Over the years I’ve heard just about every excuse as to why a particular client can’t set expectations well. One of the most common is that no one does it. My experience this weekend at a PetSmart indicates otherwise.

As I was checking out I showed my loyalty card to the cashier. He ran it through the machine and then started talking about the program.

Cashier: Did you give us your email address when you signed up for the program?

Me: I’m not sure, probably not. I get a lot of email already.

Cashier: Well, if you do give us an email address associated with the card every purchase will trigger coupons sent to your email address. These aren’t random, they’re based on your purchase. So if you purchase cat stuff we won’t send you coupons for horse supplies.

I have to admit, I was impressed. PetSmart has email address processes that I recommend to clients on a regular basis. No, they’re not a client so I can’t directly take credit. But whoever runs their email program knows recipients are an important part of email delivery. They’re investing time and training into making sure their floor staff communicate what the email address will be used for, what the emails will offer and how often they’ll arrive.

It’s certainly possible PetSmart has the occasional email delivery problem despite this, but I expect they’re as close to 100% inbox delivery as anyone else out there.

If you meet me on the street and ask me what my job is I’ll tell you that I work with companies who send bulk email to make sure that they’re not sending spam. I do this by educating clients into good practices and teaching them how to send mail people want to receive. What this statement doesn’t tell people is that usually clients find me because they have been suspended by their ISP for spamming or blocked by some receiver.

Clients who find me because they can’t send mail usually hire me to solve their immediate problem. And I do give the the best advice I can to resolve their problem. But fixing today’s problem isn’t enough, you also need to fix the processes that caused the problem. To me, a critical part of my job is to set clients up for long term success by creating procedures that will get them delisted and keep them from being relisted in the future.

Sometimes, though, I have those moments Al is talking about. When clients don’t actually want to fix their problems, they just want to argue. They want to argue about the definition of spam. They want to argue about permission. They want to argue about how awful their ISPs are for suspending their account. They want to argue about CAN SPAM. They want to argue about free speech. They are angry and they want to fight.

My role is to listen to them, then guide them down a constructive path. I do turn out to be the sounding board for a lot of customers, sometimes they just need to know someone is listening to them. Once they get it all out we can move on into solving the problem.

But, boy, are there the occasional conversations where I just want to scream, “JUST STOP SPAMMING!”

This question is asked over and over again and there is no one answer. There are a number of reasons and all of them interact with one another.

What factors have recipients mentioned?

• High frequency – mail that is too frequent can annoy recipients and they’ll hit this is spam
• Low frequency – mail that is too infrequent may be unfamiliar and unexpected and recipients will report the mail as spam
• Content – mail that has content that recipients don’t like can annoy recipients into reporting spam
• Mailing after recipient has unsubscribed – while CAN SPAM provides for 10 days to process an unsubscribe request, recipients often have much shorter expectations
• Unrequested mail – do you really have permission from the recipient? Do they want and expect your email?
• Mistake – sometimes recipients select large portions of their mail box and report all the mail as spam. Real mail can get caught in the selection and reported as spam.

The only one of these issues that is outside the control of the sender is the mistaken complaint. All the others are things that senders can affect.

Here at Word to the Wise, I often work with clients who are seeing delivery problems related to high complaint rates and the resultant poor reputation. I work with these kinds of clients to sift through their data to maintain as many good email addresses as possible. At the same time, in order to improve reputation the number of unengaged recpients needs to be as low as possible.  Working closely with clients I help them design and implement a strategy for list hygiene to improve reputation, response and return.

We start with a series of questions about the complaints. If you don’t know what is causing the complaints, then you can’t resolve the underlying problem. Some questions to consider.

• Is this unusual complaint behaviour? If so, what changed recently?
  • Have we added new addresses from a new source?
  • Have we resolved a problem resulting in more emails in the inbox?
  • Did we change our frequency?
  • Did we mail new or unique content?
• Are complaint rates consistently high?
  • How are we treating our recipients?
  • Are we sending mail they expect and anticipate?
  • Are we actually sending opt-in mail?
  • Are we setting expectations appropriately during the opt-in process?

Once you have an idea of why the complaints are happening, you can address the systemic problems.

Remember, it is extremely rare that a high complaint rate is the only problem with a mailing program. Usually, I find there are other list performance problems including poor open rates, poor click through rates, all evidence of low recipient engagement.

It can be a challenge to fix a mailing program with high complaints and low recipient engagement. The process takes longer than many managers like. However, the only real options are to spend so much time dealing with delivery and reputation problems that there are no strategic decisions being made or step back and make the strategic plans that create a sustainable email marketing program with few delivery problems.

The result is similar, when told their idea will hurt their delivery they fight tooth and nail. On good days they will argue and decide to listen. On bad days they go off and do what they were warned not to do.

It can be horribly frustrating for all of us in the delivery field. We actually want customers’ mail to succeed. We tell customers no, not because we want to ruin their day or their business or their ideas, but because we want to help their business. Our job is to make their email work, and sometimes that means saying no.

Next time your delivery consultant, or your ESP delivery expert, tells you that an idea may cause delivery problems, give them some credit for their experience and expertise. We really do have your best interests at heart and really do want your email to succeed.