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Why your email links in e-newsletters will no longer work in Hotmail - and what to do about it

In the last few weeks Hotmail has stopped supporting "mailto" tags in HTML emails. What is a "mailto" tag and why does this matter? A "mailto" tag is where an email address is turned into a clickable hyperlink, for example info@expertiseontap.co.uk. Alternatively it's where the actual words are hyperlinked. This is usually used for "contact us" links or calls to action like click here to reserve tickets. Hotmail is no longer supporting "mailto" tags in HTML newsletters which means for Hotmail users your text will appear hyperlinked but won't be clickable. This is less of an issue for B2B (business to business) newsletters where recipients are less likely to be Hotmal users. But it's more an issue for B2C (business to consumer) emails where as many as 20% or more recipients could be Hotmail users. Solutions Currrently no-one has come up with a work round so for now you have these choices. 1. Link to a "contact us" form on your website 2. Spell the email address in full. At least Hotmail users can then copy and paste it even if they can't click on it. 3. Irrespective of this Hotmail issue, for calls to action such as "click here to enter competition" I recommend not using an email link at all. It's far better to use a form creation service such as Formstack. That way it looks more professional and it avoids clogging up your inbox with entries. You can see all the entries in one place on a web page and you can even export the data to Excel. Formstack plans start from $14 per month. Or, if you want a cheap and cheeerful form creator Google Docs has this option in its spreadsheets product. It's less functional than Formstack and doesn't look quite as professional.

More common e-newsletter mistakes and how to fix them.

I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters and whilst many of them are very good, some senders are making simple but easily corrected mistakes. Here are some recent examples I've seen in email newsletters along with some tips. 1. The name of the sender is not well known to the recipients Several e-newsletters I've received recently have been from "John Smith" or "Jane Brown" or whoever. The problem with this is if that name is not known to most of the recipients then they're unlikely to regard the email as being from a trusted sender and therefore less likely to open. That said, adding a person's name give the email a personal and less corporate touch so where possible I recommend including a person's name and the business name. I recently did this when sending out an e-shot for my client 4Networking. The e-shot was a regional event in Yorkshire so the email came from "Tom Lawrence - 4Networking". We achieved good results because Tom is a trusted and well-known figure to many of the recipients. 2. The unsubscribe process is not tested I recently unsubscribed from a newsletter and received the confirmation email below. The text "Repeating customers - didn't finish registration" is actually the list name in Mailchimp, which they're using to send out their e-shots. Unortunately this looks clumsy and is meaningless to recipients. So, make sure you test your unsubscribe process and if possible stop the list name from appearing in your unsubscribe confirmation emails. 3. The font size is so small it's almost illegible Subscribers need bright bold headlines to draw them in. And the main body text must be large enough to avoid them squinting to read it. Here's a newsletter I received recently and even though my eyesight is pretty good it's hard work to read this. If you make it difficult for your subscribers to read your content many won't bother. ACTUAL SIZE (COMPANY NAME MASKED) Does your e-newsletter text look a bit small? If so consider increasing your font by a point or two. And don't forget smart phone users. On those small screens tiny fonts are almost impossible to read without a lot of zooming.

Met Police admits victims' email address sharing error - how to avoid it happening to you

This article on BBC News caught my eye today. Scotland Yard has admitted inadvertently sharing the email addresses of more than 1,000 victims of crime with other victims. A Met spokesman said "In total 1,136 emails were sent out in seven batches of between 119 and 198 recipients but because the addresses were put in the wrong box they were visible to the other recipients in the batch." What seems apparent from this quote is that the Met was using its in-house email client (for example Outlook or similar) to mass e-mail people and instead of putting the email addresses in the "bcc" blind copy box, it placed the emails in the "cc" box instead meaning all recipients could see each others' addresses. The Information Commissioner's Office comments "We will be making enquiries into the circumstances of the alleged breach of the Data Protection Act before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken." The maximum penalty is £500,000 for "the most serious cases".  Ouch! Mistakes like this are remarakbly simple to avoid and it's astonishing the Met were not better informed on how to send mass emails of this nature. How to avoid this happening to you. The simple solution is never to use your email program to send out newsletters or similar to large numbers of people. Instead use an email service provider such as Campaign Monitor. It doesn't cost much and it will help you avoid serious data breaches. Alternatively, just outsource your e-newsletter production to Expertise on Tap and we'll ensure you stay within the law.

Three more tips for better email newsletters

1. WHY not to send your newsletter on the same day that you write it. I guarantee if you write your newsletter today and review it tomorrow that you will change something! Reviewing your content the following day enables you to look at it with fresh and more objective eyes. This provides an opportunity to: 1 Proof read your content.     2 Test your content. Are all your images displaying and links working?     3 Abridge your content. Is it too long? Are you using short sentences and paragraphs? Have you got plenty of white space?     4 Assess your content for relevance. It's easy to get wrapped up in your own world so stand back, review your content and ask: - Why is this relevant to my subscribers?   - How does it add value? 2. WHY you should include a subscribe link in your e-newsletter. This is where you might say "Why do I need one? They're already subscribed aren't they?". Not necessarily. If someone has received a forwarded copy or read the newsletter on Twitter or Facebook, including a prominent subscribe link will enable them to do just that! 3. WHY you should avoid a big logo at the top of your e-newsletter I often receive e-newsletters with a large logo in the masthead. Sometimes these are 200 pixels high or larger.  If you're wondering how big 200px is, it's this big... LOOK AT MY FANTASTIC NEW LOGO I'VE SPENT LOTS OF MONEY ON IT THAT'S WHY IT'S THIS BIG I REALLY WANT YOU TO NOTICE IT The problem with using a logo this size is when your subscriber is viewing your newsletter in their preview pane it pushes the content down the page.   They need to see some of the content to make a decision on whether to open. Therefore it's far better to have a smaller, more discreet logo in the masthead.

E-Newsletters - Common mistakes from 2010 and how to avoid them

End of Term Report 2010 - Email Newsletters I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters and although many of them are excellent some make fundamental mistakes, even those sent by very large companies. At the end of the article are some blog links which will help you avoid such errors. Here's my list of this year's common mistakes 1 Failure to include an unsubscribe link or where they have included one they have made it difficult to locate. Making it easy to unsubscribe will improve your list quality. 2 Contact details are not prominent. Subscribers will not go hunting for your phone number or email address. 3 The call to action is not clear and not prominent. What is it you want the subscriber to do? Call a number? Book now? Register here? 4 The subject line is poor. Subject lines should sell as well as tell what's inside. 5 The layout is poor with no clear distinction between articles and sometimes no prominent headlines. 6 The layout contains a large proportion of images to text or is entirely made up of images. This will trigger spam filters. 7 The e-newsletter width is too wide. I recommend 600px if possible and 630px as a maximum. This is because more emails are being read on smartphones these days. 8 There is too much content. I received one recently which was five pages long! 9 The content is dull, often because the author is wrapped up in their own world and fails to consider what will be of relevance to subscribers. Write it then sleep on it. I guarantee you will change your content the next day! 10 Business to business (B2B) emails being sent overnight or at the weekend.  B2B emails need to land in subscribers' inboxes during the working day to have more chance of being read. 11 The e-newsletter has not been tested across the main email clients and therefore doesn't display correctly in Outlook, GMail and/or Hotmail. 12 Broken links. Ensure you send yourself a test email and check that all links are working. Help is at hand!  Here are some previous blog posts which address some of the points raised above. • Why sending your B2B email newsletter overnight is a bad idea • Why you should make it easy to unsubscribe • Why your newsletter may no longer look right in Hotmail and how to fix it • Why your e-newsletter subject line is important • How to generate great content for your e-newsletter

How to get more subscribers for your e-newsletter

Here are our TOP 10 TIPS to get more subscribers 1 On every contact with customers take the opportunity to ask for their email address. Ensure you explain what you will use it for. 2 Add a subscribe form to your website. Place it on all the key landing pages. Right hand side of page and 'above the fold'. 3 Sell the benefits of subscribing to your newsletter. What will subscribe receive and how often? Why will it benefit them? 4 Give something away for free in return for subscribing. For example a tips sheet, a white paper or similar. 5 Add a link to your subscribe form in your email signature. 6 Promote your newsletter on blogs and forums. 7 Take hard copies of your newsletter to networking events and include details of how to sign up. 8 Archive your newsletter on your website along with details of how to sign up. 9 Include a forward to a friend link in your newsletters. 10 Include a subscribe link in every newsletter for people who have received a forwarded copy. Above all take every opportunity to collect email addresses. If you take the above steps your list will grow organically over time. You'll have a high quality list and will be communicating with people who have asked to hear from you.

E-Newsletters - why you should make it easy to unsubscribe

Why? Surely you want to prevent people from unsubscribing? No. We say make it easy to unsubscribe. Here's why. Making it easy to unsubscribe: 1. Cleans your list ensuring you're not wasting money emailing people unnecessarily. 2. Ensures you are only communicating with people who want to hear from you. 3. Means people are less likely to report as spam. Too many spam complaints will affect your sender reputation and you could even end up on a spam blacklist. Google, Hotmail and AOL have a "report spam" button which people will click if they can't easily find the unsubscribe link. 4. Provides a much better user experience and leads to less frustration. Every subscriber interaction with your business should be as positive as possible. Our top tips for easy unsubscribe 1. Include an unsubscribe link in the header of your e-newsletter along with a permission reminder of why they are receiving it. 2. Include a second unsubscribe link at the end of the e-newsletter. Make it part of the main body of the email, don't hide it in the small print footer. Below are two recent examples of poor unsubscribe positioning. In both cases the unsubscribe link is buried in the lengthy small print text at the foot of the newsletters and are very difficult to find. Example 1: Not actual size - see full size Example 2: Not actual size - see full size

E-newsletter list quality. What it is and why it matters.

So, you've decided to start your own email newsletter. You've got 5,000 opt in email addresses built up over 10 years. You're ready to send out your first issue. Oh no you're not. Unless you check and clean your contacts frequently it's likely the quality of your list will be very poor. The results from your e-newsletter are very likely to be disappointing. With poor list quality you will waste money by sending it to people who have no interest in reading it or because their email address no longer exists. It's far better to have a high quality, but smaller list of 1,000 emails than a low quality list of 5,000. A high quality list means your subscribers are more likely to be engaged by your content and do business with you at some stage. Here are some simple steps to clean your list: 1. What is the age of each contact record? Ie. When was the record created? A good rule of thumb is not to send to a contact record more than two years old unless you can definitely say they are still an active contact. Contact management software such as ACT! automatically logs a record creation date to help with this task. 2. What is the relevancy of that contact? Aa lot of small and medium sized businesses I come into contact with don't have an effective contact management system in place. For example they just pile all the contacts together into Outlook - business contacts, former work colleagues, relatives and friends. If this is you, check if that contact is relevant for your e-newsletter before using it. 3. Personal knowledge. Having actioned (1) and (2) above, scan the list and use your personal knowledge to decide if the contact stays or goes. Do they still work for that company? Are they still trading? Have they retired? 4. The final stage - having cleaned the list and before you send your e-newsletter. When you first send the e-newsletter to your new cleaned list, explain to people in the header why they're receiving it and include at least two unsubscribe links. One in the header and one just below your sign off. If they unsubscribe from your first newsletter that's OK. It makes your list even cleaner and ensures you're only sending to interested recipients.