On Track With Jack: The Importance of Plain Text

While sum-sum-summertime is here, don’t take a vacation from your email marketing!  There are a ton of great business opportunities to take advantage of - market them all with JangoMail.  Most recently, we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on deliverability, and I have something else to add into the mix this week:

Always generate a plain text version of your email.

Each time you send out a new email, you should include a plain text version.  While most email clients support HTML messages nowadays, there are still some platforms and devices that cannot display HTML.  Additionally, there are a few folks out there that prefer to block HTML emails.  When you send plain text with HTML, you ensure that your recipient can see your email, no matter what.

Need another reason?  Spam filters check for plain text because spammers do not include it.  A lot of messages without it go straight into the junk folder.  Please note that the spam filter also checks for a balance of HTML to plain text so you want to make sure you have an even amount of both.

At JangoMail, we make it easy.  Once you have the HTML portion of your email finalized click on the second tab in the editor labeled “Plain Text”.  You have two options here: you can “Generate now based on HTML message” or “Generate automatically at send time”.

If you want to edit any portion of the plain text, click the first link.  I prefer this option, especially for newsletters because I like to remove any duplicate links, for example.

Choose the second option if you want your plain text to be identical to your HTML message and it will be created when your message sends.  The system will generate the latest version right before your message is processed.

To recap: Make sure that you always include a plain text version.  With JangoMail, you can easily create plain text to ensure your message delivers.

Have questions? Ask. Dial 1-888-465-2646 or drop us a line here.

Jack the Jangolope
Department of Awesome
JangoMail

About Jack

Jack the Jangolope is our JangoMail mascot.  Each week, look for Jack's emails for marketing advice, trends, and quick tips on how to grow your email marketing plan to the fullest!  Hop into email marketing each week with Jack's helpful tips!

What is a Jangolope? Find out HERE

We want to hear from you. Remember, at JangoMail it's your email, your way.  Have a topic you would like Jack to cover?  Email us at marketing@jangomemail.com with the subject line: On Track With Jack.  Follow Jack on Facebook

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AOL Follows Yahoo in DMARC Policy Change

By: Chris Reibold
Senior Email Analyst

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how Yahoo’s DMARC change would be a new trend and that we would see it going forward with other email providers. No, I’m not psychic, but I was right.  Yesterday AOL announced the same change.

For more details, click here to read my first post.

Like the Yahoo change, this only affects messages with the From address of AOL.com. If you are sending from AOL.com to AOL.com through JangoMail (or any other email provider), then your message will never be delivered.

The domino effect is clearly in play here. You can expect Hotmail and Gmail to follow suit accordingly in the near future.  Keep it here for the latest.

Bottom line: Do not use an @aol.com, @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, or other free email provider address to send your emails. Instead, set up and send from your own domain. Learn how to here.

Yahoo Policy Change Impacts Delivery

By: Chris Reibold

Senior Email Analyst

While I did put considerable thought into titling this blog post “Yahoo breaks the internet!”, I thought that might be a little dramatic, but it was tempting.

Within the last 48 hours, Yahoo made a bold move in updating their DMARC policy setting to "p=reject." Therefore, mail containing a Yahoo from address is no longer considered legitimate if it does not contain an authentication signature, or if it did not come from properly identified Yahoo infrastructure.

What does this mean? If you are sending from a Yahoo address, to Yahoo users, your emails will always be bounced. Essentially, if the from address is @yahoo.com, and your message is not originating from Yahoo infrastructure (using their web interface, or sending with your Yahoo account from outlook, your iPhone, android, etc), it will never make it to the recipient.

If you look inside the SMTP logs of a message sent to Yahoo, it will look like this:

Message+not+accepted+for+policy+reasons.++See+http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-28.html - - 0 0 0 SMTP - -

At JangoMail, we discourage our users from sending with a from address of major free email providers like Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail.  With the new change, however, users will be flat out blocked if they try to send from a provider. While this move seems drastic, it will limit the amount of spoofed email to Yahoo accounts to zero.

Since Yahoo is a major source of email on the web, you can expect Hotmail and Gmail to follow suit. Do not think of this as some security experiment that Yahoo is performing, but a real and secure change in the way email is handled on the internet today.

Bottom line: Do not use a @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, or other free email provider address to send your emails. Instead, set up and send from your own domain. Learn how to here.

Your Emails Will Get to The INBOX (and other lies)

Any email marketing partner who promises 100% of your emails will hit the recipient's inbox aren't just misinformed - they're lying. The truth is, there's simply no guarantee of a foolproof method to dodge every spam filter or customized filter established by every potential recipient.

That said, there are some ways to improve the chances your emails hit those hard-sought targets.

8 ways JangoMail

gets your emails to the inbox

1. Separate yourself from the pack.
Use a branded "From" address rather than your complimentary username@jangomail.com "From" address. Ex.s: john.smith@company.com or john.smith@newsletters.company.com. Using your own domain, or creating a subdomain of your own carries your branding consistently throughout the message. Also, a key benefit is that each address can have its own SPF and DKIM records. These are "reverse lookups" that tell the receiving server that we have permission to send on behalf of your domain(s). There's also a SMTP level benefit, in that a branded sub-domain allows the SMTP MAIL FROM command during the SMTP transaction between our sender and the recipient server to show your sub-domain rathern than jangomail.com. Details

2. Keep track of yourself.
By default, every JangoMail account is assigned a system tracking domain that's shared among multiple clients (ex. x.jango5.com). By setting up a branded tracking domain based upon your organization's domain name, you can isolate yourself from the activities of other clients. To set this up, just go to Settings > Tracking > Tracking Domain. Details

3. "Up" your trustworthiness.
Setup DKIM for the domain use in your "From Address".
Yahoo! Mail and Gmail look for DKIM signatures in the headers of incoming email messages, considering them confirmation that the email was sent by who was purported to send it. In other words, consider it a sign of trust. Details

4. Clear the path for complaints.
After creating a DKIM record, click the link in the confirmation email from Yahoo to postmaster@yourdomain. Here's some background: When you create a DKIM record, Yahoo sends this confirmation email that includes the link to activate a "Feedback Loop". That loop is where Yahoo processes any complaints, and communicates those back to JangoMail. If you don't click the link to activate, complaints won't be properly reported and delivery to Yahoo will be negatively impacted - specifically folks looking for your unsubscribe list.

5. Stay master of your domain.
Setup SPF records on your domain, and then set your email campaigns to use your own "From Address" as the SMTP-level MAIL-FROM address. Details

6. Send backup - plain and simple.
If you're sending HTML email, always include a corresponding plain text message. Spam filters can still get hung up on heavily-coded emails, even though they've proven more effective in communicating a customized message to and eliciting ROI from email recipients. To ensure greater delivery success, simply set your plain text messages to "auto-generate", which triggers plain text to be generated (base don your HTML message) at the time of email sending. Details

7. Get certified in success.
Enroll in the Return Path Safe List program if you have a complaint rate of 0-0.1%. Once enrolled, your emails are sent from safe-listed IP addresses. Yahoo, as a primary example, prioritizes emails sent from listed IPs. Details

8. Anchor yourself in phrases only.
If you use click-tracking, you'll want to submit anchor text in phrases - not URLs. Spam filters can consider URL anchors as fraudulent and indicative of a phishing scam.

Good click-tracked link:
<a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">Visit our web site.</a>

Bad click-tracked link:
<a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">http://www.browniekitchen.com</a>


Here's what success looks like
Successful email campaign open rates are in the range of 15-35%. Take into consideration that some of your opens may not register if recipients have to 'view images'. But, if your rate is even higher than this, it's definitely reason to celebrate.

And if you're seeing lots of response to your behavioral goals (i.e. "click on this to get this deal/offer/information") then you also get a seat in the VIP section at Club Jango.

Already a rock star?
If you've had some amazing results from email campaigns and want to share them, tell us. We love to hear and share new tips to enhance email communications. Who knows? What you tell us today could be the next, new JangoMail feature we unleash tomorrow.

As always, give us a shout with any questions or comments. Until then, we leave you with a blast from the past commercial. We hope you've never met ANYONE like this:

New Report: Email Address Delivery Diagnostics

Email marketers often have questions about their email delivery and why a certain email address isn't receiving emails. We launched a new report to answer these questions and to provide the most transparency possible to our users. The new Delivery Check report runs a diagnostic check on an email address. If you are having a delivery issue with a certain email address, this report will perform a number of checks to help you resolve your delivery issue.

To use this report, click the REPORTS tab and then the Delivery Check link.

Enter an email address to diagnose and click the Diagnose button.

The Delivery Check report checks the following:

*Is the email address correctly formed?
*Is the email address on the unsubscribe list?
*Is the email address on the bounce list? If so, a details link will appear to provide you with more information.
*Does the email address appear on the recipient list of a recent email campaign? If so, you can view the log file.
*Does the email address appear on the recipient list of a recent transactional message? If so, you can view the log file.

The JangoMail Support Team is also available to assist you with any issues you may be having. If you need help, contact us via the Support Contact Form.