Are you a Thunderbird user? Ever get this message:

Ever wonder what it’s all about?

Here’s the deal. Thunder bird tosses this warning when the display text of your link is a full URL and it differs from the href attribute of the link (the actual pointer of the link). For example:

Your link says this: Go to http://www.acmecompany.com to learn more.

But your code says this: <a href=”http://www.companyx.com”>

So Thunderbird assumes that the mail is therefore an attempt to direct users to a malicious web site.

So, the issue is that if you use link tracking in your mails and the display text is also a complete URL Thunderbird will incorrectly label you as a scammer. Lame.

There’s a simple work-around though, just don’t use a complete URL in the text of the link. Even just removing the protocol (http://) is sufficient to avoid the scam warning.

So the text of your link might become: Go to our web site to learn more. or Go to www.acmecompany.com to learn more.

Problem solved.

One of the most important factors in whether or not a recipient will respond to an email campaign is how relevant the content is.

We’ve discussed how busy the in-box is before on this blog and the bottom line is that recipients don’t have time for emails with no value. I know what you’re saying … ‘but all my emails have value! How dare you!’ Of course they have value, but value has to be weighed against perception. For example say my list has 1,000 people on it. And say that 300 of them would like to get updates about new product features, 200 would like to get all the company press releases and 200 would like to get special offers. Assuming no overlap between categories that’s 70% of my list with a strong preference on what they would like to receive. If the general newsletter that I send out has a piece here and a piece there of all that information I risk alienating those subscribers who would prefer a more focused newsletter. This is especially true given what we know about how busy the in-box can get. Don’t rely on recipients scrolling to the bottom of the message to read about the upcoming product upgrades. If that’s all they want to read they’ll be put off by having to look for it. Eventually they stop perceiving the email as valuable and they’ll opt-out.

So what to do?

The simple solution is to add a table of contents to the top of the email. Something that the recipients will see in the preview pane. Each of the entries should be a link that they can click on to jump to a story in the newsletter. So…recipient opens mail, recipient sees TOC, recipient clicks on their choice…happy recipient.

One of the best practices you can establish to insure the best delivery rate and best response to your email campaigns is consistent sending habits.

Consistent sending habits means sending the same content at the same time to about the same number of people.

In other words, if you’re sending a newsletter to 500 users, send it at the same time, on the same day, week after week.

Why are consisting sending habits so important? Two reasons, ISP perception and user perception. You always want users to stay engaged with your email campaigns, sending them the same content at the same time helps them to recognize your email and enhances your reputation with them. Same goes for ISPs, especially the large consumer ISPs. If they see you sending the same content to the same people at the same time it only does good things to your reputation.

Consider the following two campaigns.

Campaign A is sent to 5,000 recipients every Tuesday at 8:30am
Campaign B is sent to 5,000 recipients when the marketing guy gets around to it. Sometimes Friday at 10pm, sometimes Wednesday at 3am, sometimes every third week, sometimes when the moon is full.

Which looks more legitimate? Without opening the email which would you expect to have more valuable content?

Want to increase recipient engagement and response? Normalize your campaigns.