This year is the 25^th anniversary of a very significant event for me, an event that has led directly to me being here today.

In 1986, as a young direct marketer working for home shopping giant GUS, I was lucky enough to attend the Montreux Symposium, on the Lake Geneva shoreline (as Deep Purple put it).  At the time, the week-long Symposium was the biggest event in Europe for the direct marketing industry, and attracted some major speakers.  But for me, the single most significant session, one that profoundly affected my approach to direct marketing, was a ground-breaking live demonstration and seminar by Professor Siegfried Vogele, founder of the Institute of Direct Marketing in Munich that is now owned by Deutsche Post.

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We love our lunchtime training sessions here at Red C. Every few weeks, a feast of sandwiches, cakes and pastries is laid out in the boardroom and we’re invited to gorge ourselves, whilst picking up new skills and knowledge from guest speakers or colleagues.

It was at one such day earlier this month that our Managing Director, Adrian Rowe, shared a presentation that he’d previously been invited to give at a conference in Amsterdam. It was an online masterclass, detailing some of the key learnings Red C have picked up during our time creating and implementing web strategy for our clients.

Part of this presentation included 7 ‘killer’ email tips Red C have found to be very effective. I thought it would be a good idea to share them with you here.

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He may be a Spuds Spurs fan, but Red C Account Director Steve White is not completely useless. He knows an awful lot about Email Marketing for one thing. So when he gave me a 700-page document from MarketingSherpa called Best Practices in Email Marketing I thought to myself, this is probably worth reading.*

MarketingSherpa is a research firm that specializes in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not.) Their goal: to give marketers of the world the stats, inspiration, and instructions to improve their email marketing results.

According to their Research Manager Stefan Tornquist this guide was written “to provide one-stop guidance on building a ‘best in class’ email program, whether you’re managing an enterprise level marketing department or a small business.”

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Here’s a scary fact for you.  20% of legitimate email never actually reaches its intended destination; the inbox.  Can you imagine if the Royal Mail only delivered 80% of its mail?   Mmmm actually, let’s not go there!  Anyway, you understand the point I’m attempting to make.  Deliverability is a big issue.

The culprits for this statistic have to be the ISPs, right?  Wrong!  Well, they are partly to blame as they are certainly making things harder for legitimate email marketers like you and I.  However, when 90% of all email is spam then they really do have quite a job on their hands if they want to keep one step ahead of the spammers. I’m afraid if there is any doubt as to the legitimacy of your email messages then you are going to be spammed.  You can’t blame them can you?  When 9 out of 10 emails are spam then they’re bound to lean on the side of caution.

But the real culprit for this frightening statistic is you and I.  We are to blame.   It’s our sending practices that determine whether our email message reaches their intended destinations.  However, with blame comes responsibility and with responsibility comes the ability to change and improve.  We have the power to control our deliverability rates.

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