| If you are going to survive and thrive in
any business today-either online or off-email needs to be a part of your marketing
strategy. It's cheap, it's effective and it will make you money.
Yet, again and again I hear from online business owners
their reluctance to send email. Fears of spam complaints, government fines, etc. keep them
from pursuing the best avenues for marketing their products.
If you fall into this category I have good news: You can
send email without fear. All you need to do is follow a few simple guidelines.
1. Make sure the list you are sending to is verified
email.
verified email simply means you verify the email address is
correct with the recipient before adding them to your email list.
While not required by law, verifying your list gives you an
added level of protection from pranksters who would fill in someone else's email address
in a form or from simple typographical errors.
2. Make sure you are CAN-SPAM compliant.
Assuming you are not sending adult content, this one is
pretty simple. Follow these guidelines:
- Have a "real" return address which belongs to you;
- Avoid a subject line which might be misleading;
- Have an automated unsubscribe link in the body of the email;
- Include a postal address to contact you in the body of the
email.
These four rules will keep you in compliance for non-adult
content emails.
3. Respond to Customer Service Requests Quickly.
One problem some list owners encounter is a lack of
responsiveness to requests for manual unsubscribes, so they end up sending email to those
who have asked to be removed.
If you have a list of any real size you will receive email
requests for removal. Make sure you respond to these within one business day (or before
your next mail-out) to avoid the ire of recipients.
4. Maintain a Black-List of Problem Subscribers.
While not everyone does this, it can be a great headache
reducer for those maintaining a mailing list.
Over time you will (unfortunately) run into subscribers who
are rude or who create consistent customer service issues or who simply lack the skills to
manage their emails properly.
When we get a rude or threatening email from a subscriber,
we not only unsubscribe them, we place them on a automated black list so they will not be
able to subscribe again. This helps us avoid problems with them in the future.
How can you put these four things to work in your own
business? The simplest way is to use a service which will provide all of these features
for you-automatically-so you can spend your time counting your profits rather than
manually mailing and maintaining your email list.
For our current recommendation for a service, go to:
http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/ar
Copyright 2004 by Kevin Bidwell All-In-One-Business.com |