By Danny Levinson
Some Web barriers have fallen in recent weeks, as China prepares for the Beijing Olympics and more websites are gloriously available to those of us living here, but malformed email marketing communications are still having deliverability issues when sent to Chinese recipients. Fortunately many of the problems digital marketers face can be traced to a few fundamental issues in how they conduct email marketing campaigns in the Middle Kingdom.

First, build a 100% opt-in email list. Many email marketers' brains tell them to do this, but their hearts override this logic. We have a tight Acceptable Use Policy for how our own clients conduct their campaigns, but sometimes a list of errant users gets past our censors. The result: low deliverability, low open rates, and high expectations that are now shattered for the client. On the flip side, though it is initially more work to generate a 100% opt-in email list, the percentages of opened emails, delivered emails, and actions within the emails rises substantially. That generally means a higher return on investment over time. One recent meeting I had was with a publishing company that ran a small list of about 10,000 users. The manager complained that his undeliverability hovered around 20% — if he had started with a 100% opt-in email list, his fortunes would be reversed. Even more important than being logical, it is the law in many jurisdictions around the world to have a 100% opt-in email list.

But then the problem arises on how best to build a clean opt-in email list of users. Most of our clients are in the travel sector, and we powered the email loyalty marketing campaigns of over 150 hotels in China last year. For those types of businesses, I tell them to convert their offline guests to online subscribers by asking for digital contact details when the guests check-in. For large hotel chains like Marriott, Carlson, IHG, and Shangri-La, it's also easy to gain opt-in information via Internet booking forms.

But for companies who want to build their databases strictly via online methods and are starting from zero, they should plan on more creative means. If they can do it on their own, that's sometimes an efficient way to maximize a budget. But most companies lack both the email server infrastructure and the creative teams, so they need to rely on a good digital marketing company. There are hundreds of email marketing companies in China — anybody with a PC and a client-side mass mailing program can call themselves "the leading email marketer in China" — so find a company that fits your budget, understands your needs, has good ideas for database growth, and (importantly) is reputable. Most importantly, do they manage their own email servers? Some email marketing companies in China have nothing but their name — they outsource their servers and email software to third parties. While this might sound like an efficient way to manage a business, it puts your brand in peril as that company has no direct control over any spammer utilizing that third party's IP address. When the spammer is blocked, so is your brand.

Here are some good ideas for growing your opt-in list online in China: if you are selling a technology product and want a list of potential buyers, contact vertical technology websites and partner with them to grow your opt-in list via list co-registration; if you represent an outdoor amusement park desiring to have Chinese users sign-up to your monthly special deals newsletter, work with a portal to target the parenting and kids sections on their website; and if your restaurant brand is entering a second-tier city for the first time and you want to both make potential diners aware of your presence and have them subscribe to your weekly e-zine, build a mini-website just for email registration and then market that website name on dining websites. These are all ways I've recently worked with clients in China.

The second important part of emailing in China is to remember to use the correct markup language. This refers to how your HTML emails (I'm still a fan of ASCII) are coded. I have seen some email campaigns in China from the world's largest advertising companies that lack good markup — it is infinitely difficult to find an email designer who constantly stays abreast of the latest rules when creating email campaigns. Understanding the complexities of this simple topic is numbing. First of all, don't include any Javascript in your emails — it will either be stripped when the recipient opens it or bounced back to you because it is interpreted as possible spam or a phishing assault. Next, try to avoid using any forms in your emails — these are the boxes where people sign-up to join lists or enter a term to search for something. Some email readers allow forms to be used, but many others make them inoperable, which confuses your recipients and potentially harms your brand if people think your emails "don't work".

Also avoid Flash on your email campaigns unless you are segmenting your users based on the email software they use or the webmail service provider to which they subscribe. Last year we issued a White Paper called "The Perils & Promise Of Flash Email Marketing Campaigns In China" in which we said that Tom.com, Yahoo.com, and Hotmail.com disabled any Flash in an email campaign, but China's Sohu.com, Sina.com, and 21CN.com all accepted it, by default. This is good news for email marketers in China with easy access to segmentation tools — they can now create richer email campaigns.

Finally, be careful about using images in your emails. Many email users now have images off by default, which means they see nothing if your email is comprised of 100% pictures. Instead I try to tell clients to balance about 50% of their emails with text. This means that even if I have images turned off, the text is still visible. More importantly, email is used as a viral marketing tool — when you send one person an email, you hope they send it to many more friends. If you are splicing images in your emails, they often become mixed up when forwarded to secondary users or arrive as attachments instead of embedded in the email. Therefore, a healthy use of text in your emails will ensure that the most important part of your message still makes its rounds among China's netizens.

Working with Internet Service Providers and Web portals in China is important when conducting large email campaigns. Sometimes these companies act like tollbooths, extracting money for each email sent through their systems. Often these companies can negatively impact how a campaign is conducted — what happens if 20% of your users are using Sohu.com, but Sohu.com blocks emails from your server because you are not following good email etiquette or you are causing unnecessary burden to their infrastructure? Proactively engaging the portals by making them part of your campaigns is one strategy and have them act as agents for your list's growth. If you are sending from an overseas IP address, this is one way to get out of favor with the email gods in China. Instead focus on delivering your important emails from a registered company and server based in mainland China. The work involved in finding the right Chinese partner will pay dividends in better digital marketing campaigns.

Also be careful of the type of content you send in your emails. Sure, avoid political, "superstitious", and sexual propaganda. But you also need to be wary of the sometimes-innocuous terminology you use in your subject lines and email bodies. A few years ago, Netease.com was not allowing any emails through that had the English word "newsletter" in the subject. Through trial and error, the list we compiled of Chinese-language words that were lacuna non grata to users on that website ran to over seventy, and I'm sure there were hundreds more we missed. Each email server in China has its own oddities, plus they are usually using a combination of heuristics from Spamassassin, blocklists from Spamhaus, and email blacklists issued via the Internet Society of China. Your digital marketing team needs to stay in touch with all the daily changes so your company's brand attains its maximum potential.

Finally, honor the feedback loop. By law in China, you must allow your users to be removed from your email direct marketing list. Make this process as seamless and as simple as possible by only giving them one link to click. And the removal should be immediate — don't wait seven days to totally remove them from your list while they might still be sent messages. If an email subscriber contacts your company to be removed from your list, honor the request immediately. Often in the West, this process is automated, but Chinese netizens often like the personal touch, so appoint one person on your marketing team to quickly and politely respond to each request. If you are using a 100% opt-in email list, the number of users who contact you directly should be about 3-4 for every 5000 subscribers per week. It's not a lot.

Though the sophistication level on how to conduct a 100% opt-in email marketing campaign is generally less in Chinese corporate advertising and marketing departments than other places in the world, the technology, laws, and administration of email servers and email protocols is sometimes more advanced in China than elsewhere. With this in mind, digital marketers who choose email as their campaign platform need to be both cognizant and wary of how to best connect with Chinese recipients. Always err on the side of caution, or otherwise your company's brand can suffer.

About the author:
Danny Levinson is CEO of BDL Media, which owns XZList.com, one of China's leading email marketing companies and which manages hundreds of email marketing lists, email loyalty marketing programs, and email newsletters of companies doing business in China. His company owns other Chinese-language email marketing services and he is the current publisher of the English-language ChinaTechNews.com. Danny is currently the chairman of the I.T. Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and is a frequent email trainer for Chinese groups like the Internet Society of China. Danny can be contacted here.