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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In my opinion, email marketing is now no longer use spam techniques. Virtual community has been growing up and began to respect the privacy of others. Therefore, using the legitimate privacy in email marketing is absolutely needed
The worst thing when you start blogging is you don’t know which person you should subscribe and which not. Spamming is real is bad practice if you want to survive in this industry. Making Inbox flooded with too many junk mails is also the matter of Thinking.
Thank god that there are very good plugins available in the market that can reduce the number of spammers but we own will have to take care of this.
Hi daniel, good email marketing are welcome to people email inbox and this post showed how to become good guy. the things are many good guy turning into bad guy after a while, maybe just because they have new product or making new site to promote, i have experience on that, so i’ve to unsubscibed it. Their lost not mine.
I agree with the respect your subscriber decision tip a lot. Subscriber do need respect, and if they want to leave your list, let them go. You shouldn’t keep them cave in or they are going to spread rumors about you.
Hi, Daniel!
I agree, many are afraid of spamming and thus do not know how to look like “good guys” in email marketing. I think the best way to deal with it is to respect the privacy statement, but other points you raised here are of great relevance, as well. Sticking to them can help in building solid reputation over time.
When I used to work in customer service I get numerous calls about people claiming that we are not answering emails. I had to constantly tell them to check their spam folder as tendency is we got directly routed to it by mistake. The business of ethical companies are getting hurt by spammers. I don’t know why they persist on spamming when pretty much everybody knows what they are up to. Do they actually still dupe anyone into even reading what they are spamming about?
Even after opting out of some spam emails we still get the same emails over and over, so annoying.
Very nice post Daniel. I deal with the issue in a simple way; when it comes to email marketing, I try to not do anything that I wouldn’t want someone else doing to me. If I dont wanna be spammed, I wont spam others, if I dont want to be bombarded with sales pitches, then I wont bombard my list with sales pitches left and right either.
If we all do this, there will be no room for spam and unethical marketing tactics. Thanks.
Email marketing is a must for almost all professional bloggers and especially for those who occupy with affiliate marketing.Spammers are everywhere but with spamming as you said you cannot go too far away.If you ask professional bloggers would tell you that an email list is a must.Keep informing people with quality infos and nice to meet you as it is the first time posting here.
Thank you for the straightforward advice. If more people would follow what you have outlined, there would definitely be more subscriptions. Now if all email marketers would give you the option to determine how often you would like to receive emails, that would be even better!