You can upload CSV lists of email recipients and bypass the recruitment survey process. For example, you may want to do this for ad hoc activities which may not require the profiling information of members.
Because this does not follow the standard double opt-in process which helps validate email addresses, it is important to import clean lists into your community to minimize invalid email address errors. Mailing to invalid email addresses can get you blocked by an ISP as this type of behavior is viewed as spammy.
If you wish to upload lists via External Sample, Alida has a few requirements that are best practices to help ensure your domain does not get blocklisted and therefore, have email to a certain Internet Service Provider halted under suspicion of SPAM. Please make every effort to ensure lists are as clean as possible.
Details
List Management
- You must ensure your list has opted in to receive email for research purposes from a third party address on your behalf.
- Remove users who bounced back as invalid addresses.
- Remove users who have not shown any opens or clicks within six months.
- The list must have been gathered in the last 6 months to ensure fewer old outdated addresses.
Anti-Spam Compliance
- The subject line should accurately explain the nature of the message.
- The opt-out link should be visible and functioning.
- Every email should have a physical address at the bottom. Note: The use of P.O. boxes is permitted but strongly discouraged since spammers use P.O. boxes.
Subject Line
- It should be simple and clear, a brief summary of what the user expects to read in the message body. To be safe, keep it at 35-50 characters.
- Avoid using all capital letters, words with alphanumeric letters, and symbols like $, % and !
- Including your company name in the subject line may get more people to open your messages.
Message Content
- Encourage subscribers to add the client’s "From Address" to their Address Book. ISPs generally view the Address Book as a source of significant interest by end users.
- Ensure that the top header image is a reasonable size so that it does not push the message content down.
- Personalize the message. For example: 'Dear [First Name]' or 'Mr/Ms/Mrs/Dr [Last Name]'.
- Provide a brief explanation about why the user is getting the message.
- Specify how long the survey will take to finish.
- Use a call to action, but do not use all caps, exclamations marks, or special characters
- Include a clear explanation of what the community is and what it is used for.
- Add links to the Privacy Policy, About Us, and perhaps Survey Rules at the bottom of the email.
- There should be two links in the content clickable to the survey. One text link to the survey, for example: Click here to begin the survey; and a full URL in case they need to copy and insert into their browser.
- Do not use special characters, such as ! # $ in your message body and especially in your subject line. Also, try to avoid using words with alphanumeric letters, acronyms or all capital letters.
- Limit the width of the message to 600 pixels to ensure that messages render properly with most webmail interfaces.
- Most of the message should be in text rather than images. At the very least, we encourage having 60% of your message in text.
- Ensure that there are two versions of your message – one as plain text version and one as HTML. Since some email clients only read messages in plain text, ensure that your plain text version has the same information as the HTML version.
- DON’T use Flash or other rich media files, Java, JavaScript, frames or Dynamic html.
Deployment Steps
- Always send yourself a test email to ensure everything is working properly.
- Deploy a small sample first and monitor deliverability.
- If the undeliverable addresses total 10% or more of the total outgoing number, you will need to further clean your list and send smaller deployments.
IMPORTANT: If you receive 100+ undeliverable from any deployment, contact Alida Technical Support to discuss next steps - If everything looks OK, send the rest of the emails.
More Information
Please read the Import data into a power survey for external samples article for more information.