Spam Free Email Marketing

The proliferation of spam makes marketing through email a challenge. Unfortunately spam pollution has obscured many appropriate and effective uses of email marketing. Nevertheless, email is still a powerful means of marketing. Perhaps technology will someday cure the problem of spam altogether, until then we just have to get used to using filters and spam blockers to minimize unsolicited and undesired email. At least we aren't wasting paper and ink when we trash our email.

The internet has transformed marketing. by allowing businesses and consumers to make relevant and desired transactions based on genuine personal likes and interests. In theory, the more my actual interests and buying habits are known by the marketplace, the more specific and targeted the offers and information I receive. Instead of sitting through commercials for Geritol (which I won't be needing for a few years yet), or listening to ads for a real estate agents (which I don't need right now), I receive emails about things I am interested in, like books about innovation, new music by Jack Johnson, or free steaks at Ruth's Chris Steak House (I can dream).

Great strides have been made toward making internet marketing targeted and relevant. For example, I was once quite happy to receive an email right before Christmas with a special deal on the new Veggie Tales video - I bought it. On another occasion, I was informed of a new book by Malcom Gladwell - I quickly ordered and received in a couple days. Unfortunately, for every offer I am interested in, I still get dozens that go straight into the deleted items folder.

There is a big difference between legitimate email information and irrelevant offensive spam. For too often I often receive unsolicited email that I am not interested in, yet if it contains information about things that I might possibly have been interested in, I don't resent receiving it. For example, I might get an email from Amazon.com about a new recording artist that I'm not interested in. But if it is in the general genre of music I like, I'm glad they let me know and just delete the email. This kind of email doesn't make me mad like spam does.

There is an appropriate and effective way of using email in marketing. We just need to make sure that the email we send is appropriate for those receiving it. Later we'll discuss how to distinguish your targeted email from spam, so that people won't instinctively hit the delete key without first evaluating your email's message.

There are two kinds of spammers out there. The worst kind of spammer is completely unethical, usually immoral, and sometimes criminal hoping a few people will be gullible enough to respond. Then there are the less offensive spammers who are perhaps just untalented, uneducated, or unethical marketers who would rather send out a perfectly appropriate offer - but rather than targeting it they decide to send it to 50 million people hoping to hit their market is shotgun fashion.

It can be tempting to buy a CD of a million untargeted email addresses for $39.95 and send email out for fractions of a penny per address. The temptation can grow when comparing that cost to $500 - $3,000 for 10,000 targeted opt-in addresses (more on these terms later). Why spend so much money on a targeted list when you will likely hit many interested people by sending to 50 million generic addresses?

There are reasons why targeted email is more effective than bulk spam email, but these advantages don't outweigh the cost factor for those whose ultimate value is money without consideration for values such as common courtesy, professionalism, appropriateness, and respect. Why so much spam? Basically it's for the same reason that we are often interrupted during dinner by annoying telemarketers; there are so many marketers out there who consider money the ultimate, and perhaps only, consideration.

Daily correspondence - One of the great uses of email is something we all take for granted. I remember the first time I used email, how incredibly cool it was to be able to send a message to a friend on the other side of the world and get a response in moments. Often when we think about using the internet for business we think about the world wide web. While the web is an awesome tool for communicating information, email can be just as useful and effective (even more effective for lead generation and sales). One way to take advantage of the daily use of email is to simply correspond with clients and customers, checking in on them and reminding them that you are there when they need you.

General announcements to your personal contacts and clients - It doesn't take long to build up a collection of email addresses in Outlook or whatever email client you use for your personal and business contacts. Grouping these contacts into email lists and sending out general announcements to appropriate groups about happenings at your company is a great practice. There is no reason not to; it's free; and it's a pretty good bet that anyone in your personal email list will at least be happy to hear from you.

Email newsletters - Email newsletters (like this one!) are a great way of keeping your company in the minds of the people with whom you do business. Hopefully the newsletters are also interesting and helpful to subscribers. The only cost to offering email newsletters is that of producing them. The time investment for producing a newsletter (which I am very aware of as I sit here typing on a Saturday afternoon) is considerable. Newsletters can be valuable resources for your clients and customers, and it's a great way to utilize email. If your client already produces a newsletter it's a no-brainer to offer it via email.

Using email for active lead generation and sales - The uses of email already mentioned fall into the category of customer service and retention. While most companies have failed to recognize and utilize the internet in the area of customer service, these uses do not create leads or generate sales. Email however can be an active, lead generating tool that finds and directs new customers and clients to your company. In my opinion, before a company should think about how to use email aggressively to generate leads and sales, it should first become familiar with using email as a customer service and relationship tool. The experience of using email regularly will help to form good practices and perspectives in email marketing. Once there is a general comfort level in using email, using it as a lead generation and sales tool can be powerful.

The most important part of marketing email is its message. Having a compelling message is crucial to its success. Crafting this message follows the same kinds of strategies that other marketing media would. Messaging, positioning and branding is beyond the scope of this newsletter. We can, however, highlight issues specific to writing and crafting email messages.

Odd spellings using alternative characters like the number one in place of an "I" is a dead give away that an email is spam. CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS are also indicative of spam. As are random numbers added to subject lines. There are other evil techniques used by spammers like teaser subject lines such as "Re: Hey." This kind of subject line might make me think that I'd sent an email to a friend with the subject "Hey" and that this is their response. While any genuine and professional email marketing would not stoop to such lows, it's good to remember, when crafting a subject line, that recipients have been trained to look suspiciously at every email subject. So be as clear as possible about who the email is from and why it's being sent. If the offer is appropriate and your list well-qualified, a clearly labeled subject line is best.

Spam emails often come with "from" fields with addresses like "vmtwjivyqmpnqprg@yahoo.com" or "bulker8080351711@hotmail.com." One of the problems bulk emailers have is that they need to automate so many emails. This requires generating "from" addresses on the fly. These obviously bogus email addresses are a quick giveaway that the email is spam and cause the recipient to hit the delete key right away. Make sure an email's "from" field contains an actual name or email address, and that it is clearly an email address of the company that sent it. If you are renting a list (see below) and the list provider takes responsibility for sending the actual email (which is most often the case) you will need to ask about how the "from" field will read.

Personalization helps get an email read. When the "from" field and the subject line are both specific and appropriate, the next place a person will look to decide if the email is spam or not is the body of the email. If the first line or so has a personal salutation with the person's name it will at least encourage the person to read a bit further. Another way to personalize an unsolicited (but appropriate) email is to include your name and contact information. If I receive an email that is introduced by a real person and their email address and phone number is included in the email, I never consider it spam. Even if I am not interested, or even if it's off target, personal contact information tells me that a real person sent the email, not a blast email system.

When sending out emails you must consider whether or not to send the email in HTML or in plain text. Most people can read HTML emails these days. Sending an email in HTML does provide you with the opportunity to design the email, making it more attractive. A text email has some benefits in that it loads almost instantaneously so recipients can decide quickly to either respond or delete it. This is a courteous practice. But if HTML formatted email is used, make sure the graphics are light weight and not overly used.

A well-written email with a compelling message, as with all marketing, is essential for success. There is another way of making an email campaign successful, the use of targeted sub-sites, or landing pages. As in any marketing effort, the more focused and targeted the message the more effective it will be. Most email offers contain links back to websites for more information. This is, of course, a good idea, but focus can be lost if a recipient is directed to a general homepage. One of the Client Fallacies in a previous Newsletter discussed the problem of expecting your home page to "do too much." A typical homepage contains so many messages and choices that it can be ineffective as a follow up to a targeted email. For example, when I send out email about our newsletter I do not point recipients to our general Newfangled website. Instead, I direct them to the newsletter itself. Sometimes though, a special offer needs a special sub-site or landing page. A targeted landing page provides specific follow-up information and will help maximize the effectiveness of email campaigns.

Email marketing, unlike many other forms of marketing, allows immediate tracking of real-time responses. I am often shocked to see how quickly responses come when sending out emails. Once we sent out an email to a client site's subscribers asking them to fill out a survey. Within 5 minutes of sending the email we had many respondents. Within an hour we had hundreds. By the next day we had thousands.

When using our advanced tracking system a user specific code is added to each link within an email. The links triggers the system to track the session and optionally can email me a notice as each person responds. I can then look up these user's sessions before I follow up with my marketing effort.

A well crafted email needs a well targeted email list. Many traditional list providers such as InfoUSA offer email list in the same way that they sell direct mail list. There are also specialized email brokers that sell access to highly targeted lists. The process of buying an email list is similar to buying a traditional list. List brokers will take your information, and provide consultation for identifying appropriate list owners. Cost structures are similar as well: there are minimum buys, and cost ranges based on CPM (cost per thousand) that go up as your criteria becomes more targeted and specific, and down with the volume of names you purchase. List brokers provide a valuable service by having at their disposal so many list owners that they can greatly facilitate finding the best lists. In all these ways, renting an email list is similar to renting any other list for direct mail or cold calling.

There are some specifics to email list renting that you should be aware of when identifying good sources for email lists. We have provided a listing of email list brokers at the end of this newsletter. The biggest thing to look for in renting a list is that it contains permission or opt-in email addresses. This is the biggest distinction between bulk spam email and targeted email marketing. Spamhaus, a company that investigates and reports on spammers, has a helpful page on email list terminology to look for when evaluating email lists and list brokers.

Whenever you go to a portal or information source on the web (like an online magazine) and request information, fill out a form, or download software, you will often see a checkbox that asks if you would like to receive other information about this area of interest. Whenever you say yes to that question you are authorizing that source to provide your information to list brokers. You have opted in to that email list. If the online source is ethical it will only provide the list to appropriate renters whose offers are appropriate to the interests of their visitors. If they are not ethical they might sell the information to anyone who is willing to pay for it.

Another phrase you will hear email list providers use is double opt-in. Be careful with terminology - "confirmed subscription" or "closed-loop opt-in" are better than merely "double opt-in" lists. The Spamhaus article gives more detail. Gererally speaking "double opt-in" means that when that online form was filled out the user choose to receive offers via email, the site immediately sent a confirmation email to make sure that they want this information. If they say yes to the response email they are then entered into the double opt in list. This process keeps people from entering other people's email into such forms since the subscriber must respond to the email from their address.

Any email you send out should always offer the recipient the option to unsubscribe. This is a common practice among ethical list owners and providers, and their mechanisms for unsubscribing do work. However, as an email recipient you should know that unsubscribing to bulk spam email is extremely dangerous. Not only do these mechanisms often not work, but you actually end up telling the spammer that the email address is a "good one." Many spammers go so far as to guess at email addresses. They will send out to bill@yahoo.com, mary@yahoo.com, john@yahoo.com, etc., in hopes that these are real addresses. If one of them "unsubscribes" they really have only informed the spammer that they guessed right. That address will then be sold to other unethical bulk email lists.

I often verbally ask permission to send email to my prospects while on an initial marketing call. In fact I probably spoke to some of you for permission to send you an email about our agency partnerships. While this is not what is meant by permission email, and of course it is a much slower process than sending out thousands of emails at a time, it is a considerate and effective way of getting your email to people who are truly interested in your service.

Bounce back refers to the emails that bounce because some of the email addresses in the list are no longer in use, or were unavailable at the time the email was sent. Ask list brokers about their bounce back rates and how they compensate for bad addresses. Typically email brokers will overblast, meaning they will send to more names than where originally purchased to make sure that at least that many go through. Depending on the list, overblast percentages tend to range from 1-10% of the number of names purchased.

Some email list brokers can track how many emails were viewed and clicked. View rates correspond to the number of emails that were actually looked at (although whether they were immediately deleted can't be known), click-through means that the recipient clicked a link in the email and visited a website. Some brokers will boast high click-through percentages but a 1-3% click through rate is considered successful. Some email campaigns boast 10-15% click through rates.

Another advantage of email marketing is how quickly your message can get in front of your market. Some list brokers can identify a list and get the email out within 2 to 3 business days. Of course, once the email is sent, responses can come in within minutes.

Using well targeted, permission based email lists is a perfectly appropriate and effective means of marketing. But it is also expensive. While we would never recommend using bulk spam addresses, or extremely low priced targeted lists (which is just spam in disguise) to save money, we do recommend building your own lists by gathering email addresses from a website. Sign up forms on a website creates a qualified and targeted prospect list. Always use these addresses appropriately.

When sending out a few hundred emails, Outlook or other email clients may suffice. But sending thousands of emails will require an email sending service. These services not only send email, but they usually also offer list buying and list management services. There are bandwidth and server capacity issues to consider when sending out large numbers of emails. Large lists require a system that can handle hundreds of bounce back emails, perform list cleaning, remove duplicate emails, and handle unsubscribe features. We have listed some professional services below.

As long as email is used appropriately and sensitively it can generate leads and make sales. While we use our own email newsletter system, which has advanced features that tie into our tracking system, there are a few other professional services we can recommend.