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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Spamming is indeed a problem if you are trying to do email marketing. You are correct in sending to only people from your opt-in list. When they visit your site, you also must have some form of disclaimer like the privacy statement. One of the best ways to make email marketing work and make your readers/clients look forward to it is also by offering subscriptions and newsletters with fresh content (not the same old rehashed info).
Whenever I get an email marketing message, i’ll generally only give it a read if there’s a clearly labelled unsubscribe link, otherwise it will get deleted straight away. Honesty is the best policy after all!
For good online business one should completely be familiar with spamming activities.Because of spamming activities search engines also penalize the site.Spammers are intelligent and it very difficult to captures them but not impossible.
I agree with you Daniel; email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tool in internet marketing. If we do it the right way then the returns would be multiple times the amount we earn without email marketing. Just starting to use email marketing in my blogs and found a good post so that i stay on the right side.
Very good advice. In emailing marketing it’s very important not to be considered as spam. That’s why you should email people on your opt-in list who want and are ready to read your letters.
An important thing is that most of the people who communicate through emails or try to send newsletters gets failed due to some of the mistakes. Most of the time emails are unprofessional due to which it gets marked as Spam by the subscribers. Before you send any promotional or general emails to any of your list, make sure you know the basic Email Etiquette Rules. I would like to suggest author to please post some effective “Email Etiquette Tips” for visitors so that the basic mistakes are avoided.
I can’t stand email spamming, in cloggs up your inbox, junk mail and basically your entire account. I agree, good email marketing techniques is a lot better in terms of online marketing objectives, customer satisfaction and more.
I get quite a bit of spam and can’t believe this stuff actually works! The subject line promises are absolutely ridiculous and the products they’re pushing are absurd. This is a great article that outlines email marketing best practices very well. Thanks for the post!
Brian
Great addition here. Personally, I feel as though sometime the biggest persuasive technique is just simply being yourself and NOT spamming crap in emails.
I’ve always avoided email marketing because of the spam factor. But it still something I have to do. Thanks for the tips.