opens IMAGE file Email marketing is a great opportunity for brands, but it also has some clear rules and if you break them, you’re in trouble! It’s called the blacklist and trust us, you don’t want to be blacklisted in email marketing. There are a lot of spamming things happening in the world of email and sometimes business owners get excited about the things they could be doing…problem is a lot of times that spam!
So, how do you avoid being the dreaded spammer? Here’s what NOT to do:
Add Everyone You Know To Your List.
Just because you have access to someone’s email, doesn’t mean they want to receive your email marketing. You can get seriously flagged for adding people to unwanted lists. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that you have opt-in policies and opportunities in place. Then, if you’re purchasing any lists make sure you are using trusted sources for third-party email lists. Vet the companies to find out the quality of the recipients and how they’ve chosen to get on these lists. It’s important…REALLY important.
Keep All Of Your Emails On Your List Longterm.
The reality is that you WILL have unsubscribes, and you’ll also have a lot of people who stay on your list, but they are simply stale. They don’t care about your message and never have. Why are you keeping them on your list? To make yourself feel good? Sorry, they’re not doing you any favors. Instead, keep your list cleaned up, current, and relevant. Your open rates, click through rates, and overall campaign performance will be more accurate because you don’t have dead weight holding your email list back.
Emailing Too Often…Too Soon.
If you are sending emails twice a day, everyday for a week, you are going to literally exhaust your followers. They’re more likely to report you, unsubscribe, and frankly – have a bad taste in their mouth. There’s an art and science to how often to be sending emails, but a good rule of thumb is to give a little bit of breathing room between emails, especially if they are of mainly an advertising nature.
Selling Too Soon.
Email marketing, like most marketing today, is relational. Consumers love a good deal, but if they’ve never heard of you, odds are, they will disregard your advertisement immediately. You have to build some rapport, whether that’s in a honest-to-goodness freebie (no strings attached), a killer coupon deal, or some other content that appears giving. Once you’ve established some level of rapport with your audience, then you can send in the big offer.
If you’ve been following us at Data-Dynamix much, you know that we love email marketing. It still gets the best attention in the digital marketing space, over social media algorithms, pop up ads, and other strategies. But, you can’t abuse it and you have to walk a fine line with the CAN-SPAM rules and frankly, common sense. If you play by the rules, and think a little bit “outside the box” you’ll find that email marketing can be the best thing you brought into your marketing mix!