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Lic. Damian Moccagatta

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NIH-funded research published in the January issue of the American Journal of Hypertension showed that Transcendental Meditation could significantly lower blood pressure, helping some patients to avoid medication and others to reduce the amount of medication needed. The first-of-its-kind, long-term clinical trial included 150 mend and women with state I hypertension.
From Dayspa - April 2005

How do you solve a problem like image blocking? Here are the tips:
1. Become a Trusted Sender
This best practice has never been more important. Encourage the recipient to put your From Address in their address book, trusted sender list or approved sender list (whatever the name may be in their email client).
- Ask at every possible touch point including at the time you collect the address (e.g. on your opt-in form), in the permission reminder at the top of your email (see the permission reminder at the top of this newsletter), in the body of your email and on your new subscriber thank you/welcome page. (If you use an email marketing service all of these should be easy to edit and customize).
- Make it easy for recipients to add your From Address to their trusted sender or contact list by keeping it short, easy-to-remember and easy-to- type.
- Be consistent with your From line and, for better sender recognition, make sure you use a From Name and Address that includes your name, company, product or service name - whichever the recipient will know best. Your brand in the From line assures the recipient that the email is coming from a reliable and trusted source and builds familiarity and credibility - especially when repeated over time. (For 9 more important From line tips, go to "Your From line: benefit or barrier?").
As a trusted sender or known sender, your email is more likely to be delivered and remain exempt from anti-spam measures including filters, challenge- response systems or image blockers.
2. Pay attention to any challenge-response emails coming through to your reply inbox and answer them in a timely manner (most require a response within 24 hours).
- A challenge-response message is an automated message triggered by the receipt of an email for the purpose of identifying the sender as a trusted source. The "challenge" is a message to the sender of the email with instructions on how to validate themselves. If the sender provides a valid "response," his email address is added to the recipient's list of trusted senders and his message is passed along to the recipient.
Only about 10% of recipients use these systems. As annoying as some people find challenge-response, the method has been adopted as a means of spam prevention and can be effective in getting your email delivered and getting your address effectively "whitelisted" by the recipient.
3. Test the day of week and time of day you send your emails.
Tuesday through Thursday have been considered the best performing days for quite some time, however, new surveys indicate Monday may be the new favorite. As far as time of day goes, some studies now show that, because the volume of email sent is highest between 10am and 2pm, your emails may have a greater chance of being seen from 8am - 10am or 4pm - 6pm.
The bottom line? Keep tracking your open rates, but keep them in context. While open rates have become a somewhat less reliable indicator of email success - you shouldn't abandon the open rate as a measure of overall responsiveness. Just be sure to look at the open rate in conjunction with other metrics - especially click-throughs.
In contrast to open rates, average click- through rates have held steady or even increased. (According to DoubleClick, click-throughs have remained in the 8% range). This indicates that, though we often cannot count opens due to image blocking, more recipients than you think are actually seeing your email and clicking on your links just like always. So, include some call-to-action links in text, then keep watching those click-throughs.
Finally, don't forget about other important metrics including email replies, email forwards, new subscribes, unsubscribes, spam complaints and other direct customer feedback.
To learn more, go to "6 Tips to Get Your Email Opened and Read."
Michelle Keegan is the Email Marketing Diva for Constant Contact the leading Do-It-Yourself Email Marketing provider for small and medium-sized businesses.
ConstantContact one of DSA's benefit providers - do you get this newsletter? Sign-up at tips@constantcontact.com