In today’s highly competitive retail space, with hundreds of businesses offering similar products and services, customer loyalty plays a crucial role in ensuring consumers choose your brand over others. Implementing a loyalty rewards program is a strong way to build long-term relationships with your customers, increasing their loyalty, retention and profitability. With AIQ, you’re free to design your own innovative, strategic program that speaks to the character of your brand, backed by reliable tools to power your experience.

Achieving Customer Loyalty With Essential Membership Offers 

A valuable membership program fosters a loyal customer base while continuing to drive sales. Where do you start?

1. Establishing a system of core rewards: The most important layer to a successful loyalty program is the rewards system it’s built on. An effective program should target customers during key moments in the retail journey, like the first time a customer joins your program.

Other examples include a bonus offer once a customer completes their first purchase to incentivize a return visit, rewards triggered when points & spend milestones are reached, a special birthday bonus and membership anniversary gifts. All touch points are designed to keep the customer connected to your brand by personalizing the retail experience through automated rewards.

2. Create a two-tier system: A two-tier loyalty program separates customers into two groups: (1) customers who signed up for your program and (2) customers who signed up and opted in to receive direct notifications from your brand.  

The reason? Having immediate access to notify your customers directly with unlocked rewards, targeted campaigns, and promotions gives you the platform to achieve optimal returns on your marketing & sales activations. 

Using AIQ Sign Up forms is an easy way to achieve this, and can be strategically displayed on a kiosk in-store, embedded into your website, or accessible via QR code to ensure the process is simple and generates opportunity for customers to opt-in post sign up.

3. Individualized treatment to drive retention: Maintaining loyalty becomes a top priority once a customer has joined your program. To do so, retailers must treat each shopper as an individual, not just a faceless number. This builds an emotional connection between the brand and customer, which is key in establishing long-term loyalty. 

Using AIQ’s Audience segmentation capabilities, you can reward customers based on their purchases, target them when established milestones are reached, and generate campaigns centered around customer buying behavior like favorite product, average basket size, and total loyalty points among many, to ensure you have the necessary tools to accomplish an individualized approach.

4. Exclusive experiences generate interest: Traditional loyalty programs based solely on transactions (earning points, redeeming rewards) are no longer enough as membership programs become increasingly popular. Customers compare membership programs, and it is vital yours has clear value and connects to your base. Strong loyalty initiatives focus on retention across all touchpoints with exclusivity incorporated throughout to ensure joining your loyalty program is beneficial. 

What does this look like? Examples include exclusive shopping rights to extended sales, early access to deals, and pop-up rewards available only to loyalty members, making customers feel special for being a part of your membership program.

A great way to accomplish this is incorporating AIQ’s Ongoing Campaigns throughout your shopper journey, automating the process to ensure it’s sustainable, and effectively reaching your base during valuable, key moments without any manual work required.

Download AIQ’s Comprehensive Strategy Guide on Loyalty Rewards, deep-diving into essential program structure & membership offers in retail

Best Practices For Building An Effective Customer LoyaltyProgram 

Here’s some best practices to follow as you begin strategizing with your team to develop your loyalty program: 

• Define your goals and objectives: Before launching a loyalty program, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success. For example, do you want to increase customer retention, spending, referrals, or data? How will you track and analyze your results? Defining these key metrics with AIQ’s Analytics tool ensures you will be able to effectively measure your successes, and see where improvement could be made. 
• Know your customers and their needs: You should design your loyalty program based on customer segments, behaviors, and their preferences using AIQ’s Audience Builder. With this, offer rewards that are relevant, valuable, and appealing to your customers, using AIQ’s Discount Builder to populate customer profiles with these available rewards, communicated to customers using our campaign tool to optimize visibility. 
• Make your loyalty rewards program simple and easy: Ensuring your loyalty program is easy to understand, join, and use helps staff better market your program to customers which in turn, helps customers see the value and want to sign up. Avoid complicated rules, restrictions, and expiration dates so the customer doesn’t feel confused or shorted by the program. Make rewards easy to earn, redeem, and access using AIQ App Wallets to bring this experience to life, with clear and consistent messaging + branding across all channels.
• Make your loyalty rewards program unique and differentiated: Your loyalty program needs to stand out from your competitors and offer something that they cannot. Using your brand identity, values, and story to create a distinctive loyalty program helps build that customer connection to ensure they prioritize your membership over others. Great ways to stand out are using gamification, like AIQ’s Prize Wheel, and personalization throughout the program, which can be accomplished through AIQ’s Personalization Macros and AIQ Audiences.
• Continuously Improve Your Program Structure & Membership Offers: A loyalty program should evolve over time to stay relevant and effective. Continuously seek feedback from customers and analyze program data to identify opportunities for enhancement. Update rewards, introduce new tiers or benefits, and keep the program fresh and exciting. Regularly communicate changes and improvements to your customers to keep them engaged and informed.

By incorporating these strategies, retailers can boost customer satisfaction, retention, spending, and referrals while collecting valuable data to refine their marketing approaches.

Download our 2024 Marketing & Loyalty Playbook for details on getting started on building your program on the AIQ platform today.

The Benefits: Investing Into Customer Loyalty Pays 

• Increased customer satisfaction: Customers feel valued and appreciated when they are rewarded for their loyalty. They are more likely to perceive and recommend the brand to others positively.
• Increased customer retention: Customers are more likely to stay loyal to a brand that offers them rewards and incentives. They are less likely to switch to competitors or look for alternatives.
• Increased customer spending: Customers are more likely to spend more when they are part of a loyalty rewards program. They are motivated to earn more rewards, redeem them, and take advantage of exclusive offers and discounts.
• Increased customer referrals: Customers are more likely to refer their friends and family to a brand that has a loyalty rewards program. They can share their rewards, invite others to join, and spread the word about the brand.
• Increased customer data: Customers are more willing to share their personal information, preferences, and feedback when participating in a loyalty rewards program. This allows the brand to collect valuable customer data and use it to personalize its marketing campaigns, products, and services.

Deep dive further into the benefits of loyalty programs by checking out our post: 10 Reasons Loyalty Programs Have Undeniable Power. 

In summary, building an effective loyalty program requires a strategic approach and a deep understanding of your customers. By setting clear goals, designing attractive rewards, simplifying the enrollment process, and continuously improving based on feedback and data, you can create a loyalty program that drives customer retention, increases sales, and fosters long-term brand loyalty. Invest in a well-crafted loyalty program and watch your business thrive as you build stronger connections with your valued customers.

Connect with the AIQ team now to learn more

Here’s some ideas you can try using AIQ’s tool suite:

Offer a special ‘Pot O’ Gold’ reward or bonus points for customers by activating a Wheel of Prizes on your App. This is a great way to utilize gamification to promote your retail native app and engage customers. 

To add rewards to your prize wheel, create the offer in AIQ’s Discount Builder and switch the prize wheel toggle to ‘Yes’.

Create a special discount for customers who wear green or show St. Patty’s Day spirit when they shop at your store or online. Using AIQ’s Discount Builder, you can easily push this promotion to all of your customer’s Rewards Wallets so they can prepare to take advantage of this offer. To maximize visibility, use AIQ Campaigns to directly notify all subscribed loyalty members of this promotion.

Create a themed reward tier or badge for customers who reach a certain amount of points or purchases during the month of March. For example, you can name it “Lucky Leprechaun” or “Pot of Gold” and offer exclusive benefits or prizes for those who achieve it. To implement, upload a custom badge to any audience directly in the AIQ Audience Builder. Customers will see this badge in their Rewards Wallet as soon as they meet the requirements.

Run a contest or giveaway for loyalty members, making it themed for St. Patrick’s Day. You can reward them with things like free product, store credit or an exciting surprise, easily managed using AIQ’s Random Lottery Campaign tool. 

Create a St Patrick’s Day-themed quiz or survey and invite your customers to participate. You can reward them with points, coupons, or freebies for completing it, using AIQ Surveys to collect the information.  You can also use this as an opportunity to get feedback or reviews from your customers.

Want to learn more about AIQ and how it can service your organization?

Our Campaign Builder has undergone a major upgrade, and we’re excited to share it with you. After a lot of hard work, the enhanced campaign builder is ready to make your campaign creation smoother and more enjoyable. In this blog post we will explore the improvements and innovations this upgrade brings and discuss how it can impact your campaign creation process.

A New Look and Feel

Our Campaign Builder has undergone a comprehensive user interface and user experience (UI/UX) redesign, offering a sleek and user-friendly interface that simplifies campaign creation. By incorporating your valuable feedback, we have implemented a step-by-step flow builder, ensuring a more intuitive process as you’re guided through each stage of campaign creation. Furthermore, our new builder stands out for its mix of easy-to-use design and strong capabilities. It’s designed to efficiently manage campaigns across various channels, whether you’re focusing on a single channel or organizing multiple. The builder supports Alpine IQ’s omni-channel approach, allowing you to power your campaigns across multiple channels in tandem. This includes Text messaging (SMS & MMS), Email, Voice Drop, Push Notifications, and Direct mail. We recognize that our marketing and messaging channels are strong individually, but their true strength lies in their combined effort to engage customers where it matters most.

Empowering Brands and Retailers: Exclusive Guides Available

In alignment with our platform’s upgrade, we introduce two specialized guides to further empower your campaign creation journey – the Brands Guide and the Retail Guide.

• Brands Guide: This guide encourages brands to leverage our sign-up forms and build out their own customer base, enhancing the connection with consistent supporters across retail accounts. It highlights the importance of campaign tags for organizing messaging, introduces the capability to save campaigns as ‘drafts,’ and details the inclusion of audience segmentation and exclusion within the campaign building process. Access the Brands Guide here.
• Retail Guide: For retailers, this guide outlines strategies for effective customer engagement and promotion management. It emphasizes the new feature of self-destructive texts for time-sensitive promotions, the importance of static products in campaigns, and the introduction of a campaign forecaster to estimate the impact by credit use and recipient reach. Access the Retail Guide here.

These guides are designed to maximize the benefits of our Campaign Builder’s new features, offering tailored strategies and tips for both brands and retailers.

Tags, Templates, and More

We’re introducing the ability to add up to five tags per campaign. This groundbreaking feature simplifies organization and tracking of your campaigns. Additionally, our template navigation has been refined, offering smoother sorting and ease of editing.

These features contribute to a more streamlined workflow, crucial in today’s fast-paced marketing environment. They ensure that each campaign you create is personalized and relevant to your target audience, thereby enabling more data-driven decisions and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Listening and Improving

We’ve incorporated your feedback into this redesign. Our aim is to offer an industry-standard experience that’s fine-tuned to your needs. From improved navigation in our Media Library to backend enhancements like setting audience permissions and campaign billing options, we’re making sure every aspect of the campaign builder works for you.

We highly value your input and would greatly appreciate it if you could share your experiences by leaving a review on G2. Your feedback not only supports us but also helps others understand the impact of our tool.

Designed for Everyone

Whether you’re a small business owner, part of a marketing team, or running an agency, this redesign is for you. We’ve tailored our messaging to ensure that no matter who you are or what your needs are, our campaign builder empowers you to achieve your marketing goals with ease.

Demand Sage states, “70% of online buyers prefer well-optimized websites for a smoother shopping experience, and mobile application conversion rates being 3x higher than mobile websites.” Our Campaign Builder is equipped to meet these demands, ensuring your campaigns resonate effectively with your audience.

We’ve tackled some of the biggest pain points in campaign creation. Say goodbye to the complexities of the past and hello to a smoother, more efficient process. Our autosave feature means you’ll never have to worry about losing your progress again. And with our enhanced reporting capabilities, you’ll gain valuable insights that help propel your marketing to new heights.

Ready for the Future

As we roll out this new update, we’re excited to see how it transforms your campaign creation experience. With a revamped interface, enhanced features for both brands and retailers, and a focus on user-centric improvements, we believe this is a big step forward in helping you craft effective, impactful campaigns with less effort and more creativity.

Stay tuned for more updates, and get ready to experience the future of campaign creation with our redesigned Campaign Builder! Schedule time with an Alpine IQ expert to learn more today. 

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Among these options, it goes without saying that email marketing is the most reliable channel for communication. And for many good reasons.

Email Marketing and Its Value to Businesses

According to several studies, email marketing has been proven time and time again that they’re the most reliable marketing channel for retailers and brands:

• There are approximately 4.3 billion people using emails every day, and the number is expected to rise in the coming years. 
• Among these users, 99% report that they check their inbox daily, which ultimately results in higher open rates than other channels.
• Email marketing offers a higher return on investment: for every $1 you spend, the average return is $45 for the retail and e-commerce industry.

Email marketing gives you the opportunity to interact directly with your customers, all while being able to promote your products and grow your business. 

3 Main Benefits of Email Marketing

With the right strategy, you can reap the many benefits of email marketing for your business. Among the top 3 benefits it offers are:

1. Reaching more qualified leads

It’s required by laws all over the world to get explicit consent from users to send them brand emails, it’s safe to surmise that people on your email list are considered more qualified leads than those who are not. 

Essentially, these people are already interested in your brand, so they’re more receptive to your marketing messages, ultimately making it easier to convert them.  

2. Widening your reach

One overlooked value of email marketing is that it’s very easy to share. When you send targeted, personalized emails that users can easily relate to, they’re more than likely to forward your email to their family and friends.

Compared to other channels, sharing/forwarding emails is much more straightforward. This leads to a wider reach, even to those you didn’t intend to target initially. 

3. Driving more revenue

The combined benefits of targeting more qualified leads, the higher open rates, and the higher engagement in emails all results in better conversions and higher revenue for brands.

You can leverage email marketing more when you segment your audiences and tailor each of your email campaigns depending on their unique needs and pain points, as well as where they are in the customer journey. 

4 Best Types of Emails to Catch Customers’ Attention

There are several types of emails that you can use for your campaigns, but the following are seen to be the most effective ones to catch customers’ attention.

1. Welcome emails

As soon as your target audience subscribes to your email list, it’s important to make them feel valued and welcomed. Sending welcome emails not only creates a positive perception about your brand, but also guides new subscribers on what to expect from you. 

For example, you can include in your welcome email the benefits that subscribers can enjoy — special discounts, first-to-know about new products, and if applicable, member-exclusive content.

2. Weekly/monthly newsletters

Regular newsletters enable subscribers to be in the know of the latest updates about your company. Newsletters are also a good opportunity to subtly remind your customers about your existence and how you can help them with their needs and pain points.

Aside from special offers, it’s best practice to send informative and relevant content through your newsletters to add more value to your campaigns. Some examples are short guides on how to use your products in everyday life, the latest research about the benefits of products, and more.

3. Discount/special offer emails

This is perhaps one of the best types of emails to drive more engagement and conversions to your website. Customers are naturally inclined to better deals that can save them money, and there’s no better way to communicate these offers than emails.

You can optimize your campaigns even further by always including a compelling call-to-action (CTA) that directly takes customers to your dedicated landing page. This is crucial so that the customer journey is simplified.

4. Abandoned cart emails

Abandoned carts are a reality for all retail and e-commerce brands. Several studies have found that the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is a whopping 70%. One of the ways to effectively lower that number is automated abandoned cart emails.

These types of emails become more effective if you add benefits to customers who decide to check out within a certain time — for example, offering them time-bound discounts for the items already in their cart.

Amplify Your Email Marketing Campaigns with Alpine IQ

Despite the existence of many other channels to communicate your marketing messages, email marketing remains to be the most reliable. Billions of people use and open their emails every day, email marketing is legally done with consent, and it offers better revenues and higher engagement.

This is why it’s important to use email marketing tools that are specially created for retailers and brands. Alpine IQ offers a suite of AI-powered marketing products that allows retailers and brands to optimize their campaigns all while staying compliant. 

We also offer an omni-channel messaging approach to build your audiences even better. Pair this with our waterfall delivery system to ensure the deliverability of all your messages and you have a winning marketing strategy for your dispensary.

If you want to know more, contact us at https://alpineiq.com/ and we can discuss more on how we can help you with your marketing campaigns.

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However, what if there is a way to reel them back in? How can you make your emails stand out from the competition and ultimately win back your customers? In this blog post, we will discuss what win-back campaigns are, why they are important, and strategies that can help you win-back your customers.

What is a win-back campaign?

A win-back campaign is sometimes known as a re-engagement or reactivation campaign. Essentially, it’s a series of emails that you send to dormant customers, with the aim of re-engaging them.

It’s also important to note that you’re trying to target dormant or lapsed customers, or those who have previously engaged with your brand but have become inactive. This is in accordance with anti-spam and data privacy laws, which stipulate that brands cannot continue sending emails to customers who have explicitly requested to opt out from future emails.

Some examples of lapsed customers include, but are not limited to, the following:

• They bought from your brand but haven’t come back to make subsequent purchases.
• They have visited and browsed through your website but haven’t made a purchase.
• They haven’t been opening or interacting with your emails for a while.

Why is winning customers back important?

Having one or two customers disengaging with your brand from time to time is harmless, but having multitudes who unsubscribe could hurt your brand in many ways:

• Lower open rates and higher bounce rates

Spam filters take these metrics into consideration when sifting through emails. Low open rates and high bounce rates could signal these filters to tag your email as spam, which could greatly hurt your future email campaigns. 

Additionally, if customers are not informed about what’s going on with your brand, such as special promos or discounts, this could negatively affect your bottom line, which leads us to the next point.

• Lower conversions and sales

If your email campaigns are falling on deaf ears, it’s natural for your conversion rates to fall off too. Subsequently, with lower conversions and sales, this could badly hurt your brand. 

With a well-strategized win-back email campaign, however, you can nudge dormant customers into the right direction and ultimately get them to engage with your brand more regularly.

Winning back customers is an important aspect of marketing and business in general, as 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers. It’s also more cost-effective to retain existing customers than attracting new ones. 

And most importantly, win-back campaigns are a good way to make customers know and feel that they are important to you, ultimately cultivating brand loyalty.

5 Strategies for a Successful Win-Back Email Campaign

1. Be mindful of the timing and frequency

Too many emails from a brand can be quite off-putting for customers, and more so for those who have lapsed in their interaction with you. This is why timing is important for win-back emails.

Ideally, your first win-back email should be sent between 1 to 3 months of inactivity. Subsequent follow-up emails can be sent after a week or 2. As a rule of thumb, win-back campaigns are set in 4 phases:

• Phase 1: The Reminder

This can be a simple hello to let the customer know that you’ve been thinking of them and that you noticed their absence. It serves as a subtle nudge to get their attention. 

• Phase 2: The Incentive

Phase 1 and Phase 2 can often be used in conjunction with each other. The key here is to come up with a valuable lead magnet that will prompt your customer to re-engage with your brand.

• Phase 3: The Last Chance

This phase leverages customers’ FOMO, or fear of missing out. This involves creating a time limit to your incentives to create a sense of urgency. However, be careful with this stage. Spam filters have a long list of trigger words, and this includes subject lines and email copies that create a false sense of urgency. A good balance of subtlety and urgency is essential.

• Phase 4: The Goodbye

Most campaigns settle with around 1 to 3 “incentive phase” emails before sending the “last chance” email. If all previous efforts have been in vain, it may be time to say your goodbye. In your “goodbye” email, it’s still important to give customers the option to check out your website or offer. This is also a good time to ask for feedback on how you can improve.

2. Craft compelling and concise subject lines

Your subject lines are crucial in determining the chances of customers actually opening and reading your emails. A key strategy is to use personalization. It’s not just about addressing customers by their names — it’s also about providing them content that’s relevant and valuable to their unique needs. 

Another important consideration is to craft your subject lines professionally: avoid trigger words, make sure it’s neatly formatted (i.e., avoid multiple punctuations), and keep it short and concise to avoid getting them trunctuated. In a study, subject lines that are less than 16 characters long have higher open rates.

3. Keep email copies lighthearted with clear calls-to-action

People don’t want to feel pressured into making a purchase, especially those who are not actively seeking your brand and your products/services. An important element of a successful win-back email is to keep it subtle and lighthearted. 

A good balance of wit and humor also does the trick, but be sure that your tone of voice and message are consistent with your branding.

Some examples of email copy lead-ins you can use are:

• We haven’t seen you in a while. Is it us?
• We miss you. Here’s a little gift to welcome you home.
• Now is a great time to come back to us!

4. Offer attractive incentives

Incentives can be anything, from special discounts, a free trial, a reactivation offer, or whatever makes the most sense to your business. The aim here is to offer something of value that will entice customers to go back to you. 

Knowing their purchasing history or product browsing history can give you a clue as to what they would appreciate best. It’s also important to consider that dormant customers may be at different stages of the sales funnel, so be sure to vary your incentives by segmenting your audiences.

5. Evaluate your campaigns regularly

This part is often overlooked but is quite essential in determining the effectiveness of your win-back campaign. Evaluating can also help you gauge whether it’s time to say goodbye to your customer who remains unresponsive to your efforts.

Some things you can do at this stage, among many other things, are the following:

• Segmenting your audiences and adjusting your metrics in accordance to this
• A/B testing your subject lines or email copy
• Asking for customer feedback
• Cleaning up your email list after evaluation

Win-back email campaigns are essential in cultivating brand loyalty and customer retention. With the right strategy, you can reel in lapsed customers and get them to re-engage with you. A lot of factors come into play in dictating the success of your win-back campaign, but it essentially comes down to knowing your customers well.

Having the right tools to analyze your customers and sending out well-timed email campaigns are also crucial. At Alpine IQ, we have a suite of AI-powered marketing tools that can help you make the most of your marketing efforts. Contact us to learn more!

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Here are key things you need to know about iOS 15 and how you can prepare your email campaigns the update that is set to be released on September 20th.

What is happening to email with the iOS 15 update?

Apple will be introducing Mail Privacy Protection with the iOS 15 update, which will make it more difficult for marketers to get insight into Apple users’ email behaviors. With iOS 15, users can now:

• Disable open tracking – Marketers will no longer see whether an iOS 15 user has opened their emails.
• Hide IP addresses – Marketers will no longer be able to implement IP-based segmentation in their email campaigns.
• Hide email addresses – Users can opt to use randomly-generated email addresses for signups.

When is this happening?

The update is expected to be released on September 20, 2021.

What You Can Do Before and After the iOS 15 Update 

A/B testing subject lines

Get your email campaigns right by starting with a well-strategized and compelling subject line. For every campaign, create variations of your email subject line and do A/B testing. As open tracking will no longer be relevant to Apple users with iOS 15, you can measure the effectiveness by their click-throughs.

Clean your lists

Weed out inactive contacts and invalid email addresses from your list as early as now. It’s also considered best practice to regularly evaluate your lists to avoid high bounce rates, which could affect your overall deliverability.

Back up your channels

Start utilizing Waterfall to use backup channels for your marketing campaigns. With our l technology, you can set up preferred channels for your campaigns based on what works best for your customers. You can also protect your campaigns even further by using automatic backup delivery through Waterfall to ensure that your messages are actually delivered. 

How will I know my audience is engaged going forward?

You can gauge the performance of your email campaigns by the number of clicks in your call-to-action (CTA), as well as unsubscriptions and conversions.

We will discuss more on this in the next section.

What Metrics Matter Now

CTR

The click-through rate (CTR) is the most common metric in determining the effectiveness of your email campaign. It actually provides far more insight than email open rates, because you will know how your contacts are engaging with your content. 

Top Tip: Be sure that your email has actionable content (a CTA) so that your readers will have a clear guide on what to do next. 

Unsubscribes

While unsubscriptions can be a negative metric, they can still be used as a good baseline for creating your email list growth strategy. 

It can also help in cleaning up your email lists and improve the quality of email recipients. This is more preferable than continually sending emails to uninterested parties and increasing the likelihood of being reported as spam.

Top Tip: Include a feedback option on your opt-out landing page. This gives you a prime opportunity to learn what worked, what doesn’t, and what you can do to improve your campaigns.

Conversions

On a similar note to click-throughs, conversion rates give you insight into how customers complete specific actions through your emails. Whether it’s completing a sale, signing up for a free trial, or making an inquiry, conversions tell you the progress users make from your email campaigns.

Top Tip: Provide something of value in your CTA so that email recipients are more compelled to take action, increasing your conversions in the process.

Final Notes

It’s important to note that since the update will only apply to Apple-related products, users who use other email apps (e.g., Gmail or Microsoft Outlook) on an iOS 15, iPadOS 15, or macOS Monterey device are not affected for now—that is, marketers can still gauge email open rates.

However, it’s safe to anticipate that other email providers will likely follow Apple’s lead in protecting email users’ privacy in the future. It will be practical for marketers utilizing email marketing to take precautions as described in this article as early as now. 

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However, email marketing still has to deal with avoiding spam filters. According to Statista, spam emails account for nearly half (47.3%) of email traffic globally—and your carefully crafted email marketing campaign could be one of them.

How do you avoid email spam filters? In what ways could your email be considered spam?

What Is spam and how is it detected?

Spam, in the context of marketing, is unsolicited messages that are sent to recipients in bulk. As such, spam emails are also known as Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE).

Spam messages are detected by spam filters. These filters work by sifting each email and putting them up against a list of criteria to determine whether it’s spam or not. If it’s considered spam, it will go straight to your Spam or Junk folder. 

Another way spam messages are discovered are through email firewalls. They function the same way as spam filters, but the main difference is that if your email is flagged as spam and reported as such several times, your IP address and domain name will be communicated with other firewalls, blocking all incoming emails from you.

Spam Laws

Unintentionally creating and sending spam-like email marketing campaigns can be damaging to your reputation. Additionally, if your organization does not comply with spam laws, you could also face serious penalties, including civil and criminal charges.

Each country has different laws and policies in place for commercial emails; for example, the United States has CAN-SPAM and Canada has CASL. Here are the things you need to know about these two laws:

1. CAN-SPAM

CAN-SPAM is the short name for the United States’ Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003, which is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Act aims to protect consumers from any unsolicited business emails, regardless if they were sent in bulk or not. 

Additionally, not all B2B or B2C emails are considered part of the coverage of CAN-SPAM. Emails that are transactional in nature are exempted—for example, following up an ongoing transaction. For emails that have both commercial and transactional content, the primary purpose of the email will be the deciding factor

Penalties

CAN-SPAM has heavy penalties for non-compliance, amounting to $43,792 for each separate email in violation. And if there is more than one organization involved, all of them can be held responsible. 

Additional fines might also be incurred if aggravated violations are also present in the case, as well as criminal penalties and imprisonment. Among these violations are any fraudulent ways to digitally access or use the information for commercial gain.

How to avoid violating CAN-SPAM Laws:

The FTC specified 7 main requirements for commercial emails:

1. Keep your header information accurate: This applies to the information in your “From,” “To,” and “Reply to” fields, as well as the domain name and email address.
2. Be honest with your subject lines: It must clearly and concisely describe the contents of your email.
3. Be honest that the message is an ad: You must also be honest that your message is commercial in nature. It can be as simple as including a fine print that says, “This advertisement is brought to you by XYZ Corp.”
4. Disclose your business location: You must include a valid, current, and accurate physical address of your business. PO boxes can also be used.
5. Must include an opt-out notice: Provide a conspicuous notice in the email, clearly stating how recipients can opt-out of any future emails at any time. Opting out must also be easy and straightforward to do—for example, requiring only one or two clicks to do so.
6. Honor opt-out requests within 10 business days: These requests must be promptly and unconditionally honored.
7. Be sure that third-party email marketing tools/solutions you use are compliant: It is your legal responsibility to check and ensure that all aspects of CAN-SPAM are being followed.  

2. CASL (Canada)

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) regulates and outlines safe practices in email marketing to protect both businesses and individuals from spam and other digital threats. 

CASL is reinforced by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and it applies to commercial messages sent by Canadian and global organizations to Canadian recipients. As opposed to CAN-SPAM, CASL is a more recent law, created in 2014, and is considered as one of the toughest yet most effective laws concerning spam. What sets it apart from other laws is its stringent requirement for people to opt-in—that is, you must have consent from recipients before you can send commercial emails to them.

Penalties

Penalties under CASL are quite severe, consisting of fines up to $1 million for individual violators and up to a staggering $10 million for corporations. This amount applies to each violation. 

In addition to the heavy fines, victims can sue for damages if actual harm or loss after receiving the spam message is proven. Organizations are also subject to vicarious liability for any wrongful acts done by the company itself, its employees, or any third parties they work with in relation to email marketing.

How to avoid violating CASL Laws:

To summarize, CASL requires organizations sending commercial messages the following:

1. Clear identifying information about their business is provided in the message, including the company name, current physical address, and contact information.
2. Express and implied consent are knowingly given by the customers before organizations can send them commercial messages. Records of the consent must also be kept (i.e., date, location, and manner).
   1. Express consent refers to recipients saying yes to email opt-ins. It also includes any verbal or written consent to receive emails from the company. There is no expiration for this type of consent but it can be revoked by the recipient at any time.
   2. Implied consent refers to certain activities with the customer that imply being in agreement with the company to receive emails. CASL stipulates that the validity for implied consent for a purchase is 2 years; consent for an inquiry, 6 months. Once the consent expires, the contact information of the recipient must be removed from the mailing list.
3. All messages must have a clear and straightforward unsubscribe option. All opt-out requests must also be honored within 10 business days.

Spam filters and how to avoid them 

While every spam filter, email firewall, and spam law are different from one another, there are certain widely accepted best practices in sending commercial emails. Here are a few tips on how to avoid having your email flagged by spam filters: 

1. Boost IP Address Reputation and Sender Score

The reputation of your IP address is one of the factors in determining whether your email is safe or not. Email providers use your Sender Score (also known as IP reputation, IP score, or email sender reputation) to gauge if your email should be filtered to the spam folder or sent to your inbox.

If your IP address is new, consider IP Warming:

Mailbox providers view emails from a new IP address as suspicious until they establish a positive sending reputation, which can take between 4-8 weeks. Warming could take longer if email providers perceive the email as “unwanted” by the recipient. This is why Alpine IQ recommends starting with your best-performing messages or campaigns to your highest engaged audience. The goal during the warm-up process is to send to your subscribers who are least likely to bounce or complain. During your IP warm-up, the more consistent you are with volume, frequency, complaint, and bounce levels, the faster you will establish a positive sending reputation.

IP Warm-up Plan:

• Weeks 1 & 2:
  Send frequently to your most active subscribers – those who have opened/clicked, or opted-in within the past 30 days
• Weeks 3 & 4:
  Expand to subscribers who have opened/clicked, or opted-in within the past 60 days
• Weeks 5 & 6:
  Expand to subscribers who have opened/clicked, or opted-in within the past 90 days

A few other factors that could also affect your Sender Score are the following:

• Having a high hard bounce rate, which refers to failed email deliveries, such as the recipient’s email address being invalid or incorrectly spelled.
  Pro Tip: To avoid hard bounces, make sure you are cleaning your lists often. There are email verify softwares availble that can bulk verify.
• Using purchased email lists and thus giving you low recipient engagement and more spam complaints.
• Sending poor-quality content.

2. Ensure all metadata is accurate

Metadata in emails is the information in the Date, From, To, and Subject of your email.

Spam filters are more likely to flag your email if it’s addressed to your recipient’s email address and not their name. Alpine IQ recommends that you use our macros to personalize the “To:” field of your email. Also, spam filters will check if your recipients already know you. This is why it is important to use a verified domain to send your messages.

Having misleading metadata or thumbnails in your email could lead to your message being filtered as spam. Additionally, any misleading information that’s intended to trick users into believing the content to be something else is against both CAN-SPAM and CASL laws.

3. Remove excess code

The code behind the email templates you use must be kept simple and clean. Having a messy code, including broken or incomplete tags, could prompt spam filters to flag your email. 

4. Tailor your content to boost engagement

We briefly mentioned earlier that recipient engagement is a factor in determining Sender Score. A practical tactic to boost engagement is to segment your subscribers and then tailor your email content to their interests, needs, and preferences. In a study, it has been found that 72% of consumers prefer to engage with personalized messages over generic ones.

5. Provide quality email content 

The quality of the content constitutes the majority of the factors in determining whether an email is spam. Here are some tips to avoid being flagged by spam filters:

• URLs: Use descriptive text instead of naked URLs as the link text. Avoid using URL shorteners as well. 
• Links: Make sure all links included in your email are working properly.
• Images and text: Balance the ratio of images to text and links to texts. Be also sure that images are mobile-responsive and are optimized for web viewing.
• Grammar and spelling: Emails with poor grammar and spelling errors could make it appear unprofessional, and recipients may likely report your email as spam.
• Trigger words: Avoid spam trigger words and, as mentioned earlier, make sure that your subject lines are accurate and honest. There’s an exhaustive list of trigger words (nearly a thousand!), but here are a few to give you an idea:
  • Calls to action that denote a sense of urgency: Act now / hurry / open this
  • Competitions: Congratulations / you’re a winner!
  • E-commerce: Order today / wants credit card
  • Financial: Double your income / earn extra cash
  • Health: Lose weight / life insurance / Viagra
  • Marketing: Dear friend / 100% free / free sample
  • Special offers: For you / instant access
  • Sales: For only (amount) / join millions / save big

6. Properly format your email 

Another factor is the formatting of your email. An unprofessionally formatted email does not only make your content look spammy, but it also affects your bounce rate and engagement. Avoid the following formatting mistakes as much as possible:

• Using all caps
• Using multiple punctuations (e.g., “Hello!!!!” or “What do you think?!?”)
• Using too many colors
• Using too many different font styles and/or font sizes

Professionally Craft Your Email Marketing Campaigns

A lot of effort goes into email marketing campaigns, and being mindful of whether you’re compliant with spam laws is just one of its many facets. One way to streamline your process is to work with professional marketing solutions providers like Alpine IQ. 

All our solutions are backed by stringent security measures to make sure that your data and that of your clients’ are safe and secure. Our email marketing service, in particular, is equipped with the best tools to efficiently automate your email campaigns for you. We also ensure that every email you send is compliant with spam and data security laws. 

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Social media channels come and go but email will live on after we are gone. If your business hasn’t allocated a marketing budget to email marketing, your business is missing out on significant growth opportunities. Unlike SMS, email marketing has significant advantages. 

As our team of engineers and experts collaborated with our partners to design and develop our latest email marketing technology, we put together a guide on email marketing best practices for both beginners and email marketing pros. If you’re not sure where to start or are interested in brushing up on what you already know, this guide is for you. If your business is an online highly regulated market, email marketing can be used to increase customer trust and revenue. 

Email marketing is older than social media marketing. While consumers may choose which social media platforms suit their lifestyle, email is used by virtually everyone. It’s true. Email is needed to log into social media platforms, book airline reservations, and so much more. With email playing a crucial role in the lives of consumers, it’s important to define how crucial your business is to your contacts. 

When customers and patients visit your business, it’s easy to understand each visitor has different needs. The same can be said for email. While it is not realistic to manually write individual emails to thousands of customers, there are a few strategies your team can leverage to ensure customers read your emails and find value in what your company has to offer. 

To improve marketing with email, read on. 

Most Effective Email Messages  

First Timer Email 

When a new customer leaves your store, it is imperative to use email marketing to extend their experience. Why? An experience doesn’t end when a customer leaves the store. As customers use products purchased from your store, your business is top of mind. Use Alpine IQ’s email marketing software to welcome new customers into your brand with high-value creative such as branded videos and stunning photography. 

New Inventory Email 

What could be more exciting than being the first to try a new product on the market? Nothing. That’s what. When new products are acquired, compose an email to customers. Tell them where the product comes from, what the benefits of the product are and why they should stop in the shop to get a closer look. 

Promotional Email 

If your business has excess stock of a particular product, send a promotional email. If your business has data that proves a specific product has the highest profit margins, send a promotional email. Yes. There is always a good reason to send a promotional email. 

Event Email 

If foot traffic in your business is down, plan an event. Partner with a local business to offer an incentive for customers who arrive between certain times.

Newsletter Email 

Most newsletters suck. Your business’ newsletter doesn’t have to. Encourage your internal team to create content for your company’s newsletter. Share customer success stories. Build an email list of customers who have only shopped with you once or twice. Send your newsletter to that list too and see what your open rates are. 

Customer Survey 

Your customers are the lifeline of your business. Transform customer complaints and praise into business opportunities by using your email marketing software to send out customer surveys. Business stakeholders can also have one-to-one relationships with customers. 

Corporate Social Responsibility

If your business is up to all good, it’s important to let your customers know. Use your email marketing software to build community. 

Best Practices 

Know Your Audience 

Before sending an email to a customer or a list of customers, identify the needs of the person you’re sending an email to. If you’ve ever received an email that is anything less than helpful, you’ll understand why it’s important to know who your audience is and what your email can do for them. Prioritize email messaging under customer needs. 

Segment Your Audience 

Don’t worry. Knowing your audience is easier when you have the ability to segment them. We give you the power to identify and group customers based on many factors. After you’ve segmented audiences, you’re ready to deliver customer-centric messaging that moves your business forward. 

Follow The Law 

Before you segment audiences and send messages, your business needs to know what’s allowed and what could get your business in trouble. For the most up-to-date information on email law, read FTC’s compliance guide. 

Avoid Becoming Spam 

Spam filters are designed to protect customers from malevolent senders but they aren’t perfect. To ensure your emails don’t land in your customers’ spam folders, ask your customers to check their spam folders if they don’t receive your business’ emails. You should also ask customers who have received your email to save the businesses email address in their contacts folder; this will ensure emails are received. 

Subject Line 

Your subject line is the first line of messaging that will either compel a contact to open your email or ignore it. To ensure emails are open, craft enticing subject lines that evoke curiosity.

Example:

Good:
New Lemon Cookie In Stock 

Better: 

GSC or Lemon Cookie? Learn the difference 

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