Email marketing is a crucial piece of your integrated marketing puzzle, yet all too often business owners abuse the power of email and get hit with Spam labels. It’s not surprising. Who wants to receive dozens of emails a day from businesses you’ve never heard of. Whether you’re running a medical marketing campaign, or looking to add some more business to your Scottsdale resort, email marketing can lead to great success, if done properly.
Email Spam
According to Entrepreneur.com, one in four commercial emails doesn’t make it to the inbox and is either shunted to spam folders or blocked altogether. Just a few months earlier, that number was one in five. The trend is leaning away from email marketers.
With that said, it is possible to run a successful email marketing campaign by following these steps;
1. Where Are You Sending From? It’s important to take this question into account when beginning your marketing campaign. Are you simply using your free Yahoo or Gmail account or are you using a paid-for service such as Constant Contact? This will affect how your email is received by the recipient’s email program.
2. Where Are Your Email Addresses From? One of the most important aspects to consider is where you got your email list from. Are these people who opted-in through your website or an affiliate site? Are these people Friends or Fans on Facebook or any other social network? Did you buy the list? One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make early on is to buy email lists from unknown sources. These lists, even as ‘genuine’ as the seller makes them out to be, are no doubt riddled with fake email addresses and spam traps. These lists will also more than likely include emails to individuals who never opted-in, thus they are more likely to label your email as spam.
3. How is Your Email Reputation? Spam filters on every email program will take a close look at the email address that you’re using to determine how safe and reliable you are. If you’ve sent out many emails in the past that have been labeled spam, email programs will automatically send you to the spam folder and you’re recipient will never see what you have to say. Email programs can go as far as seeing the IP address of the computer you’re sending from, so even if you do utilize a different email address for this ‘clean’ campaign, your IP address could give you away.
4. Are you Using Spam Keywords? Email programs will also take notice of what words you are using in the title of your email, as well as the content of your email. Such keywords that will set off email program’s spam filters are best price, call free, dear friend, compare rates, free offer, free preview, marketing solutions, money, trial offer, and more. Be specific with your email title and avoid ‘selling’ your product to aggressively.
5. Do You Need Help From Marketing Professionals? Sending commercial emails in a targeted email campaign takes experience, know-how and consistency. If you are running these campaigns on your own it will take a great deal of dedication and commitment, as well as the tools to get it done right.
While using tools such as Constant Contact, MailChimp or iContact can greatly improve your success rate, nothing will work quite as well as having an expert run the campaign for you, design an email layout, avoid using ‘trigger’ words and get your email opened by each recipient. If you’re looking for a professional to take over for you, contact us today.