GRAPHICMAIL

The turn of the calendar is a good time to toss that tired old email template or rework it to begin the new year with a refreshed look for your communications. If you start 2012 by giving your emails a good pruning this January, your business will reap the rewards.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just a few tweaks to your email template can go a long way toward making sure your customers and prospects pay more attention to your messages.

1) Polish Your Design

Is your email newsletter professional and inviting? It’s time to put a critical eye on it. Just ask yourself: Is it easy for readers to scan the newsletter to find what they want? Do your newsletter colors and fonts match your website? Are you using fonts that are easy to read and that will display in any email client? Does your email newsletter contain calls to action with functional links that redirect to your website?

If not, then it might be time for an overhaul. Examine your template and, using these criteria, consider how you can improve on its looks.

2) Try a Different Layout

One of the easiest ways to refresh your template is to try a different layout. You might want to consider cutting back on elements before you think about adding more, as simpler layouts give you the opportunity to focus on a single, compelling message.

On the other hand, you can also try a multi-column layout if you do have a lot of information to fill your newsletter with and want to organize it into more easily readable blocks. But remember — single-column layouts have the best readability on mobile devices.

3) Revitalize Your Content

The new year is a great time to rethink your writing and to start focusing on what your customers want to read more about. If you’re not sure how to do this, but really want to work to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry, conduct surveys asking readers what they want to learn more about in future issues, or provide a list of potential topics from which they can choose.

You can also invite subscribers to contribute content (such as testimonials or success stories), submit questions about your business, or ask industry experts for permission to feature some of their content in your newsletters.

4) Change the Scenery

Images are a powerful way to grab your readers’ attention, but not if they’ve been seen over and over and over again. One of the most important things you can do to give your email template a fresh look is to opt for new pictures. Would different photos or graphics make your newsletter more visually appealing? Absolutely!

As long as you keep your messages’ branding consistent with your website and other marketing materials, you can freely experiment with adding new images or replacing old ones. If you like to create your own graphics, take the time to put together a library of new images in January that you can draw from throughout the year. If you’re using photographs from an online stock, keep an eye out for new uploads or search for new resources.

ADOTAS

Below, you’ll find the full and unabridged case study:

How Maggiano’s Little Italy Is Turning Data Into Engagement

A name and an email address… times millions.

Maggiano’s Little Italy started collecting this information about guests back when email loyalty programs were in their infancy. Back when the theory was that you didn’t ask people for more than their name and email or you’d never get them to enroll. Back when response to email marketing was measured in double digits.

Over the intervening years Maggiano’s committed to developing Direct Marketing as their primary channel for sales lift and new guest acquisition. They used multiple sources of data, targeting analytics, many rounds of targeted direct mail, and careful analysis of results to develop a vigorous and successful feeder program. And yet, the Maggiano’s/Marketing Informatics team knew more about prospective customers than we did about the Loyalty Guests.

It was time to change that, and RapLeaf data was the trigger.

The Way Forward

Maggiano’s decided to morph their email list into a marketing database and evolve their CRM communication from couponing to engagement. That would be a multi-step process:

1) APPEND DATA WITH RAPLEAF DEMOGRAPHIC AND PSYCHOGRAPHIC ENHANCEMENTS. The problem we’d faced in appending this data before was that we needed postal addresses for the match back to the enhancements and only a very small percentage of the file had postal addresses. That’s a real problem today with email loyalty clubs and traditional enhancement sources.

To solve this problem we turned from those traditional sources to RapLeaf. RapLeaf has the capability of appending enhancements using email addresses as the matching link rather than postal address. This is a major evolution in the information industry. And while some other providers have similar capability, RapLeaf was the most comprehensive source. Plus, the mechanics of the append process were very simple and their customer service was spectacular.

So we appended the following RapLeaf data bundles to the Maggiano’s email data: Basic, Premium, Professional, Interests. To increase overall match rate, and to use in our direct mail targeting, we also appended physical address. Matches came in at around 50% of the file – a quantity that assured statistical significance for the modeling.

2) USE STATISTICAL MODELING TO IDENTIFY SIGNIFICANT GROUPS OF CUSTOMERS WHO SHARE SIMILAR TRAITS. For two years we’d been developing and using customer profiles for Maggiano’s direct mail targeting. These profiles were descriptions of “average” customers at both the national and individual restaurant location levels. And while these are very valuable for acquisition programs, analytics for CRM must be more granular. “Average customer” is not granular enough. For this task we now had to identify specific characteristics of the people who comprise the most significant customer groups or clusters.

To do that we turned to statistics. Beginning with simple summary descriptives, we moved through extensive cross-tabulations and significance trees to explore the data and understand what was there. We finished off with a cluster modeling technique, run separately for men and women. Here’s a chart that shows how the female population naturally grouped:

To translate, 69.4% of all records were “included,” i.e. they clustered statistically into 4 significant groups. 30.6% of all the records were “Excluded Cases” because they fell outside the 4 significant groups. That means that 7 out of 10 of Maggiano’s customers fell into 1 of 4 statistically related groups. But how did we move from this information to actionable intelligence?

3) CONVERT THE STATISTICAL CLUSTERS INTO FLESH AND BLOOD DESCRIPTIONS.

Here’s where the real fun began. Once we could classify each of the records into a cluster (or flag it as not-in-a-cluster), then we could explore each of the clusters. Here’s an example in which the cluster numbers are cross-tabulated against RapLeaf Homeowner/Renter/Unknown data:

As you can see, female clusters 2 and 4 are almost 100% homeowners. Are these women married or single? Are there children in the home? What is their family income? Are there any significant interests that they share? What makes them different from one another? As we answer these questions, a solid picture of real people always emerges. Statistics convert to characteristics and a comprehensive view emerges.

Following are samples of two of the many full profiles. In both cases, percentage of loyalty guests and percentage of US households is masked because of the proprietary nature of the information. The first description is of female statistical Cluster #1, the only cluster that was composed of nearly 100% single women:

Compare the description of Elizabeth to another, this one of Female Cluster 2 and Male Cluster 3 which were statistically related:

Practically Speaking:

From the perspective of profiling the “average” customer for direct marketing among prospects, these three people are exactly the same. They fall into an above average income range. They are the same age range. Acquisition coupons are usually gender neutral. Treating them as part of the same profile produces solid results in such new customer acquisition programs.

But when you think about engaging these people and building relationships with them, profiling the “average” doesn’t cut it. But cluster segmentation modeling sure does. It opens a world of opportunity. How would you treat Elizabeth differently than you do Laura? With what would you incent each? What is it about the brand that appeals to each? How should you highlight that appeal?

Next Steps:

Of course, once this stage is completed, it’s just the beginning. Among the steps that follow are these three simple ones (simple, but not easy):

4) DEPLOY THE CLUSTER INTELLIGENCE IN THE MASTER MARKETING DATABASE
5) CONDUCT RESEARCH IN EACH CLUSTER
6) ORGANIZE THINKING AND COMMUNICATION AROUND ELIZABETH, PAUL AND LAURA, AND THE OTHERS.

But those are all issues for later discussion.

Final Notes:

The information in this case study about Maggiano’s Little Italy and its customers is shared by permission of Steve Provost, Michael Breed and the professionals at this great organization. Thanks to you, Steve and Michael, for the privilege of working with you and for the permission to share a glimpse into the organization that is a leader in your industry.

About RapLeaf:

RapLeaf provides real time demographic data to help companies safely personalize experiences for their customers. As a consumer data company, RapLeaf’s technology provides instant insight to help businesses better understand their customers in order to personalize content, show them more relevant deals and offers and give them a better experience – online and off.

About Maggiano’s Little Italy:

Maggiano’s Little Italy specializes in Italian-American cuisine served in a warm and friendly atmosphere. Each restaurant is open daily for lunch and dinner with a convenient carryout service as well as delivery, and offers beautiful and accommodating banquet spaces for special occasions. Maggiano’s menu features both classic and contemporary Italian-American recipes – homemade pastas, signature salads, prime steaks, fresh fish, regular chef specials and specialty desserts, accompanied by a large selection of wines from acclaimed vintners as well as its own private wine label, Salute Amico. The food is made-from-scratch daily. Family style service or individual entrees are available.

About Marketing Informatics (Mi):

Marketing Informatics has been in the Direct/Database Marketing business since 1987. The company specializes in using database design and analytics to fuel “The Cycle of Engagement,” i.e. the cycle of new customer acquisition, loyalty program capture, enhancement and segmentation for CRM, and program measurement. Mi has been recognized with three awards from the Kelly School of Business, Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship, Inc. Magazine’s “Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America,” and other industry recognition.

“Email marketing is the workhorse of online marketing for many companies trying to maintain an ongoing relationship with customers and prospects,” said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association. “The creative used in an email marketing campaign has gone from text-only to highly personalized ads targeting highly segmented lists. Each email advertisement and campaign will be judged on creativity, innovation, impact, design, copywriting and use of the medium. The IAC Awards provides an opportunity to find out who is doing an outstanding job creating email advertising. It’s also a great marketing opportunity for the winners to promote their work to senior management, customers and prospects their outstanding work.”

“We believe that winning an industry specific award is more valuable to the participant. It allows the participants to be judges against their peers, just like in the marketplace,” said Rice.

The 2011 Best of Show winner for Email Campaign was CDMG Inc for Coffey Anderson – Email campaign. The 2011 Best of Show winner for Email Message was e-Dialog, Inc. for e-Dialog 2010 Holiday Card.

Other Top Email Advertisements for 2011 included:

British Airways won Best Airline Email message for Executive Club Mobile Campaign.

Symantec won Best Computer: Software Email message campaign for Symantec Retention Trigger Series Email Campaign.

Carlson Marketing won Best Consumer Goods Email message for Pampers Gifts to grow E Newsletter.

Miles Media won Best E-Zine Email message campaign, Best Leisure Email message campaign, Best Marketing Email message campaign and Best Travel Email message campaign for St. Pete Oil Message Campaign.

Jostens won Best Education Email message for Yearbook Avenue Email Marketing Campaign.

Olympus Corporation of the Americas won Best Electronics Email message for The New Olympus E-5: See What the Pros Have to Say!.

AT&T won Best Email Email message campaign, Best Telecommunication Email message campaign for AT&T “Like” Email Campaign.

e-Dialog, Inc. won Best Email Email message, Best of Show Email message for e-Dialog 2010 Holiday Card.

JWT INSIDE won Best Employment Email message campaign for New York-Presbyterian eCRM Campaign.

CDMG Inc. won Best Family Email message campaign for FamilyLife Email campaign.

Jefferson National won Best Financial Services Email message campaign for Top 10 Reasons.

Carlson Marketing won Best Food Industry Email message for Jam email.

Epic Media Group (Creative by Epic) won Best Game Site Email message campaign for Creative by Epic (Email/Game Site).

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and Priority won Best Health Care Email message for Plans by Design Wellness Email.

VUMC Nurse Alerts! won Best Health Care Email message campaign for Nurse Alerts!.

Wyndham Hotel Group won Best Hotel and Lodging Email message campaign for Wyndham Rewards: Monthly Rates Email Campaign.

AkzoNobel/Liquid Nails and Hitchcock Fleming & Associates Inc. won Best Manufacturing Email message for PROfile email.

Fixation Marketing won Best Marketing Email message for Fixation Holiday Haiku.

CDMG Inc. won Best Music Email message campaign and Best of Show Email message campaign for Coffey Anderson – Email campaign.

Cessna Aircraft Company won Best Other Email message for G1000 Email.

DKI Direct won Best Pharmaceuticals Email message campaign for Compass Website and PRM Program.

Carlson Marketing won Best Retail Email message for -1 Value Rewards E Newsletter.

M Marketing Inc won Best Retail Email message campaign, Best Shopping Email message campaign for Sears Email Program.

Nowhere are the downsides of channel silos and their corresponding point solutions more apparent than with email marketing. When email took off in the late 1990s, organizations developed new email marketing teams. These email teams had separate goals and responsibilities from the existing direct/database marketing teams, which continued to manage existing customer relationships across multiple offline channels, such as direct mail, outbound call centers and others.

Email service providers (ESPs) emerged to support these fledgling email marketing teams, who used ESPs in the same way they used mail shops for direct mail or call centers for outbound telemarketing: as a convenient external service for outsourcing message delivery and fulfillment. Since email marketers at the time hadn’t progressed beyond the “batch and blast” mentality, it was relatively easy to cut a list and then use the ESP or call center to broadcast a campaign.

However, the technological silo created by ESPs served to reinforce the functional silos. Customer and campaign performance data sat in different silos, making it progressively harder to integrate email with other channels, and making it nearly impossible to deliver a relevant and consistent cross-channel customer experience. Further, a specific set of metrics was devised to measure and analyze email marketing performance — again, completely separated from how results across other channels were quantified, further exacerbating the problem.

Although the mail shop and call center continue to serve their respective channels well, savvy marketers have begun to take a hard look at ESPs. They recognize several disadvantages of ESPs, stemming from both the inherent qualities of email (compared to other channels) and limitations with the systems themselves. Let’s examine some of those limitations further.

ESPs Limit Email Marketing’s Full Potential

Unlike channels such as direct mail or voice, email is real-time, interactive, trackable and customizable. Unfortunately, ESPs prevent marketers from taking full advantage of these inherent qualities and realizing greater marketing ROI.
For one, their limited data model and targeting capabilities reduce personalization options, and they often force marketers to perform list selects in a separate customer and prospect database, and then upload the files to the ESP. The required additional steps, along with multiple systems and GUIs, significantly slow down go-to-market time, preventing email from being truly real-time.

Although ESPs generally track email interactivity, this behavioral data remains trapped on their servers and can’t be incorporated into an organization’s master customer and prospect database. Thus, the true value of this data remains unrealized, as it can’t be used to increase message relevancy and personalization.

Behavioral Data: Unlocking an Untapped Enterprise Asset

Because of its interactivity, email creates a tremendous amount of data and insight into customer behavior, before, during and after the click. With an ESP, this valuable behavioral data is trapped on the ESP vendor’s servers — a silo over which marketers have no control. While they usually get the output/visualization of this data in the form of reports, they rarely have access to the raw data, and thus can’t bring it into the master marketing database in order to enrich customer profiles and execute more targeted, relevant campaigns. The result is less effective marketing.

According to Forrester’s “The Road to the Online Marketing Suite” report, “Without centralized access to data, marketers are limited in their ability to understand their customers and execute compelling multichannel campaigns. The growing number of data sources like CRM databases, search marketing,website clickstream, transactions, display advertising, email and other messaging campaigns remain confined to disparate applications.” The goal, the report continues, should be to incorporate “insights and data from online and offline channels to support an enterprise-wide approach to segmentation, planning, and customer experience.”

A cross-channel campaign management platform allows marketers to implement such an enterprise-wide strategy by establishing — or leveraging, if it already exists — a central database of record that encompasses all known and inferred customer information, including contact information, socio-demographics, transactions, computed data, expressed interests and preferences, behavioral information, aggregates and scores. These profiles are typically updated in real time with the very latest behavioral and response data. Because all channels are natively integrated into the platform, this insight can be leveraged for progressively better targeting and offer selection across all channels, not just email. In this way, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts, and marketers reap the benefits in the form of greater campaign results and revenues.

Market to the Customer, Not the Channel

One of the largest systemic problems with ESPs is that they breed a culture of marketing to the channel. Each marketing team is narrowly focused on the goals and performance of the channel for which it’s responsible, with little or no regard for the overall customer experience. With multiple point solutions, it’s incredibly complex to coordinate campaigns across channels in order to establish and maintain a positive, relevant and personalized customer experience. Instead, with channels managed in silos, customers suffer from inconsistent and poorly-targeted messages, contact fatigue and frustration

A cross-channel campaign management platform allows marketers to holistically manage their marketing campaigns — and the customer experience — from a single interface, ensuring they’re always marketing to each individual and his or her interests, needs and preferences. By focusing on the customer experience, marketers will not only improve the performance of each individual channel, but also overall marketing ROI and corporate revenues.

Create Seamless Experiences across Outbound and Inbound Channels

One of the most crucial aspects to providing a seamless, cross-channel experience is achieving inbound/outbound fusion: seamlessly delivering the best marketing offers across all interactions in the customer conversation, regardless of the channel. While coordinating outbound channels alone can drive greater results, the real payoff comes from incorporating real-time inbound interactions initiated by customers via the web, call center or point of sale (POS). Study after study concurs that inbound visitors presented with a relevant offer are much more inclined to respond, compared to recipients of one-off, direct outbound communications.

Although many ESPs have begun expanding into the web channel, they are unable to truly unify outbound and inbound marketing strategies. In reality, they offer only basic capabilities for creatinglanding pages tied to specific email campaigns. While these pages often mirror the design and contentof the email, they are not personalized in real time, based on each individual visitor and his or her behavior — not only within the email, but on the web and across other channels. Moreover, ESPs lack integration with other key inbound channels, namely the call center, POS, or kiosk.

Leading cross-channel campaign management vendors, on the other hand, have made inbound marketing capabilities a native component of their platforms, seamlessly blending them with traditional outbound campaign management. Regardless of the specific channel, all known and inferred information about each visitor is used to select, personalize and deliver the most relevant offers in real time. In addition, all offer recommendations and outcomes are centrally tracked in order to enhance future interactions and the overall customer experience.

With inbound/outbound fusion, all the rich behavioral data created by email informs offer selection on inbound channels, and vice versa. If a customer ignores a specific offer delivered via email, the platform can automatically suppress that offer from other channels, so it’s not presented when that person visits the website a week later. The way a customer interacts with a specific email can even drive what content they’re presented when they click to the web just seconds later. A sophisticated platform can also dynamically insert the most relevant offers into an email at the moment of execution — e.g., they may have just declined an offer on the phone — as well as personalize an email each time it’s opened to ensure it always reflects the very latest customer information.

Break Down the Silos to Develop a True Cross-Channel Customer Experience

Customers today are more informed, more connected, and more fickle than ever. They not only control how they interact with brands, but when and where. More than ever, customer experience has a direct impact on a business’ revenue and profitability. Because of the viral nature of social media, one bad experience can quickly spread in all directions, weakening a brand and its sales.

Consequently, marketers can’t afford to continue managing their channels and campaigns in silos, perpetuated by point solutions like ESPs. This siloed approach only leads to customer fatigue and frustration. Organizations that can tear down these walls and deliver a relevant, seamless, cross-channel customer experience will be rewarded with share of mind — and wallet.

Below is a case study detailing how Act-On enabled startup HA Advantage to get its email marketing program off to a roaring start.

Act-On Software Case Study: HA Advantage Goes from ‘0 to 60’ Using the Act-On Marketing Platform

As with any start-up, the key to success is ramping up quickly. HA Advantage’s seasoned marketing group of two, while short on resources, is certainly not short on a vision or ideas. They knew it was just a matter of finding the right solution that would enable them to launch their strategies and messages quickly. More important, they needed a solution that would give them the ability to immediately start generating inbound responses and leads for the sales team.

“It’s all about creating conversations, and deploying strategies that help keep those conversations alive,” said Aaron Bolshaw, direct marketing manager for HA Advantage.

From the onset, HA Advantage knew that email marketing was going to be a large component of their marketing mix. However, the key was finding the right platform that could help them not only launch email campaigns, but give them the tools to effectively nurture prospects through the pipeline, including scoring and efficiently distributing qualified leads to sales.

Finding That One-Stop Solution

“The process of launching and managing campaigns is always very time-intensive. In the past I’ve had to rely on a team of graphic designers, html resources, writers and CRM system integrators just to get a campaign out the door and working correctly,” Bolshaw said.

The typical labor intensive and expensive model of executing and managing campaigns was never an option for this fast-paced startup as they quickly short-listed different marketing vendors. While they found many solutions that would automate and manage different components of their marketing strategies, their end-goal was to not have to work with multiple systems, platforms and resources as they had done in the past.

Simply put, they wanted to find “Something that did everything” — and did it well with analytics and engagement features.

Key requirements included:

• Salesforce integration
• Strong email functionality
• Proven email deliverability
• Lead scoring
• Robust reporting
• Automated nurturing
• Ease-of-use

With Act-On’s comprehensive marketing platform, not only were HA Advantage’s main requirements satisfied, the additional functionality — without the additional costs — was pivotal in their decision to move forward with Act-On. Additional features such as:

• Next Generation Website Visitor Tracking – providing essential insight on prospect behavior, interests and activities.
• Twitter Prospector – built-in tool to easily monitor and engage in Twitter conversations

Plus with Act-On’s “zero” commitment contract — only month to month — HA Advantage knew that they had found the right solution.

Ramping Up

HA Advantage was able to set up Act-On quickly and was launching campaigns in a matter of weeks. And while the system is intuitive and easy-to-use, the live support helped them put fundamental processes in
place to ensure long-term success.

“The system is very intuitive though having access to a superior support team has made the comfort level of using the tool even that much better,” says Bolshaw.

Results

HA Advantage is quickly growing their email database, and has launched over 250,000 emails in just nine months. Based on the tracking capabilities, HA Advantage has been able to monitor and tweak their campaigns while in progress, ultimately improving campaign results.

And while any veteran marketing person knows that “content is king,” having a platform that easily and effectively gets your message out to the market is crucial to a marketing organization’s success.

Moving Forward

As HA Advantage grows, Act-On continues to grow and scale with them. As a SaaS provider, Act-On continues to roll-out new features and functionality regularly.

“From the beginning it’s been clear that Act-On is a partner in our success; they listen to us and continue to focus on improving their already best-in-class platform,” said Bolshaw. “Ultimately, my job is to get people to raise their hand, and with Act-On I’m able to effectively do this.”

But I probably wouldn’t be as annoyed if they popped up on my Facebook page. Because I can scroll pass and get a little more information as well as not feel as overwhelmed as I do when I’m slogging through emails. Despite these type of reasons, eMarketer says that marketers are much more likely to provide a “forward” link (48%, including those who provide both links) than easy sharing capability (13%, including those who provide both links) according to data from Smith-Harmon.

Only a few online retailers used both types of links in their e-mail campaigns, and nearly one-half did not offer any link at all for passing on messages, according to eMarketer. Links to share content with a social network can potentially give messages much more exposure, since such e-mails are shared with the subscriber’s entire social network, rather than just a few friends chosen specifically for the purpose.

Despite data showing that testing and optimization increases ROI, e-mail marketing agency eROI recently found that 37.1% of US e-mail marketers did not test their e-mail campaigns at all. According to eMarketer, the most common reason for those who didn’t test was that they did not know how (nearly 33%). Another 27.4% reported not having enough time to do so. A few (8.5%) said they did not actually see the value in testing.

More than 85% of those marketers who tested their e-mail campaigns scrutinized subject lines. Far fewer (54.8%) tested calls to action, and around one-half made efforts to optimize design and body copy.

For the best time of the day, almost one-half considered midday the optimal time to send marketing messages, followed by the start of the business day.

Respondents also reported that Tuesday was the best day of the week for marketing e-mails, with Wednesday coming in second.

CertifiedEmail aims to provide a safe and reliable means for consumers to easily identify authentic email messages from legitimate commercial and nonprofit email senders. Each CertifiedEmail is sent with a cryptographically secure token that assures authenticity and is marked in the inbox with a unique blue ribbon envelope icon, enabling consumers to visually distinguish email messages which are real and sent from email senders with whom they have a pre-existing relationship. Available to email senders meeting strict standards for best practices and low complaint rates, it is the only class of email available that assures delivery of all opt-in email messages to the inbox, with links and images automatically rendered intact, yielding measurable improvements in email effectiveness. CertifiedEmail has been adopted by seven of the nation’s top 10 email mailbox providers and is in use by 500 commercial, government and non-profit senders.

Most recently, Paramount invested in technologies that aim to take direct mail to the next level, leveraging the use of personalized direct mail printed pieces targeted to the individual with “the power of the Internet,” the company said. The service utilizes personalized web addresses or PURLS to generate leads and communicate with existing customers as well as update databases, measure responses and obtain customer feedback.

Many factors come into play for design reputation if you are sending a sub-par designed email the following can become an issue:
Unsubscribe Rates: Over 53% of people unsubscribe if your offer and/or content isn’t compelling.
Spam Complaints: 26% of consumers unsubscribe from email by clicking on the “This is spam” button.
Customer Relationship: If the customer adds you to the address book, it improves your delivery AND turns images back on in AOL 9
ISP Whitelisting: If you are on the AOL Enhanced Whitelist images are turned on. If you are on the Yahoo Whitelist and get into the inbox, images are on. However to remain on whitelists your unknown user rates (bounces) and spam complaints must be kept very low (for AOL EWL spam complaints must remain below 0.25%).
ISP Blocking: If as little as 0.5% – 1% of your customers complain you are spamming them, the ISP may block ALL your mail.
You have to consider your total client experience and rendering plays a big part of that engagement.
Here are some final thoughts on Design Tips:
Recognize your customers read their emails in a variety of environments and your QA should reflect that. (Verify your message looks and functions right across email readers; a single view of your message in your local email reader – how most folks QA their design – is misleading and not representative)
Recognize the importance of images on and off, and what off means in the different email clients.
Optimize your brand and calls to action to display in the preview pane and above-the-fold view. This view may indeed be what differentiates a response vs. none.
Don’t forget about your ‘From and Subject.’ They may be the only thing that looks right and should identify who you are and, in most cases, the point of your message.
Don’t design in a vacuum. Your design affects your delivery and your delivery affects your design. Your design affects your credibility and your credibility affects your reputation. Your reputation affects whether you’ll have the privilege of continuing to communicate with your customers.