Avoiding Three Big E-Mail Marketing Mistakes Don't Sabotage the Most Cost-Effective Marketing Tool in Your Arsenal!
By Lisa Pelish of www.massiveimpressions.com
The brief history of online marketing has revealed e-mail to be a top tactic for delivering marketing ROI. Unfortunately, over the last few years it has gotten harder to promote a business using e-mail.
Anti-spam measures have grown prevalent and pro-active, making it more and more difficult for e-mails to reach recipients. If a message does make it to a recipient's inbox, and isn't deleted, then it still has a flood of spam to compete with.
Avoiding being labeled as a spammer is critical, not only to the ROI of your e-mail marketing investment, but also to the welfare of your business in general.
Even with today's heightened challenges e-mail still remains one of the most inexpensive and quickest ways to reach a large audience. The key is to focus your mailings on a list of people who want to hear your message. To do this, you need to do permission mailing, which means having people either sign up for such mailings on your Web site or provide their e-mail addresses when they buy something from your company.
Mistake #1 Not Knowing, Understanding or Adhering to Federal Can-Spam Regulations
Federal law requires all bulk e-mails include a physical address in the message. The regulations around e-mail apply to everyone, b2b and consumer marketers alike. There are resources on the web to help you comply with these regulations - and you'll need the help, because many of the mandates are vague. Here are only some of today's e-mail advertising legal restrictions:
Provide a way for recipients to unsubscribe: e.g. an unsubscribe/opt-out link and/or instructions
Handle all unsubscribes within 10 days of the request
Use "good mailing practices" and be "honest and truthful".
Use a valid "From" address,
Make sure your "Subject" line "is straightforward, vs. misleading".
Mistake #2 Sending E-mails, LOTS of E-mails from your Company Server
Your business has collected e-mail addresses from customers and leads. With a list in hand, you've designed your e-mail to comply with the can spam regulations. But what's your next step? How do you send to a list in a safe way?
Lots of people make the mistake of thinking "I've got an e-mail server so I can send whatever I want through it." Not knowing the risks of sending it through your own server is a big liability. What's at stake is the very real possibility of your company's e-mail server being blacklisted as a result of one of your recipients taking offense at receiving your e-mail.
Technology makes it easy for an e-mail to get reported as spam. Desktop internet security software from companies like Norton and Trend Micro embed buttons directly into Outlook that allow e-mails to easily be marked as spam. When enough people, or the wrong person, report your efforts then your e-mail server gets blacklisted. Being blacklisted means your e-mail server is marked as a spammer with one or more of the major spam monitoring authorities.
If your e-mail marketing efforts result in your e-mails being marked as spam, your legitimate e-mail service could be impacted. Once your server is blacklisted, normal day-to-day e-mails will be automatically marked as spam by your recipients. This will negatively impact the ability of day to day business to get through - undoubtedly slowing down the business.
So how do you send out those 1000 e-mails? Use a third party, web-based service. There are lots of them out there - Constant Contact, Vertical Response, Silver Pop. They offer templates, tracking, reporting and most importantly - automated list management. In most cases if someone opts out of your list, even if you try to re-load that record into the system it will recognize them as an opt-out and exclude them. You can design a custom designed HTML e-mail, send simple text e-mails or use pre-made templates.
Mistake #3 List Quantity Over List Quality
You've been collecting names for years. You've purchased lists, captured names at trade shows, kept the cards of every prospect you ever met. So you should start shooting out e-mails to them, right? Wrong.
First, you should segment your lists based on the source of the contacts, and create a custom message for each. Then you should send each segment a single e-mail, explaining why they're receiving the message and offering them news, content or something else of value as an enticement to "opt-in" to receive ongoing communications from your company about topics and issues of concern to them. This is permission marketing and it pays dividends in the end - the key is providing content, news and offers of value to your audience.
At least 50% of the original list will most likely opt-out of future communications. However, the half you'll keep will be far more valuable because they'll have raised their hand and expressed an interest in your company's services and viewpoint.
Additionally, you'll avoid annoying people who are inclined to hit the "Mark as Spam" button when they receive e-mails they did not invite - helping your company stay off spam lists.
About the author: Lisa Pelish is editor of Training Growth Innovations. A 15 year marketing veteran, she's worked within the global marketing departments of F500 companies and on the agency side working with businesses ranging from start-ups to large corporations. Lisa is president and principal of Massive Impressions, specializing in online advertising and b2b lead generation www.massiveimpressions.com. She also provides strategic, tactical, online and offline marketing consultation services www.pelishmarketing.com.