Best E-Mail Marketing Practices
Due to being perhaps the most cost-effective advertising method, e-mail marketing campaigns by now have been adopted even by the smallest local businesses, leading to a general over-saturation and an increasingly hostile consumer base, ready to press the "spam" button of their e-mail filters at the slightest suspicion of unsolicited advertising. Though over ninety percent of e-mails are indeed spam, regrettably this also often causes legitimate notifications and mailing list entries to be deleted unseen.
What, you ask, can be done to prevent your important business newsletter from being falsely identified as spam? Simply follow these guidelines:
Subject Lines Should be Descriptive
Users are less likely to delete an e-mail with a subject that is clear, professional and official sounding. They should know exactly what to expect from the e-mail, and do not react positively to hype or deception. Calling your message something like "AutoClub Newsletter: April 2007" will yield infinitely better results than "The MOST IMPORTANT MESSAGE you'll ever read..."
Avoid Spam Terminology and Syntax
Spam filters scan incoming e-mail for certain terms or types of syntax commonly associated with spam mail. Words like "approved", "free", "guaranteed" or "Viagra" are pretty sure to get you deleted, especially if they're placed within the subject line. Too much expletive punctuation or writing in all caps also are the kiss of death for your e-mail.
Identify Yourself
Few things are more suspicious than an e-mail from an unfamiliar and/or made-up sounding person. Never attempt to mask your company name or IP, and always use a moniker your customers will recognize. Also be sure to include your name and up-to-date mailing address within the body of the e-mail.
Allow for Opt-Out
The reader of your mail must be allowed to easily unsubscribe from your mailing list, lest they end up simply black listing you instead.
Create Content Balance
There should be reasonable balance of content. The more graphic-heavy your mail, the more likely it is to be filtered out. If you absolutely must have several large images, also supplement them with rich and thorough content.
Don't Send Indiscriminately
Not only should you stick to a fixed and regular schedule for sending your e-mail campaigns, but it is even more important to only send them to users actually expecting mail from you, i.e. users who have consciously signed up for your mailing list. Failing to correctly compile user data will likely leave you with more complaints then you can handle, and end up getting you black listed.
If your mailing list is more than a few months old, don't just start sending your campaign. Instead, send an "opt-in" message, and explain clearly why your customers are receiving it.
