Email Marketing 101: What not to do with your emails

I just received another email that just pisses me off for the most part!

Here are just a few reasons why:

1. I never subscribed to this persons website or opt in form
2. I was listed as a “bcc”
3. I received two messages from the same person using two similar emails within an hour of each other
4. I did not have the option to unsubscribe

All of these are what not to do with your emails when it comes to “Email Marketing 101”

I had also recently received an email from someone I also had not opted into their list which showed about 60 other emails, all alphabetical that they had just pasted into their “To” box in their own personal email.

These are all wrong when it comes to email marketing.  There are much better ways to handling your business that I want to share with you now.

If you really want to build a following, it should be of people who WANT to be on your list and actually signed up to get your emails.  For this you would need an autoresponder service.  There are many out there like Aweber, iContact, GetResponse and GVO/Pure Leverage family of marketing tools.

Having an autoresponder allows you to accept peoples email addresses in basic ways, Single or Double opt in.

A single opt in is where someone enters their email and instantly starts to get your follow up emails delivered to their inbox with no further work on their part. They would be listed as “Active” in your email account once this occurs.

A double opt in is where someone enters their email and needs to open their email account, open the new email and click the verify link in the email in order to accept the future emails being sent to them.  They would be listed a “pending” in your account until they verified their email.

Some email systems require you to use the Double opt in feature, while others allow you to use single or double.  GVO and Pure Leverage allow the single opt in which I find as a beneficial tool so you are not waiting for people to get future emails delivered to them.

Once a person opts in and gets their emails they also need to be able to unsubscribe at their desire in case they realize that they do not want to be on the email list anymore, due to not finding value, lack of time, too many emails in their inbox or many other reasons.

The autoresponder service should provide an automatic way to get out of the list which helps decrease the amount of spam complaints that might otherwise show up and could jeopardize the autoresponder email account.

Setting up your online communication with your customers should be a simple and stress free occasion where there should be a mutual benefit for all parties involved.  When people take it upon their own to steal email address, or purchase them off some random list and then blast emails out to those who are not expecting them, it leaves a bad taste toward those so called marketers and brings about a bad name to the home business agency.

Too often people think any email they get is a scam or related to pyramid scheme because too many people have presented their emails to them without the appropriate steps being taken first.  If you are an online marketer, run a non profit group or coach a team, having an autporesponder is a great way to stay in touch with your followers the right way.

Now it is up to you to be ethical and make the right choice when it comes to your marketing promotions online.

Dave Gardner