Avoiding the spam trap with your email marketing

Do you want to use email as part of your marketing strategy, but are concerned that you will be labeled as a spammer if you do? With 87% of all email messages considered spam according to the State of Spam monthly report by Symantec, it is no wonder that a small business owner might be tentative to use this media in their marketing. However, email is one of the most cost effective ways to reach the people that WANT to hear from you.

By using 3 key best practices as the foundation of your email marketing strategy, you can help your business grow while avoid becoming a spam statistic. These key practices are: have permission, follow your campaign plan, relevant content.

Have Permission

Do not send commercial emails to anyone who has not given you permission. You can receive proper permission directly from the subscriber through a sign up form on you website, a paper form in your store or a sign up form at your trade show booth. Purchasing or receiving a list from a third party is NEVER a way to receive permission. It is also important to provide a way for recipients who decide they no longer wish to receive your messages to easily unsubscribe. This will prevent them from hitting their spam button and flagging your messages as spam.

Follow Your Campaign Plan

You set a frequency for your campaign—once a month, once a week, or even every day—and it is important for you to follow your plan. Don’t deviate from it. Don’t change it. It is what your subscribers agreed to receive from you and changing it puts you at risk of losing subscribers—or worse, annoying them. Have a need to send more frequent messages? Create a new campaign and invite subscribers in your regularly scheduled newsletters to sign-up for the new more frequent email list. Provide them the opportunity to sign-up for the more frequent email list with every newsletter you send. But don’t send existing subscribers the new, more frequent, mailings until they sign-up for it.

Relevant Content
Deliver the content that your subscriber expects. If you told them they would receive periodic special subscriber only offers, that is what  you need to deliver. If they are expecting special tips, success stories, or industry related news, then this is what your newsletter needs to deliver. You can add an additional item into the newsletter, for example a commercial offer, but the primary content must be what they expect to receive. It is also important that your subject line be concise and descriptive of the information conveyed in the message. 35 characters is a good limit for subject line length.

You do not need to be shy about promoting your business and email is an extremely cost effective way to reach out to people that want to hear from you. Use these 3 key best practices and you will enjoy successful email campaigns that will not be labeled as spam.