Here at Experian CheetahMail, we allocate multiple dedicated IP addresses to each of our clients. We do this primarily so that we can send email faster, especially during the holidays. A secondary benefit of this approach is that if an ISP blocks/filters one IP address, it does not impact the other IP addresses sending email.

But now that filtering technologies have now moved beyond IP address reputation to domain-based reputation, it is critical to understand how this shift fundamentally changes how email is filtered by ISPs.

• The good news: For most senders, this change will actually benefit their delivery rates. The fact remains that ISP filters still have ‘false positive’ situations where an individual IP address is singled out due to insufficient data or a glitch in the system, while the same sender’s other IP addresses are highly reputable and reach the inbox. With domain-based reputation, the filter looks at all of the data associated with the domain — therefore the singled-out IP address is overshadowed by the other approved IP addresses. In addition, domain-based filtering incorporates the reputation associated with transactional email sent from the same domain, which will most certainly help overall sender reputation.
• The bad news: If there truly is a reputation problem from anywhere within a sender’s domain, it will effect most (if not all) of the mail coming from that sender. This means that senders must be mindful of their complaint rates and email acquisition efforts because they both will affect their domain-based reputation — and by extension, their ROI. Equally important, if a sender is using the same domain for transactional messaging, those emails may also see their deliverability rates decline.

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It has been the bane of countless email marketers as to how to incorporate coupons, coupon codes, bar codes, and other traditionally offline discounts into email. We want these offers and discounts to be easy to redeem and print, but how can it be done?

A few key questions come to mind:

• Does the recipient need to be redirected to a separate, print-friendly landing page, or does the email link to a printable PDF?
• Do they need to print out the entire email directly from their browser or from a screen capture? (This can lead to problems if the email prints on multiple pages or if the coupon gets cutoff.)
• Does the recipient need to write down a code and bring it to a store?

Starbucks recently deployed an email with a great solution to this age-old conundrum – they have print functionality within the email itself. When Print This Email is selected, the recipient’s default printer displays. Printing is as easy as a simple click. This solution not only makes printing email coupons easy, but also utilizes the subscriber’s default printer settings which ensures a clean, readable print.

I really enjoy checking my inbox during the month of March. Unlike other times of the year when everyone tends to focus on the same predictable “milestone” holidays — Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, etc. — March is the one time of the year when different brands choose to highlight various events in seemingly unpredictable way. You just never know which holidays (both official and non-official) are going to get picked up by each of your favorite brands.

I’m not sure if I can discern a pattern or explain why each brand chooses to align itself with a particular event, but I can certainly say that I enjoy being surprised by each brand’s choices. You just never know what you’re going to get, which is sort of refreshing given how predictable and cyclical the email business is.

Let’s have a look at some emails that hit my inbox in just the past few days:

Last week marked the beginning of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, which has become an unofficial holiday of sorts for many sports fans in the U.S.. I was intrigued to see GNC, a nutritional supplement retailer, give “March Madness” the full-on holiday treatment in its email campaigns. But there they were, talking hoops with their customers like they were selling basketball sneakers rather than, say, protein shakes and iron pills.

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Nine in ten U.S. adults today use at least one mobile device. Mobile phones have truly become an essential part of consumers’ every day lives, and email marketers can easily capitalize on this immense market if they plan and segment their campaigns strategically. Recently released consumer reseach from Experian Simmons reveals the following key trends that provide deep insight on the traits and characterstics of the mobile consumer today:

• The most popular mobile function today – aside from talking – is taking pictures, which 70% of mobile phone owners do each month.
• Adults under age 50 are the most likely to be mobile users with 93% owning a mobile phone today.
• Over 78% of adults over the age of adults over age 60 are now mobile.
• Fully half of cell phone users simultaneously engage with some other medium while on their mobile. TV is the most common media distraction with 21% of mobile phone owners watching TV while using the phone
• Thirty-one percent of mobile phone owners check personal email on their phone and 21% check their work email.

To learn more about what research by Experian Simmons has to say about today’s mobile consumers, we recommend reading the “Mobile marketing” section of our latest report, the 2010 Digital marketer: Benchmark and trend report.

Source: Experian Simmons Fall 2009 Consumer Study/National Hispanic Study

Many of us remember Mad Libs. But how many of us knew that Mad Libs style registration processes can increase form completions?

For those not familiar, Mad Libs are books that have a short story on each page, but with many of the key words replaced with blanks. Beneath each blank is a category, such as noun, verb, place or name. One player asks the other players, in turn, to contribute a random word as specified by each blank, but without revealing the context for that word. Finally, the completed story is read aloud. The result is usually silly and somewhat nonsensical but altogether fun.

A recent article by Luke Wroblewski of Yahoo! Inc. shows how using Mad Libs pays off when designing registration forms. Looking at one registration form before and after switching to a Mad Libs format, the results show that switching to a Mad Libs style form increased form completions by 25-40%. Wroblewski points out that two versions of this form are being used at Vast.com and Kelley Blue Book.

Who knew that forms could be so much fun?

There really is a baby in that bath water.

I’ve never used that idiom before, but in this case, I feel compelled to use it in response to an article in BtoB Magazine that actually promotes the use of unsolicited commercial email (UCE). In the article, Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex, says that “there’s nothing prohibiting a marketer from sending an e-mail to someone who hasn’t opted in. The recession has forced us to drop this etiquette.”

Everyone has a different definition of what spam is, yet I think we can all agree that at a baseline it starts with unsolicited commercial email — promotional messages sent to consumers who have not requested them. My feeling is that just because we are burdened by an economic recession right now does not give us license to abandon the principles of responsible, permission-based email marketing. By lowering our standards when the going gets tough, we risk losing our industry’s credibility with consumers altogether.

I’ll keep my underlying point here brief: PLEASE DON’T SEND SPAM! If you’re still new to email or striving for more education, please refer to these best practice guides which include recommendations and guidelines that the vast majority of the email industry follow:

• Direct Marketing Association US
• Direct Marketing Association UK
• Email Sender & Provider Coalition
• Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group