There comes a time in most email marketer’s life that the email address he or she sends from needs to be changed. This change might be warranted because of an IP update, a change to a new email marketing service provider, a hosting update, for ascetic purposes, or other reasons.
When a change like this must be made, what should be done? Two of the most critical goals are, one, to do your best to be sure deliverability does not suffer when the new email address is used and, two, that subscribers recognize that the email is from you and do not hit the spam button. After a thorough white listing process what’s next? Do you alert your subscribers about the new email address, if so how?
Diapers.com recently tackled this issue. In their case they were updating their ‘from’ email address, diapers@diapers.messages4.com, to the easier to digest diapers@baby.diapers.com.
This retailer of all things baby sent an email to their subscribers explaining that to better serve them they are making some ‘technical upgrades’ to their website including changing the address that they send email from. The message requests that the subscriber does one of three things.
1. Right click on the from address with the email, select "add to contacts."
OR
2. Right click on the message before opening it, select "add to contacts" or "add to people I know.
OR
3. Click "add to address book" from within the email next to the from address.
This message is clear, simple, and sincerer.
One update that Diapers.com should make to their creative, however, is add the new email address to the header of the email. Here is a good example from Current Catalog.
This way the subscribers will be more conscious of the change since it is in the top of the creative and top-of-mind.
Here is the creative from Diapers.com. The subject line is: We're updating our email address
Here is another example. This one is from Kenneth Cole.
The subject line is: Add our new email to your address book
Posts
Hi Jordan,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. There is nothing more critical than getting the subscriber to add to the addressbook. This action is essentially a personal whitelist. I just wish there was more tips and strategies out there to get subscribers to do this.
I have a gmail account and i consistently look at my steep and cheap emails but from time to time they go to my junk folder. Any thoughts?
-A
Hi A-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. Getting the email in the inbox is the goal!
I have a few recommendations on your gmail junk folder issue.
1- Be sure you have clear instructions in the header of your emails on how to whitelist your domain
2- Check with your ESP (email service provider) to see if there are any deliverability reports you can look at. This will give you a good indication if there is a major or minor deliverability issue.
3- Ask your subscribers to hit the “not junk” button if your email does end in the junk folder.
4- Perform a creative test and/or subject line test. Do HTML heavy emails hit the junk folder more than text only emails?
5- Perform a list hygene check. Are you sending to the right group? Are these active or inactive subscribers?
Lastly, I am more than happy to take a look at some of your emails and provide more specific recommendations. You can send them to me at JordanLane@EmailMoxie.com
Check EmailMoxie.com often for more great articles and tips.
- Jordan
http://www.emailmoxie.com
http://twitter.com/JordanDLane