- New Pre-Send Checklist: I developed a simple checklist to go through checking links, tracking tags, from name, subject line, preheader, personalization, country/regional variations, lists selected, etc., etc. It's evolved a lot over the last 7 years since, but I haven't had a major error go out since.
- Take Sending Seriously: I believe in no distractions when going through the checklist and getting ready to launch something to (in my case) half a million readers. Music gets paused, email/IM get minimized, and the only open windows on my computer are the ESP and the checklist.
Hi Coye,
For phone numbers (or email addresses), Abby's example of re-styling an <a> tag is the best way to go, because it removes client-added styling but it does retain the clickable functionality for smartphone users.
<a style="color: #010101; text-decoration: none;" href="tel:18007652747" target="_blank">1-800-POLARIS</a>
For addresses and dates, I use a class in the head styling...
.nolink_010101 a {
color: #010101; text-decoration: none !important;
}
...and wrap an inline span around dates or addresses.
Join us <span class="nolink_010101">January 1-2, 2018</span> for the event...
<span class="nolink_010101">2100 Highway 55, Medina, MN 55340, USA</span>
This also ensures that the dates and addresses can be selected/copied (or on some phones, still tapped) but without the client-added styling showing.
Any chance you'd share that infographic with us? :-D
Direct-to-ESP is always best!
A related tip - if you must open in Excel between your database and your ESP - is to use tab-delimited .txt files instead of comma-delimited .csv files. They can be opened and managed in Excel exactly the same way, and it is far less likely that your customer data will have tabs than commas.
The first year I was doing email, I was moving too quickly during the send process and accidentally sent a service training webinar intended for ATV dealers to ATV owners (very similar list names, but very different audiences). We ended up doing daily apology/correction emails and it ended up being a lot of cleanup work.
My boss at the time was very understanding, saying that mistakes happen, but asking what I would do to prevent mistakes like this in the future.
My process from that day forward:
Hi Clayton,
Sounds like a challenge! I like the idea of showing their last purchased item in the banner - could you pair that with the purchase date and add some kind of "it's been X months since your last filter purchase - it's time to update your fridge filter" message based on recommended replacement intervals?
If you have any kind of product reviews on your website, you could test including review snippets that help tell success stories (e.g. "Since I switched to XYZ, my allergies have never been better!") and see if that has any positive effect?
Last idea, and definitely a long shot - do you have any opportunities to cross-market with the appliance manufacturers? The fridge people include your filter promos, you include the fridge people's promos, etc. Again, definitely a long shot.
Adam
A case of better safe than sorry, I'm sure. Our legal team determined that a form titled "Sign up for emails" didn't need a consent checkbox because there was no ambiguity about what they were agreeing to by submitting. But it doesn't surprise me that many would want to include it just in case.
Seems like you should be okay as long as it's defaulted to NO, or neither pre-selected. The CRTC link I shared above makes it clear that it cannot default to an opt-in value.
Hi Veronica,
CASL requires an affirmative action on a web form in order to consent to emails, and as a good rule of thumb, that affirmative action needs to be both optional and intentional. Let's look at two different use cases.
If the form's sole purpose is to sign up for your email newsletter (sounds like this is what yours is), then just the act of filling it out meets both requirements. They're choosing to fill out the form (optional) and it's clear that the form is to sign up for emails (intentional). So in this case, you can make any fields you want required, and you don't really need a "yes, I agree" checkbox since the submit button effectively takes care of that.
If the form's primary purpose is for something else - let's say e-commerce checkout buying a product online, for example - then signing up for emails is a secondary purpose of the form, and that's where the checkbox comes in. You can still require any fields you want for the checkout transaction, but in order for the email sign up option to be CASL compliant, it needs to be a non-required checkbox (consent is optional), and the checkbox should not be pre-checked (consent is intentional).
This page by the CRTC (one of the organizations behind CASL) offers some visual examples and additional information:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2012/2012-549.htm
Good luck!
Adam
*I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. :-)