|
7 Email Marketing Principals to Avoid Spamming
Copyright © 2008 Kerry Johnson
When using an email marketing campaign to prospects
or customers, there are plenty of issues to consider.
The primary consideration is how many emails actually
make it to the inbox. One poll conducted by a software
company revealed that 58% of email marketers indicated
that they had no idea what were their delivery rates.
And of the responders that indicated they knew 23% were
using a tracking tool to monitor and verify delivery
rates. The remainder we basing there delivery rates
on guessing, prospect/customer feedback or testing with
their own email address.
There are other issues that afflict email marketers
such as anti-spam compliance, single and double opt-in
methods, text vs. html formats, frequency of sending
emails, blacklisting/whitelisting, maintaining relationships
with ISP and content.
To increase your success as an email marketer and
not get tagged as a spammer, here are 10 things to remember:
1) Enhance the start of the relationship by focusing
special attention at the beginning because email performance
usually declines two months after responders opt-in.
Engage your new subscribers immediately in an organized
program that include a welcome letter, a copy of the
latest newsletter or promotion and emails offering a
set of best-newsletter articles or an email-exclusive
offer for new subscribers. It is important to manage
the subscriber's expectation from the start by adequately
explaining the email program's value proposition, frequency,
type of content and privacy policies.
2) Segmentation and personalization are probably
the most underutilized keys to email marketing. Your
email is competing with many others in your subscriber's
inbox. Personalized subject lines, offers, articles,
products showcased and follow up emails based on recipient
activity, are clear winners. It is critical that you
begin this process even if it is only personalizing
the content of the subject line.
3) Many email marketers spend plenty of time building
relationships with ISPs, and putting things in place
so their emails get to the inbox however in vain, because
most final gateway such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook,
Gmail, etc have filters stopping unknown senders. To
stop this, it is important to get your recipient to
add you to their safe list.
4) Get and confirm permission from your subscribers
is the pinnacle to a successful email marketing campaign.
Capturing the opt-in and confirming it with a follow-up
email is the best practice and one which the email industry
is adopting.
5) As the inbox gets more crowded with spam, your
users are looking for relevant content. The age
of email blasting is over. Send valuable, informational
content. Avoid promotional words and phases, multiple
exclamation points, all capitol letters and text often
used by spammers. Nothing can trigger subscriber dissatisfaction
like continued emails that do not meet subscriber's
expectations in terms of content and frequency.
6) It is your responsibility as an email marketer
for handling unsubscribe requests promptly. You
should also set a process to enable your subscribers
to update their preferences and email address without
having to jump through a series of hoops.
7) Always test your email marketing campaign.
A strategy that worked six months ago, may not work
today. You must continuously tweak your format, design,
copy style, calls to action, subject lines segmentation
content, days/times sent, etc. Start with simple A/B
split tests and repeat a few times to verify your results.
Focus on what really matters when setting up your
email campaign. When you use these best practices within
your email marketing program, both you and your subscribers
will win.
Author: Kerry Johnson
Kerry Johnson is webmaster http://www.skoshabizonline.com
your Online Business Ideas site.Sign up for his free
home business newsletter and receive free affiliate
marketing and home business related ebooks.
Keywords :email marketing, email marketing services,
email marketing news, email marketing campaigns, best
email marketing
Content Provided By : SubmitYOURArticle.com
|
