More on eNews ‘Content Checking’

In an earlier post, I mentioned using the term FREE in eNews tends to throw red flags for spam filters and even flag a scam alert in Thunderbird. Turns out using the term ‘click here’, ‘buy online‘ and even ‘subscribe‘ may raise a filter. So even valid offers using these terms should be avoided. We even removed the term ’subscribe’ when referring to subscription offers for Design World in print. So no more subscribing, now we just encourage engineers to ‘Get DW in Print’. More to come no doubt on this front.

Free! Blog Post

Design World uses content checking software on eDelivery, and came across a straightforward email call to action from a customer that Thunderbird flagged as a scam.

The simple reason was the use of ‘free’ 3 times in the text. Simply removing the word free from the text and changing one instance to ‘complimentary’ resolved the issue. Note that the domain, subject line and company name had nothing to do with the scam flag - just the repeated term in the body copy. We’ll be sure to offer more complimentary advice when we come across other red flags.

eNews Specifications

Our most common ad format for eNewsletters is referred to as a text based ad, but an image actually accommodates the text. The ad inclusion is 35-40 Words of copy with an image - jpg or gif (NO FLASH) - that is 125 x 90 pixels- and thats 125 pixels across, 90 pixels in height. The headline will be the company name or a supplied headline that should be just a few words that should appeal to a very short attention span. And of course we need the specific URL for click through.

Example here - facing left side of the enews.

Summary again-

• Headline or Company Name with 35-40 Words & URL :: Plain text document or Word

• Image 125×90 pixels, jpg or gif

Deliver files to us via our robust ftp service located http://www.designworldonline.com/adcenter/

Just click the ‘Upload Creative’ button and select eMedia as the receiver. We will notified automatically of any uploads. File transfer this way avoids any email server issues. The service allows multiple file uploads making it easy to submit multiple creative files and Word or plain text documents.

Its important to remember email servers will deny Flash files or scripts, thus the limitation of gif or jpg image files.

Calculating CTR%

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about CTR% - Click Through Rates- and what constitutes a ‘good’ or successful rate. First to point out the way to obtain CTR% and the different ways I’ve seen the rate calculated when it comes to eNewsletters.

For web metrics, its pretty straightforward. An advertiser gains 10,000 impressions, or unique page views where the ad resides. 100 people actually click on the ad, and the CTR% is effectively 1%.

For eNews delivery we calculate CTR% by measuring the amount of emails that were successfully delivered, say 55,000 for example, and measuring against total delivered, versus total opened. I have seen metrics calculated both ways, and they obviously give different results.

So if the open rate is 25%, 13,750 is our viewer number, but CTR is still calculated from successful send figure. If the click through is say 1500 total clicks, the CTR for that enewsletter is effectively 2.7% or rounding up for example 3%, If you based CTR off the opens, then your CTR would be almost 11%. So its wise to find out how the CTR is calculated to compare apples to apples.

Further, for each call to action, the click % for each unique link may be based off the pool of clicks or the 1500 number. So if one call to action yields 700 clicks, the clicks are 47% of the total clicks. But NET CTR now based off our total successful sent emails for this action is 1.2%.

So as an advertiser you may see numbers like 11% CTR and 47% share and feel great, while the 2.7% CTR and 1.2% NET CTR seems like a disappointment, but in the end, your result was the same.

So what is a successful CTR % rate? If you are after branding and mind share, this may have less importance that on a specific call to action to receive a catalog, whitepaper, video, or CD offering. Calculating the DW way based on an enewsletter with multiple advertisers, NET CTR of 1% is outstanding - or to use the click pool method- say 4-5% of the clicks. Even better is that we also provide levels of contact information and metrics associated with the click, so further, the advertiser can determine the quality of the lead, which carries much greater value than just a click of course.

And for those calls to action, its important to be compelling. Rino Mechanical recently ran a series of enews ads where they stated a specific technology was obsolete. This bold statement got people clicking - 20% of the total click pool in a single enewsletter.

At the end of the day, if its not a brand new technology or breakthrough, a message with no call to action, no offer, or lacks anything compelling probably will not get a decent CTR to materialize no matter how you calculate it.