Email marketing is used as a great communication channel to reach prospective customers. Businesses can not only find new customers but also retain existing customers through email marketing. A series of emails help customers to be updated with the company’s news, services or products. Lets focus on how to do ethical email marketing.
1. Email marketing has a great potential to boost any business. But some marketers take the shortcut for success, but there is no shortcut for success. Your email ID may be blocked due to a lot of spamming activities which include sending mails in bulk on a list which is not opt-in. Never buy an email list. Put your time & effort to build an email list.
2. Convince users that their database will be secure and also mention it in your company policy. Describe them why they should subscribe to your email list. Choose double opt-in process to build powerful email list. Also, do not use opt-in list of one product to send the mails of a different product.
3. Provide an opt-out option to your email. Users should have choice to unsubscribe from your email list. Unsubscribe process must be easy and single step.
4. Always mention the relevant & brief subject line. Don’t use lengthy subject line & spamming words like discount, free, buy etc.
5. Message in your email should be clear & useful for customers or prospects. Write your main points in opening sentences. Don’t send multiple emails in a day, it will irritate subscribers. Email frequency is very important.
6. Marketers should be aware of email marketing laws. To avoid spamming, manage & segment your email list regularly.
7. CAN-SPAM Act:
Don’t use false or misleading header information
Don’t use deceptive subject line
Message must include valid physical addresses
Give an opt-out or unsubscribe option to recipients
If you are using best email marketing practices & doing it right, it is an amazing marketing tool. But if you’re doing it wrong, it can be very risky for your business. Here, we’ll discuss about some risks:
Spamming
Email is marked as spam if you send it to people without their permission. Marketers need to be careful when they’re implementing a campaign and make sure to send the campaign on the customers who subscribed for that product. The main reasons of spamming are:
Easy option. Vendors are available online who sell database and is easily available
New players choose the easy way as it takes time to collect opt-in database and there too the number is quite low
The option is chosen to get the leads, which is a big Myth
Sending mails to 1000 unknown person and 10 known person will yield equal results
Unsolicited means it not requested by the recipients.
Abuse report ratio will rise and mark your IP blacklist. This will then affect even your genuine mails which are sent to opt-in database.
You have to be honest & place an unsubscribe link in your email, so they can may simply unsubscribe rather than flag your mail as spam. Unsubscription option is necessary even if you are sending mails to your opt-in list. Show some respect to your client and do not bother him after he/she unsubscribes your services.
Segment your contact list and make multiple lists based on the products for which you have received the subscription. It can be embarrassing when wrong people receive the wrong emails. It shows that you doesn’t care about customers, so these kind of mistakes are very dangerous to your business reputation.
Deliverability is the number of email messages delivered to your recipients’ in-box. It tells you how many of the emails bounced back and if that number is high, it’s a sure sign of inactivity. Low deliverability rate might get you blocked by Internet service providers. If your list is containing a lot of inactive emails, then it decrease your delivery rate.
