Black and White

Email marketing is black and white, you either do it correctly, or you do not. There are plenty of companies that do it "mostly" correctly, but if they miss one element, then they are not doing it right.

For example, if you have a clean, confirmed opt-in email list of highly qualified customers to which you send a newsletter once per month. You stick to your schedule, you only send the newsletter and no other promotions not previously agreed upon; in essence everything is perfect, but you fail to honor unsubscribe requests, you're doing it wrong.

If you keep the law, yet offend in one point, you are guilty of all. The judge is not the federal government, nor your IT department, the judge is the email recipient. They do not care how carefully you crafted your message or how many rules you follow, if the email is not right for them, they will judge you and send you to oblivion. If they can punish you along the way, they will do that too.

The problem of course is there is no standard. What if you honor unsubscribes within ten days, just like the CAN-SPAM act says. If you send monthly, you should not have a problem. If you send daily however, you could have a huge problem with someone who unsubscribes. You know that CAN-SPAM gives you ten days, but the recipient may not. When they see the next email message from you, they will simply reach for the report as spam button. If you get a few of those you are in trouble.

The law governing legitimate email marketers is email best practices; an ever-changing and ambiguous set of guidelines that are not set in stone. The lowest common denominator is the CAN-SPAM act of 2003, which allows you to send out spam to any email address you happen to have, one time. Some of the provisions of the law require that you:

• Include an unsubscribe method in the email message
• Honor unsubscribes within ten days
• Include your physical address in each email message

That is all there is to the CAN-SPAM act, but following the act will not keep you from being labled as a spammer. Some of the best practice guidlines admonish you to do the following as well:

• Confirm subscriptions
• Honor unsubscribe requests immediately
• Personalize your email message
• Include the email address the recipeint used to sign up in the message
• Clearly identify yourself in th email
• Do not use a no-reply in the from address

That is a small list of things that will help prevent you from being labled a spammer, but there are plenty of additional tactics you can apply to your email message to improve the responses you get to your email. Ultimately, it is the recipient who decides your fate. If you can please most of the people most of the time you should be able to effectively reach your audience.

Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting

P.S. Please share your best practices here, the things that you do to improve your chances of making it to the inbox.