subject: Think Before Launching Your Email Blast [print this page] The title of this article may seem a bit awkward. You may be saying to yourself, 'Well of course I think about my email campaigns.' The thing is, email campaigns are very different from website content, press releases and pay per click advertising.
The major difference is that your company is establishing a one to one connection with the customer in the privacy of that customer's email account. That is a very different matter than all of those circumstances where the customer has ventured beyond their own controlled environment to follow a paid ad or browse through your website. In all of those circumstances the client has made a choice to view material. Although opt in email essentially says that the customer has invited your company into their email space, it is still a privilege that can be easily disrupted by making a mistake.
Be sure your email is welcome:
Being welcome means that the recipient has 'opted in', they have given permission for your company to send email to them. Be sure that you have clearly demarcated the difference between the transactional email and marketing email. Your customer expects transactional email after a sale, such as email notifications of shipping and updates on backorders, plus possibly a follow up thank you note and query about satisfaction.
Your customer does not necessarily expect to receive biweekly alerts about sales and discounts. They many not mind but you need to be sure before you send something out that is not welcome or at least expected in a general 'oh yes I remember agreeing to receive offers' kind of way.
If you do not get permission and too many people are confused by your marketing email and label it 'junk', your company can find itself in trouble with the agencies that oversee the production of spam on the Internet. Be aware that studies have shown that ten percent to thirty percent of email receivers hit the 'this is junk' button even when they agreed to receive email, often because they believe it is the best way to unsubscribe.
One reason that people forget about having agreed to receive email is that marketers often allow a large amount of time to lapse between gathering opt ins and sending email. If you have allowed six months or more to go by without contact, send out a 'remember me' email first so that your correspondence does not end up labeled as junk.
Make your correspondence error free:
Web content is out there in front of people all the time, same with paid ads. If there is a typo, someone should catch it very quickly. Even if it is your customer who points out that you have used an apostrophe incorrectly which makes the company look a bit amateurish, at least you can correct it before anybody else finds it again.
Emails, on the other hand, may only be seen by a few people in the company and, once sent, cannot be retrieved for a do over. So, before you send an email be sure that many pairs of eyes have looked it over for grammatical problems, effectiveness of the text and accuracy of information. You basically have one chance to make a good impression, do not fail because you did not take the time to have someone else proofread the copy.
It may sound too basic, but given the opportunities for error and the inability to correct those errors, it still makes sense to double check everything before you launch your email campaign.
Sign up to feedback loop services:
All major email service providers offer a service called feedback loop. This service notifies you whenever a user has marked one of your emails as spam. A high level of emails marked as spam could indicate to the email service provider that your newsletters are either junk mail or not wanted, and they could limit the number of emails you can send per day to their customers. Therefore do consider pruning your lists by removing users who have marked your email as junk more than once.
