Congratulations, a new customer has signed up to receive your emails!  Now what? It’s obvious that they want to hear from you — this is the opportune time to make an impression that will leave them wanting more.

Welcome emails allow you to engage with your prospective customers when their propensities to open, click and transact in emails are at peak levels. So why do so many businesses still rely on very generic confirmation emails that miss out on the opportunity at hand and are neither engaging nor of any value to the recipient?

Maybe they don’t realize how easy it can be to optimize welcome messages in order to make open rates, clickthroughs and ROI soar.

Thankfully, there are a number of proven tactics for making your welcome emails all they can be and more. Among the best practices discussed in Experian CheetahMail’s new white paper, The Welcome Email Report: Benchmark Data and Analysis for Engaging New Subscribers Through Email Marketing, here are a few best practices that are definitely worth considering:

• Give a formal introduction: Include your brand name in the “from” address, and be sure to “welcome” your subscribers in your subject lines. Also include whitelisting instructions so that the subscribers can add the “from” address to their list of accepted senders.
• Gain insight on their interests: Use category navigation links or images and other clever calls to action from which you can infer subscriber interests. Leverage the click-through data for segmentation and targeting from the start of the subscriber relationship with your email program to increase engagement and relevancy
• Recognize past purchasers: Include dynamic messaging to recognize existing customers who are new to your email program. Using any data you have to drive any communication, even the initial welcome, can make an immense positive impact on the customer relationship.

Don’t forget to check out The Welcome Email Report: Benchmark Data and Analysis for Engaging New Subscribers Through Email Marketing to learn more.

Every email service provider treats hard bounces differently. In most cases, a hard bounce will never be valid ever again. In select cases, it may just mean that the address is currently unavailable but will be available at some point later.

Here’s a personal story about why it doesn’t make a lot of sense to bounce remove after the first attempt.

I purchased my personal domain name in 1998 and have used it for select personal email relationships ever since. I had a problem with my domain registrar a couple years ago that involved them accidentally expiring my domain without notifying me. It then took weeks to get it fixed. In the meantime, all personal email to me hard bounced. Some of my most important contacts reached out to me through other channels, a few even sending snail mail informing me of the bounced email.

While this situation is rare, it is just one of many reasons why emails hard bounce and yet will be valid once again in short order.

In the past, ISPs used to focus on hard bounces as a critical anti-spam metric. With today’s sophisticated filters focused primarily on complaints and other data, very few ISPs see a reasonable (<5%) hard bounce rate as an indicator of spam as long as the other performance metrics are also in line with legitimate email.

Some additional tips when considering bounce removal rules:

1. Every ISP is different, therefore a liberal bounce rule at less sophisticated ISPs (like those without real-time complaint data) could result in deliverability problems.
2. Re-mailing bounces again is not the same as ‘re-trying’ a message. If the address is invalid now, it likely won’t be valid again the same day or even a few days from now. Wait a week or more before re-mailing that user.
3. Never re-mail bounces more than a few months old. Some ISPs turn bad data into spamtraps, which are used as an anti-spam filter. In some cases, ISPs will share defunct addresses with 3^rd party blocklists like Spamhaus. In other cases, an ISP may recycle that address to another user.
4. If the relationship is really important (or if you have the resources), consider a personalized snail mail effort following a bounce. I was pleasantly surprised about the letters from my commercial relationships and valued those relationships even more as a result.

Technology has brought about immense change in the lives of American consumers. Today, eight-in-ten U.S. adults access the Internet and seven-in-ten use email and surf the web. Fully nine-in-ten adults have at least one mobile device and four-in-ten send text messages. While Americans wholeheartedly embrace new technology and adopt it quickly, others take a longer time to adjust before integrating new technology into their lives.

A new technology segmentation system developed by Experian Simmons uncovers four distinct groups of consumers to help marketers be more relevant in their targeting efforts and messaging.

• Wizards: “Technology is life”
• Journeymen: “Technology is an important part of my life”
• Apprentices: “Technology is changing my life”
• Novices: “Technology has a limited impact on my life”

As seen in the chart below, Journeymen are the most receptive to hearing about products/services via email and are increasing the amount of time they spend shopping and surfing the Internet. In terms of mobile advertising, Wizards are the best segment to target. They are interested in receiving mobile advertisements and are the most likely to purchase products they see advertised on their cell phones. Click here for more results from the study.