Canada’s Bill C-28 (also knows as CASL) is moving forward with last week’s release of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s final set of regulations under Canada’s new Anti-Spam Law.

The final Regulations include the following changes from the original proposal:

  • - Clarification that persons sending a message, or persons on whose behalf a message is sent, must identify themselves by the name by which they carry on business.
  • - Greater choice with respect to the contact information to be provided.  Senders, and those seeking consent to send messages, must still include a physical address, but may now provide either a telephone number providing access to an agent or a voice messaging system, an email address or a web address (the original proposal seemed to require the provision of all of these).
  • - Revised requirements that web-based information be “readily accessible” and that the required unsubscribe mechanism must “be able to be readily performed.”  (the original proposed Regulations specified these requirements with reference to a maximum number of “clicks”).
  • - The revised Regulations now indicate that consent for the receipt of a commercial electronic message may be obtained orally, as well as in writing, as the original proposed regulations provided; however, the Regulations do not provide certainty as to whether electronic forms of consent will be considered to be “in writing,” which was the chief concern of many stakeholders with this requirement.
  • - The Regulations still require that when seeking consent, requestors must include a statement indicating that consent can be withdrawn, but no longer requires the requestor to specify through which avenues such a withdrawal of consent could be made.

What’s next?

Now that the CRTC has set the ball in motion, we’re waiting for Industry Canada to release their own set of regulations in the coming weeks, with a 30 day comment period to follow. After these comments are reviewed final regulations will be presented and an enforcement date will be set. Industry Canada will hopefully clarify this, but CASL looks to be coming into force sometime in Q3 2012 (October).

Bye for now,

Kevin

In compliance with Canada’s New Anti-Spam Law (Bill C-28), The CAN SPAM ACT of 2003 and CakeMail’s existing Anti Spam Policy all senders using our service MUST include the physical postal address of the sender in their email, along with an unsubscribe tag. Not only is it illegal to send commercial-based email without a valid postal address, it goes against Sender Best Practice of not showing proper accountability to the recipient.

The receiver should be able to readily contact the sender (by any means possible) if they no longer wish to be contacted via email. Failure to adhere to this policy will result in the termination of your CakeMail account.

In order to protect you (and us!) from this happening, we have modified our existing detection system to alert us so we can properly resolve this issue before it happens. In CakeMail 3.2, the system automatically searches for both an unsubscribe and an address tag. If they are not detected, you will not be able to move forward and schedule your campaign.

The user attempting to schedule the campaign will be notified immediately, and if the physical address is missing, you’ll have the option of entering the information in a pop up. Once the information has been edited, the tag will be added automatically for you in the footer of the email. (You will also be notified that the unsubscribe tag is missing and that process will be automatic as well)

 

To read more about this topic, please refer to our Support Document.

Spammers are forever trying to find different ways to abuse the system and ISPs are forever trying to figure out new creative ways of stopping them. Engagement is nothing new – it’s actually been around for a while (we’ve mentioned it a few times here, and here) – but ISPs have only recently started making delivery decisions based on this kind of data.

What does this mean?

If the email you are sending does not engage your readers, chances are it’s going to be sent straight to their junk folder if you don’t make some changes.


One of the great things about new product releases is that you get to add all the cool things you wanted to add in previous releases but didn’t quite have time for. And more importantly, you get to include some of the great suggestions we receive everyday from YOU, our customers!

Showing List Engagement is one of the things I advocated for in this new release. Under the Contact Lists tab in v. 3.1 and higher, you’ll now see an active panel that not only displays the number of lists and subscribers you have across all your lists, but the number of total emails sent and the average engagement level of your list:

How does it work?

Our new Engagement measures the quality of your relationship with your subscribers. The average click and open rates for the last 6 months are combined and given a grade out of 10.*

Half a star = 1 point

The greater the number of stars, the higher your engagement, the better the list!

*takes into account Opens vs Unique Opens as well as Clickthroughs vs Unique Clickthroughs.

ISPs also take into account the number of complaints you receive, the number of hard bounces you generate, the number of spam traps you hit and whether or not your content is flagged by their content filters. They look at this data along with 3rd party reputation metrics to determine where to place your email.


How do I boost my Engagement?

Your open & click rates are determined by many things, but on average you should be seeing anywhere from 10%-60% dependant on your reputation, how well you build and maintain your lists and of course, the content you are sending.

The data never lies, look at our basic delivery model. Start by focusing on past campaigns. Did some perform better than others? Ask yourself why. Was it something as simple as the subject line? Did your email contain an attractive offer your customers could not resist? Did you effectively target a specific portion of your list through segmentation to help boost performance?

Tips:

  1. Identify your audience and target your campaigns accordingly – this data should be part of your onboarding process, find out as much as you can (within reason) and use it to your advantage.
  2. Use appealing subject lines – knowing what your email is about before they open it is extremely important.
  3. Learn from your mistakes – finding out what didn’t work is almost as important as what did!
  4. Retire inactive users – people that have not opened/clicked in a while are deadweight. Try a win-back campaign and if that doesn’t work, remove them from your list entirely.
  5. Test – try using A/B Split campaigns to maximize the effectiveness of your content.

Another thing you can look at is your analytics reporting. What happens when the user has opened/clicked through and they are sitting on your webpage? What is their average time on your site? What is the number of page views? Did they convert? Did they purchase something?

“Set a course for the Inbox, Commander, Warp 9 – ENGAGE!”

Bye for now,

Kevin

PS. Sorry for the Star Trek reference at the end there, I couldn’t resist. :)

Don’t you just love the Holidays? I don’t.

Well, I do love the holidays really, but the truth is that for email delivery folks, it’s a very stressful time of year. Not only do email volumes go through the roof, but people seem to forget (or ignore) some basic rules of email marketing that they wouldn’t otherwise think of doing throughout the year.

Because the lure of sending email to as many people as possible to increase ROI is just too good to pass up this time of year, typically good senders can sometime turn a blind eye when it comes to best practices. They reactivate inactive users, they use lists that haven’t been sent anything in months, they send 5 emails a week instead of the usual 1 etc, etc.

As we all know, Black Friday in the US is the biggest shopping day of the year…but I affectionately refer to it as Blacklist Friday because that is usually what results for many email marketers.

ISPs (and email receivers in general) are constantly trying to find good ways to filter spam. One of those ways is by using blacklists. A blacklist is a list used by receiving networks to judge a given IP and/or sending domain’s reputation. These lists are run by Anti-Spam groups and most blacklistings are the result of sending Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE) to addresses that never asked to receive it.

There are many different blacklist providers in existence and some carry more weight in the community than others, but they are all an indication you are doing something seriously wrong. I’ve mentioned this before, but a lot of people think blacklists are the bad guys, when in fact they should be regarded as friends (not foe). The feedback they provide is not only free, it’s an extremely viable way for ISPs to keep spam out of your own Inbox. Getting blacklisted also alerts you (the sender) to problems with your marketing practices you might not be aware of. You should think of it like your child’s report card in school. If your kid fails a class wouldn’t you want to know about it so you can help them and fix the problem?

There are 2 basic kinds of traps, “Dormant” and “Bonafide” traps.

“Dormant” Traps

An email address that once existed, and may have even signed up to your list legitimately at one point but they have since become inactive.

“Bonafide” Traps

An email address that has been created intentionally to catch people scouring the internet looking for any address they can find. These traps do not belong to a real person (and never did) and could never “opt-in” to any list since it is impossible for the address to initiate, respond or give consent to having received email of any kind.

Essentially, ISPs want to know if people are:

  1. Harvesting addresses off the internet
  2. Sending to lists that are very old
  3. Handling & Processing hard bounces correctly

It allows them to judge the incoming mail from that sender so they can add it to their overall reputation score and filter it (if necessary).

An Example:

abc123@hotmail.com is deactivated because the person that signed up for it is no longer using it. From the date it becomes inactive for a period of 6-12 months, it will return a hardbounce if you try to send it an email. So… people that are sending regularly and removing hard bounces from their lists properly will abandon this address in the process. People that don’t do this obviously will still list this address as ‘active’.

After 12 months, Hotmail will stop returning a hardbounce because it feels that any responsible marketer would have already removed this address from their lists.

If you keep sending to it after this time, it could result in a negative reputation at Hotmail and together with all the other stuff they look at.. could mean email from that sender will start going to the Junk box. Blacklists do the same thing, but they also receive inactive spam traps from ISPs, Registrars, they buy domains of companies that have gone under, etc.

Email marketing is far different to any other method of reaching out to your client-base. The actions of one single email address going to the wrong place or the wrong person, can seriously affect your reputation and your delivery. This is the worst time of year to take risks with your sender reputation, risking account suspensions and blacklists with activities like reactivating old lists.

Opt-in check boxes need to be empty, confirmation emails need to be sent and you need to send to your list on a regular basis. This is the only way we can avoid having this issue during the busiest time of year.

Happy Holidays!

This is a simple question with a simple answer that – surprisingly!  a lot of marketers get very wrong. The From address you use in your email campaigns is a fundamental part of the success of your marketing efforts. It has as much impact on your open/click rates as the Subject line and is one of the first things people see when deciding whether (or not) to open your email.

Most important, it has to be recognizable and should remain static. The recipient should know instantly who this email is from and trust that the sender is sending them something of value that they have asked to receive. If a recipient doesn’t recognize you (the sender) they’ll be more likely to unsubscribe from your emails. Worse, they might flag your message as spam, making it harder for subsequent messages to reach others who want to receive it as well as tarnishing your reputation in the process.

Ideally, the domain in the From address should be the same domain the recipient used to sign up and the same domain in your Welcome email. It should also be able to receive mail (unsubscribe requests) even if it’s a no-reply@ address. In fact, you should encourage this and here’s why.

Here are some more tips:

  • The From domain should point to a valid website and should have functioning abuse@ and postmaster@  addresses
  • It should have valid, public WHOIS data
  • Encourage each recipient to add your From address to their Contact list to take advantage of whitelisting
  • The From domain used should be set up with both SPF/SenderID and DKIM (see below for more details)
  • Ensure you always reflect your brand well with legitimate “From” names and a valid reply address that is managed by a real person
  • Keep your From email address short and sweet – too long and it’s likely to run off the screen of most mobile devices
  • Consistency is important! It should never change unless absolutely necessary (if you do change it, you should run a separate campaign informing everyone of the change)

Authentication

I see a few people using @gmail, @hotmail  or @yahoo addresses from time to time and this is a big no-no. Not only are these addresses generic and often a target of spammers, it’s also a good bet that the recipient didn’t sign up to your list via any of these domains! Large ISPs like this also have SPF/SenderID, DKIM records that do NOT include any of Cakemail’s servers so any authentication verification during transmission will fail and increase the likelihood of your email going to Junk or not show up at all.

Both Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and SenderID are setup by the domain owner publishing a list of trusted servers/IPs that are allowed to send email on it’s behalf in their DNS. The receiving end can then check whether the message complies with the domain’s stated policy and if not, send it to junk, label it as ‘worrisome’ or block it altogether. This varies by ISP and depends entirely on how much weight they apply to the authentication process, but in general, an email that is authenticated will perform better than one that has no authentication, and worse still if the domain is setup but the person sending the email is not among those listed in your DNS.

Reputation

Many receivers will assign a reputation not only to the IP used to send your email, but the domain used to send the email as well. This is particularly true if you are sending from a shared pool of IP addresses and if you change the From domain, you will instantly loose any domain-based reputation you have garnered to-date, not to mention any Whitelisting associated with that domain.

Almost all ISPs these days (even the small ones) are looking at some form of authentication to filter spam. Even the SMB crowd looks at authentication (however indirectly) by incorporating outside filtering services such as Postini, McAfee, Brightmail, Spam Assassin, etc.. to their anti-spam filtering solution. Allowing Cakemail to send on behalf of your domain will go a long way towards ensuring your email gets delivered.

For information on making sure your domain’s DNS is set up properly, please contact our Deliverability team.

Bye for now,

Kevin

In the spirit of the Easter long weekend…and since many of you won’t read this until Tuesday morning,  here is the continuation of Monday’s entry about the Top 10 things that will hurt your email delivery. Enjoy! 

Content

The single most influential factor when it comes to people interacting with your emails is content. Studies have shown that open rates for targeted campaigns are typically twice that of a generic newsletter. Segment your list and send targeted content to your recipients on a regular basis to keep them engaged.

Content filters also play a huge role in email delivery. Signup to services like Litmus or setup seed accounts of your own. Whatever you do, test, test, and test. If you aren’t doing this simple task before sending your email off to your entire list, it’s like going to work with no pants on. Sure it’s easier, but it’s only a matter of time before you regret it. ☺ Here is an excellent example of what I’m talking about from the folks at MarketingSherpa.

Take away: Write engaging targeted emails to each person on your list. Making sure your content is clean and doesn’t upset any spam filters should be part of every email you create.

Reputation

Getting your email marketing messages to your audience relies heavily on your reputation. Your delivery is determined by the reputation you have acquired by the practices you adhere to as a sender. You have to earn a positive online reputation, but once you do it will make the difference between your email getting delivered to the Inbox, Junk folder, or not showing up at all.

Take away: A good reputation is key to everything, if you don’t start caring about it, nobody else will.

Authentication

Almost all ISPs these days (even the small ones) are looking at some form of authentication to filter spam. Even the SMB crowd looks at authentication (however indirectly) by incorporating outside filtering services such as Postini, McAfee, Brightmail, Spam Assassin, etc.. to their anti-spam filtering solution. Allowing Cakemail to send on your domains behalf will go a long way to ensure your email gets delivered.

Take away: If you’re not who you say you are, your email has a little chance of making it to its destination.

Blacklistings

Blacklists are used by receiving networks to judge a given IP and/or domain’s reputation. Blacklistings are the result of sending Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE) to addresses that never asked for it. There are many different blacklist providers out there and some carry more weight in the community than others, so it’s very important you keep your lists as clean as possible.

Take away: If you have a history of being labelled a spammer, there’s a fat chance anyone is going to let you send them anything.

Compliance

There are many aspects when it comes to Email compliance, but for this list I am referring only to the one that will keep you out of jail. Sending commercial-based email has certain laws and breaking those laws is a criminal offence. It doesn’t matter what country you are in, it matters what country you are sending - To. The following are links to several anti-spam policies available online.

United States: The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

Canada: Fighting Internet & Wireless Spam Act (Bill C-28)

Europe: Privacy & Electronic Communications Directive (2002/58/EC)

Australia: 2003 Spam Act

For email legislation in other countries, please consult Wikipedia.

Take away: Even Email has laws, if you choose to ignore them you not only stand a good chance of getting fined, you won’t make a very good impression with ME either.

Technology

Emails are sent using an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent), which is essentially a piece of software that connects one computer to another to send email. In order for everybody to understand each other, a standard was established called RFC (Request For Comments) and every email in the world must be RFC-Compliant in order for the message to be delivered successfully. It doesn’t matter if the message is in English, French or Chinese, a successful transfer must include the following:

HELO/EHLO (introduction)
MAIL FROM:
RCPT TO:
DATA (body of the message)
QUIT (end of the message)
221 Goodbye

As is the case with most ESPs, sending multiple copies of the same message can be achieved within the same connection thus allowing you to send to multiple recipients at once. This is done by repeating the RCPT TO command several times within the same connection, but there are limitations. For example, some ISPs limit the number of recipients and can also limit the number of connections per IP within a certain timeframe, this process is called “throttling”.

Luckily you don’t have to worry about this, we have a trained group of individuals who are looking after this for you. Leave this part up to us!

Take away: If my computer doesn’t say the right things to your computer, there is little hope that you will accept my email.

Complaints

If your recipients are marking your email as ‘spam’, your delivery is going to be in trouble. Spam reports are a direct reflection of how your email is received and what a lot of people don’t understand is CAN SPAM and Bill C-28 aren’t the gatekeepers; the ISP is, and the ISP listens to their users (your recipients).

If you want your email to get delivered, you cannot generate complaints. It’s as simple as that. Here are a few ways to avoid user complaints:

  • Make sure every person on your list knows who you are and is expecting your email
  • Send a confirmation email to all new signups (if you are not doing this, you are in the dark ages of email marketing.. seriously)
  • Have the common courtesy to ask people if they want to be on your mailing list, DO NOT sign them up automatically
  • Make your signup process crystal clear, explaining what someone is signing up for, when they will start receiving emails, and how often they can expect to hear from you

For a more complete list, check out our Guide to Understanding Email Deliverability here.

Take Away: If people don’t want to receive your email or never wanted to receive it in the first place, they are going to complain.

Bounces

A ‘hard’ bounce is generated when you try to send an email to an address that does not exist. Sending to these invalid addresses repeatedly (whether knowingly or not) will seriously damage your delivery. You must ensure they are removed and stay removed.

If you haven’t used the list in a while (3-6 months) or you are thinking of reviving an old list, you need to be very careful. ISPs monitor the number of hard bounces you generate very closely and too many will affect your delivery and cause blocks.

  • Confirm the address exists on signup by sending a confirmation email
  • Ensure you are processing hard bounces correctly
  • Send on a regular basis

Take Away: If you aren’t removing the bad eggs from your hen house, it’s going to get pretty stinky.

Spam Traps

Spam traps are email addresses used to catch spam. They do not signup to receive email voluntarily and if they wind up on your list, it is going to affect your delivery, your reputation or worse.. get you blacklisted. Believe it or not, spammers have ways to get around complaint/bounce rates, but they do not have ways to get around sending to spam traps.

  • Never purchase, borrow, steal or harvest an email list
  • Confirm new signups to ensure the person signing up owns the address in question
  • Remove hard bounces
  • Send on a regular basis

Take Away: Traps addresses are one of the most effective ways of controlling spam today, they are not going anywhere. If you don’t protect yourself, you are at risk.

Engagement

OK, now that we’ve covered the easy part ☺ .. here’s where it gets interesting. Making sure your recipients open and read your emails!

ISPs measure engagement by looking at the number of people who open and click your emails. Engagement is nothing new, it’s been around for a while but like everything, ISPs need to make sure it works before acting on it. Guess what? Now they’re acting on it.

Take Away: If people aren’t actively opening/reading/clicking on links in your emails, it’s a pretty good sign they aren’t interested in receiving them.

This covers the first five of our top ten reasons – check back next week for the remaining five!

It has been a little over a month since Canada’s new anti-spam [Bill C-28] received Royal Assent from His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston (Governor General of Canada) and we are waiting patiently for the set of regulations that will outline the specifics. If you missed our first two blog posts about Bill C-28, you can read them here and here.

In summary:

Bill C-28 (The Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act) is scheduled to come into force this September, but the final date is to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council.

As stated in the Bill itself – “the enactment establishes a regulatory framework to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities.”

Does this apply to me? Bill C-28 is not restricted to residents or companies in Canada, it applies to all marketers sending email to or from Canada and effectively renders CAN SPAM and its incumbent opt-out permission obsolete.

The good folks at Return Path have teamed together with Thindata, the Law Office of Kris Klein and CAUCE to publish an excellent guide on what you need to know about Bill C-28.

The full text of the law as passed by Parliament and which received Royal Assent can be found here.

As noted in this report from thewirereport.ca, Industry Canada is currently in the process of conducting a consultation with the industry before the Bill comes into force and any regulations are passed.

It is important to note that all senders (whether in Canada or not) should plan for the changes now so that you are not caught off guard later. As always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact our Delivery team. CakeMail will continue to keep all of our clients informed as matters develop.

Bye for now,
Kevin

Kevin Huxham is CakeMail’s Director of Deliverability. You can follow Kevin on twitter @cakemail_kev.

We’ve alluded to it a few times over the past few weeks, and we’re excited to share the news that we’ve just released a new CakeMail whitepaper all about email deliverability.

Understanding Email Deliverability: A Guide to Best Practices in Email Marketing is your reference for best practices in email marketing and it’s full of valuable information about writing great content, building great lists, and most importantly, building a great reputation.

Some of the topics we cover are:

  • How do I make sure my email doesn’t go to the junk folder?
  • How do I avoid spam complaints?
  • How do I coach my clients on building their list(s)?
  • What is a Spam trap?
  • Is my content affecting my delivery?
  • How does engagement affect my reputation?
  • How do I effectively track my results and use them for future campaigns?
  • Are there anti-spam laws that apply to me I need to worry about?
Understanding Email Deliverability
Download

Getting your email marketing messages to your target audience is about more than just writing an email and hitting send. It’s a complex process that relies heavily on reputation, valuable content that engages recipients, a contact list full of subscribers who want to receive your email and a skilled interactive marketing delivery platform to get it there. But how do you build a solid reputation as a sender? What steps can you take to keep your emails arriving in people’s inboxes instead of their junk or spam folders? How can you ensure your clients are happy and getting the most from their marketing campaigns?

This guide helps to answer all of those questions and is a must read for the holiday email marketing season. Download your free copy today!

As we mentioned last week in Part 1 of this series, this is a very busy time of year for sending email and a lot of marketers are tempted to reach a wider audience in time for the holidays. Pressures from the powers that be in your organization might look to renting or purchasing a list in an effort to get your message to as many people as possible. It is important to know the consequences of such actions and avoid tarnishing your reputation before it’s too late.

The best mailing list is one filled with recipients who’ve explicitly requested that you send them something, but there are many kinds of mailing lists used in the industry, classified according to how reliably the recipients have indicated their willingness to be contacted. Last week we told you what not to do, here is a list of what you should do:

Confirmed “Closed-loop” Double Opt-in

When someone signs up for your mailing list, a confirmation email is sent to their email address and an action is required (like clicking a link) in order to confirm that the address is valid. It is highly known throughout the industry as being the most effective method of growing your list as only the true owner of the email address can sign up and confirm their subscription – therefore generating very few complaints, if any. It also prevents you from adding any invalid and/or spam “trap” addresses to your list as they will never complete the confirmation process.

Notified Opt-in

This type of opt-in sends a Welcome email to new subscribers upon sign up, but does not require any additional confirmation from them in order to be added to the list. This type of opt-in is a popular method, though it can be prone to abuse and lead to lists with more complaints than a two-step Double Opt-In process.

Single Opt-in

Single opt-in is when someone knowingly signs up to a mailing list by checking an empty “Yes, please sign me up to receive news from company x” box when submitting a form (like an online shopping cart, or account registration for a particular website). Although better than the Opt-Out method we’ll talk about next, this method leaves list owners open to abuse and generally results in a higher spam and/or Bounce rate that can lead to serious delivery problems.

Opt-Out (Implied consent)

Opt-out list building occurs when an email address is added automatically and users are required to either unsubscribe upon receipt of an email or to uncheck a box when submitting their data on a form, or as part of a checkout process. Using Opt-Out methods as a way to build your list is a bad marketing practice and can make recipients feel as if they were tricked, damaging your relationship and reputation in the process. This method typically generates a large volume of emails flagged as spam which negatively affects your reputation as a sender and in turn your delivery rates.

Getting your email marketing messages to your target audience is about more than just writing an email and clicking send. It’s a complex process that relies heavily on your reputation, sending valuable content that engages your recipients and a contact list of subscribers who want to receive your email.

The most important part of good email delivery is the reputation you have acquired by the practices you adhere to as a sender. It takes time to earn a positive online reputation, but can take just one mailing to ruin it. This is especially true during the holidays because this is when marketers send the most email. Don’t do something now that you will regret in the weeks and months to come.

This is the final part of a two-part series by Kevin Huxham, CakeMail’s Director of Deliverability, talking about growing your list for the holiday marketing season. If you enjoyed this, there is more to come. Stay tuned for our up-and-coming whitepaper on delivery best practices which is scheduled to be released later this week. In the meantime, you can follow Kevin on twitter @cakemail_kev.