Promote your business online - Part 2: What is email marketing?

Good morning, fellow business owners.

What is email marketing?

I consider email marketing to be anything that relates to sending commercial messages to one or more recipients.

Commercial messages include advertising, coupons, marketing, and anything else that isn't transactional in nature. If you're soliciting or trying to sell, it's probably a commercial message.

A transactional message would be an email where the subject line and majority of the body content contains invoicing details, account information, a sales receipt, shipping tracking links, or other non-marketing information.

Email is replacing snail mail for correspondence

Email is replacing "snail mail" for many of us, and for some of us it has become our primary means to communicate with others. I rarely talk on the phone or send a letter; I'm much more likely to dash off a quick email. It's simple, inexpensive, and fast.

I also prefer email to talking on the phone because it automatically has a written record of the conversation and I don't have to rely on my not-too-great, aging memory for the details of what was talked about.

Spam, the scourge of email

Of course, for the same reasons that I really like email, it has become a problem for many of us when used by unscrupulous characters who send millions of emails that we call spam. Every ISP (Internet Service Provider) and email host spends lots of hours and a significant portion of their income fighting this scourge of the Internet.

If you use email to any extent, I'm sure you've encountered - and probably loathe - spam.

Federal law: Can-Spam Act of 2003

In fact, spam got to the point where the Federal Government passed the CAN-SPAM act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) in 2003, and if you're using email in marketing your business, you had better be aware of what you can, and can't, do regarding commercial email.

If you're new to email marketing, you may be violating the terms of this act and not even know it. Even though the act is about six years old, most small business owners have never heard of it.

Here's an article about the CAN-SPAM Act on Wikipedia and information about the CAN-SPAM Act from the FTC.

If you are going to use email in your marketing and promotion, you need to understand the difference between commercial and transactional messages. Commercial messages come under the control of the act and transactional messages do not.

Why do companies keep asking for my permission to email me?

Scrupulous business owners not only want to stay in compliance with Federal regulations, we also want to make sure that the people who hear from us really want to hear from us, and we also want to protect our email service providers and ourselves from spam complaints.

Instead of just emailing someone with a promotional offer about your business, which is generally legal, you may want to go a step further and get someone's permission before emailing them. This is called "single opt-in."

The problem with single opt-in permission is that people with weird senses of humor and too much time on their hands can subscribe others to a mailing list by entering someone's name and email on the form. This can be done as a practical joke or, more maliciously, to get others to enter spam complaints against the sender. It can be done by your competitors, other people who want to hurt your business, or even complete strangers with nothing better to do.

For that reason, most of us who are serious about email marketing use email mailing list providers, such as Aweber, for managing our mailing lists. If I'm going to be sending the same message to more than one or two recipients, I use a mailing list management service for several reasons.

1. They provide an automated unsubscribe mechanism so anyone who no longer wants to receive what I send can easily opt-out of receiving further information from me and I don't have to do anything. It's handled by the service provider, such as Aweber.

2. They have an easy way to facilitate double-opt-in requests from anyone wanting to receive the information I'm offering. This can be done in a couple of ways. A form can be generated and placed on a website so someone can enter their name and email address, or if I know they want to subscribe, I can manually enter the information for them. But, that's only half the process. The mailing list management service then sends an email to that person asking them to confirm their intention to subscribe. This message contains a coded link that must be clicked on to complete the subscription request. The system automatically keeps a record of this confirmation to protect against any future spam complaints, just in case.

3. The best mailing list management systems allow for multiple, sequenced messages that will be sent over a period of time. They allow us to send a welcome message immediately upon confirmation (if you want to do so), and as many follow-up messages as you want. Each message can be sent from one day to several months later.

4. I look for a mailing list management system that also allows for broadcast messages. This means that I can send an email, newsletter, time-sensitive message, or anything else to all subscribers at the same time, regardless of where they are in the follow-up sequence. People who subscribed today, yesterday, or even last year will receive the broadcast the same day, as long as they remain an active subscriber.

Yes, it costs a little money, but these services provide automated tools that make it easy to create follow up messages, edit them at any time, change the sequence or time delay, send out a broadcast, and automatically handle unsubscribe requests as well as double-opt-in subscription requests. They help me make sure that I'm in compliance with the law and reduce the amount of administrative overhead that would be required if I were doing this using other methods.

I would encourage you to seriously reconsider your mailing list management if your system does not have all the things required by the Can-Spam act.

If you do decide to send marketing emails using your personal email account, make sure that you honor unsubscribe requests within 10 days and be sure to include your physical address towards the bottom of your message. Be sure the headers, subject line, and body contents are accurate and not deceptive.

How do I deal with spam complaints?

Many people subscribe to mailing lists and newsletters and then forget all about it some time later. When your message arrives in their inbox (assuming it gets past the spam and junk mail filters), many of them will not use the unsubscribe mechanism at the bottom of your email. They will simply click the Spam button or link in their email system. Some of these will simply mark email from you to be filtered into the spam box on their system, but others cause bigger problems by registering a spam complaint against you with your ISP, email provider, and even organizations that maintain black-lists of people and IP addresses that send spam.

Your ISP may very well cancel your account to protect themselves and their other clients. If you get on one of the blacklists, the deliverability of your email will seriously decline, sometimes to the point that nothing you send out is ever delivered to the people who want to get it.

I consider those to be serious problems.

A reputable company like Aweber will handle spam complaints for you. They have a record of the confirmation that proves someone actually gave you permission to send information to them. They also have personnel who work with the blacklist organizations, and others, and they know how to deal with spam complaints on your behalf.

Aweber also checks each email in your follow-up list when you create or edit it, and rates the message for its "spamminess." The higher the rating, the more likely it is to trigger spam filters and the less likely it is to land in someone's email inbox. I try to keep all my follow-up message scores below 3, even though a score below 5 will still likely be delivered.

Over the years, I've known a few people who had serious problems with their email because they just didn't know any better and made a simple mistake.

I'm not trying to scare anyone, I just want you to consider the ramifications of sending commercial email.

Dealing with spam complaints

So, what can you do to reduce the number of spam complaints and to handle them if/when they happen?

Aweber's blog has a number of posts on spam complaints.

Stefan Pollard has a couple of excellent articles on the subject:

Who are your complainers?

Dispute Resolution: Resolving ISP Blocks

I find that it is much easier, less time-consuming, and less-expensive to avoid spam complaints than to have to deal with them.

Again, I'm not trying to alarm you, I'm just letting you know some of the facts related to sending commercial email that aren't immediately obvious, and some of my experiences with this.

I've been sending commercial email since it first became legal to do so, when the Internet separated itself from Arpanet and the commercial phone companies started providing the backbone pipes instead of the goverment and universities.

In fact, I programmed my own email list management system a long time before Netscape, Microsoft, and Google even became interested in the world wide web. Later, I managed a number of mailing lists using open-source software, but it was difficult and time-consuming.

I still have a few mailing lists that are managed by Yahoo, but all of my current mailing lists and newsletters are powered by Aweber or Site Build It.

I'd rather pay for the convenience and service they provide rather than dealing with the expense, aggravation, and time required to deal with problems if they arise.

Another possibility...

A few people in Murphy are using MerchantCircle.com to handle chores related to creating coupons, blogging, and sending newsletters.

I like Merchant Circle, but their free service is limited and their paid services offer less features than I can get elsewhere.

I have a listing for Dilbeck Marketing on Merchant Circle and you can see their directory of businesses in Murphy, NC.

What do you think?

Do you have any experience with email marketing? What works for you? What doesn't?

Your comments, questions, and opinions are welcome and encouraged.

All the best,

JD