How are companies adopting email marketing in India

India is seeing a larger attention in digital marketing space as younger and older population are getting online and their spending habits online fuelled by already established online travel companies which made their life much easier. Indian online population is enjoying now the ease with which they can book their tickets, or buying things at much cheaper prices.

Email being one of the prime digital channels for companies to continuously engage with their large subscriber base, Indian companies have long attempted multiple solutions from in-house SMTP mailers to MTA boxes to Email Solution Providers (ESP) of all sizes. As the internet email regulations have evolved over time and often dictated by the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like yahoo, hotmail, Gmail and such and their continued redefinition of the rules for accepting and delivering mails to the inboxes of the recipients, Indian companies are more and more trying to use the Email Service Providers.

This has provided an opportunity for several companies to jump into providing bulk email solutions.

Some of the Indian companies have attempted to easily take some open source solutions like PHP Mailer and such and modifying or building to the needs of the Indian companies. These solutions mostly lack the authentication features required by ISPs like DKIM and speed throttling. Most of the solutions are not built for managing entire email life cycle communication and the data privacies required. Their infrastructure is not scalable and can't be separated for each of their client. This will complicate issues like IP and domain reputation. A company which has very good email practices can easily get hurt by some other company which has no good practices if they use such email solutions. Indian companies still being very slow and averse to use confirmed opt-in practices, can easily get their domain blacklisted and ISPs can soon either put their mails in spam folder or start blocking their mails.

Moreover these solutions that are not built for analytic driven marketing lack the analytic features. This makes the marketer not aware of his engaged audience by demographics, email behaviour and purchase behaviour. With no knowledge of such intelligence, Indian companies who are using such solutions are blindly shooting the mails to all subscribers, without knowing what their subscribers are doing with those emails. This can also treated by ISPs as bad senders and emails may be blocked or sent to spam folders by ISPs.

According to Reputation Authority, Indian Companies using home grown email communication platforms are sending more than 40% spam. It is very difficult for Indian email marketing solution providers to control the spam rate, as their solutions are not very sophisticated to handle all kinds of bounces, spam complaints and spam traps. Moreover there is no intelligence to analyse the active and inactive subscriber base over time.

They also lack the integration features for companies to manage their entire life cycle email communication with one solution and work with the company's portal and back end systems seamlessly.

Seeing the growth in the internet population and recent explosion in e-commerce and daily deals, several international email service providers (ESPs) have now entered the Indian market through sales team located elsewhere or in India and offering their more matured platforms to Indian companies. This is a most welcome trend.

Now there are more companies offering such solutions, the price competition is so much, International email service providers are competing with the Indian email service providers on price and dropping the account management, project management and integration features for Indian companies. When their minimum ticket size is more than 100K US Dollars per client in matured markets of USA and Europe, and they throw in a dedicated account manager, solutioning to automate the clients email communication and providing full services, the international email service providers are just providing a software tool to send bulk mails to Indian companies, with none of those needed services that are very much needed by Indian companies, as they are trying to adopt email as an effective medium.

According to Reputation Authority, even the international email service providers that are providing email platform as a tool for sending bulk email communications for Indian companies are not able to bring the spam to single digit, as they are not able to work with the Indian clients to strategise their email marketing efforts.

I see Indian companies as they trying to adopt email communication as a prime medium for their online business, is largely under served by both Indian companies who lack features and International email service providers who can't provide much needed strategy and expertise with local resources for companies to better engage their subscribers.

Email cost measured in CPM (cost per thousand) may be a deciding factor when you choose the email service provider. While each ESP may have a cost per CPM to compete, a self managed email platform may not be a single decisive factor.

Indian companies have to start looking at not only the platform, but also need to look at the expertise of the email service provider on their mailing infrastructure, security practices for their data, expertise in email marketing, though leadership, ability to do customizations, integrate their websites and backend systems for life cycle email communication and ability for managing their email campaigns.

I see some Indian companies have understood the importance of much needed services along with the email platform and are choosing the email service provider based on a broad spectrum and depth of services and expertise offered to better optimize the email medium.

I believe that most matured and smart Indian Companies are trying to stop blasting the emails to all in blind everyday and start using intelligent analytic driven customer engagement email communication in the days ahead.

This is most welcome news for the most spammed Indian Internet consumer.

Sprinklr signs up several key clients for its email marketing platform

Sprinklr tier 1 email marketing platform signs up several key clients in India for all their email communications.

Sprinklr e-messenger is one of the top performing email marketing platform that can pump 4 million email messages per hour. This feature is very critical for companies to deliver messages just before their subscribers ready to read, instead of delivering in the middle of the night or the day.

Sprinklr offers robust security features that makes client's customer data in safe hands, which can't be compromised at any cost. Sprinklr e-messenger in the only platform in the country that is worthy of being used by major brands and financial institutions, as it being certified by SAS 70 audits, the world's highest security audit methodology, only used by major global financial institutions.

Sprinklr is the ideal bulk email solution for Indian major brands and agencies to manange their email communication needs, as it provides seperate and integrated views and controls for email communications for several of their businesses.

Sprinklr provides higher deliverability and rich reporting metrics.

Sprinklr will be launching email to social platform soon.

For more visit http://www.sprinklr.in

How Indian political parties leverage the learnings from US President Obama's email campaigns to reach out to their supporters?

The supporters of Presidential candidate Mr. Obama collected millions of email addresses through the enormous rallies and countless gatherings organized by them. Through out the period to election, the supporters reached out to the voters though email and phone. After Obama's victory, his campaign sent out a message, that more is yet to come. Today Obama's office is reaching out to the citizens in all round involvement in bringing the needed changes to America.

Even though email is still at a nascent stage in India, directly reaching the voters in the country through online interactive mediums like email and mobile can't be ignored. It is a compelling reason for parties to engage the voters if they need to connect with them, just not for voting them, but to get their support for electing them and later engaging them to seek suggestions and push the changes that they need to implement.

Mass politiical rallies, announcement over megaphone on the streets, one or two visit to voter's residences are just not enough to get the support of the voters. They have to be engaged in a much more direct and interactive way. And not just to lead them to vote, and now to engage them even after coming to power through direct interactive mediums.

Some political parties have just started this effort. They may need an overall email and mobile campaign strategy to collect the email addresses, mobile numbers and other needed data to selectively target the citizens with their message, analyze the results and use the results their advantage.

Read the entire article at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/10/AR2008111000013.html?sid=ST2008111000071&s_pos=

Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has many many years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world. Aghreni brings a world class email and mobile marketing platform to the marketers to effectively measure their email marketing campaigns and reap success. Aghreni provides strategic email marketing consulting and end to end interactive marketing services to Companies worldwide.
For more information about Aghreni, visit http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html

High quality, low costs keep IT product companies ticking

Aghreni Technologies, an e-mail and mobile marketing services company, has acquired more than half a dozen clients in the Indian market. Aghreni MD Manjunatha Kutarahalli said their differentiated offering with open source technologies has helped them bag clients in the past three months, which include large Indian business houses.



Read the entire article on Economic Times website
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/no-downturn-in-it-product-cos/articleshow/4289757.cms

Email Delivery Optimization Techniques from Email Marketing Solutions Provider - Aghreni Technology

There is a misconception with marketers and providers that email marketing software is a bulk mailing solution. When the emails are blasted out of a bulk mailer, they are assured that it will reach the recipient’s inboxes. Is that so simple?

Does your email marketing software or service provider guarantee email delivery optimization?

Certainly most do not!

There is a misconception with marketers and providers that email marketing software is a bulk mailing solution. When the emails are blasted out of a bulk mailer, they are assured that it will reach the recipient’s inboxes. Is that so simple?

Let us look at some of the email deliverability myths that most marketers seem to have.

1. We don’t spam!

2. We send emails only to opt-in lists

3. Someone has blacklisted us for no reason

4. ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly

5. If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to safe lists



We don’t send Spam!

The marketers first need understand the definition of Spam! It is not just the Viagra or the porn stuff! Any message that doesn’t suit the need of the customer is spam, whether it is the message subject line, content, broken or dodgy HTML code, relevance, frequency of the emails, etc. Moreover, messages that do not comply with CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) act may be classified as SPAM by receiving ISPs.

Marketers have to stop sending messages that are boring, mundane and uninteresting. Marketers need to check if their messages are CAN-SPAM compliant. Marketers have to monitor their campaigns reports like opens, clicks, spam complaints, and abuses from their customers and ISPs. If they don’t, they may be surprised to see sometime later, their messages are being categorized as SPAM and lying in junk folders or being blocked by ISPs.



We send emails only to opt-in lists

Sending email campaigns to opt-in lists is a good practice, because you are assured of good deliverability. But have you given control to your opt-in customers, the power to opt-out or unsubscribe in each campaign? If you haven’t, start doing it now. Even if you have given the power to opt-out or unsubscribe, are you acting promptly within a reasonable time (with one week) to stop sending further email campaigns? Have you opted them again, after a reasonable amount of time through another promotional campaign? Are you acting on bounces and taking action to get your list cleaned out of bounced email addresses? Are you educating your opt-in subscribers, to opt-out instead of complaining to ISPs about abuses from you? Are you capturing the opt-in subscriber preferences to send relevant campaigns that suit their interests and the frequency of email campaigns in a given period?

The success of keeping your list clean and emails reaching out to your opt-in customers lies in understanding the needs of the opt-in subscribers, measuring the success of each email campaign and working to address the issues above. If you don’t, even your opt-in customers will soon be opting out or complaining you to ISPs on email campaigns as SPAMs.



Someone has blacklisted us for no reason

Emails Marketers have to understand that email communication is being heavily abused by spammers around the world. For every genuine email sent, there are 90 others which are spam. Most of the email service providers and companies are putting tough measures to block spam emails reaching their infrastructure or for processing and storing Spam emails and damaging their employee productivity. There are service providers who constantly scout for spammers, monitor their activities on the web and maintain a list of their IP addresses (blacklist). They provide various companies the blacklisted IPs, to block the email senders from that IPs. The black list service providers employ various complex and advance techniques to monitor increased email sending, patterns, and their web crawlers checking various things on their servers, and etc. to collect lot of statistics to classify them into the blacklist.

Hence Marketers need to understand the challenges if they are using their own bulk mailing solutions and constantly monitor if their IPs are blacklisted by any service providers. They should take immediate action, if needed with those service providers and get their IPs white listed.



ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly

Most of the opt-in customers have their email addresses on the major 4 ISPs Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Hence Marketers will be sending a bulk of their emails to these 4 ISPs. They have to ensure that their emails are getting delivered to recipient’s inboxes on these ISPs. Why should these ISPs block the marketer’s emails? They have several reasons and some of them have been stated earlier. Most of the ISPs provide free email infrastructure to their customers and hence they need to optimize their email infrastructure. They have to protect their recipient’s privacies and their reputation as the best ESP in the world.

The emails in those ISPs may also bounce for various reasons like account deletion, inbox full, etc. The sender email server or the email service provider has to remove these bounced addresses from the next mailing; else the ISPs may treat you as a spammer and deny service.

Major ISPs such as Google, AOL and MSN/Hotmail provide their users to complain on the sender of the emails or domains. The ISPs also have strong authentication and dynamic filtering mechanisms that your email software and service provider have to deal with.

If your email marketing software or email service provider doesn’t implement the authentication response mechanisms, adjusting to the filtering policies of the ISPs and dealing with the abuse complaints, there is no reason to complain against their unfair treatment!



If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to safe lists

This is a myth that marketers have! If they request the recipients to add the sender email address into the recipient’s safe list, then the messages will be reaching the inbox. While this may be true, it still doesn’t address the deliverability of the sender emails.

ISPs will deliver the email to the recipient’s inbox after their server has successfully received the email, passing through white listed sender IP reputation, authentication mechanisms, dynamic filters (which are changing every moment).

Then there are other questions that marketers need to understand?

1. Does the marketer always use the same send email id for sending different promotions? Is there a need to use different email ids for different e-mail communications like newsletters, campaigns, promotions? What about from different brands or departments in the company?

2. Do you see a recipient adding every marketer’s email ids into the safe list? What is the guarantee that you will not start sending irrelevant and innumerable email communications to the recipient?

If you don’t have answers for most of these questions, then this trick will not work in most of the cases. The marketer is back to seeing his email moved to junk folders and soon deliverability takes a hit.



Email Marketing is a disciplined process and in order to get it right and realize the benefits, Marketers have to work with companies and agencies who really understand the science and art of email marketing.

If not, there will no differentiation between your marketing campaigns and the spammer’ campaigns. Ultimately the recipient’s and the ISP’s are the better judges.

Hence it is very important to measure the success of each of your email marketing campaigns.



Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has over 4 years of experience in email marketing working with some of the world’s largest brands across the world.

For more information, visit URL http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html