Words have been spreading since early this year — with disappointments from email marketers — that the new Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses Word HTML rendering engine instead of IE-based HTML rendering engine. The latter was used in previous version of Outlook.

Bronto blog has a scoop on how to handle this issue. There are certainly ways to overcome this. Don’t hold your breath, it may involve reworking on your HTML email template.

Visit Bronto blog for a quick overview of what are different in Outlook 2007 and previous versions.

Microsoft also provides resources for web designer. A validator is also available for download. It will help you validate HTML for your design and its compatibility with Outlook 2007 engine.

Mark Brownlow has a summary of the issue.

Since switching to Microsoft Office 2007 two weeks ago, off all email newsletters I subscribed to, I have seen none of them which are unreadable. If you only use simple HTML, you should be okay.

Nothing is further from the truth nowadays.

Other factors, such as authentication, reputation and message construction are more critical if messages are to land in inboxes, writes Stefan Pollard in a new article at ClickZ.

Spam filters such as SpamAssassin, an open-source spam-filter program, has an extensive list of triggers that set off the filter. But, that’s not all. There are hundreds of tests on a message, that will assign a point value based on the likelihood of the elements to be used in spam messages.

Only after the message accumulates too many points that the system flags it as spam.

More issues are also likely to trigger filters and collect higher point values than those assigned to words in the message body. They include:

• Incorrectly formatted or incomplete e-mail headers, which list technical details of the message transfer, including the sender’s IP and e-mail sending address
• Broken tags and sloppy HTML coding
• Too large an image relative to the amount of text
• Scripting that could launch viruses or spyware
• Attachments
• URLs or domains that have appeared in spam

Although marketers have to select their words carefully, using the word “free” in the subject line is something they can do as long as they provide the right kind of offer in the message.

Nowadays, recipients have all the rights to click on the spam button to flag a message as such. If your message looks like spam and recipients can’t tell the message is from you, even the most careful choice of words can’t help.

A new study showed that SPF checks are becoming part of content filtering tests done by Internet service providers. These checks involve comparing the sender’s return path domain and the IP address to a list of approved IPs the sender includes in their DNS zone.

The Lyris’ EmailAdvisor ISP Deliverability Report Card for Q2 2007 measured the delivery path of more than 436,000 permission-based e-mail marketing messages using ISP domains in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.

Changes in IP addresses or email service providers without updating SPF records could possibly increase the chance of failure when passing content filters. Marketers need to ensure that their SPF records are current to maintain deliverability.

The first challenge businesses face in the industry is to find new customers (42 percent), while generating business in the off-season come next at 27 percent.

When it comes to the method the respondents use to overcome these challenges, 47 percent of the respondents agreed upon email marketing, followed by 17 percent answered direct mail, 13 percent for search engine ad, 10 percent for newspaper ad, and 2 percent each for yellow page ad and radio ad.

Businesses in the industry have been using email marketing to reduce dependency on print (44 percent), generate repeat visits from past customers (33 percent), get higher volume of visitors (27 percent), increase reservation (18 percent), filling reservations during off-season (11 percent) and increase ticket sales (8 percent).

If you are curious about different types of communications the business send, here are the top 3 results: Newsletter - 83 percent, promotions - 67 percents and even invitations and calendars - 56 percent.

For full results and link to the survey results in PDF format, visit Business Wire.

There a couple of payoff to producing editorial calendar:

1. Your ezine will be produced on a timelier manner. Avoid premature quality content which is developed very close to deadline.
2. Have a more natural flow between each issue.
3. Notify audience about future issue.
4. Improving guest contributions for those who know about the topic.

Of course, the last point could happen if you make your editorial calendar public.

MailChimp has a simpler approach to editorial calendar.

The page includes technical information and best practices on email marketing especially on how you can land your email on Gmail users’ inboxes.

For example, Gmail will favor email messages which “From:” address is listed in the user’s Contacts list. A user who clicks “Not Spam” to alert Gmail that messages sent from that address are solicited also help Google get their filter right.

Having abuse@yourdomain.com is also recommended if you use third party services. I think this is a best practice that has been forgotten.

If with all your efforts to comply to the guidelines and still your email continues to land on the Spam folder, then you can contact the Gmail team. Very helpful if that actually works.

Read the whole article for full information.

Thanks Tamara Gielen of Email Marketing Best Practices for pointing this out.

You can browse categories from authentication, automated messages, to branding, segmentation, spam, subject lines and white papers. The categories are sorted alphabetically.

This source of email marketing metrics is also sponsored by Got Corporation.

Visit the site here.

Here are some of the roles major online retailers have tried to cast their subscribers:

• Employee/recruiter. Email subscribers have already been familiar with your brand and products. That is a bid advantage over random strangers out there.
• Content provider. Retailers announced their move to hire bloggers through email list. Other content contributed by subscribers include newsletter, reviews, user feedbacks, etc.
• Model. Abercrombie & Fitch put out a call for models in email with the subject line “Casting Call for the next Abercrombie & Fitch Photo Shoot.”
• Volunteer. Often subscribers are also willing to volunteer because they feel like being part of the newsletter they subscribe to.

If you build great relationship with your email list, then they tend to be your best customers. They are often willing to get involved in other things beyond wiping credit cards to purchase products. So, take advantage of the fact to further improve relationships.

This isn’t the same with web ad campaign, when if there is a problem with it, your face may be red.

Those are the facts Wendy Roth gave to lead into her newest article for iMedia Connection titled Email Quality Control in 8 Steps. I should say that’s really a great way to grab my attention to the whole article.

What do you do before you hit the “send” button? Here are the checklist to make sure you don’t forget anything:

1. Are you sending to the right list? Make sure you are selecting the right list.
2. Make sure the “from” address works. Recipients sometimes reply to the “from” address instead of “reply-to.”
3. Make the subject line accurate, short and compelling. Longer subject line will be trimmed by most email application and webmail.
4. Include a link to read the message outside of email. “Read online” link provides an alternative to those who can’t read your message.
5. Check all images and links. Make sure the links and redirects are working. So simple but critical.
6. Include a working unsubscribe link.
7. Include a physical address. Be Can-Spam compliant.
8. View the message through several different email accounts. At least check in several webmails and email apps to make sure it is displayed properly.

Save your revenue by checking your campaign before sending. You could just save your company’s asset by these simple checklist and prevent bigger problems.

This is another prove that email marketing is alive and well. Internet marketers should not focus only on the cutting-edge tactics while neglecting existing channels that are already well establish and working.

The study involved a financial publisher, offering trials to its product.

Here is the summary of the results, in tabular format:

As you can see, emails have more than double the conversion rate than organic site traffic. AdWords and Yahoo! Search follow after that.

Of course, we can’t be too confident with such report unless we actually factor in other details such as what keywords and key phrases were used during the experiment, which rented list was used, etc.

If there is only one lesson to take from this experiment, again is the fact that email marketing should be a marketing channel that none of us should overlook.

[iMediaConnection]