Effective E-Mail Marketing

Posted by Brandon Harker on 29 July 2010


Effective
Bulk email is a highly cost effective means to keep your customers and potential customers abreast of their topics of interest; namely, your auctions. The caveat here is that you must not abuse your goodwill. That means you must obey this list of do’s and don’ts.

 

DO (Good)

  • Always include an easy-to-use opt-out link in your emails.
  • Use plain text emails whenever possible – HTML emails look better but plain text emails are easier to read on smartphones and encourage you to be concise. If I want to look at auction images I will click on the link in the email.
  • Double-check ALL links in your emails. A broken link in your email aggravates your customers.
  • Clean up your email list to eliminate bouncebacks (bad emails). Failure to do this increases the likelihood of your emails getting marked as spam.
  • Send your emails from a branded email account like [email protected] NOT from [email protected]
  • Ensure you have an easy to use sign-up form on your home page where someone can simply enter the email address and click Submit. Let me repeat that: The only field you need is the email address.  

  

DO NOT DO (Bad)

  • Do not send more than one or two emails a month. Sending more than this reduces your read percentage and yields higher opt-out rates.
  • Never, ever purchase or harvest email lists. Using purchased lists can immediately and irrevocably harm your company’s credibility not to mention it will elicit vile responses from the recipients.
  • Never use unscrupulous bulk email service providers. They will collect the email addresses you send to and sell them to spammers.
  • Avoid spammy keywords in your emails like FREE, CLICK NOW!, etc.

 

Self-Service or Full Service

You have the choice of sending your emails yourself or using a bulk email service provider. The biggest issue that most people face when attempting the self-service route is limitations from their Internet Service Provider (ISP). Most ISP’s limit how many emails you can send in an hour. This number is often very low (50 or less) which means that sending a bulk email blast of 5,000 emails would take 100 hours… ugh. That is where the bulk email service providers step in. Because they run their own servers that are connected directly to the internet they don’t have these limitations.

 

Scruples

I can attest to the following list of scrupulous bulk email service providers. They will automatically allow recipients to opt-out of your emails.  They will automatically eliminate bouncebacks from your email list. They will not harvest or sell your email lists to spammers. They can typically send your entire email blast out in less than a few hours. In short, they make bulk email easier to manage.