Over 90% of all email traffic is spam … wow! This is a staggering statistic, which in reality costs email providers like Hotmail, Gmail, Aol, Yahoo!, and even businesses real dollars. Spam email traffic consumes bandwidth, research, filtering logic, servers, labor, and the list goes on. Not only is spam a financial burden for the companies receiving email, it is a huge point of frustration for the end-users (recipients) to have to put up with.
Soon, Microsoft will make an important upgrade to their email services (Hotmail/MSN/Live) which changes the email marketing game quite a bit. As we Tweeted previously, we wanted to give you the scoop about this so you’re ahead of the curve.
Microsoft reports that approximately 50% of email sent to their Hotmail/Live/MSN users can be classified as junk mail, not to be confused with Spam. Meaning, spam is email that would be unsolicited, suspicious, phishing or simply something people never wanted. With that said, Hotmail cites 80% of their spam reports are not actually spam messages. Hotmail differentiates the two because they are two very distinct problems. Hotmail, for example, views junk mail as being a newsletter you may have signed up years ago that, “continues to haunt your inbox, or the promotional email that you forgot to unsubscribe from, or the real estate listing alert you never canceled.” They classify this as inbox “Clutter.”
What does this mean to you as an email marketer? This means “the times they are a changin’,” and now it is more important than ever to be sure your email marketing tactics evolve along with the rest of the industry. You need to ask yourself as a marketer, several self-analysis questions. How targeted are your emails to each individual on your list? … Are you sending truly relevant information? … Do your emails contain value to individuals? As objectively as possible, ask yourself if you would perceive your own email as junk mail or ‘clutter’?
Hotmail is one of the first major email services to provide these tools to their users. Others will follow their lead. Now is the time to clean up the clutter before your emails become swept aside with all major email service providers.
Below are a few highlights of new the new Hotmail features:
- Efficient inbox management tools;
- Filtered inbox views;
- Improved user-filtering tools … intelligent email filtering technology to help reduce “clutter” for their users;
- Send up to 10gb of photos through email.
Recommendations on How to Handle the New Hotmail Changes:
- Take a moment to thoroughly understand the new Hotmail features.
- Engage your recipients in your emails, always.
- Segment (narrow) your list as much as possible in order to cater to individual’s expectations and needs — this is the raw power of Infusionsoft and Email Marketing 2.0.
- Send out occasional emails asking recipients what they want. Polling them helps you gauge their interest. Are your emails too frequent, not frequent enough, irrelevant, too sales-driven, etc.?
- Provide different types of email campaigns for your recipients. For example, do they just want a monthly newsletter, promotions and offers, product updates or all of the above? (Tip: Use Automation Links to make this super easy for recipients.)
In the end, make your emails standout from the rest of the clutter in your recipient’s inbox. Consider mailing less and providing more. But whatever you do, don’t follow this advice.
According to the Windows Live Blog, you have about three weeks to get your stuff together and stop sending Clutter.
Posted In: Email Marketing
