Make sure you avoid the spam folder

New Year, New Email Marketing Campaign? Make Sure you Avoid the Spam Folder

One of the key factors in email marketing is deliverability i.e. your emails reaching inboxes, not junk or spam folders. You probably wouldn’t keep a sales person who never made it to client meetings? Would you use a courier to deliver your products to customers who had a history of only delivering 50% of shipments? Well that’s where we come in for your email campaigns.

We’re constantly working in the background to ensure your emails are delivered. ISP feedback loops, throttling, MTA, bounce handling are just a few amongst the many things we take care of on your behalf and we won’t bore you with the details. We just want you to know we’re fighting your corner on a daily basis. But we can’t do it alone so here are just two simple ways of helping us to help you get all your emails to exactly where you want them – into inboxes

Step 1 – Send less emails!

I know it seems strange for a company providing a system that enables you to email your customers to say this, but yes, we think most people send too many emails. Or to maybe be more specific, too many emails that aren’t relevant enough to the recipients interests and needs. Research has shown that 75% of respondents say a lack of relevance is the biggest reason they choose to opt out of receiving regular emails, followed closely by being sent them too frequently at 73%. (Merkle Interactive Services 2009).

So how often is too often and how do you ensure relevance?

Well clearly it will depend on the type of business but a good rule of thumb is once a week if you are sending customers a promotional offer or a way of saving money/purchasing something new. Or for general company updates and “staying in touch” purposes, probably once a month is all that’s needed. To work out what’s best for your business, try a few different approaches and keep an eye on your open rates – if they start to fall, you can start to work out is it the content of the message that is the problem or the frequency.

Content is King

It’s just as vital to consider content. 41% of US internet users threatened to stop buying from companies that send them irrelevant messages (CMO Council & InfoPrint Solutions, 2010) so it really is a turn off for them. Unfortunately we see this happen a lot – if a customer signs up to receive your restaurant business newsletter and you then use that same customer’s details to also send them communications about a completely different business venture, you are effectively spamming them and they will complain and potentially unsubscribe.

Instead, include a link to your alternative business venture in your restaurant newsletter, invite them to actively sign up to the new communication or contact you for information and then you have a separate group of customers that you know are actively interested in your new product or offer. This means you can then segment that group and send them emails containing content that is timely but relevant to them.

Let a CRM system such as InTouch do the hard work for you

Remember, the InTouchCRM system helps you manage all your email marketing communications and will track and report on open and click through rates as well as giving you the low down on delivery & bounce rates, unsubscribes etc. So the system will do a lot of the hard work, you just have to act on the information it gives you.

Step 2 – Keep your email list up to date

Let’s make this very simple. If someone receives your email and did not want it, that is spam. Even if they purchased from you in 1986 or told you at a trade show they would be happy to receive emails, if they click that junk button, its spam. That’s bad for you and bad for us. Once someone has unsubscribed from your emails InTouchCRM will not send them another email. However, what if you’ve sent someone 10 campaigns and they’ve not opened or clicked a link in any? Do you think they’re really interested? Do you think ISPs don’t notice this? We can assure you they do. Too many unopened emails and complaints will eventually lead to the ISP blocking you….and unfortunately this affects us too so we do everything we can to prevent it getting to that situation. But a regular check of your own email contact list and making sure all your permissions are up to date and current is essential. If you don’t, at best you’ll look unprofessional and at worse the emails just won’t get there. Make it a new year’s resolution to check your list once a month!

That’s it for now. Nothing too strenuous whilst we all ease back into work mode. We’ll have some more tips on improving email effectiveness over the coming weeks so watch this space for more information soon. Happy emailing and for more help or advice visit us at www.intouchcrm.co.uk