Following the Rules of the CAN-SPAM Act

Posted: Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,
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Marketing with email can be very helpful for your business. Whether you’re a local or national business, newsletter email can be a great way to communicate with your current customers as well as bring new ones in. Like marketing guidelines for print, marketing with emaildraws many guidelines as well.

Reduce spam

Reduce spam

Spam has become such a problem in email that the United States enacted the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to help prosecute spammer. Marketing emails and newsletter email can sometimes fall into spam and junk folders, so be sure to follow the rules of email. CAN-SPAM or Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 makes certain email marketing practices illegal. There are different areas of this act that you should understand before initiating an email marketing campaign.

The CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply to transactional or relationship messages, strictly commercial electronic mail messages. A commercial email contains some sort of email marketing or advertisement. It can be a promotion or content from a business site. A transactional or relationship email is anything that doesn’t fall into commercial email: back and forth with a client, an online purchase, etc. Read more …

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Make Sure Your Emails Get Delivered

Posted: Monday, December 19th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,
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Email deliverability

Email deliverability

Unfortunately, everyone that uses email encounters spam. Email consumers receive so much spam that they have become hesitant about opening any messages where they don’t recognize the sender. This may become challenging for anyone looking to issue out email newsletters.

Email newsletters are a great way to communicate with your customers and even employees. Delivery newsletter emails may be difficult though if you’re working with a large database. Deliverability refers to the obstacles and issues that need to be overcome in order for your email to reach your inbox. Things like wrong email addresses, spam filters and blockers and email server issues can all affect the successful delivery of email messages.

When constructing an email marketing campaign, especially one that involves an email newsletter, be sure to do you research about spam first. Authoritative benchmarks for determining spam are:  legal standards, professional standards and consumer preferences. Most consumers expect email newsletters or other marketing emails to come through trusted sources. Email newsletters should follow the appropriate standards so they don’t end up in spam boxes. Read more …

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Email Marketing Tracking

Posted: Thursday, September 1st, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Now that you’ve built your email marketing campaign, it’s time to blast it out to your email database. Whether you’ve built the HTML yourself, or you’re using an newsletter marketing program, you should always evaluate tracking data. There are a few important results you want to evaluate. This data will help you understand who is reading your emails, what they’re interested in, which email addresses are invalid and more. To understand your results, there are a few different areas you should be aware of:

 

Open rate

This term refers to the number of email recipients from your list that opened the email message you sent. This number is usually displayed in a percentage and total number of message opened.

 

Bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to the number of emails that were undeliverable. — some email addresses may be invalid, some email accounts block unknown users. A hard bounce means that the email you sent was returned because delivering it was impossible. Either the email account doesn’t exist or it’s wrong in your database. A soft bounce is the delaying of email messages. Sometimes the system has difficulty delivering because the mailbox is full or the server is temporarily down.

  Read more …

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Email Subject Line Best Practices

Posted: Monday, August 29th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Knowing all the areas you need to cover in your email newsletter marketing campaign will give you the most value from your work. Once you’ve had a chance to evaluate the focus areas of your email, it’s important to craft an effective subject line. The subject line is almost as important as the content laid out in your email. It gives your customers a quick overview of what type of content is in your email.

An effective subject line will prompt your audience to open your email. It’s important to give your readers a peak at what’s inside through the subject line. Marketing with email is strategic and writing a subject line is tough.

There are some challenges that come with crating an effective subject line. Most email programs only display a certain number of characters (usually between thirty and fifty). This gives you a limited amount of space for your subject line. Aside from space allowance, your subject line needs to be catchy and intriguing – something that will cause your reader to open your email. Keep these things in mind when creating a subject line:

Theme: Most newsletter marketing campaigns are designed around a theme. Your email will most likely stay within a certain theme, which means your subject line should stay within that theme as well. Read more …

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Effective Email Marketing Strategy

Posted: Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

After recognizing the value and ROI of retention newsletter marketing campaigns, you’re ready to build an effective internet marketing strategy. It’s important to plan ahead and build out your campaign so you’re prepared for what’s to come. A few things to keep in mind for your marketing strategy:

Setting Objectives

Be sure your customers can act on your newsletter marketing campaigns. What do you want them to do? There’s no doubt you want your business to make money from any type of marketing, but think strategically. What do you want to put in your emails? Certain product/promotion you want to push? How often will you be sending emails? To whom are you sending emails?

Segment Your Email Addresses

By dividing your email list can be beneficial to both you and your customers. Instead of building a broad email newsletter marketing campaign, divide your list into segments and build smaller, more targeted newsletters based upon similar customer interests, demographics, or other behavioral characteristics. More defined segments can result in better email response.

Planning Your Email Campaign Read more …

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Retention Email Marketing

Posted: Saturday, August 20th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Research shows that it costs four to seven times more to gain a new customer than it costs to keep an existing one. That being said, it’s important to actively communicate with your existing customers and a great way to do that is through retention email marketing.

Businesses, especially those operating in highly competitive markets and rely on their existing customers to continue using their products and services, can surely tell you how important retention email marketing is. Retention marketing is often used by mobile phone companies, cable television services and credit card companies because it’s an effective way to retain their customers.

What is email marketing? Retention email marketing is a form of internet marketing through email. Retention is the idea of keeping your current customers, which is crucial for any business.  Customer loyalty can make or break your business, which is why any business should make use of their database and email marketing. Even combining email marketing with other forms of online marketing can boost your marketing campaign and create a very powerful strategy.

Before you build your email marketing campaign, you should learn about the value and ROI it will bring your business. Your business can increase revenue in a number of different ways. Since email is one of the most inexpensive and effective channels to reach customers, email marketing is a great way to communicate. You can also increase your profits by targeting specific customers (highly profited) and design a strategic campaign specifically for them. Read more …

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Newsletter Marketing

Posted: Monday, June 20th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,
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Newsletter blasts are a great way to stay in touch with customers, offer new products and promotions and share new content from your website. Email blasts also serve as great web marketing tools. Take this email newsletter from Professional Audio Consultants (PAC) as an example.

Outdoor audio and video specials

Outdoor audio and video specials

For local businesses, it’s a great idea to offer a promotion in your email blasts. Since summer is almost here, outdoor activities are on everyone’s mind. PAC focused on an outdoor theme for their June newsletter, offering a 10% discount off any outdoor equipment. This is a great way to bring your customers in, have them inquire about new products and offer a discount.

Also included in the newsletter is information links. PAC used two different approaches, one link to the website’s outdoor audio/video page where you can find helpful information about outdoor products. The second link was to a blog post written by the company’s President. Here, there’s more of an opinion/personal view, but still with informative content about outdoor audio/video products. Overall, you want to inform your customers. Read more …

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