Email Marketing: Best Practices
Email marketing resources.
You can classify the email marketer pretty easily. There are the email marketers who are good responsible people who only send emails to people who subscribe to them. There are the spammers who try to send to as many people as possible regardless if they want to receive the email or not. Then there is the majority who fall into the middle category, those who want to be good responsible email marketers but who haphazardly use techniques and practices that place them in the spammer category. This article is to help those who want to be good responsible email marketers and to avoid the pitfalls of becoming a spammer.
Get your subscribers the right way
Generating a subscriber list legitimately is hard and time consuming. Buying an email list sounds like a shortcut, but in the long run hurts you more than it helps you. A list of subscribers who are genuinely interested in your product provide much better business than a random group of people that you are trying to trick into gaining interest in your product. Aside from the violation of their privacy more than likely you are wasting your resources on them. Only send to people who have directly contacted you about your service. They are the ones you want to target with your product.
Don't email people that do not want your emails!
Do not, I repeat, do not ever send to people that did not explicitly state that they want to receive email from you. Just because you bought a list of emails from some website that guarantees that they are "100% willing" does not mean that they are. Don't be a spammer. Only send emails to people who have directly subscribed to you either through your website or requesting directly from you to send to them. Any list that you get from a friend or another website will only be a list of people that do not want to open your email. Why go through the hassle of spending money to have people reject your emails? In addition you run the risk of them reporting you as a spammer and getting your IP address put on one of those blacklists that major ISPs use. Trust us. You don't want that to happen. Also, there are benefits to only sending to people that signed up. You get better returns on people actually opening your email that have genuine interest in the product or service that you provide. Again, why waste your money sending to people who are going to delete your email anyway?
Honesty is the best policy
We've all seen it. Emails with the subject line that read "Open Me For Free Offers" or "Hello from so and so". Your subject line is the first connection to a client and if for one second they think it is spam they will instantly delete your email. Instead of using catchy slogans or deals to entice them to open your email, just label the subject line with a legitimate title that describes what is inside. For example, "Monthly shampoo newsletter" or "This week's special offer from Mull's". It should be a subject line that instantly lets them recognize that this is an email that they signed up for.
Keep it simple
Yes you can make complex HTML documents that illuminate the screen when someone opens their email. However, those can get unnecessarily bulky and can slow down the delivery of the email. Keep it simple. Always include plain-text (many people actually prefer it that way) in case they are blocking images. Never have just an image. That is a guaranteed red flag as spam and your email will go into the junk filter. Keep your emails simple and to the point.
Always leave an exit
Always provide an unsubscribe link in your emails. Yes, losing a subscriber hurts but it is better than being labeled as a spammer from someone that doesn't want your service anyway.
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