Myth Busters: Loren McDonald on “Free” in Subject Lines, Ideal Frequencies, and More

Many marketers, novices and seasoned vets alike, have fallen prey to a few misconceptions when it comes to e-mail. In this occasional series, E-mail Essentials asks experts to set us straight regarding common myths. Here, Loren McDonald, vice president of industry relations for solutions provider Silverpop, separates the fiction from the facts about several key e-mail marketing issues.

Myth: Using a word like “free” in your subject line will get your e-mail blocked.

Truth: At least for the major Internet service providers and any company that uses SpamAssassin as part of the filtering algorithm, content such as "free" will penalize you only a few tenths of one point. That in and of itself won’t get your message filtered or blocked. But, McDonald adds, there’s an exception: Individual corporate network administrators, “who tend to dislike HTML e-mail and marketing messages in general, may set up their own filters and block based on certain content they dislike.”

Myth: Permission isn't required.

Truth: “Okay, first the caveats and exceptions. Permission isn't actually 'required' to get your e-mails delivered,” McDonald notes. “In the U.S., the Can-Spam Act does not require permission, nor do most receivers such as ISPs, though many strongly recommend it on their postmaster pages. But at least in the b-to-c world ruled by ISPs and reputation scores, if you don't have permission from your recipients you will most likely generate a high-enough spam complaint rate to get your e-mails blocked or filtered. So while you technically or legally you do not have to have permission to get your e-mails delivered, in reality it is pretty tough to get in to the inbox without it.”

Myth: There is a magic number for e-mail frequency or touches.

Truth: “Perhaps the single most often asked question these days is ‘What is the optimum frequency to send emails to my subscribers?’ There’s this ubermyth that there’s the right answer or one way to do anything,” McDonald says. “The answer that we all use in the industry is ‘It depends, and you’ve got to test it.’”

There are “dozens of attributes and factors” that determine the optimal cadence and frequency for your marketing e-mails, McDonald says, such as your market niche, your audience demographics, and whether you use behavior-based triggers.

Then, too, if you set up expectations ahead of time, by informing subscribers when they opt in of the frequency of your e-newsletters, you’re much less likely to have customers unsubscribe or report your messages as spam because they’re dissatisfied with the frequency of contact. Along the same lines, if the recipient considers your e-mails relevant, the cadence is somewhat less of an issue. “A lot of it is driven by value and expectation,” McDonald says.

Myth: I don't control my delivery rates.

Truth: “The marketer does in fact control 98% of their deliverability destiny,” McDonald says. “Marketers think there’s this trilateral commission behind the scenes somewhere that is randomly saying, ‘We don’t like you, so we’re not going to deliver your e-mails today.’ Their mindset is that the ESPs and ISPs are ganging up on them.

“Yes, the ISPs have these complicated, nontransparent algorithms and formulas. But there are some well-known ground rules. After that it’s the basics: Have you run your messages through a spam checker? Do you have permission? Are you sending three e-mails a day when your subscribers expect only one a week? If you are put on a blacklist, dig in a bit and you’ll probably find that someone [on your team] did something naughty.”

When it comes to deliverability, “technical things” account for just 2%, according to McDonald, and your e-mail service provider can help with these matters, by establishing relationships with ISPs and warming up IP addresses. “It’s 98% down to how you manage your lists and keeping your list clean and content and cadence and things like that.”

Would you like to debunk a few myths or clear up some common misconceptions? If so, e-mail sherry.chiger@penton.com.