Speaking on Newsletters
This week I speak to the Carolina Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs on a favorite topic: Newsletters and CAN-SPAM.
I plan to start with a primer on the scary compliance stuff and then discuss how professionals can build their newsletter subscription list (as well as subcriptions to blogs, ezines, etc) with a solid CONTENT strategy, including article marketing.
I’d appreciate any advance questions you think I should plan to address in my talk.
I’m also interested in any research on this topic, whether your own or someone else’s.
Thanks in advance.
Your Reputation as a Spammer
You think you’ve properly built a subscriber list of folks who OPTED IN to receive your e-newsletter. Turns out, that’s not good enough. Your email might still wind up in the SPAM file.
Recipients determine who's a SPAMMER
Lyris, Inc.’s 2008 analysis showed one out of every four permission-based email messages sent to U.S.-based Internet Service Providers (ISPs) lands in the junk mail folder.
What’s up? While results vary by the filter policy of each ISP (such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AIM, etc), the report says it’s the sender’s reputation driving 25% of messages to the SPAM folder.
How do you earn the right reputation?
- Craft a compelling message.
- Don’t bombard your list — send no more often than your recipients bargained for.
- Make it easy for people to find the “Unsubscribe” button. If it’s easier to hit “SPAM” than “Unsubscribe” you’ll get a reputation as a spammer on ISPs’ scorecards.
Stefan Pollard, Lyris email marketing expert, points out that “The definition of spam has moved beyond the legal requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act to include any message that is unrecognized, unexpected or unwanted... This puts the onus on senders to make their messages recognized, expected and wanted. Until they do, invited email will continue to be delivered to the bulk folder.”
Spam filter trigger words:
Act Now! Free! 50% off! While Supplies last
Click Here Call now! Earn $ Why pay more?
Discount! You’re a Winner! Credit Serious Cash
Weight Opportunity Compare Double Your Income
Removes Collect Amazing Work from Home
Offer As Seen On… Click Here “Stop” or “Stops”
Buy Direct Loans Buy Direct Satisfaction Guaranteed
Subscribe All Natural Winner Avoid Bankruptcy
Promise You Cash Easy Terms Special Promotion
Get Paid Great offer One time Guarantee, Guaranteed
Join millions No cost, No fees Order Now Online Marketing
Please Read Don’t Delete Save up to Time Limited
Problems with promotional email
In a study by Merkle, “View from the Inbox,” 2009, the main reasons subscribers choose to opt out of email programs, are perceived irrelevance (75%) and sending too frequently (73%).
Promotional emails were deemed the most intrusive. Solution? Make your newsletter informative, not promotional.
Merkle reported that 20% of those receiving e-newsletters thought they were worthy of reading, and received, on average,about eight newsletters each month. That’s a heap of competition for YOUR customers’ attention.
Your reputation intact
If you can’t do the job in house, pay a good ghostwriter/copywriter. You’ll offset by the fees with savings to your reputation with customers and ISPs.
When you decide to outsource, be sure you hire someone who not only can cut a phrase and punctuate, but also who knows your firm/industry. That is, unless you really want to bring a writer up the learning curve(!)
Pardon my plug to consider my turnkey newsletter service. When you go to the trouble of communicating with customers, track results so you know what’s working and what’s not. My service includes custom templates with analytics that can tell you details like who opened what link in what browser.
Speaking engagement
At the kind invitation of the Carolinas Professinal Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs, I’ll be speaking on CAN-SPAM and e-newsletters June 18. Hope to see you there.
Field Organizations Run Amok
Jordan Ayan at Media Post offered good advice on how to work WITH field organizations on e-Newsletters.
Mr Ayan defined “field organizations” as divisions, salesmen, distributors, franchisees, etc., and noted that many of them send email campaigns with little control or input from the parent organization.
I’ve been on both sides of this equation. Working for the parent organization that owns the brand, I know everyone in the field thinks they’re a marketing genius and corporate/home office is just there to get in the way. Working for the field organization I know how long it can take corporate know-it-alls to get out of their never-ending meetings and get something done (for a change)!
Give a little, get a little
Here’s what Mr Ayan suggested would encourage field organizations’ marketing initiatives while mitigating the “collateral damage” (including CAN-SPAM violations) they can cause:
1. Let field organizations know your objective is not to shut them down, but to understand what is working, to facilitate implementation of best email practices across the organization, and perhaps even to provide some tools to make doing the job easier.
2. Audit their list practices. In some cases, the lists field organizations have built are far superior to anything a corporate entity can do because of their proximity to the customer. In other cases, it could be a CAN-SPAM nightmare waiting to happen. This is especially true if they are operating without an effective opt-out process, or worse yet, with no opt-out process at all.
3. Determine if you can facilitate the email process. The key word here is facilitate, not control. If a field organization feels that you are trying to control them, they will start trying to figure out all the ways to work around you. However, if you make it easier for them to do something that they have already found is effective, you may find that you have a large fan base.
How about it, readers? No matter which side of the fence you’re on, what works well and what’s a bust? Do tell.
Merging Postal and Email Addresses
Stop or go on email appending?
OK, you have a file of your customers’ physical addresses and you want to enjoy the efficiencies and effectiveness of email marketing to them. How?
You could engage a database company to match postal records to the email records in their database. When a “match” is found the database company will add that record (with the new email address) to what’s called an “append” file.
They usually send a “welcome” email to the entire append file complete with an opt-out only link and then send the file back to you.
Sounds great, eh? A dream come true.
Maybe not. The file has NOT been properly opted-into and could cause serious delivery problems for you.
If you decide to go that route, Ryan Deutsch of StrongMail Systems offers this advice:
1. Only append active customer files. Do not append inactive or “stale” customer files. These result in poor match rates and are riskier than active customer files. Furthermore, it is critical that these customers pass the PBR (Prior Business Relationship) test. As a general rule, be sure that the customer has purchased and/or interacted with your organization in the last 12 months. If you append bad data you will…destroy your deliverability.
2. Build an append-specific communication strategy. You should not treat your appended email recipients the same way you treat subscribers that have been on your file for months and years. First, make sure you isolate your append mailings from your core programs. While I believe opt-out appends can deliver value to a marketer, we must accept that this file IS riskier than the house file. As a result, keeping it separate limits any negative impact the program will have on your existing email campaigns. Second, develop a series of communications that repurpose email content for the appended addresses, and be sure to place opt-out front and center and continually remind recipients how they ended up on the email list. Be transparent; your customers will appreciate it.
3. Build rules to migrate append addresses to your house file over time. As time goes by, proactively migrate appended addresses into your house file. Migration should be based on specific recipient activity (clicks, purchases, etc.) Companies can build these rules to apply to their unique business models.
Discussion on Ryan’s blog post includes thumbs up and down. Whatever your choice, deliver quality content to recipients and they’re less likely to unsubscribe or hit the “spam” button.
Laryngitis, LinkedIn and Me
I spoke at a networking event last week on one of my favorite topics: email marketing and the scourge of SPAM.
Savvy Jackie
More correctly put, I whispered my way through it. Laryngitis. It helped that people wanted to know about CAN-SPAM compliance — audience members shushed each other so they could hear me croak away. Afterward, someone told me that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis spoke in a whisper to make people pay attention. Savvy, Jackie.
The topic was well received, so I went to LinkedIn and in-mailed it to selected contacts. Within three hours a friend asked if I would present it to his company at a Friday lunch-n-learn and another asked if she could link to it in her blog.
Later, I offered it to a LinkedIn group. Within 24 hours I learned that it had been Tweeted around the world and one group member wanted to post my guide on her website and use my presentation for a Chamber of Commerce event! This social networking thing is amazing, eh?
About 40% of my new web traffic comes from LinkedIn and newsletter efforts. My subscriptions include people from around the world. Worthwhile CONTENT on your website can drive eyeballs.
If you want to see what the buzz is about visit http://tamelarich.com/food-for-thought/canspam-download/
CAN-SPAM compliance
Download my handy, one-page checklist for staying in compliance with the US federal law that governs all commercial email.
Sooo many ways to get subscribers without spamming!
To download click on the link: CAN-SPAM Quick Guide
Less is More
Less is really more in e-communications
Interesting blog post at MediaPost, a firm that provides an array of resources for media, marketing and advertising professionals. In it, I discovered it’s not just my inbox getting bruised and swollen by a flood of marketing messages.
LESS is MORE. Did your newsletter subscribers sign up with the belief they’d be getting a monthly coupon and now you’re pummeling them with daily exhortations to BUY NOW? You’re probably shooting yourself in the foot.
If enough of them hit “spam” to rid themselves of your aggressive communications, you can’t email them again. Plus that, you run the risk of a $11,000 federal fine under the CAN-SPAM ACT.
Focused and fresh content, delivered at comfortable intervals, will help you avoid “spam” reports from recipients who are overwhelmed by everyone, including you. One way to avoid the compulsion to blast an email: devise an editorial calendar. I spoke on this topic Monday night at Connect the Dots, a networking event run by the PR Store. If you want a download of my presentation it’s available here.
Connecting the Dots
Delivered to your inbox the last Monday of the month
Whether you’re a business owner or employee, no doubt you appreciate the need to network. If you’re in the Charlotte, NC area Monday 3/9 at 6pm, drop by Connect the Dots, a monthly networking group sponsored by The PR Store .
I’ll be the featured speaker this month, talking about one of the things that gets under my skin: unsolicited newsletters. What makes so many people think that just because they have my email address I actually want their newsletters?
I posed this question to a group of fellow solo-preneurs, who pounced:
“Everyone else does it so if I don’t do it my competitors get ahead of me.”
“Why wouldn’t they want to hear from me?”
“It’s not illegal, you know!”
“They can always hit ‘spam’ or ‘unsubscribe’.”
“If I’m not sending out a monthly newsletter I’m not being professional.”
“I can’t afford to send brochures and postcards and besides that, no one opens snail mail anymore!”
“If I send them an email asking them to opt in, half my list will go away!”
When I went on to tell them they could incur a federal fine of $11,000 for doing so, they became frantic.
“No one’s going to turn me in.”
“Can’t get blood from a stone.”
“That can’t be right.”
Since I offer custom newsletter content, templates and management services I have a vested interest in getting the word out about CAN-SPAM compliance. But so does every business that sends out what’s defined as “commercial email.”
That probably includes YOU.
Hope to see you on March 9 at 6pm. I’ll be giving away a free newsletter consultation to one attendee. Hope it’s YOU!
