ESP’s email confirmation’s

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be taking a look at some of the ESP’s and their email marketing programs to see if they are practicing what they preach in terms of abiding by best practices.

Today’s topic is whether or not the ESPs or email vendors are abiding by what would commonly be referred to as best practices centered around trying to confirm my subscription.

I signed up for many ESP’s emails in the last day and some sent me a subscription confirmation email to confirm my opt in to their communications. Great first step..until you open up the “text based” email that they send. First up is bluehornet, a well know email vendor in the space. Their subscription confirmation looks like this:

They managed to personalize it, but sent it to me in plain text. There was no pre-header text and no physical address and no link to their privacy policy. They did manage to give me a link to check how I was added, but over not a really compelling or appealing way for me to be introduced to your company. After confirming my email…guess what…24 hours later..no welcome..no nothing. Seems that Bluehornet needs to think about how they want to engage me as an email professional.

Up next is mailermailer another premier player in the email space. I get another text based subscription confirmation, a physical address and no link to the privacy policy. I am instructed 8 ways to Sunday how to copy and paste a link into my email, but nothing of real substance. Here is the subscription look below:

After confirming my subscription I get a welcome email from mailermailer, which is great to see but guess what…you guessed it, another text based email. This time they tell me what I am going to get, how often I am going to get it, but never manage to put any physical address and offer up no way to contact them other than sending me back to their site. Again, this is not a great way to start a dialogue, especially since I could be a hot prospect wanting to sign up for their newsletter, just to get a gauge on their email practices.

Last up is eRoi. As some of you know eRoi is a great company and have a very prominent standing in the email community. When I signed up on their site, I got an email subscription confirmation which was in HTML and is below. It is clear, concise and to the point and branded eRoi which is nice. They have their physical address, but really should have a link to their privacy policy in it. I was able to click and confirm my subscription, but noticed that I have not received my welcome email yet. My only gripe with their email was the link at the bottom about the mobile reader did not work, but it appears to have been corrected now..but wonder how long it was a broken link for.

1 out of 3 profiled here in this post sent me my subscription confirmation in HTML and had it distinctly branded by their company. I dig the fact that all 3 had me confirm my opt in to their newsletter but wonder if that is really necessary given the current debate over confirmed/double opt in for email that has raged lately in email circles.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not meant to bash companies and their practices..they are simply to point out to folks that sometimes we need to take a long hard look at the business that put out best practices and guidelines on how to do email and really not do it themselves. Hopefully folks at these companies will see this post and will want to change the way they do things going forward. As a professional email marketer for over 8 years on the client side, I am particularly interested in seeing all companies succeed in this space and want to ensure that if vendors want respect in the space by us client side folks that they need to step up and practice what they preach.

Tomorrow we are going to look at a few of the really great welcome emails that I received while signing up and give props to them as they did make me feel a part of their conversation.

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email, email marketing, eRoi, mailermailer, blue hornet, email service providers, ESP, email best practices, email practices, email strategy, welcome email, email subscriptions, HTML, pre-header text