the design. Does the email look good? Look at the email critically; is there a

good balance of text and images? Is it easy on the eyes – not too busy?

Have you chosen a familiar sender and an enticing, smart subject line? Remember, recipients will look at the sender of the email to determine whether they delete an email and at the subject line to determine whether they open the email.

Test your email! Don’t just rely on the preview mode of email creation. Actually

send the email to a few different email addresses – setup up free accounts with Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! to test rendering. Emails delivered to Hotmail will look different from an email received by Gmail. Check how your images are displayed (or not displayed. Do your links work?

Post-email strategy. Do you have a follow-up email planned and ready to go? Are

you planning on calling all those prospects who clicked on a specific link? Whatever the strategy is, make sure you have a plan prior to the email being sent.

And, finally, after the email has been sent, don’t forget to . . .

Review the Mass Mail Report – how do your stats compare to other emails? Is your

open rate increasing or declining? Why? You want to learn from your experiences; it’s important to create metrics so you know what is effective and what is not.

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IX. Glossary of Email Marketing Terms

Authentication protocols: Protocols that help inbox providers avoid messages from anonymous bulk

senders and messages from those who attempt to spoof the identity of legitimate senders. By allowing e‐mail providers to verify the purported identity of senders, these protocols also serve as a first step in reputation systems.

Blacklist: The practice employed by ISPs of blocking an IP address or series of IP addresses to prevent the

receipt of e‐mail messages from a server that is suspected of transmitting SPAM. Many companies use blacklists to reject inbound e‐mail, either at the server level or before it reaches the recipient’s inbox.

Block: A refusal by an ISP or mail server to forward your e‐mail message to the recipient. Many ISPs block

e‐mail from IP addresses or domains that have been reported to send spam or viruses, or have content that violates e‐mail policy or spam filters.

Bounce message: A message sent back to an e‐mail sender reporting the original message could not be

delivered and why. Note: Not all bounced e‐mails result in messages being sent back to the sender. Not all bounce messages are clear or accurate about the reason e‐mail was bounced.

Bounce handling: The process of dealing with the e‐mail that has bounced. Bounce handling is important

for list maintenance, list integrity and delivery. Given the lack of consistency in bounce messaging formats, it's an inexact science at best.

Bounce rate (also known as Return rate): Number of hard/soft bounces divided by the number of

e‐mails sent. This is an inexact number because some systems do not report back to the sender clearly or accurately.

Bulk folder (also known as Junk or Spam folder): Where many e‐mail clients send messages that appear

to be from spammers, contain spam, or are from any sender who’s not in the recipient’s address book or contact list. Some clients allow the recipient to override the system’s settings and direct that mail from a suspect sender be sent directly to the inbox. e.g., Yahoo! Mail gives recipients a button marked “Not Spam” on every message in the bulk folder.

Challenge‐response system: An anti‐spam program that requires a human being on the sender's end to

respond to an e‐mailed challenge message before their messages can be delivered to recipients. Senders who answer the challenge successfully are added to an authorization list. Bulk e‐mail senders can work with challenge‐response if they designate an employee to watch the sending address' mailbox and to reply to each challenge by hand.

Churn: How many subscribers leave a mailing list (or how many e‐mail addresses go bad) over a certain

length of time, usually expressed as a percentage of the whole list.

Domain authentication: The effort to equip messages with enough verifiable information so that

recipients can recognize the nature of each incoming message automatically; the means for ISPs to establish the true identity of an e‐mail sender.

DomainKeys: An anti‐spam software application being developed by Yahoo and using a combination of

public and private "keys" to authenticate the sender's domain and reduce the chance that a spammer or hacker will fake the domain sending address.

Double opt‐in (also known as Confirmed opt‐in): A process that requires new list joiners to take an

action (such as clicking on an e‐ mailed link to a personal confirmation page) in order to confirm that they do want to be on the list.

Enhanced white list: An example is AOL’s enhanced white list for bulk e‐mail senders who meet strict

delivery standards, including less than one spam complaint for every 1,000 e‐mail messages. E‐mail senders on the enhanced white list can bypass AOL 9.0’s automatic suppression of images and links.

Hard bounce: Message sent to an invalid, closed or nonexistent e‐mail account. Hard bounces should be

removed immediately. To avoid this pitfall, heed best practices like proper list hygiene to keep your list fresh and build a double opt‐in mechanism into your registration process.

ISP: ISP stands for Internet Service Provider. An ISP provides access to the Internet for others via some

connectivity service(s). Examples of ISPs include Shaw, TELUS, Earthlink, Mindspring, and WorldNet, to name a few.

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IX. Glossary of Email Marketing Terms (cont.)

List fatigue: A condition producing diminishing returns from a mailing list whose members have become

disengaged and are inactive.

List hygiene: The act of maintaining a list so that hard bounces and unsubscribed names are removed

from mailings. Some list owners also use an e‐mail change‐of‐address service to update old or abandoned e‐mail addresses (hopefully with a permission step baked in) as part of this process.

List management: How a mailing list is set up, administered and maintained. The list manager has daily

responsibility over list operation including processing subscribes and unsubscribes, bounce management, list hygiene, etc.

Opt‐in: A specific, pro‐active request by an individual e‐mail recipient to have their own e‐mail address

placed on a specific mailing list. Many list renters and buyers now require list owners to provide proof of opt‐in, including the actual e‐mail or IP address date and time the request was received.

Opt‐out: A specific request to remove an e‐mail address from a specific list or from all lists operated by a

single owner. Also, the process of adding an e‐mail address to lists without the address owner’s pre‐approval, forcing those who don't want to be on your list to actively unsubscribe.

Segmentation: The practice of dividing prospects into custom lists or groups based on profile

information such as geographic location, product interest, rating, etc.

Sender ID: The informal name for a new anti‐spam program combining two existing protocols: Sender

Policy Framework and CallerID. SenderID authenticates e‐mail senders and blocks e‐mail forgeries and faked addresses.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF): A protocol used to eliminate e‐mail forgeries. A line of code called an

SPF record is placed in a sender’s Domain Name Server (DNS) information. The incoming mail server can verify a sender by reading the SPF record before allowing a message through.

Sender reputation: E‐mail delivery problems often stem from factors related to the reputation of the

sender. A reputation score is determined by many variables, including the number of bounces, spam complaints, and the number of inactive subscribers.

Soft bounce: E‐mail sent to an active (live) e‐mail address but which is turned away before being

delivered. Often, the problem is temporary ‐‐ the server is down, the recipient's mailbox is over quota, or an “out of office” reply. The e‐mail might be held at the recipient's server and delivered later, or the sender's e‐mail program may attempt to deliver it again. Soft‐bounce reports are not always accurate because they don't report all soft bounces or the actual reason for the bounce.

Spam: Spam is any message, regardless of content, that is sent to multiple recipients who haven’t

specifically requested the message. Other common terms for spam include: Junk mail, unsolicited commercial e‐mail (UCE), and unsolicited bulk e‐mail (UBE). However, some e‐mail recipients define spam as any e‐mail they no longer want to receive, even if it comes from a mailing list they joined voluntarily.

Spamcop: A blacklist and IP‐address database, formerly privately owned but now part of the e‐mail

vendor Ironport. Many ISPs check the IP addresses of incoming e‐mail against Spamcop’s records to determine whether the address has been blacklisted due to spam complaints.

Throttling: The practice of regulating how many e‐mail messages a broadcaster sends to one ISP or mail

server at a time. Some ISPs bounce e‐mail if it receives too many messages from one sending address at a time.

Unsubscribe: To remove oneself from an e‐mail list, either via an e‐mailed command to the list server or

by filling in a Web form.

View rate: The number of recipients included in a mass mailout that viewed the intended message. Web bug (also known as Web beacon): A 1 pixel‐by‐1 pixel image tag added to an HTML message and

used to track open rates by e‐mail address. Opening the message, either in the preview pane or by clicking on it, activates the bug and sends a signal to the Web site, where special software tracks and records the signal as an open.

White list: A list of e‐mail senders, most often by IP address, considered by the list compiler to exhibit

exemplary sending behaviour and therefore to be worthy of preferential treatment in the recipient

Em ail M ark et in g Wh it ep ap er M ar ch 20 13

X. About the Authors

1_{http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/01/16/internet-2012-in-numbers/} 2_{http://www.edatascholars.com/faqs.html} 3_{http://blog.mailchimp.com/double-opt-in-vs-single-opt-in-stats/} 4 http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/13879/Segment-Your-Email-List-To-Increase-Open-Rates-Data.aspx 5_{http://email.about.com/cs/bayesianfilters/a/bayesian_filter.htm} 6_{http://www.returnpath.com/resource/email-in-motion/} 7_{http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business} 8_{http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/8560/email-open-and-click-rates-benchmarks-trends}

20

XI. References

Angela McKay,

Angela is passionate about email marketing! In fact, she joined Lasso five years ago as an email Marketing Specialist. She continues to be involved in email marketing whether working on Lasso’s own email marketing strategy or assisting clients with creating email. Angela has over 20 years of business experience in marketing and business development positions and for the last seven years has focused on lead

generation and inbound marketing efforts. [email protected]

Thaïs Cuffy,

Thaïs’ main objective is to deliver informative, innovative and practical content about Customer Relationship Management. With 10 years’ experience in real estate marketing and operations, Thaïs has worked with some of the nation’s top builders and sales firms to deliver powerfully integrated marketing plans for new home

communities. [email protected]

About Lasso

Lasso Data Systems is the leading developer of innovative “on-demand” CRM home builder software for builders and developers. Lasso, deployed on thousands of projects globally, equips real estate