Dynamic Content for your Advanced Newsletter
What Works in Email Marketing
Fourteen real world strategies in permission email marketing as reported by online retailers, nonprofit organizations, technology firms, and service organizations.
Introduction
To create this report, Arial Software surveyed 120 of its recent customers—organizations which rely on email marketing to distribute product information, boost sales, build trust with customers, and save money on postage. Study participants represent a diverse cross-section of companies, organizations, and agencies.
Each of these organizations has similar ongoing missions: to build trust with their customers or members, to distribute information in an efficient manner, and to optimize their results.
Study participants were asked directly what strategies they employed which worked best for these goals. Their answers represent years of experience in sending millions of emails, while making the required adjustments to gain optimum results.
Another commonality between these groups is they’ve consistently worked to improve their email campaign results. Accordingly, this report includes the best of the best—time-tested email strategies used by organizations that thrive on providing great service and added value to their email recipients.
Interestingly, many of the “what works” strategies presented here seem simple. That is, they may seem like common sense strategies for email marketing. What could be said about these marketing testimonies is that after trying many strategies and experimenting with a wide variety of techniques, these veteran email marketers have, indeed, arrived at a point where the truths of “what works” for them are quite simple.
In other words, they said simple is good, simple is powerful, and, most importantly, simple works. Here are the 14 strongest points of email marketing campaign successes.
1. The shorter the message, the better
Study participants said shorter messages work better than longer messages: today’s email recipients, it seems, expect you to get to the point more quickly. Bullet-point items work well; extended, drawn-out introductions do not.
What’s the right length for effective email messages? The best length depends on the subject of the communication. Nonprofit organizations have reported doing better with longer messages, a possible indication their readers are more self-motivated to indulge in newsletter updates, membership drive information, or other agency outreach.
Appetites for lengthy commercial messages, on the other hand, were reported to be much less. Readers of commercial messages seem to feel their time is being unfairly or unjustifiably taken by the message sender. Participants reported commercial messages perform better when they are short, with main message items bullet-pointed and product images filling the message rather than paragraphs of text.
While the “shorter is better” approach has always been applied in news headlines, magazine articles, direct mail, and other media, the format also has validity with the medium of electronic mail as well.
2. Deliver relevance, not volume
If any of the 14 email marketing points in this report could be called a “magic formula” which produces outstanding results in email marketing, it would be the delivery of relevance. There was no email marketing strategy cited more frequently than this one.
The core point: deliver the right offers and messages to the right people, all the time, every time, or risk losing them forever.
This principle also isn’t new, nor is it surprising. What’s notable is how frequently study participants cited this point, an indication email professionals are giving this point just as much priority as the email recipients are.
For many years, email professionals would simply send the same, untargeted message to their entire list. This was acceptable when email was still a relatively new medium to new Internet users, and their email boxes weren’t being deluged with hundreds of offers each day. Today, however, with the total volume of email reaching infinite proportions—including a spam mail level which continues to get worse—very little tolerance exists for messages that don’t speak directly to the interests or concerns of recipients.
Reputable, professional email marketers understand this point at a business intelligence level, and they've implemented strategies which rely on relevance, not volume, to accomplish their immediate marketing goals.
3. Use minimal self-promotion
Self-promoting emails are receiving more negative reaction from recipients than ever before, according to study participants. Rather than functioning as advertisements, which usually focus on self-promotion, emails are far more successful when they focus on the recipient, not the sender. In other words, make the recipient the center of your universe, and you’ll see much stronger results in the long run.
This not only means understanding recipient product preferences, but also noting their views on things outside of what your organization offers: their hobbies, for example, or who they usually shop for. A person buying gifts for a family member will demonstrate very different shopping behavior than someone buying for his or herself. Another example is a person offering financial support for a nonprofit organization, who has a depth of personal experience, beliefs, and views that support their willingness to take action in the form of donating funds.
Assessing underlying motivators—and applying them in responsible ways to increase message relevancy—is central to boosting the effectiveness of email campaigns.
4. Use strong creative and design elements
Today’s messages sent by reputable email marketers look better. They have more appealing visual elements, stronger layout, and an improved overall look and feel. Study participants emphasize the HTML design of outbound emails is more important than ever in generating positive results.
The days of the plain text email seem long gone, according to the survey. While plain text elements are still included in multipart emails (as highlighted in the next point, Rely on multipart messaging…), the HTML portion of the message is now receiving far more attention. This not only means making it look good, but also testing the HTML of the message to make sure it works well in the various email ISPs of the clients.
Compatibility with email client browsers is also a concern, especially when considering America Online (AOL) recipients. Study participants cited AOL compatibility as a high-priority factor to consider when designing outbound HTML messages. Use of tables in HTML emails is increasing, but more exotic elements, such as embedded video, are still shunned due to compatibility problems and, to a lesser extent, bandwidth considerations.
Overall, the quality of design in outbound emails is reportedly growing in importance. This doesn’t mean an organization needs a full-time designer pouring over every outbound message; however, a well-designed template, even if created at considerable one-time expense, now seems justified.
5. Rely on multipart messaging for broad compatibility
Rather than sending HTML messages to one subset of recipients, and plain text to another, the majority of study participants (76%) used multipart messaging to provide compatibility for both.
Although multipart messages increase the size of outbound emails, participants expressed justification due to increased compatibility for these messages among recipients. In the years ahead, the expected trend will ultimately favor HTML-only emails, yet multipart formatting continues to remain popular.
6. Keep your database clean
Maintaining a current, accurate database was cited as one of the most important back-end strategies for improving email effectiveness. The number one reason given for this was to ensure the database was “frequently removing unsubscribe requests.” This strategy ensures those recipients who unsubscribe won’t be emailed again, even if another campaign launches a few hours later.
Failing to quickly remove recipients who submit unsubscribe requests results in a “great loss of credibility and trust,” according to study participants. Recipients who receive subsequent emails after requesting to be removed are often offended or frustrated at the organization sending the email, and are unlikely to ever engage in a constructive relationship in the future.
7. Don’t saturate lists
Today’s opt-in email recipients are especially sensitive to the volume of email they receive, according to study participants. In their experience, over-emailing a list will backfire—resulting in an accelerated unsubscribe rate. This reaction is even more apparent when sending self-serving messages.
Tolerance for email frequency is higher when recipients receive messages providing perceived value to them, such as news, education or entertainment.
The ratio of self-serving messaging to recipient-serving emails varies widely, depending on the industry. Recipients expect to receive a higher frequency of offers and promotions from online retailers than other types of businesses, for example. Emails from nonprofits, however, carry a much different expectation: recipients expect greater focus on news or beneficial information.
The key strategy appears to be setting the expectation of email volume early in the relationship with recipients, and then adhering to that expectation throughout the email relationship. “Saturating” an email list is not an objective measure. What matters is the degree to which emailers stick to their original promises to subscribers.
8. Incorporate elements of brand awareness
Outbound emails are an important venue to use for branding, according to study participants, and not just for garnering extra brand awareness. Branding also serves to add credibility to the email. A logo at the top of the message reminds recipients that, yes, they subscribed to this message. This shifts the email into an “I asked for this” category, rather than a “This is spam” category, motivating the recipient to read the message.
Successful strategies for brand awareness included:
9. Always include unsubscribe features
According to study participants, every outbound email message must incorporate unsubscribe features. Unsubscribe features—usually in the form of an inserted hyperlink—have become such a standard in email marketing that failing to use them broadcasts a degree of illegitimacy to your recipients.
Traditionally, unsubscribe features are inserted near the bottom of an email message. Unsubscribe scripts or web pages must be frequently tested, to ensure they operate correctly. Few things are more frustrating to an email recipient than attempting to unsubscribe, and having the process repeatedly fail.
Unsubscribe requests should take effect as quickly as possible, so email recipients do not receive further emails (as previously mentioned in Keep your database clean). Study participants frequently mentioned the ability of Campaign Enterprise software to automatically record unsubscribe requests and update the source database in real time, virtually eliminating the possibility of additional email going to recipients who have asked to be removed.
10. Segment outbound messages
Study participants engaged in online retailing rarely sent the same message to their entire list. Instead, they segmented messages to subsets of their list.
This relates to the earlier point, Deliver relevance, not volume, because segmenting the database means professional email marketers are matching recipients to intended messages.
Before sending and outbound email, participants suggest it may worth asking these key questions of the message:
11. Always give more than you take
Study participants indicated that email marketing campaigns were more successful when they found creative ways to give more than they take. That is, they provide extraordinary value or relevance to recipients, while only asking for small actions or commitments in return.
How does this apply to the real world? Permission emailers might consider “giving” by offering a free report, a product discount, or an early announcement of new or upcoming products. They would “take” by requesting the recipient to click on their website link, fill out a survey, or recommend the website to a friend.
It’s extremely important that a message campaign never be perceived as self-serving. Subscribers—including customers, clients, members, contributors, or investors—are typically more interested in two-way exchanges, and they're looking for emails from contributors, not sales people.
12. Build your lists carefully: 100% opt-in only
This rule should be second nature to professional email marketers. Study participants emphasized that 100% opt-in lists were clearly the best strategy for building email lists. They reported email messaging missteps when veering from this path, even in minor ways. There's a question, however, of what 100% opt-in really means.
In its purest form, 100% opt-in means only those email addresses you've accumulated from your website, customer orders, trade shows, or other direct marketing activities. These are email addresses voluntarily submitted directly to a company or organization, most likely through its web site.
At the next level, 100% opt-in means paying service companies to send email using their opt-in lists. Companies of this type manage tens of millions of opt-in email addresses, all available for “rental,” where they will send your message to their lists for a fee.
However, this approach isn't the same as sending to in-house opt-in lists, because the recipients on these lists opted to receive emails on specific topics, but not from specific organizations. These recipients don't necessarily expect to hear from your organization specifically, although they do expect to receive emails on the topics they've selected.
Of course, never use email addresses from any source offering you the actual database of emails. These addresses have undoubtedly been used as spam targets, since reputable email list rental companies never divulge the actual email addresses they're sending to.
Using a source like this can destroy existing email marketing efforts and very likely get your domain name and mail server IP addresses added to spammer lists.*
* We've all seen unscrupulous marketers offering 10 million emails on CD-ROM, claiming “100% triple opt-in” for all 10 million. When we contacted the provider of one particular list and asked what was meant by “100% triple opt-in,” we were given the following explanation: “When the email recipients receive the message, that's their first opt-in; when they view the message, that's their second opt-in; and, when they don't ask to be removed from the list, that's their third opt-in. So they've opted in three times.” In reality, they haven't opted in at all, yet the CD is still sold as “triple opt-in.”
13. Check messages for spam traits
Because of the high volume of spam received by end users, many service providers and portals analyze incoming email for spam “traits,” and either delete spam-like messages or move them into spam mailboxes, where users are unlikely to read them. Industry experts estimate that as much as 30% of legitimate email gets flagged as spam, simply because it shares spam-like traits.
Most study participants indicated they pay special attention to spam triggers, including the general spam red flags like over use of capitalization, too many bright colors in the HTML message, and over use of large fonts.
Subject line red flags
All the following subject line traits will flag email as spam:
Study participants advise using newsletter-like language in email messaging, as spam filters actually reduce a message’s “spam score” when it displays newsletter-like traits. These include:
Using an email signature not only lends the email message further legitimacy, but it also reduces its “spam score.” All these traits help:
Interestingly, only spammers bother to proclaim they're in compliance with anti-spam legislation within an email, and some even mention within the message they are compliant with federal regulation, and are therefore exempt from prosecution. These claims are largely false.
14. Link to your privacy policy in every message
While it's common knowledge to link to an unsubscribe handler, many email marketers neglect to link to their privacy policy. By linking to a posted privacy policy, the trust factor of the email is enhanced by reminding recipients their privacy is protected during communications. It highlights privacy as a top concern of the source organization.
Conclusion
Today’s permission email marketers respect email recipients, treating them as real human beings, and are constantly leveraging technology to make communication more meaningful and effective. They never use technology to make bulk email marketing efforts less human.
Professionals today use quality software or service providers to manage outbound email campaigns. This commitment not only saves time and effort, but it also continually reinforces industry credibility.
Investments in composing messages with quality graphics, well-written text, and professional HTML construction gives end recipients the impression that the email message they receive is one of the most valuable messages they'll get in their inboxes today.
Additionally, a deepened relevance within an email message garners stronger response. It's better to mail to a smaller selection from your database than the entire database, because it narrows focus and boosts relevancy. To focus messages, learn more about recipients through surveys or by reviewing an analysis of buying behavior. Ask yourself what content, graphics, or special offers would be the most appealing to your target recipients today.
Operate your electronic marketing as you would any other business: with integrity. Don't spam. Don't cut corners. Deliver what’s promised, and treat recipients with respect.
While technology constantly changes, the truths of conducting business with human beings do not. The sooner companies acknowledge and incorporate these fundamentals into existing and future email marketing efforts, the higher organization sales, loyalty, and reputation will subsequently climb.
Introduction
To create this report, Arial Software surveyed 120 of its recent customers—organizations which rely on email marketing to distribute product information, boost sales, build trust with customers, and save money on postage. Study participants represent a diverse cross-section of companies, organizations, and agencies.
Each of these organizations has similar ongoing missions: to build trust with their customers or members, to distribute information in an efficient manner, and to optimize their results.
Study participants were asked directly what strategies they employed which worked best for these goals. Their answers represent years of experience in sending millions of emails, while making the required adjustments to gain optimum results.
Another commonality between these groups is they’ve consistently worked to improve their email campaign results. Accordingly, this report includes the best of the best—time-tested email strategies used by organizations that thrive on providing great service and added value to their email recipients.
Interestingly, many of the “what works” strategies presented here seem simple. That is, they may seem like common sense strategies for email marketing. What could be said about these marketing testimonies is that after trying many strategies and experimenting with a wide variety of techniques, these veteran email marketers have, indeed, arrived at a point where the truths of “what works” for them are quite simple.
In other words, they said simple is good, simple is powerful, and, most importantly, simple works. Here are the 14 strongest points of email marketing campaign successes.
1. The shorter the message, the better
Study participants said shorter messages work better than longer messages: today’s email recipients, it seems, expect you to get to the point more quickly. Bullet-point items work well; extended, drawn-out introductions do not.
What’s the right length for effective email messages? The best length depends on the subject of the communication. Nonprofit organizations have reported doing better with longer messages, a possible indication their readers are more self-motivated to indulge in newsletter updates, membership drive information, or other agency outreach.
Appetites for lengthy commercial messages, on the other hand, were reported to be much less. Readers of commercial messages seem to feel their time is being unfairly or unjustifiably taken by the message sender. Participants reported commercial messages perform better when they are short, with main message items bullet-pointed and product images filling the message rather than paragraphs of text.
While the “shorter is better” approach has always been applied in news headlines, magazine articles, direct mail, and other media, the format also has validity with the medium of electronic mail as well.
2. Deliver relevance, not volume
If any of the 14 email marketing points in this report could be called a “magic formula” which produces outstanding results in email marketing, it would be the delivery of relevance. There was no email marketing strategy cited more frequently than this one.
The core point: deliver the right offers and messages to the right people, all the time, every time, or risk losing them forever.
This principle also isn’t new, nor is it surprising. What’s notable is how frequently study participants cited this point, an indication email professionals are giving this point just as much priority as the email recipients are.
For many years, email professionals would simply send the same, untargeted message to their entire list. This was acceptable when email was still a relatively new medium to new Internet users, and their email boxes weren’t being deluged with hundreds of offers each day. Today, however, with the total volume of email reaching infinite proportions—including a spam mail level which continues to get worse—very little tolerance exists for messages that don’t speak directly to the interests or concerns of recipients.
Reputable, professional email marketers understand this point at a business intelligence level, and they've implemented strategies which rely on relevance, not volume, to accomplish their immediate marketing goals.
3. Use minimal self-promotion
Self-promoting emails are receiving more negative reaction from recipients than ever before, according to study participants. Rather than functioning as advertisements, which usually focus on self-promotion, emails are far more successful when they focus on the recipient, not the sender. In other words, make the recipient the center of your universe, and you’ll see much stronger results in the long run.
This not only means understanding recipient product preferences, but also noting their views on things outside of what your organization offers: their hobbies, for example, or who they usually shop for. A person buying gifts for a family member will demonstrate very different shopping behavior than someone buying for his or herself. Another example is a person offering financial support for a nonprofit organization, who has a depth of personal experience, beliefs, and views that support their willingness to take action in the form of donating funds.
Assessing underlying motivators—and applying them in responsible ways to increase message relevancy—is central to boosting the effectiveness of email campaigns.
4. Use strong creative and design elements
Today’s messages sent by reputable email marketers look better. They have more appealing visual elements, stronger layout, and an improved overall look and feel. Study participants emphasize the HTML design of outbound emails is more important than ever in generating positive results.
The days of the plain text email seem long gone, according to the survey. While plain text elements are still included in multipart emails (as highlighted in the next point, Rely on multipart messaging…), the HTML portion of the message is now receiving far more attention. This not only means making it look good, but also testing the HTML of the message to make sure it works well in the various email ISPs of the clients.
Compatibility with email client browsers is also a concern, especially when considering America Online (AOL) recipients. Study participants cited AOL compatibility as a high-priority factor to consider when designing outbound HTML messages. Use of tables in HTML emails is increasing, but more exotic elements, such as embedded video, are still shunned due to compatibility problems and, to a lesser extent, bandwidth considerations.
Overall, the quality of design in outbound emails is reportedly growing in importance. This doesn’t mean an organization needs a full-time designer pouring over every outbound message; however, a well-designed template, even if created at considerable one-time expense, now seems justified.
5. Rely on multipart messaging for broad compatibility
Rather than sending HTML messages to one subset of recipients, and plain text to another, the majority of study participants (76%) used multipart messaging to provide compatibility for both.
Although multipart messages increase the size of outbound emails, participants expressed justification due to increased compatibility for these messages among recipients. In the years ahead, the expected trend will ultimately favor HTML-only emails, yet multipart formatting continues to remain popular.
6. Keep your database clean
Maintaining a current, accurate database was cited as one of the most important back-end strategies for improving email effectiveness. The number one reason given for this was to ensure the database was “frequently removing unsubscribe requests.” This strategy ensures those recipients who unsubscribe won’t be emailed again, even if another campaign launches a few hours later.
Failing to quickly remove recipients who submit unsubscribe requests results in a “great loss of credibility and trust,” according to study participants. Recipients who receive subsequent emails after requesting to be removed are often offended or frustrated at the organization sending the email, and are unlikely to ever engage in a constructive relationship in the future.
7. Don’t saturate lists
Today’s opt-in email recipients are especially sensitive to the volume of email they receive, according to study participants. In their experience, over-emailing a list will backfire—resulting in an accelerated unsubscribe rate. This reaction is even more apparent when sending self-serving messages.
Tolerance for email frequency is higher when recipients receive messages providing perceived value to them, such as news, education or entertainment.
The ratio of self-serving messaging to recipient-serving emails varies widely, depending on the industry. Recipients expect to receive a higher frequency of offers and promotions from online retailers than other types of businesses, for example. Emails from nonprofits, however, carry a much different expectation: recipients expect greater focus on news or beneficial information.
The key strategy appears to be setting the expectation of email volume early in the relationship with recipients, and then adhering to that expectation throughout the email relationship. “Saturating” an email list is not an objective measure. What matters is the degree to which emailers stick to their original promises to subscribers.
8. Incorporate elements of brand awareness
Outbound emails are an important venue to use for branding, according to study participants, and not just for garnering extra brand awareness. Branding also serves to add credibility to the email. A logo at the top of the message reminds recipients that, yes, they subscribed to this message. This shifts the email into an “I asked for this” category, rather than a “This is spam” category, motivating the recipient to read the message.
Successful strategies for brand awareness included:
- Using the organization name in the return email address, so recipients can quickly identify message origin
- Using consistent colors in the graphics of the HTML message, so recipients immediately recognize the look and feel of the email, even before reading its content
- Using the organization logo near the top or above the fold of the email message, so recipients quickly recognize and remember the source of the message.
9. Always include unsubscribe features
According to study participants, every outbound email message must incorporate unsubscribe features. Unsubscribe features—usually in the form of an inserted hyperlink—have become such a standard in email marketing that failing to use them broadcasts a degree of illegitimacy to your recipients.
Traditionally, unsubscribe features are inserted near the bottom of an email message. Unsubscribe scripts or web pages must be frequently tested, to ensure they operate correctly. Few things are more frustrating to an email recipient than attempting to unsubscribe, and having the process repeatedly fail.
Unsubscribe requests should take effect as quickly as possible, so email recipients do not receive further emails (as previously mentioned in Keep your database clean). Study participants frequently mentioned the ability of Campaign Enterprise software to automatically record unsubscribe requests and update the source database in real time, virtually eliminating the possibility of additional email going to recipients who have asked to be removed.
10. Segment outbound messages
Study participants engaged in online retailing rarely sent the same message to their entire list. Instead, they segmented messages to subsets of their list.
This relates to the earlier point, Deliver relevance, not volume, because segmenting the database means professional email marketers are matching recipients to intended messages.
Before sending and outbound email, participants suggest it may worth asking these key questions of the message:
- Who will find true value and relevance in this message?
Ensure these recipients are included in the database select. - Who will find this to be of very little interest?
Ensure these recipients are excluded from the database select. - How can I alter this message to make it more relevant to the current recipients I've selected?
By further increasing message relevance, you will experience fewer unsubscribe requests and increased response.
11. Always give more than you take
Study participants indicated that email marketing campaigns were more successful when they found creative ways to give more than they take. That is, they provide extraordinary value or relevance to recipients, while only asking for small actions or commitments in return.
How does this apply to the real world? Permission emailers might consider “giving” by offering a free report, a product discount, or an early announcement of new or upcoming products. They would “take” by requesting the recipient to click on their website link, fill out a survey, or recommend the website to a friend.
It’s extremely important that a message campaign never be perceived as self-serving. Subscribers—including customers, clients, members, contributors, or investors—are typically more interested in two-way exchanges, and they're looking for emails from contributors, not sales people.
12. Build your lists carefully: 100% opt-in only
This rule should be second nature to professional email marketers. Study participants emphasized that 100% opt-in lists were clearly the best strategy for building email lists. They reported email messaging missteps when veering from this path, even in minor ways. There's a question, however, of what 100% opt-in really means.
In its purest form, 100% opt-in means only those email addresses you've accumulated from your website, customer orders, trade shows, or other direct marketing activities. These are email addresses voluntarily submitted directly to a company or organization, most likely through its web site.
At the next level, 100% opt-in means paying service companies to send email using their opt-in lists. Companies of this type manage tens of millions of opt-in email addresses, all available for “rental,” where they will send your message to their lists for a fee.
However, this approach isn't the same as sending to in-house opt-in lists, because the recipients on these lists opted to receive emails on specific topics, but not from specific organizations. These recipients don't necessarily expect to hear from your organization specifically, although they do expect to receive emails on the topics they've selected.
Of course, never use email addresses from any source offering you the actual database of emails. These addresses have undoubtedly been used as spam targets, since reputable email list rental companies never divulge the actual email addresses they're sending to.
Using a source like this can destroy existing email marketing efforts and very likely get your domain name and mail server IP addresses added to spammer lists.*
* We've all seen unscrupulous marketers offering 10 million emails on CD-ROM, claiming “100% triple opt-in” for all 10 million. When we contacted the provider of one particular list and asked what was meant by “100% triple opt-in,” we were given the following explanation: “When the email recipients receive the message, that's their first opt-in; when they view the message, that's their second opt-in; and, when they don't ask to be removed from the list, that's their third opt-in. So they've opted in three times.” In reality, they haven't opted in at all, yet the CD is still sold as “triple opt-in.”
13. Check messages for spam traits
Because of the high volume of spam received by end users, many service providers and portals analyze incoming email for spam “traits,” and either delete spam-like messages or move them into spam mailboxes, where users are unlikely to read them. Industry experts estimate that as much as 30% of legitimate email gets flagged as spam, simply because it shares spam-like traits.
Most study participants indicated they pay special attention to spam triggers, including the general spam red flags like over use of capitalization, too many bright colors in the HTML message, and over use of large fonts.
Subject line red flags
All the following subject line traits will flag email as spam:
- Contains “FREE” or “GUARANTEED” in all capital letters
- Starts with dollar amount
- Starts with “Free”
- Starts with “Hello”
- Includes question mark or exclamation point
- Subject is missing or field contains lots of white space
- Subject is all in capital letters
- Subject mentions savings
- Subject talks about losing pounds
Study participants advise using newsletter-like language in email messaging, as spam filters actually reduce a message’s “spam score” when it displays newsletter-like traits. These include:
- Subject contains newsletter header (list)
- Subject contains newsletter header (news)
- Subject contains newsletter header (in review)
- Subject contains a frequency - probable newsletter
- Subject contains a month name - probable newsletter
- Subject contains a date
Using an email signature not only lends the email message further legitimacy, but it also reduces its “spam score.” All these traits help:
- Short signature present
- Long signature present
- Contains what looks like an 'Email Disclaimer'
- Contains what looks like an email attribution
- Contains what looks like a quoted email text
Interestingly, only spammers bother to proclaim they're in compliance with anti-spam legislation within an email, and some even mention within the message they are compliant with federal regulation, and are therefore exempt from prosecution. These claims are largely false.
14. Link to your privacy policy in every message
While it's common knowledge to link to an unsubscribe handler, many email marketers neglect to link to their privacy policy. By linking to a posted privacy policy, the trust factor of the email is enhanced by reminding recipients their privacy is protected during communications. It highlights privacy as a top concern of the source organization.
Conclusion
Today’s permission email marketers respect email recipients, treating them as real human beings, and are constantly leveraging technology to make communication more meaningful and effective. They never use technology to make bulk email marketing efforts less human.
Professionals today use quality software or service providers to manage outbound email campaigns. This commitment not only saves time and effort, but it also continually reinforces industry credibility.
Investments in composing messages with quality graphics, well-written text, and professional HTML construction gives end recipients the impression that the email message they receive is one of the most valuable messages they'll get in their inboxes today.
Additionally, a deepened relevance within an email message garners stronger response. It's better to mail to a smaller selection from your database than the entire database, because it narrows focus and boosts relevancy. To focus messages, learn more about recipients through surveys or by reviewing an analysis of buying behavior. Ask yourself what content, graphics, or special offers would be the most appealing to your target recipients today.
Operate your electronic marketing as you would any other business: with integrity. Don't spam. Don't cut corners. Deliver what’s promised, and treat recipients with respect.
While technology constantly changes, the truths of conducting business with human beings do not. The sooner companies acknowledge and incorporate these fundamentals into existing and future email marketing efforts, the higher organization sales, loyalty, and reputation will subsequently climb.