Email Promotion Basics (or Why Email isn’t a simple as it used to be).

Email isn’t as simple, in terms of using it for marketing, as it once was.  Sending out mass quantities of emails from your home account, on behalf of your business is problematic at best.

I got a call today from a client who was concerned that no one saw his email broadcast, and he believes (rightly so) that his email might be considered SPAM and disappeaered into a filter.  Here are the most common errors in sending email, and why they get caught as SPAM:

1. Authentication. If you’re sending business emails with links to your website from your home email account, many filters automatically see this as SPAM.  In simple terms the sender does not equal the web domain you’re talking about.
2. Large lists (anything over 5) are also considered SPAM by many ISP’s, when BCC:d.  Yup, as little as five recipients can have you flagged.
3. It is SPAM. Most email programs, including Gmail have little buttons at the top of the page that say ‘Mark as SPAM’.  It only takes two marking your email address as a spammer to get MANY services to block you automatically.  If the list you’re using doesn’t offer an automatic way to subscribe (or unsubscribe), you’re definitely SPAM.

   An example is a realtor who adds me to their marketing lists without my permission.  I may have done business with them, but it doesn’t allow them to add me to a list without my express permission.

Solutions – doing Email Promotions the right way.

1. Authentication. Authenticating a sending domain instantly improves the chances of your campaigns being delivered at many of the major ISP’s like Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and AOL.  A professional service always does this.  If it ain’t authenticated, then it’s SPAM.
2. Managed Lists. List members have subscribed using a proper protocol, and have ready access to unsubscribing in every email, and on the web site.  Anything less than this is unprofessional.  Managed Lists + Authentication + Feedback = Promotion success.
3. Feedback. What’s the point of sending an email promotion without know when it was opened, and where it directed your clients too?  Feedback should not be limited too ‘when it was opened’; it should be tied into Google Analytics to provide real-time client information demonstrating what they looked at, and why.  Unsubscribes, SPAM conflicts, soft and hard bounces should all be tracked.  If the terms ’soft and hard bounces’ are new to you, it’s time to get some help.

For a more indepth look at email marketing, check out my previous email post ‘When a list is not a List‘.