This is a guest post by Daniel Erhabor from FlutterMail.com.
Most internet marketers, old and new, are reluctant to use email marketing to its fullest because they are afraid of spamming. They are afraid of being labeled “spammers”. The truth is that there is a thin line between ethical email marketing and spamming.
In this article you will learn how to be the “Good Guy” in email marketing.
Before you learn how to be the good guy, you need to know what makes an email a spam message. When you know this, we can then highlight ways to avoid it and your messages will never be labeled as spam.
What Is Spamming?
Spamming is to forcefully send messages to a lot of people over the internet by
flooding their email addresses with copies of the same message without their request to receive such messages.
Spam is annoying.
Internet users frown at spam seriously. This is the reason measures have been put in place to penalize anyone doing it. For every legitimate email sent on the internet daily, there are far more spam messages sent. This sometimes make people and Anti-Spam systems list legitimate emails as spam.
The major characteristics of spam are:
• Spam Messages Are Unsolicited
Recipients of spam messages did not request to receive such messages. The email addresses are gathered through different means like email extraction from web pages. When the emails are gathered, spam messages will be sent to them.
• Spam Messages Are Selfish
In an ethical email, the recipients have the option to opt out of receiving such messages from the sender in the future. And when a recipient opts out, the sender respects the person’s decision and leaves him out.
Spammers do not respect their recipients’ decisions. Even when the recipient of the email opt outs from receiving messages from them, they will keep sending more messages to the person. Sometimes they change the content of the email or the sender address but it is the same spammer.
• Spam Messages Cannot Pass An Anti-Spam Verification System
Anti-Spam verification is a system that automatically sends a message back to the sender address when an unsolicited email is sent to the email address protected by the Anti-Spam system.
The sender will be required to manually prove that they are human by entering a verification code. When this is done, the message will be delivered to the email address it was sent to. Spam messages cannot pass Anti-Spam verification because the spammer will not have the time to manually enter the verification codes for all the returned messages sent by the Anti-Spam system since he might have spammed over one hundred thousand email addresses.
Now that you know what makes a spam message, let’s see how you can be the good guy in email marketing.
Deal Only With An Opt-In Email List
Create your own opt in form to allow people WILLINGLY join your list. If you do not know how to do this or you are too busy, just outsource it to someone who has the knowledge and time.
When people willingly join your list, you know that they are interested in what you have to offer. When you send them messages, they will know that they requested to receive messages from you. As such, they will not report your messages as spam
Send An Opt In Verification Email
When someone joins your mailing list, you should send an email to confirm that it was the owner of the email that signed up to your list. This can be done automatically by using an autoresponder service.
They will send an email immediately the person joins your list. The person will have to visit his email and click the verification link to start receiving messages from you. This opt-in verification will get you pass Anti-Spam verifications. Anti-Spam systems see this as legitimate and you will be whitelisted.
Add A Privacy Statement Close To Your Opt In Form
Adding a privacy statement close to your opt in form will go a long way and will also increase the number of subscribers you get. Your privacy statement should simply say that you will not sell or share subscribers email addresses with third parties. Many people are scared of joining one list and then receiving emails from 10 other promoters. So by adding a privacy statement your reputation will go up.
Respect Your Privacy Statement
You must respect and stand by what you wrote in your privacy statement. Don’t use your privacy statement to lure people to subscribe to your email list and then go against your privacy statement and start selling it to list brokers. If you do this, you will be flagged as a spammer. You must respect your privacy statement. Do not sell your subscribers email addresses to anyone just as you assured them in your privacy statement.
Respect Your Subscriber’s Decision
When you are sending emails to your list, always add the option for your subscribers to opt out of your list when they want. And, if at anytime they decide to opt out of your list, respect their decision. Don’t start sending them messages because if you do this, it will be spam.
That is it. Do these things and you will always be the good guy in email marketing. You will never be flagged as a spammer.
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I guess the definition of spam quoted here needs a serious revision. Spam is not only the posting of multiple copies of the same message to someone but (in my view) posting unsolicited multiple (even if different) messages to a recipient. It would say any unsolicited message about which a sender is not sure if the recipient would like or not is spam. It may sound a bit overly strict but unsolicited mails irritate me a lot and all that irritates me is spam in my opinion.
I agree with you Azam, these spamming mails are very annoying and disturbs us while looking in our mail account. So for a good e mail marketing these points are really very good.
I’ve been receiving different kind of spam emails on daily basis from same spammers, though I’ve opted-out many times but still receiving emails. This is really frustrated so I’ve created a filter and all these emails are now going directly to spam/junk folders. ;). Still it’s a headache as you have to check your spam folder as some valuable email may be there by mistake.
I remember when opt-in verification was not the norm but things have changed. Spammers are like cockroaches – you can’t seem to get rid of them.
There are so many spammers these days that it makes it difficult even for the anti-spam soft wares to distinguish spam from real email messages so they make a lot of mistakes. It is important to stay away from all these spam technics if you want to be trusted as an online marketer and you want to make money on the long run and not just a few random sales…
Great points, Daniel. I agree particularly about having a legitimate privacy statement. I have often been suspicious when a privacy statement is missing and don’t entertain that e-mail any longer. Also agreed about having the opt-out option. It is highly disrespectful to not have one and keep sending the e-mails regularly until the subscriber is forced to flag the message as spam, which is not good for the marketer.
-Jean
Spam, for me, is any email that I didn’t want – all unsolicited emails – which we fairly get a whole lot. Most of the time, they have bad construction and look really “spammy”. Lastly, spammers are disrespectful of privacy.
nice points Daniel to avoid spamming, sending legitimate privacy statement gives receiver freedom of choice, it will enhance your reputation.
thanks.
I subscribe to several newsletters, but I quit often many after I get flooded with spam email from them with worthlessly articles, cheap sales promotion, too often next letter without content, etc.
The most important thing “To Be The Good Guy In Email Marketing” is to take care for their followers well with respect.
I commonly used to stand away from email marketing for the risk of being marked as spam list. Thanks to let me know about the solutions for effective email marketing.
I do actually remember when opt-in verification was not the norm but things have changed. Spammers are like cockroaches – you can’t seem to get rid of them. And if you dont do something about it, they will only be more of them!