Email Marketing is a highly effective and very cost effective way of marketing your products or services. However, as all of our inboxes get fuller and fuller it becomes even more critical to get the formula right so that you are welcomed into your recipients inbox. You really don’t want to be a quickly deleted pest!

Often it is just a case of ensuring that the content you are sending is valuable and worthwhile to the recipients and that you have their consent. Think about your own inbox for a moment. If you receive an email from a business or a name that you are not familiar with and have no recollection of having met or subscribed to, what is the first thing you do? Assuming of course that the email did not go straight into your spam filter you would likely delete it or mark it as spam. Right?

So how to get through the clutter and get results. Ensure you don’t commit the following email marketing sins;

Forgetting WIIFM
Don’t send ‘Advertising’. You wouldn’t want to recieve it and neither do your recipients. Your emails must contain valuable content and/or a great offer. When I receive emails that are sent with the sole purpose of trying to sell and there is nothing contained within that is valuable or even helpful to me I will delete and so will most of your recipients. Don’t forget the WIIFM (Whats In It For Me) formula.

Don’t CC for bulk sends
If you only CC your contact list when sending your email marketing, everyone else on the list sees the entire list that you have sent the email to. This is a poor email practise and a breach of privacy for your contacts. If you must use Outlook (& I recommend against it) then at least ensure you use the BCC field so that contacts are blind copied instead of visibly copied into the list.

Opt-In Only
To abide by spam laws you must have consent to send your commercial email marketing messages. So it’s not only law but it is also best practise. The more targetted and consenting your list the better your results will be. When launching your email marketing for the first time ensure you acknowledge the launch and give your recipients the chance to unsubscribe.

Include Unsubscribe Functionality
An unsubscribe is much better than someone simply deleting or marking your emails as spam. If there is no unsubscribe link or instructions in your email you are breaching spam compliance laws. You must include functional unsubscribe, which can simply be a sentence telling the recipient to reply to the email with ‘Unubscribe’ in the Subject line or use an Email Service Provider (like Chameleon Mail) to automate this. Making it impossible for recipients to unsubscribe also means increasing chances of getting reported as spam to ISPs and authorities.

Sending Attachments
Expecting your recipients to open a PDF newsletter is going to substantially decrease your chances of having your newsletter or campaign seen. Most people are cautious of attachments and will not open them unless 100% sure of the sender, because they are afraid the attachment may contain something nasty like a virus. Also, a PDF requires an additional step to be taken by the recipient, a bit much to ask in our time poor society.

by Belinda Jackson

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Belinda Jackson, Online Marketing Mentor, is founder of Web Chameleon, Chameleon Mail and The Business Blogging Program.  To learn how to attract and retain your perfect clients using Online Marketing, and increase sales & income then sign up for your free Online Marketing Report and Marketing Newsletter by visiting www.WebChameleon.com.au/.