How to re-engage inactive e-mail recipients

Should I change the design of my e-newsletter so people can read it on their handheld device?

Email Service Provider Coalition changes name

You might have a list of thousands of e-mail addresses, but if you’re like most marketers, between one-third and one-half of that list is inactive. In other words, those recipients haven’t clicked through in more than a few months for monthly newsletters or weeks for weekly newsletters. Because it’s easier to keep existing prospects than it is to find new ones, Loren McDonald, VP-marketing with EmailLabs, provides these tips to move more of your customers off the inactive list.

Free White Paper: Fishing for Leads with White Papers; Where to Drop Your White Paper Line
Gain valuable information and learn essentials to keep in practice. This paper offers practical insight, tackles key challenges, and addresses contextual marketing and pay-for-performance models, whether you're preparing for or already using white papers for online lead generation, this paper will serve as a helpful reference tool.
Download NetLine's free white paper today.

Answer: E-mail-enabled devices such as the BlackBerry and the Treo have become useful tools for busy people to screen e-mail for later action and to make use of downtime by cleaning up their in-boxes. In other words, they have become editing tools, and it is your job as an e-mail marketer to make the cut by engaging this rapidly growing audience.

How do you convince your mobile audience not to delete e-mails, and instead to save them until they can follow up on them later? Follow these simple rules:

• Add an ALT Tag. Without an alternative text tag (ALT tag), the PDA will default to HTML and will show image codes and programming strings. ALT tags will enable your PDA to render the e-mail in a simple, readable format without affecting how the e-mail will look on your computer.
• Don’t use multipart MIME. Most PDAs think they can display HTML but often nothing shows up. Test your HTML on a handheld before you deliver.
• Get to the point. Put text copy as close to the top of your e-mail as possible. You have to get to the point quickly in text format.
• Do not top load with ads. If you make subscribers scroll through long links of ads, they will hit “delete.” Pull the ads lower or put some interesting copy above all the HTML and links.
• Ask readers to hang in there. Put a text line above the ads and header telling readers their attention to the e-mail will be worthwhile. This might go unnoticed in the full rendering of the desktop view but will stand out strongly in the handheld view.
•  Stop asking to be added to the address book. This message takes up the entire content area on a handheld. Once a subscriber has added you to her address book, stop asking. This data should become an attribute and marketers should use dynamic content to send that note only to those who have not already clicked.

Chris Baggott is co-founder of e-mail marketing software provider ExactTarget (www.exacttarget.com).

NEW! MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006
Get 310 Charts & Eyetracking Email "Heatmaps" & find out:
-> How do your opt-in, open, click, & conversion rates stack up?
-> Should you redesign your email newsletter & sales alerts?
-> Will personalization or changing frequency work for you?
Get 1,927 marketers' real-life data:
http://Email-Mktg-Data.MarketingSherpa.com

York, Maine—The Email Service Provider Coalition announced it is changing its name to the Email Sender and Provider Coalition, to better reflect the broadening scope of its member base. The ESPC membership is made up of 75 companies, including e-mail senders, e-mail service providers, ISPs, message transfer agents and other vendors serving the e-mail marketing industry.