Business Information Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Spam’

As an email marketer, I can tell you That Many of the people in my profession work hard to Develop good content, sell products and Constantly Their Increase the size of Their subscription base.

Despit Their Best Efforts, There Are Three Things Working Against Them.

You see, MOST email subscribers Are naive, lazy and Misinformed. Of course I Mean That in the nicest way possible .

Email Subscribers Are Naive

When Joe consumer buys a burgundy, cashmere crewneck sweater from Bluefly . com and checks the “please send me offers” box, He Thinks He’ll get an occasional message about a sale, or Perhaps a recommendation for a snazzy vest That Would Go just right with His new sweater. He trusts Them. I Gave Them His money and Expects That They Will Be His friend.

Poor unsuspecting Joe. I have never in His wildest dreams imagined he’d Be That getting two messages a day from Them (on top of all the spam email I Already Other gets).

But, who’s at fault? Joe, or the historical abused marketers That Just trust? Like the man said “Can not we all just get along?”. There Has To Be a happy medium somewhere, and it’s up to the marketers to search for it, and it’s up to the “Joes” of the world to let Them know how much is too much. If we work balance Towards That We’ll All Be happier. Consumers Will Have great products to buy and marketers will have a nice bump in Their conversion rates.

Email Subscribers Are Lazy

Despit His keen fashion sense, Joe is lazy. Even if I is one of the Few non-marketers knows All Those That Are required to emails Have a way to unsubscribe , I does not have to waste time looking for a link buried at the bottom, in a Typically Smaller sized font and a Often Color That Makes It Hard to Distinguish from the background.

It’s so much cutting easier for Joe to just click “mark as spam.”

But Is That really Joe’s fault? Or, Are the marketers That Think They Have to make it as Difficult as possible for someone to unsubscribe, while still Following the letter of the law the ones to blame? Many email marketers Have Been Told over and over – “That list grow,” Some it’s events for an annual performance goal That Has To Be Met. Over the Years We Have Our Trained Actually subscribers to use the “easy” button. I’d love to blame Joe, can not. Sorry.

Rather Than judge a list by ITS size, we evaluate-how about how it is Effective. What is your click rate, What is your conversion rate?

If someone decide What you are selling is not for Them, Make It Easy for Them to leave. However – Would not It Be Better To Have Figured Out What They Want From You Before It Got To That point? The only way to do That is more testing, and monitoring What Works and What Does not.

Sadly, I do not think Many e-marketers realize That HAVING email flagged as spam have to Greater Than Potential Impact lost just one pair of eyes. Many email systems now report spam upstream to larger, shared lists of spammers – no mail blacklists from Which Will Be accepted. Many of These lists feed from Each Other, get your company on one and soon it’ll Be on several. Blacklists Are One of the Easiest thing to get on, But Some of the hardest to get off. Get your company on one of These blacklists and it’s not just your marketing emails That Are block, it’s ALL e-mails. Do you want to Explain to your CEO That I can not email pictures of precious historical miniature yorkie’s puppies to His sister in Phoenix Because you wanted to save the company $ 950? I did not think so.

Read, read, read – then send

It Seems Like Such Obvious thing, But make sure you and someone else your message Proofs (more Than once) Before you click “send.” Our friends at Ragan Communications recently Were Reminded of this the hard way; They sat a daily e-newsletter out Twice on the Same day, about 30 minutes apart. Why? Because the first one had “ExxonMobil” Spell as “ExxonMobil” in the subject and in the body. A subtle, pero important difference.

Email Subscribers Are Misinformed

Joe Does not Know (or Does not Care) That There is a legal definition for “spam.” Joe Thinks Any email I want is not does spam. Joe Believe That “mark as spam” is the Same thing as “I just do not want this anymore.” From Joe’s perspective, it is the Same. He clicks the button, the mail stops showing up in historical mailbox. Problem solver.

Joe Does not Realize That a lot of those “mark as spam” buttons all over the world Are connected to mysterious back-end systems monitor and track That the Companies That send the emails people like Joe call spam. He Also Does not Know That When enough people click the buttons Those companys sending out emails Are Those flagged as spammers, Not just for him – Potentially But for millions of people.

No matter how great you think your content is or how you Closely follow the can-spam rules, if Consumers Do not Want it – IT IS SPAM.

Now That the company has-been flagged, good luck getting people to buy the matching belt and fedora to go With their new sweater.

Joe That Did not INTEND to cripple company’s email campaign, I Was Just sick of getting emails from Them. Joe is lazy, remember?

So what can you as email marketers do to help this? Figure Out What Joe Wants and Expects From You, and Give it to him. Format your messages in a Way That When the Time Comes That Joe No Longer Wants to hear from you, He Knows What to do and Despit historical laziness, resists the urge to click the spam button.

Email Marketers Are Naive, Lazy and Misinformed

It Seems That Perhaps Joe is Not the only one at fault. The email marketers of the world Need Not Be so naive to about What Actually Our subscribers expect from us, We Need to Be Not so lazy about Determining What We send and to who etc and we Need to help Educate Our subscribers about how to unsubscribe when to They want to.

What Would You Do to Improve email marketing? Let me know in the comments.

It’s true, research has proven That Actually email marketers Are Dumber Than Previously Thought events WAS possible. In the Interest of fairness and full disclosure, I Have to tell you I am an email marketer. Although, Sometimes When I Meet someone new I lie and say I’ma garbage collector. Most people like garbage collectors What do for a living.

It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean.

The crew at returnpath.net recently Concluded a 19 month study Into how email marketers handle non-responsive addresses . I Do not Know What the Researchers Expected to uncover, pero Were the results shocking, at least to me anyway.

I’ve Told You Before, it’s a good idea to purge addresses from your mailing lists if you know people Those That Have Never, Ever Open or clicked on your messages. I mean, why make your math more and lower your results Complicated Because A Few People Do not want (or never see) what you send Them?

I think I’m safe in Saying That if left up to the people That Actually push the “send” button, mailing lists Would Be as lean and clean as possible. Unfortunately, Many Are That stuck with bosses believe when it comes to mailing lists (and Probably Other Things), size matters – and bigger is better.

Which Brings us to the first Finding of the study, 73% of the 40 companies Studios continues to send email to Completely non-responsive email addresses for the full 19 months of the study. SEVENTY-THREE PERCENT! Come on – are you serious? I can UNDERSTAND Almost Not Wanting to mess with your math DURING the current campaign year, But why not start the year with a nice clean, fresh, VALID mailing list? Let’s Get Those lists clean up, you can do it, just call it spring cleaning – or maybe a little fib and tell your boss it’s a can-spam Requirement and you Have to do it, I promise I will not tell.

OK, so 73% is Surprising, But Not in the big picture terribly Harmful to anything in the long run, right? Wrong. There is a chance average Better Than That the reason the emails Are Not Being Opened Because They’ve Been is tagged as spam. If that’s the case, each additional message you send is Another nail in the coffin of your email marketing program as your reputation gets Worse and Worse and you get added to more and more of the spam blacklists.