Comments on: Are my emails being read?

By: John Huff

John Huff — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:48:40 +0000

I know Im really late to this conversation, but isnt the easiest way to see if your emails are having an impact is if someone replies to them or mentions it when they come into the showroom?

By: rocco D

rocco D — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:40:13 +0000

It doesnt look like anyone has answerd the question about “opened email” tracking… I am not sure all that have this feature and those that do not… but Imagic and DealerSocket do for sure.

By: Jeff Kershner

Jeff Kershner — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:38:02 +0000

Joe, you promised me that you were going to keep that little secret between you and I only.

By: Joe Pistell

Joe Pistell — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:46:15 +0000

Welcome aboard Dave,
I am sure you’ll enjoy the talent, experience and ideas roaming in these halls. But, I do have a reccomendation.

If ever you see a thread that proposes that “Jeff Kershner is a Booth hottie”, consider it SPAM, as Jeff is known to login as an alias and write nice stuff about himself!

By: Alex Snyder

Alex Snyder — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:02:54 +0000

Glad to see you made it over here Dave – I think you’ll find Dealer Refresh to be an invaluable source!

By: Dave White - DARCARS Automotive Group

Dave White - DARCARS Automotive Group — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:51:21 +0000

I am new to Dealer Refresh and found the responses to this question to be very useful and well-written. Alex Snyder told me about this site and I’m pretty impressed.

Thanks,
Dave White
DARCARS Automotive Group

By: Jeff Kershner

Jeff Kershner — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:58:14 +0000

Laura, great additional information. Thanks so much for sharing!!

Jeff Kershner

By: Lao Shi

Lao Shi — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:37:56 +0000

I agree with what Jeff states. Also you must follow up on a regular basis with a mystery shop, use 3 of the majors, a hotmail, Google and yahoo email address and include these in the mail out. This way you know what is going on. You need to have email addresses anyway to Mystery Shop your competitors…Don’t you?? I also always place the name and phone number in the subject line. The majors like this as most spammers do not know the correct name and number combination of the client. Plus as Jeff points out use the CRM tool for communicating important client/ store information, product updates, newsletters, soft sell news releases, community projects etc. There is an old, wise Chinese saying “don’t cook your food in the bathroom” Use an email campaign program for your hard sell if you need to hard sell.

I do not know many consumers swayed by the $500.00 coupon these days, you may find a few. Most Internet shoppers avoid this “gimmick” and are more intelligent. I know BZ Results thinks the sun rises and sets on the program which is an indication of where their thoughts are.

Umer, these are great sources.

By: Ryan Gerardi

Ryan Gerardi — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:43:52 +0000

True, as Laura points out, “email authentication” has become a necessary step for more successful email campaigns these days. There are two main authentication standards to support called Sender ID and DomainKeys. Problem is, not all email servers support this so depending on how your CRM spools email this may or may not be possible for you.

By: laura

laura — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:33:10 +0000

Email deliverability can be affected by all of these factors:

a) Reputation of sending domain

- Sending emails to bad addresses repeatedly – When the emailer sends repeatedly to bad addresses, ISP’s record this and subsequently block the sender. It looks like the sender is trying a dictionary attack. You must clean your email list, taking out email addresses that bounce.

- Sending emails to spamtraps. These are traps set up by blacklists to catch spammers. The addresses are never given out, so sending to them will immediately land you on a blacklist.

- How quickly/slowly emails are sent (throttling). ISP’s frown upon messages sent in large bunches. It’s also better to have spam complaints trickle in rather than come in large bunches.

- Users hitting the spam button. ISP’s take this very seriously. You can usually sign up for a feedback loop that will send you this information so that you can clean those addresses off your list. Failure to do so will rapidly deteriorate your deliverability.

- Sending architecture (SPF records, DKIM, etc.) that identifies sender properly – without this there is no reputation, and no reputation=bad reputation.

- Challenge-response system responses: the ISP sends a response requiring the sender to reply before the email will be sent on to the recipient.

- Communication between servers (Brightmail). Brightmail servers share info about spammers.

b) Content of the email message

- Criteria varies by filter (SpamAssasin is one example), includes things like verbage in subject line, excessive graphics or scripting, large bright colored fonts, certain keywords, cleanliness of code, etc.

c) Blacklists

- Blacklists are lists kept by independent organizations or internally by ISP, that record IP/domains of known spammers. ISP’s often consult the blacklists of independent organizations. There are many of them. Whitelists are the antithesis of blacklists. There are whitelists managed by independent organizations or managed internally by ISP.

Most important of all these, is the reputation of the sending domain. It used to be that ISP’s filtered based on the content of the email. But more and more, ISP’s are focusing on the reputation of the sending domain (or IP). Given the complexity involved, and the fact that reputation is the most important factor, if you do any sort of decent volume of outbound mail, you probably SHOULD be outsourcing your email delivery.