Community Blog - Page 12

A lot of people believe that delivering an email is as simple as clicking “send” and waiting a couple seconds for it to go to the inbox (or maybe the junk folder if it looks like spam).  In reality, there are a lot of checks and balances that an email campaign needs to go through before it can be successfully delivered. Every part of your message, be it the footer, body, images, subject line, and so on can affect delivery.  One aspect that is often overlooked is the “from” email address. In this post, I’ll go over how using a free email address as the “from” address can affect your delivery.

We as email marketers tend to define spam as “unsolicited” or “unrequested” mail.  While this is technically correct, it goes a bit beyond that. The truth is, spam is in the eye of the beholder.  These days, people tend to consider any mail they don’t want as spam, whether they asked for it or not. As senders, we need to understand this and make sure we are mailing to interested and engaged contacts.

Back in October, I posted about some types of problematic email addresses and why they are cause for concern. Today, I will be covering a few more types of addresses that I didn’t get to discuss previous: dead domain addresses and spamtraps.

You've heard the phrase "there's no second chance to make a great first impression" right? Well, that phraseautomation, email, marketing should be echoed through your email marketing, especially in your Welcome Email. Read on to find out how to make it happen.

Today, I’m going to go over a few of the problematic email address types that can also result in a Constant Contact account disabling for a review.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll only be discussing a few of the different types of addresses in this post, you can expect a follow-up post in a few weeks that will discuss some others. Today’s topic will be “role”, “transactional”, and “group” addresses

List Reviews come about only due to list size, whereas Account Review are due to a specific issue that Compliance would like to discuss with a customer.  One of those issue are elevated spam complaints.

The more we become reliant on the internet for storing data, shopping, banking, etc, the more cybercriminals will seek to exploit it. Through phishing it is possible for your sensitive data to become compromised. Organizations in particular are at great risk because a single employee who is phished could potentially compromise the entire company’s data. In this post, I’ll be discussing what phishing is, how to identify it, and some best practices to keep you secure in the event you come across it.

Most people know by now that in the world of email marketing, permission-based addresses are considered the gold standard; however, it’s not always clear just what exactly counts as “permission.” It gets even more confusing when you realize that there are different types of permission. In this post, I’m going to look at the two different types of permission: Implied and Explicit.

Here at Constant Contact, we are an industry leader in email delivery. This is no accident. Our Terms and Conditions are designed to ensure the best possible delivery rate for all of our customers.

That being said, it’s expected (read: absolutely normal) that most email campaigns will have some level of bounces. Knowing the cause and reasons behind these bounces can help you as a marketer to ensure you are mailing to the cleanest, most engaged list that you can. First, I covered Non-Existent and Suspended bounces, then Undeliverable and Blocked bounces; today I will be going over the remaining categories: Mailbox Full, Vacation/Auto-Reply, and Other.

We know GIFs as those little animated images that you see on different websites. But did you know that you can insert GIFs into your Constant Contact campaigns? 

That's right! You can upload and insert a GIF just as you would a regular image. Adding a GIF into your campaign can certainly liven up a static campaign and add some personality. Here are a few things you should know before adding a GIF into your campaign.

• Just like images, GIFs need to be under 5MB in size in order to be uploaded into the Constant Contact library. 
• Less = more. Putting too many GIFs into a campaign can be distracting and pull your reader away from the message you are sending. Just a few will do!
• Right along the lines of less = more, choose GIFs that are shorter in length (like the one I used above). Longer GIFs are larger in file size and may not even upload properly but they also take your readers' focus away from your message.
• There are some email clients that don't support GIFs and will only show the first frame of the GIF. It's important to keep this in mind and send yourself previews to make sure that the first frame still makes sense even if the GIF doesn't play. 

So, how can you use a GIF in your campaign? Here are few suggestions:

• Display a reaction - are you excited about a sale that you are having or want to promote something great happening with your business or organization? Show your readers how excited you are by using a GIF!
• Support your message - Maybe you work for a nonprofit animal shelter and you are trying to raise money. Try including a GIF of cats or dogs so your readers remember who their donation would be helping.
• Show personality - Readers love seeing personality in an email. Use a GIF to have a fun opening or closing message. Maybe like this:

Want more ideas on how to use GIFs? Look no further than our Blog!

We're interested to know how you will use GIFs in your campaigns. Feel free to let us know or share your "giffed out" campaign on our Share & Get Ideas board! As always, we are here to answer any questions you might have as well.