While I’m promoting email marketing as an excellent way to stay in touch with customers, I must warn small businesses on the dangers of SPAM. Never send commercial email messages to people who have not agreed to receive your news or information. Never.
We all get SPAM and some people are very aggressive about keeping it down to a minimum. Just one complaint to your web host or email marketing service and your ability to send email messages gets shut down. You will have to convince them to let you continue to send emails by showing them how you collected those addresses. You will have to pledge never to send SPAM again and when (if) they reinstate your account, you will think that’s the end of the matter.
It’s not. Now email providers like G-Mail will pay more attention to your messages and when people click to mark your message as SPAM in their inbox, Google will start delivering all your messages right to all recipient’s junk folder. Keep it up and soon even messages sent from un-compromised accounts with your web address in the body of the message will not be delivered at all.
So many small business owners just don’t believe it. They say, “No way! I get SPAM all the time from the same companies! Their messages still make it through!” Those messages are sent from professional spammers with servers in other countries so they are not constrained by our, very serious, CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. They are adept at subtly changing their business URL’s and switching servers when necessary to keep getting their messages through. This is a full time job. Is this what you want to do or do you want to build your business?
So How Can I Use Email Marketing to Grow My Business?
– The best way to use email marketing is to send messages only to people who have specifically agreed to get your messages. Subscribers to a mailing list or newsletter via a form on your site that’s provided by your email marketing service are the best, most bulletproof email contacts because they are verifiable. If you’re collecting addresses offline, you may have to show how you collected them and prove those people agreed to receive your emails.
– You can send messages that are NOT commercial in nature to anyone without fear of reprisal. This means that you may send out invitations to people you don’t know to subscribe to your list, but they cannot have a commercial aspect to them. For example, you CAN’T say, “Sign up for my mailing list and I’ll give you 20% off your first purchase” because that would be soliciting a sale. But you can say, “Please sign up for my mailing list and I will give you this free gift, no strings attached.” Be warned, your response rate for this type of message will be very low. Nevertheless, it is important that you respect people’s wishes; if they don’t sign up for your information, do no send them any more emails.
That’s it. This might seem like a bummer, just when you thought you had found the perfect way to drive lots and lots of customers to your site; or you can view this warning as a gift. I’ve known sites that had been around for years before their owners ruined them by buying a list or even just using their own personal contacts list of people who never agreed to receive commercial messages. The risk is real. Do it right, or don’t do it.
Cathy Wagner - Sales Copy Writer 