Email Email and Oh Yeah - Email

You can hire a web designer to create a web page newsletter complete with Sales message for your widgets, then all you need to do is send it out to thousands of email addresses, and you can make millions overnight right?

Er, wrong! So, you have this fantastic advertisment, and you have to send it out to every nut with a PC. Yep, well you can do that, but I’d seriously reconsider that action. For starters this campaign will be untargeted, and most will hit the delete button as they didn’t request it in the first place – and you aren’t going to make any money by annoying anyone.

You really have to be careful when sending out those mails, because one mistake, one tiny little error with your etiquette, and bye bye to any first contact and chance of doing business. You see an inbox is a very personal thing, most keep only 1 box, and this is for both their business correspondence and personal mail. They should get a separate box for the spam type stuff – then use the spam address in those silly, naff places in the net – but they DON’T.

Just place yourself in their shoes for one moment, your sitting there, and suddenly ding dong!!!!! You have 2 of the same email arrive, selling some sexual product you no way on earth asked for, so you delete it and hope it never comes back, but it does.

It’s irritating right. You could reply, but by replying you are giving them your address, then again it may have just been a simple send error by them – so you don’t unsubscribe after all. I mean what’s the harm, it’s only 2 emails okay……

Now multiply that by 20 every week. 40 spam emails every week (and that’s nothing!) that you spend time deleting, blocking and unsubscribing from. Phew!

So what’s the answer, increase anti spam laws, go to the trouble of changing that email address again etc. I don’t think there is one, the net is too big to control something like this. It’s a case of put up with it, and block what you can coming through.

It’s not just the junk that fills an inbox. Mistakes have a lot to answer for, but you can stop sending it yourself, and preventing some of the damage being done. We all accidently spam people. What! Yes, we do actually. All you need to do is hold down that send button twice oops, I just sent spam. So be careful when you are tap tap tapping away. But what is spam? No – it’s not that sickly luncheon meat stuff. Spam is unwanted mail. Er, but the word is so overused, mainly as I think people don’t bother thinking before they speak, and if they’ve had a bad day or had a lot of recent spam – they’ll just label everything as SPAM, it’s a frustration thing lol.

So we have to treat people’s inboxes with respect. To stop annoying those potential clients, here are some easy to follow rules:

oSend emails only to them that ask. Your mails should only go out to subscribers. Remember that it’s illegal to send emails to PRIVATE addresses like christophergiven@tiscali.com Business addresses are different such as admin@bbc.co.uk , but still don’t spam even business ones.

oRemove the addresses when asked. Never anger potential customers, as refusing to do something like removing them, will do this. They see your mailings as unproductive, untargeted, not asked for, or even actual scams (even though they arent’), but this is the label most come under – even if you only sent 4 in the last year.

oIf you buy email lists – check them before use. Most are useless money makers, that don’t work, bounce back or simply fail in some technical way.

oTry a few test mailings first, something simple like an offer to send em something free. This is good for locating and dealing with all those bounce backs you’re going to get. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have a better quality list – you know, something to work with. Save those ones, and send them a more deserving personal email,as this is where the sales campaigns will be more successful.

oNot Read. Ah, the not reads – I really like these, no seriously, as I get to remove them (the power and the glory), well, they aren’t going to buy anything anyway, so why waste time contacting them – or even serving them!

oIt keeps that database tidy and better qualified, oh and saves you from flaming abuse mails from sad prospects who aren’t interested.

oEnsure that you use a real email address. This is just obvious.

oMake sure that subject line isn’t deceptive. Remember to make it straightforward, don’t confuse the prospect or give them the opportunity to file you – in the computer bin. And they will, if they can’t understand your message!

regards