How to avoid being a spammer while e-mail marketing

The use of email is an increasingly effective tool used by many businesses for various purposes. However, often people are wary of spam and end up putting your marketing emails through a spam filter or becoming annoyed of repetitive emails and simply blocking the sender, which means that both parties ultimately lose out.

While email is resourceful, cheap and an extremely fast and practical way of pushing through communication, it’s becoming increasingly annoying for a person to filter through several emails a day. If you have ever checked your spam box, occasionally something important is filtered through there and you realize had you never checked your spam box you may have never gotten the information that was intended for you. It is becoming increasingly difficult for emails that are not spam to reach its intended inbox simply because of the online social stigma attached to the idea of potential spam.

This predicament is closely tied to the surge of email marketing, where a lot of amateurs tend to flood the inbox of businesses in the hopes that some random person will hit the right click. This hope that by a stroke of luck someone may click on a link is untactful as well as unethical when it comes to operating online. As such, a lot of complaints float around resulting in increased filters which may be over-efficient at times and filter out emails that are actually purposeful.

Bearing that in mind, the following tips highlight some of the things you could do to avoid being a spammer.

Keep a good reputation

No one likes a troublemaker, not even the internet. When it comes to the online world, a reputation matters. A lot of people, when coming across new information that appeals to them, will immediately Google the questions that come to mind should they have any. It terms of the way spam filters work, they used to focus on the contents of the information being sent and would filter anything that had a spam vibe to it, for example, email with the subject line “congratulations, you have just won one million dollars!”

Now however, the focus has shifted from the content to the reputation of the sender. Basically, Internet Service Providers (ISP’s), such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail use various tools and methods to determine the reputation of a sender. They keep track of the amount of times an email has been reported as spam or a phishing scam in order to gauge the sender’s reputation. Once it has been established that you are a spammer, it’s difficult to reverse.

Know your clients

While getting lists of email addresses of the internet and through the little tweaks of social networking privacy loopholes makes a sender feel empowered with the idea of a large list, it’s a) not ethical and b) not even worth it. This is because most people will not open an email from an unknown sender, even if it makes it past the spam filter.

Buying lists online is another lost cause as they usually include fake email addresses whose sole purpose is to catch spammers. This goes in line with the first point where your reputation matters, because by going through unjust means a sender is more likely to be reported as well as unsuccessful in the actual act of marketing.

While it’s certainly more time consuming and requires more effort, building on a list of customers who are aware of you and your business and have maintained some kind of relationship with you is worth the pursuit. You can even give them the choice to opt for specific kinds of information or updates; and it’s always good brownie points if you consider their needs. Another upside is that the people on lists such as these are more likely to respond with feedback.

Another aspect to maintaining a clientele list is its incentive to organize. Pay attention to the responses you receive and also to see if you ever receive a bounced email. If there has been no response for a while, it never hurts to send an email to everyone on your list asking if they want to continue to receive such emails. The receivers will appreciate customer service that is worthy.

The power of a subject line

Although once established, you will have built a clientele over the years and ensures success. However when starting out, you should avoid anything that could trigger a spam alert by either the receiver or its spam filter. It’s easy to get a bit excited about the prospect of success, but try to stray from anything that’s too jumpy, such as the use of multiple exclamation marks or the talk of money right away. Keep things relevant and try not to annoy a recipient into reporting your email as spam.

 Invest

The more the merrier, when it comes to emails – specifically commercial emails. This is no easy task and the more successful its fruits are, the more capital needs to be invested. That’s why it’s suggested that there is strength in numbers and it’s often a good idea to hire more people. Email marketing needs to be consistent. It has to be both of high quality as well as quantity. Often times, one or two people just are not capable of handling such a task efficiently. By working as a team of responsible senders,