Dealing with Domains: Quick Tips on Improving Email Performance

Whether your email list is comprised of consumer or business-oriented addresses, understanding how email domains (and email clients) may treat your emails differently is an important element of your email marketing program. The following are a few quick tips to consider when sending your next newsletter or email campaign:

Analyze Previous Results by Domain

Your first step is to understand which email domains comprise the majority of your list. For a consumer list, the top domains are usually AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and MSN. For a business list, you may find that a large number of subscribers are employed by specific Fortune 500 companies. Next, run reports from previous campaigns and newsletters by these top domains and compare key metrics - open rates and click-through rates, for example - across these lists and against the overall averages. Are certain domains underperforming others? Do you know why? Some of the following issues may be contributing to the variances in performance.

Email Client Rendering

Test your creative across the major ISP email clients - AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and MSN - to ensure that your HTML (if sending HTML) is rendered correctly. While all current versions of these email clients can render HTML, they may, for example, treat forms, navigation or certain other aspects differently. With time these subtle issues may negatively affect open and click-though rates.

Large Company Domains

There are generally very few problems encountered when sending emails to large companies, but two to be aware of include:

1. Many large companies have installed filters on their company mail servers to block unsolicited email. If you think this may be a problem with a specific company, contact the company's IT department to see if you can get your newsletter/email communications white listed.
   
2. Many large companies utilize Lotus Notes for email, which should not create any problems if they are using newer versions. However, older versions do not render HTML emails very well. Presumably these subscribers with older versions of Lotus Notes will let you know that what they've received is a jumble of code and text. Once you've confirmed a problem, consider switching all subscribers at that company to receive the text only version.

Inbox Subject Lines

Complicating the 'from line' strategy outlined above is that longer subject lines will be cut off by AOL and Hotmail. So while the subject line - "Great Savings on Energy Foods from PowerBar, Clif, Balance, GU & more" - appears in its entirety with Outlook and Yahoo, in Hotmail it reads "Great Savings on Energy Foods from PowerBar, ..." If you are creating separate emails for AOL subscribers, also make sure you create a shorter subject line that works in the AOL client. Alternatively, you may want to just develop a single short subject line that "works" across all email clients or one that still conveys the key message even if it is cut off.

AOL - Text vs. HTML vs AOL RTF

While there is no definitive answer regarding AOL users - some recent research suggests that you may see better results sending either rich text format (RTF) in the AOL specifications (listed at a link below) or plain text format emails to AOL subscribers. Though the majority of AOL subscribers are using HTML compatible versions, their demographics and preferences lean toward simple, quick-loading emails. Recently we've seen examples of rich text format emails (i.e., no graphics, embedded links, bold copy) producing much higher click through rates when tested against HTML. To be sure, however, always test with your subscribers. For a look at AOL's RTF specifications, check out this link: http://postmaster.info.aol.com/. If you have questions or comments, or have other suggestions on dealing with various email domains, please email them to marketing@emaillabs.com.