GETTING STARTED WITH EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing - sending out emails and newsletters to your subscription base - can be a very effective tool for keeping your audience aware of your business. It is also extremely cost-effective. You can advertise new products, share news, offer tips and suggestions, and provide needed information such as advertising deadlines or upcoming workshops, all without the need for printed materials.

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LET'S TALK ABOUT SPAM

There's one very, very important fact to remember:

Unsolicited commercial email is Spam. And just like the canned meat product, Spam is seldom a welcome sight!

A good email campaign is polite and courteous. It takes into consideration that we are all very busy and don't have time to read anything that does not directly pertain to our needs, and it doesn't clutter our mailboxes with unsolicited email.

Most people, upon receiving an unsolicited email, hit the delete key without hesitation. They may form a negative impression of your business if they start associating it with unwanted email. If many people flag your email as 'junk mail' you could find your emailing abilities blocked by your ISP (Internet Service Provider).

And even worse, since the Can-Spam Act of 2003, it is possible to be sued or penalized for sending Spam. Below is a quote from Wikipedia on the subject of email marketing:

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorizes a US$11,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient. Therefore, many commercial e-mail marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the Act. A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the Act.

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BUT I HAVE THIS NEW WEBSITE AND A LIST
OF EMAIL ADDRESSES...

After I have launched a website for a client, they are often interested in starting the next phase: driving traffic to the site. Usually what immediately comes to mind is their email address book, business cards with email addresses that they have collected, or other databases of contact information which can serve as the groundwork for an email marketing campaign.

But these contacts have probably not agreed to you sending them email. In other words, they haven't Opted In. In order for email marketing to operate within the law, there needs to be a way for them to sign up to receive your information in the future. This is known as permission marketing - you have their permission to send them information via email.

And according to the anti-spam laws, there are ways the email must be constructed in order for it to avoid being labeled as spam. The most basic rules for composing compliant emails are:

There must be a way to Opt-Out of the mailing list.

The subject line must be relevant to the contents of the email.

A legitimate physical address must be listed.

However there's a bit more to it than those basics:

Many companies block emails that do not contain the correct header information (in the html of the email) to get past their spam blockers.

If your email list contains a number of addresses that bounce, and/or when people opt out of your emails, you have to go into your list and delete these addresses.

And you have to add in the new addresses on a constant basis to keep the list up to date.

Often all images in your email are blocked by default.

You need to be able to test your email to see how it works and displays in a variety of email programs.

If you add a 'sign up' block to your website and you do not have a secure server, spamming programs can gather your mailing list and use it for spamming purposes themselves.

You'll need a way to get in touch with your contacts and get them to Opt In, without being thought of as Spamming.

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SO WHAT CAN I DO WITH MY CONTACT LIST?

it's still possible to make use of your contact information and start email marketing, but it won't be as easy as shoving all the addresses into a CC address area and hitting Send for every ad, press release, special offer, etc.

What you can do is re-introduce yourself via email to your customer base, remind them of how they know of you (friend, previous customer, business acquaintance, etc.) and tell them about your newsletter or upcoming email campaign.

Ask them if they would like to sign up, and include a link to your signup list in the email, or direct them to the page on your website where they can sign up.

You may have to send out a number of differently worded versions of your email re-introduction in order for the recipients to feel as if they would indeed like to sign up for future emails from you. The less this re-introduction email sounds like spam, the more interest they will take in it.

And content is important. A personal tone will work well. Explain why they might be interested in hearing from you again. What's in it for them?

Then start using your website and future emails as a way to get people to Opt-In by having sign-up links on all of your website pages (people may have arrived at a page on your site via a search engine and not the homepage) and in your email signature and those of your employees, so recipients can sign up any time they like.

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CONSIDER USING AN EMAIL/NEWSLETTER SERVICE

Once people Opt-In on your site or via your email link, their information is sent to you in a number of different ways depending on your website. If you are handling the email list yourself, they may be sent directly to you in an email message. You may be taking them from a paper Opt-in sign-up sheet and entering them into a spreadsheet or database yourself. Either way, it soon will be apparent to you that maintaining this email list takes time, and the larger the database the greater the effort.

It is likely that you will find yourself manually removing bounced addresses and opt-outs. You may want to organize your list by target groups. You may be unsure whether the emails are getting to the intended recipients as not all emails rejected by other servers will bounce back to you. And you may wish you had some sort of reporting to find out who was clicking on what, who was deleting your emails, etc.

As mentioned earlier there is also the chance that without a secure server and the appropriate code, the email addresses may be co-opted upon entry by a nefarious spammer and put to bad use, causing trouble for all.

And you may also find yourself wanting a snazzy HTML email with nice graphics and a professional feel, as opposed to a regular email look. But you'll want to make sure the graphics will load, and you want to know it will look good in lots of different email software.

Some businesses have the resources to hire a programmer to customize an HTML template for their use, to add security to their site, and to do what's necessary to make their email marketing as user-friendly as possible.

However many businesses now use email marketing services to do all of this work. An email marketing service can do the following:

They include an automatic opt-in message and have information that can be added to your site, allowing people to sign up on your site in a secure manner

They handle the un-subscribes and bad addresses (so you aren't having to constantly tweak your email groups)

They are completely compliant with the Anti-Spam Act (very important!)

Their emails include header info (unseen) that helps them not be seen as spam by your recipients

They offer reporting features and they offer attractive templates that can be coordinated with your site.

They often have a free trial period for you to try the service, and various pricing scales depending on your email volume.

At the time of this article, some of the top email marketing services include www.mailchimp.com, www.vertical response.com, www.constantcontact.com, and www.icontact.com. Each of these services offer different features, so check them out carefully before signing up.

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SENDING OUT YOUR FIRST CAMPAIGN

So now you have a clean email list, with email addresses of people who have definitely Opted In, and you're ready to send out your first campaign!

Your email recipient is a lot like you. They're getting loads of junk in their email in-boxes and, unless your information is very pertinent, they may choose to unsubscribe. In order to avoid this, sending targeted email campaigns to different groups within your email database will help you keep your message relevant.

And regardless of your type of business or the content of the email, do not send out the official email until you have tested it first.

Send a copy to yourself at another email address and others in-house to test how it looks.

Test all the links you may have included.

Check for spelling and punctuation.

Make your Subject line interesting and clearly identify what business is sending the email.

Does everything seem to be working? Then you are ready to send out your campaign!

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WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM AN EMAIL CAMPAIGN

After an email campaign has been sent out it's time for some post-game analysis. If the newsletter service you are using has reporting available you will want to see who responded to what, which links got clicked and which didn't if you included links to your website, how many un-subscribes were generated, etc.

You can make decisions based on this information as to content changes, what you may want to repeat next time and what needs to be tweaked. After a few email campaigns have been sent out, evaluate their worth. Are you getting a return for your investment? Are your recipients enjoying this interaction with you and finding it valuable?

An email marketing campaign is a work in progress. It can help you reach out to your audience in a new and timely way, help drive traffic to your site, and help you determine what people want. By being polite and considerate of your recipients' time you can forge new client relationships and build your branding in a very inexpensive yet professional manner.

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