The buzz word “standards” may cause an eyeball-rolling response, but without standards, we would have to buy specific media to work with our DVD, VCR and music player.
Remember the software buying days, when you had to look for compatibility in terms of Mac versus Windows? Imagine having to do that with Web pages. This Web page is for Macs only … this one is for Windows. Thanks to W3.org, a body that sets recommendations for HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and other markup languages, we don’t have that issue.
Some sites, however, do look better in Internet Explorer than in Mozilla or Firefox. That’s because such sites use an Internet Explorer-specific markup language that is not standard.
Let me explain. Let’s say the dreaded <blink> element is proprietary to Internet Explorer only (it’s not, but this is just an example). If an HTML page has it, and you try to view it in a browser other than Internet Explorer, nothing blinks on the page (not that we would want it to).
This is a very simple example of what happens when a browser maker creates proprietary elements that work only with its browser.
Playing well with others
Creating proprietary markup code is much like DVD makers producing hardware that works only with a specific brand of DVDs. On one hand, it may encourage people to buy their DVD products. On the other hand, customers refuse to buy something that has such limits. Which would you rather have? A customer buying your product because it works with everything, not just item A, or a customer not buying your product at all because it works only with item A, which is also your product?
That’s the kind of thing we’re seeing with those popular single-cup brewers. I have a Home Café, which I received so I could review the product. The instructions explicitly say to use only Folgers or Millstone pods with the machine because using other brands will damage it. Yet, if you look at pods from Coolbeans.com or Starbucks, companies that don’t produce a machine, they are compatible with Home Café and other brewers such as the Senseo and Melitta.
I don’t like Folgers, period. So would Black and Decker rather me not buy its product because I dislike its partners’ pod brands, or buy it because I can use it with other standard pods? That’s why standards play an important role. They benefit all companies.
Does this mean a company can’t get creative? Not at all. Home Café, Melitta and Senseo look different. Two only brew one cup at a time while one can do two cups. The setup and usage are also different. The look and feel are distinctive. I’ve heard comments from people who prefer one brewer over another.
If all single pod brewers work with any pod brand, then we have a choice based on which best meets our needs, just like with the standard coffee machines. Some love their Bunn. Some love their Braun. Some love their Krups.
Cars are the same way. The distinctive features, look and style separate one car from the others. But most of them run on unleaded gasoline. Imagine if we still produced cars using leaded fuel.
Standards for email marketing newsletters
So what about newsletters? Before sending this newsletter to you, we test it. Not in terms of beating it up and throwing it around like in the gorilla and suitcase commercials. Or running it into the wall with crash test dummies to test its safety.
Instead, we check for spammability as well as readability. How clean (or not) is the newsletter? Will it pass through the filters? Such a check looks at the fonts used, words and the markup code you don’t see unless you do a “view source.”
Once while doing a test on a newsletter, we received a warning that it had “shouting markup.” Wow. Not only do we have people who shout by capitalizing their text in email messages or instant messages, but we also have markup that yells. And apparently, it’s a bad thing in terms of filters.
When I write about Web design, I encourage using XHTML markup standards with CSS for layout. XHTML requires all markup uses lower case, as in <a>, <h1> and <p>, as opposed to <A>, <H1> and <P>. HTML doesn’t care if both are used.
But we’re talking about a newsletter’s ability to make it pass the filter, not about clean markup code. A newsletter checker shouldn’t care about the markup language. It should focus on the content. Yet, we get a warning that shouting markup, the use of upper case in the tags, is a bad thing and sends the email to the junk bin.
Words that do not pass “Go”
Who decides the standards for declaring content as junk or legit? The bad guys keep changing their content to make it pass through the filters while the good guys fail. This article could send the newsletter to the junk folder because I use the word “spam.” Guess what? The real spammers wouldn’t use that word because they aren’t going to admit their content is spam.
Another “bad” word is “free.” It’s understandable. But it’s also legit. For instance, in the blog, we give a “complimentary” report to those who buy the report. Many businesses do this. Buy this and get this for free. Yet, I use the word “complimentary” or the phrase “no cost” to avoid using “fr33” (that’s another one) and ending up in your garbage bin.
I get tired of seeing legitimate newsletters that I’ve requested using “fr.ee” or “spaham” to duck the filters. I want such newsletters to feel they can use normal words without getting creative. Yet I know spammers have gotten smart and now use periods and spaces in a word to sneak pass the filters, forcing the good guys to do the same.
What’s the solution?
If I had the solution to this problem, I’d be a millionaire. Phishers (bad guys who send you email leading you to believe it’s from a Web site with which you have an account) are getting smarter in tricking recipients into believing their email comes from a respected company, like eBay or PayPal, to get your personal information.
My email address has been blacklisted at Spamcop, a popular email filter, several times. Spammers find ways to use email addresses of people like you and me. Furthermore, they change their email and Web URLs as frequently as we change our clothes. My email server host provider offers the option of using a spam service like Spamcop, but I don’t use it. Too often, the newsletters I want have ended up in Never, Never Land.
Plus, on occasion, we forget we subscribed to so-n-so’s newsletter when we entered a contest or requested a free white paper. Some recipients report such newsletters to Spamcop, and a good guy gets jailed over a reader’s mistake.
Helpful applications, useless response systems
By using software on my computer, I put email management under my control. I’ve trained the program to recognize senders on my list. This product has done a good job and rarely sends a legitimate email to the junk folder. I always scan the junk folder before I empty it — this takes less than a minute.
Some people use the “response system.” You’ve seen these. You send an email to a friend and immediately get an email saying to click on this link and enter the code to prove you’re a real person. There’s a flaw with the system. Newsletters are managed electronically and will not catch these responses.
When I managed a list of over 100,000 readers, I watched for those response requests. However, it was easy to miss a request in the middle of all the “bad address” or “email box is full” messages. Some idiotic response systems require you to confirm you’re a human EVERY time you send a message to the individual. I gave up on several readers who had this in place.
I think the solution is to manage our emails at the host provider and local computer level. At least you have some control here. A good host provider gives you an option of using filtering services. If you do, it should store email messages in a junk folder you can access and review before they’re gone forever. If you don’t want to review them, simply empty the junk folder.
RSS enters the picture
Some online marketing experts are proclaiming the newsletter dead and all content should come through RSS feed readers. I’ve been using an RSS feed to make my content available for such readers before it hits the mainstream. I like this alternative, but I still like email newsletters coming to me.
Are you thinking I am promoting newsletters because I am in the newsletter biz? I wouldn’t do that. I believe in offering as many options as possible. My blogs and newsletters are available in RSS. Some people won’t read newsletters unless there is an RSS feed for them. Others don’t want to use RSS as they prefer content to “come to them” rather than having to open an RSS reader like FeedDemon or go to an online RSS reader like Bloglines.
I use both. The email newsletters I want to read regularly come to my email box. For those that aren’t as important, or that I want to access when I need information, I rely on their feeds and open my reader when I want to read them.
What about RSS readers that send content to your email box? NewsGator is one such application, and it’s excellent. I have so many feeds that when I run NewsGator, I get a ton of content in my email box in a folder set aside for feeds. The only way to get rid of the content is to delete the entries myself. That is the only pain.
RSS is not a replacement for email newsletters. It complements them. It provides readers with another option. Essentially, you’re getting the same coffee from the content, just using a different machine to get it. Some readers prefer one brand while others choose a different brand.
Applications that check your newsletter’s content for spam are useful.
However, they should focus only on the content and make recommendations for changes to decrease a newsletter’s chances of being filtered. Reviewing markup should not fall to such applications. There are other validators that do that job.
So what ARE the rules? There are no set rules with email newsletters. However, we have published “our” rules in this newsletter and in the book. Every newsletter we produce follows this book. The rules are subjective, but they’re available to everyone who wishes to read them.
Everyone has a strong opinion on spam, but few experts explain what it is or how it is measured. We’re just as confused. Our experience has taught us that a publisher with a solid opt-in list is at risk from an overzealous “spam fighting” industry. The lack of instructions and support from companies who offer tools, especially the free ones as many use them, cause more problems for the good guys who don’t spam their lists.
The shouting markup. We obtained a lower score by changing the upper case HTML mark up to lower case. However, trying to find this rule and an explanation is fruitless. All the guidelines indicate are the message and the evaluation. The evaluation is meaningless as the one we received stated, “BODY: HTML has very strong ‘shouting’ markup.” Nothing more.
Someone pointed me to the source code of the spam checker, which hints that shouting markup refers to refers to B, I, U, STRONG, EM, BIG, CENTER and H1-H6 tags. How is the typical newsletter publisher going to know this? Most of them are not HTML experts and would not be able to read spam checker’s source code.
Where are the standards? Where is there a manual that accompanies this popular spam checker and the implemented rules? It’s not a standard found in any RFC (request for comments), but an organization’s arbitrary ruling. We need guidelines and basic standards.
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