As email marketers, we are faced with a myriad of tasks when it comes to constructing successful email campaigns. Proper design, messaging, and the integration of actionable items are just a few of the required steps. Once you finally get to the point of hitting send, you want to be confident your message will reach its intended recipients. If only it were that easy!

Spam is on the rise and has been since its origin. It was recently reported[1] that close to 200 Billion spam email messages are sent each day – approximately 90% of the world’s email. To combat this, Internet and email providers aggressively monitor their networks for user complaints, stale data, and malicious content. They establish reputation models that identify if an email sender is legitimate or not, and then use this data to determine whether to deliver, bulk, or block incoming messages.

Companies that are in the business of sending email marketing messages find themselves in a position where they are trying to send large volumes of legitimate email, but at the same time not look like a spammer. To help bridge this perception gap a number of email sender best practices have been developed and recommended by the email industry at large. These best practices help email senders to identify themselves as legitimate companies, sending legitimate email to recipients that have requested it.

There are some fundamental steps you need to take on your own, but then there are also several services your ESP should provide.

Accountability

Email providers continually monitor their inbound mail to determine what messages are legitimate and don’t cause user complaints. To that end, there are a number of steps a sender can do to look as legitimate and authentic as possible:

1. Authenticate email with the authentication standards available (i.e SPF, Sender ID, DomainKeys, DKIM).
2. Ensure that WHOIS information for the sending domain is correct and accessible. Don’t mask this information using domain privacy services.
3. Ensure that sending IP addresses have valid and correct reverse DNS.
4. Use a dedicated sending IP address.
5. Add verbiage to the top of the message asking the recipient to add the sender email address to their address book.
6. Provide a link to an online version of the email.
7. Make unsubscribing obvious and easy.

If you are not sure whether your ESP provides these services then now is the time to ask. Nevertheless, not all deliverability services come automatically, and some take a little more effort on your part. But it is worth it.

Project Your Brand

Companies often make the mistake of not leading with their brand when they send email messages. Use the “from” field and subject line to distinguish your company, and live text in the preview pane to again communicate who the sender is. Be very aware of how your emails appear before images are downloaded by the recipient’s email client, and when in doubt setup and test send to multiple email clients from Gmail to Microsoft Outlook.

Maintain a Two-Way Dialogue

It is important that you give your recipients an easy means of responding. If you can email them then they can email you. Many times recipients will simply reply to the original senders address, so be sure to monitor those requests. It also helps to clearly provide a “Contact Us” link, or a preferred “reply to” address. Another means of leveraging the conversation is to point your email communications back to a company sponsored blog or forum.

List Hygiene and Maintenance

In order to maintain good deliverability rates, it is important that you keep your email lists up to date. The best means of doing this is to be sure you email everyone on your list at least once every 90 days. Senders should keep historical data on subscription signups, and quarantine email addresses that bounce, or are returned as not deliverable.

The plague of Spam has taught society to not trust email. As such, it is a continual uphill battle for legitimate senders to get their email delivered successfully. Nevertheless, if you take these steps it will go a long way to demonstrate accountability and maintain email marketing as one of the most effective tools to reach your current and potential customers.

[1] “Cisco Report Spotlights Worldwide Cyber Security Threats”, http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_121508.html

And Twelve Horses is one of them!

In the past year, we have worked very hard to bring to the market place an innovative new ticketing system that provides airline quality ticketing for medium-sized businesses. While there are quite a few masters of ticketing out there, we feel that we have a unique perspective and position in the electronic ticketing space.

A few things we made sure to address:

• Price: We found current pricing to be ridiculous and borderline monopolistic.
• Integration: Ticketing should not be a closed system and instead play nicely with other platforms like, for example, Salesforce.com.
• Mobile: There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to get a ticket to your mobile phone.
• Customer Service: We are getting rid of frustratingly long and unnecessary Will Call lines.
• Branding: It should be your branding on all customer touch points including:
• Web
• Email
• Mobile
• Printed Tickets
• Kiosks
• Security: Can you believe an airline was not encrypting credit card information?
• Marketing Meets Operations: Managing and implementing multi-channel ticketing should not be confined by complex systems but instead be easy to use.
• And much more in regards to ticketing, fulfillment, customer service, and reporting.

Needless to say, we hope to be chosen in our category. As you can see below, winners will be announced on January 28th. Wish us luck!

Utah Business and Wasatch Digital iQ are pleased to announce the finalists of the 2009 IQ Awards, the second annual innovation recognition program that highlights some of the most exciting and innovative products, processes and procedures coming out of Utah’s bright minds.

This year, 30 exceptional companies were selected as finalists in nine categories, recognizing the most innovative as well as creative ideas and solutions in technology. These tech-savvy businesses are pioneering a space in their industries – or creating a whole new one. Join us in saluting the innovations that will change the way the world lives, thinks and works.

The finalists will be featured in the February 2009 issue of the magazine and the winners will be announced at a luncheon sponsored by Utah Business on January 28. For more information or to register for the event, please visit www.events.utahbusiness.com.

That’s right folks! Last week the Twelve Horses crew received this following internal email from IT:

Automatic will be releasing WordPress 2.7 in the next few days. This will be a very significant upgrade for quite a few reasons. One of which makes me very very excited. Automatic Upgrades! Not only is it an important security upgrade, but it also has the potential of making future upgrades painless and far less time consuming for both Twelve Horses and our clients. The first thing everyone will notice is that the Administration area has received a major overhaul. The navigation menu appears to have taken on a more classic CMS design, and is now on the left side with collapsible menus. The Dashboard is now customizable with drag and drop widgets including a simple WYSIWYG quick post widget. Plugins now have a “Search and Install” feature built in, so you don’t need SFTP access to install your FlickrRSS and wptwitter plugins. Like I said, there is also the new Automatic Upgrade tool. A feature I cannot wait to test and use in the future!

One personal reason why I posted most of the email verbatim is because I find it quite amusing. IT get excited about something?!? Ha! Shows you how much we all love WordPress.

Props to the WordPress crew for this excellent video detailing its launch. It is soooo Matt Mullenweg with the jazz theme.

On November 13th, Twelve Horses joined Stanley Hainsworth of Tether and Mike Bonifer of Game Changers at The Depot in Salt Lake City for BrandEvolution. Produced by QuarterHorse, this quarter day symposium was focused on how to translate and transform brands online. The event featured some surprising but fun interactive exercises that rely on improvisation techniques, and we also worked together as groups to build and present our own brands. Afterwards, we all engaged in some good old cocktails and conversation before exploring the restaurants and bars of SLC. It was a good time, and I think we all walked away with a new perspective on branding and online marketing. Stay tuned for the next QuarterHorse event!

Here is a little video of the event.

And some pics:

A while back you might recall a blog post I did on improvisation for business training with Mike Bonifer. The entire Twelve Horses organization had the opportunity to take part in some very informative and thought provoking workshops, scheduled over the course of several weeks, which were designed to push us outside of our comfort zones and approach business strategy and brainstorming in a different way. I think I can speak for everyone that participated when I say, we walked away energized and enlightened.

This Thursday Mike will join Stanley Hainsworth on stage at The Depot in downtown Salt Lake City for a branding symposium focused on how to translate and transform brands online. If you are wondering whether you’ll enjoy it, I can promise you that it will be like a conference, but thankfully not a conference.

Building up to the event, Mike took some time to talk with the UtahPulse about some of what you might expect from attending. Here is the interview in its entirety, but you might prefer to listen to the podcast recording on their website.

Brand Evolution: Mike Bonifer

Any good businessperson should be able to improvise. The best improvisers are good listeners. So says Mike Bonifer, author of Game Changers and co-founder of a company by the same name. “I think it all begins with an understanding that we are brands who perform for the marketplace. Everyone has a vested interest in listening.”

Bonifer says the immediacy of today’s business environment, with blogs, microblogs and social networking, makes being able to improvise important. “Let’s just contrast it with scripting. Scripted behaviors are, by their very nature, about something you want to happen, and it’s almost like you envision it and you write about it after the fact. Stories and the narrative form are designed to chronicle something that’s already happened. So, you’re imagining that something has already happened, and then you go out with the script and try to make it come true.”

Bonifer says that game plan worked when the communication channels available were limited, but no more. “With things happening so quickly today, there is no time to script for every scenario, and by the time you’ve scripted to accommodate a certain scenario, that scenario has already evolved and changed. The script is no longer applicable. What do you do? You improvise your narrative, and improvisation is the discipline that lets you do that in a way that makes it not just random and ad-hoc, but disciplined and focused.”

If you want an example of businesses that are well suited for an improvisational environment, Bonifer says you need look no farther than Silicon Valley. “I think they understand that there is no dishonor is failure, and there is a tremendous amount of learning that comes with it. That’s why you see venture capitalists step up to the plate repeatedly with people that tried to launch an application or product and have failed, but there’s been a lot of learning and there’s been progress through the effort.”

Contrast the nimbleness of Silicon Valley with companies that are rooted in the industrial age. Bonifer says all companies are discovering the need to be more agile and more improvisational. “On one end you have silicon valley and the technology and media companies that are constantly renewing their relationship with the marketplace. On the other hand you have companies that have been selling the same product since the turn of the century and don’t see a real reason to rock the boat, or don’t see it until it’s too late.”

On Thursday, November 13th our CEO, David LaPlante will be speaking with Stanley Hainsworth and Mike Bonifer at BrandEvolution, a quarter-day symposium focused on how to translate and transform brands online. The event is being held in downtown Salt Lake City at The Depot. You can register here. 

Stanley was recently interviewed by UtahPulse.com about his experience working with brands like Starbucks, Nike and Lego, as well as his new direction running his own company, Tether Inc. Here is the text interview (below) in its entirety, and you can listen to the podcast interview here at UtahPulse.com.

Also, if you are interested in following the speakers on Twitter or joining up with them on LinkedIn, you may do so here.

He’s overseen all of the creative aspects of Starbucks Coffee. He helped make Nike a global brand. Stanley Hainsworth, who now is the Chief Creative Officer of his own agency, Tether, says he likes to use branding to tell the story of a product. “What I love to do is be a storyteller. Looking at the brand and figuring out what the story is and figuring out from there what’s the best medium for telling that story, whether it’s a new product, a retail experience or a digital experience online, and not being constricted by any preconceptions or mediums.”

Hainsworth will bring that know-how to Brand Evolution 2008. The seminar, sponsored by Twelve Horses, aims to help businesses transform their brands to connect with customers both on and offline.

When working to tell a brand’s story, Hainsworth likes to think of the brand as a person. “The way that you wear your hair, the way that you talk, the way you act, that all defines the way that people think about you. A brand is no different. A brand is perceived in the way it communicates, and the way it looks and the way customers respond to it.”

Taking those human qualities, and using them to create a memorable experience is what it’s all about for Hainsworth. “One of my favorite projects at Nike was a shoe called Presto. It came in 17 different color combinations, it was very iconic and a beautiful shoe. We decided to do something non traditional and rented an art gallery in New York City and put the shoes on the wall and called them art. There was no branding anywhere, we put posters up around town for the “art opening,” invited art critics to the opening. We got huge press and when they shoes went on sale the next month, they sold out everywhere.”

Hainsworth says the way that designers work with products has changed radically with the increasing relevance of online marketing. “No longer are there strictly these graphic designers, or web designers or environmental designers. It’s getting mixed up and it’s really exciting. These designers are able to work in these multiple mediums.”

With millions of blogs, and websites and other online destinations, it’s hard to break through the clutter to tell a story. Hainsworth says it’s a challenge, but not impossible. “I look at everything with the arc of a story and I look at it with the viewers eyes. Whether it’s a play that you’re watching or a piece of music that you’re listening to or a piece of design that you’re looking, it all has a story. It affects is a lot, and I tend to juxtapose a lot of unexpected things together and see what will happen, where it will take me to keep it fresh and not rehash things that have been done before.”

We are stoked to present to you a conference that, well, is thankfully not a conference. Produced by QuarterHorse, BrandEvolution is our Fall 2008 symposium, and it is coming to The Depot on November 13th.

Set in a collaborative environment and designed to get at the heart of questions such as:

How do businesses effectively translate and transform their brands to connect with their customers both online and offline?

How do businesses stay ahead of relentless consumer expectations, and form emotional connections between customers and products.

To answer these questions and more, Stanley Hainsworth, world renowned global creative director for Starbucks, Lego and Nike is joined on stage at The Depot November 13th with fellow digital storyteller and business improvisation visionary Mike Bonifer, and  David LaPlante, entrepreneur, web strategist, and CEO of Twelve Horses.

In 1994, Disney became the first entertainment company to boldly drive its customers to a narrative brand Web experience by launching the Toy Story movie web site under the creative strategy of Mike Bonifer, a move that forever changed branding.

In 1995, David LaPlante launched Lake Tahoe’s first ever ski resort website – skiheavenly.com. Today, Heavenly Mountain Resort ranks number one in skier visits, commands an impressive presence on the web, and delivers its message via video, podcasting, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, email, and more.

In 2004, Stanley Hainsworth left Lego and took the helm of Starbucks as VP-global creative and set in motion transformational creative and design strategies that created the ubiquitous brand of our coffee-shop connected generation today. As stated by AdAge.com, “Stanley Hainsworth put his stamp on nearly every piece of creative at Starbucks; he devised the “brand book” that defines the Lego image; and he helped push Nike into entertainment.”

In addition to gleaning real world branding experience, you will also benefit from a collaborative workshop that takes participants beyond the scripted and linear models of strategy, and challenges them to engage in an improvised branding discussion. The exercise is designed to develop greater emotional intelligence, and push the boundaries of defining a brand.

Come be a part of it!

For more information or to register for Brand Evolution visit events.twelvehorses.com.