Email Marketing: How To Avoid The Dreaded S-Word

Guest PostThis is a guest post by Charles Mburugu, a professional content developer and entrepreneur. He often writes about real estate, finance, business start-ups and internet marketing. In the past few weeks he has been writing for blogs where you can get the latest Bluehost coupon code and Web.com coupon code.

When building your email marketing list, you need to consider what tactics you’ll use to send newsletters to your prospects. Though there are many ways of attracting and luring subscribers, some might scare them away – or worse, get you labelled as a spammer.

1. Don’t hold people hostage.

The great thing about opt-in lists is that prospects willingly subscribe to receive your promotional newsletter and materials. Therefore, you will rarely get flagged. But sometimes, readers change their minds about receiving your content. It’s important, therefore, to have an unsubscribe button at the bottom of each email.

When anyone in your list sends an unsubscribe request, take it seriously. Most modern email marketing programs remove the address from your mailing list automatically, but not all have this feature. If you continue to send people email after they unsubscribe, you could be blacklisted by internet service providers and end up losing the list that you have labored for.

2. Get familiar with rules and regulations.

Due to the need for privacy, laws have been created to protect internet users from spammers.The United States Bureau of Consumer Protection has compiled a easy-to-follow guide which can help you stay compliant with these laws. Spend awhile familiarizing yourself with the laws and requirements, and make sure you keep your operation clean and tight.

3. Learn from bounce backs.

This refers to emails that returned an error message. If a message failed to reach the recipient, you may receive an automated response. There are several reasons why emails fail to reach the intended recipients. The email address used may be invalid or misspelled. Another reason could be that the email server may have been very busy when you clicked the send button.

Take note of all the email addresses that bounced back. You could also delete these addresses from your list so that you know exactly how many people are receiving your emails, or you could try them at a different time. Make sure you cross-check the spellings for all the addresses in your list.

4. Avoid pornographic, disturbing and shocking content

Generally, it is wise to avoid controversial issues since your site may be permanently associated with such issues. Many spam filters also look for words such as “Free,” “Sale,” and even phrases such as “act now” and “multilevel marketing.”

If your email marketing program has a spam checker, use it to make sure your email is free from such language and other factors that may get it sent to the spam folder. You can also get around the filters by inserting periods into words like “Free,” (F.ree), but who knows how soon spam filters will catch on to this commonly-used tactic?

What strategies have helped make your email newsletter a success? Let me know in the comments section below.

 

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Kelly Kautz is one woman on a mission to show the world that marketing your small business doesn't have to suck.

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