Email marketing is often perceived as being free. That’s not strictly true as it takes time to organise and manage.
I am often asked
• How do we go about email marketing?
• What are the rules?
• How do we build our mailing list?
• Should we buy lists?
This presentation on slideshare shares the key issues you need to consider. From the Process of Email Marketing to Frequency of email.
I have noted some additional web links for email marketers here:
SENDING MASS EMAILS
http://mailchimp.com/ this is a useful way to send out mass emails. I was reminded of this last week when another business that uses the same IP address set as us, sent out masses of email from their server, this looked like spam to the Internet Service Providers (like British Telecom) who went ahead and blacklisted the IP address. What that means to me and my business is that suddenly we can send emails, but no one receives them as we’re blacklisted.
You can get taken off the blacklist, but it takes several days and in the meantime you don’t know who is and isn’t getting your emails. To avoid this, use a verified mailing company like Mailchimp. Their basic offer is very good and free.
TESTING EMAIL FORMATS
More and more people use different email clients, like Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo and Google mail. But what does your beautifully crafted email look like when it arrives? It’s difficult to know, unless you set up many different email accounts and test on each. Alternatively Email On Acid has a free service that allows you to test a few different formats. You can pay as you go for a wider test.
VERIFY YOUR EMAIL LIST
One of the key indicators that you’re a spammer is if you’re using old or out of date email addresses. At a client’s yesterday they realised their last email newsletter was 11 months’ ago. So much has happened during the last year it’s difficult to know how valid the list is. Glock Soft has a limited free version where it can check your list and note the numbers of hard and soft bounces so that you can start any campaign with a clean list. http://www.glocksoft.com/
EMAIL EXTRAS
Lyris is a favourite resource of mine for all email tools. They have a spam checker and will let you know how ‘spammy’ your email looks. There is loads inside their website, go explore!
Labels: digital marketing, email marketing, online marketing