There is a successful pattern of marketing using email broadcasts.

There are also many wrong or bad ways to go about it. It's best to stick to this pattern closely:

1. Accumulate an email list of customers, prospects, anyone interested. Or, rent a list, but only "managed lists" such as from a magazine or association. They will send out your broadcast for you, and it will not be cheap (possibly 35 cents an address). There are no other legitimate ways to get email lists.

You are only interested in individuals who have expressed an interest in you or who are highly likely to be interested in what your are offering

2. If you have the opportunity to specify the subject line, think through carefully how to word it. Be truthful, but say something that will interest genuine prospects.

3. Make your broadcasts mostly text. If it is all in a picture, most people will never see your ad as they will not open your email on speculation. Make sure that what is "above the fold" (what they will probably see without scrolling down) is interesting enough to make them want to read on.

4. Make your communications mostly material of general interest to the people you are communicating to. Your commercial messages should only be a small percentage of what you send out. So if you have a newsletter make it 80% news and 20% ads. After all, most people don't subscribe to newspapers and magazines for the ads. Why should they subscribe to your email broadcasts for the ads? (in some cases of course, they will.)

5. Handle any unsubscribe requests, bad email addresses and complaints promptly.

Email broadcasting can be hugely successful. Successful email campaigns usually follow these rules.

Posted by Richard R. Byrd at 12:37 PM | Permalink

Email broadcasting is wonderful - a nearly free way of getting a message directly into the hands (so-to-speak) of the potential buyer.

But the mere fact that you send out an email doesn't mean it arrives. This is something different about email broadcasting, because when you send out individual emails, or send something by US mail, or Fedex, of course you expect it to arrive!

Any (rare) instance of "the Internet ate my email" or a letter got lost in transit is cause for concern.

That is NOT the case with broadcast email, where spam filters at every step of the way potentially can block your email.

Read on for the full story....

There's a key term for this: "Deliverability" - the percentage of emails sent in a broadcast which actually arrive.

How bad can this get? We've seen a company do a broadcast of 40,000 emails and have only a few hundred of them arrive at the intended email address - a deliverability of only about 1%. That's pretty extreme but deliverability rates of 50% aren't unusual and 80% is considered very acceptable.

Also low deliverability rates are a self-perpetuating problem as ISPs (Internet Service Providers) will recognize email senders with bad deliverability and categorize them as spammers on that basis alone.

What are the key factors that affect deliverability and what can you do about them?Of course if it is a bad email address it isn't going to arrive, so part of it is keeping your email mail lists cleaned up.

This is best done using software that automatically recognizes and updates your mailing list accordingly. With a small list you can do it manually but no one ever seems to get around to it if there is too much manual work involved.

The bigger issue is where your emails are considered spam and so blocked. It can be your ISP blocking the outgoing email, it can be the receiving ISP at the other end, or it can be the email client (such as Outlook) on the receiving computer which blocks it.

There is no 100% answer to this, as different ISPs and email clients have different rules for evaluating email to decide if it is spam. But there are lots of "no-no's" which will pretty well guarantee your email being blocked.

A simple solution many people use is a subscription service such as iContact or Constant Contact. However, you don't get a fully professional looking email that is completely under your control that way. And as we have elsewhere noted, you can only use these subscription services with 100% opt-in lists. The alternative is to get professional help in doing your email broadcasting.

Posted by Richard R. Byrd at 08:51 AM | Permalink

The biggest danger of doing email broadcasting, is not running afoul of the law (that is, the CAN-SPAM act). If you are a legitimate business that is easy to comply with.

Internet Service Providers have a MUCH lower threshold. While it is legal to send unsolicited email under CAN-SPAM, it violates the Terms of Service of pretty much every ISP and email subscription broadcast service in the country. Also most ISPs have limits on how many emails you can send per hour or day.

Continue reading "Spammer!" »

Posted by Richard R. Byrd at 08:30 AM | Permalink

(This is part two of an article on how to do email broadcasting.)

Door #2 says, knowingly violate the rules but do it in such a way that you never come up on their radar screen.

I strongly recommend Solution #2, and it isn't hard to accomplish. There are basically two ways to do this.

If you are sending to a list of people who really do know you and the list isn't too large, go ahead send it out through your ISP. Or you can use a subscription service for larger lists. Either way, chances are the percentage of people who complain or ask off is likely to be so low as to not trigger labelling you as spam.

There is an alternative, which works just fine even with huge lists from dubious sources. You send the emails out from a domain other than your regular one; and you send out using an "SMTP service".

If your emails are all @fatfreds.com, also register fatfred.com (without the "s") and send your broadcasts from "newsletter@fatfred.com". That way it can't come back onto your main domain hosting service.

An SMTP service is simply a barebones emailing service. We use one located in England. If they get complaints, they simply send them to you to unsubscribe.

The problem with any other system is your ISP, if someone complains, will probably NOT tell you who is complaining. They'll just tell you to knock off the spam. It is so easy for AOL users to report your email as spam, you are going to get complaints. So you have to have a way of finding out who is complaining.

All this adds up to a system which is a bit complex. It is also more expensive than just broadcasting through your ISP or a subscription service.

It is still WAY cheaper than any other form of marketing, and if the list is any good at all, and your email is well designed, it will be VERY cost effective.

(At Fast Forward we have a turnkey email broadcasting system based on the above. We've been using it successfully for almost two years. Call for more information.)

Posted by Richard R. Byrd at 08:01 AM | Permalink

About 3-4 years ago spam became such an issue that Congress stepped in.

One reason was because states were starting to pass laws - and they didn't necessarily agree with each other. You can imagine what it would have been like with 50 states having different rules, since email is by its nature, national or international!

Continue reading "CAN-SPAM act" »

Posted by Richard R. Byrd at 02:20 PM | Permalink

I am frequently asked about purchasing email lists. Here's the straight dope on the subject.

Three or four years ago, you could pay a company $1000 or so to send out 1 million emails to a targeted list.

Those days are gone, killed by spam and the CAN-SPAM act.

If someone is offering to sell you an email list at ANY price, it is almost certainly a scam. There are essentially no legitimate lists for sale. There are certain circumstances where you can get a legitimate list for free (see below).

If someone is offering to send out email on your behalf, to their own list, for less than about 35 cents PER EMAIL, it is almost certainly a scam. That's right. Email lists are considered so valuable, they charge as much to send an email as it costs to mail a postcard.

Legitimate organizations that will broadcast your email to their list are usually magazines or associations. They will have to approve your email before sending it - and may have severe restrictions such as on size or content.

With rare exceptions, the ONLY legitimate ways to obtain email addresses for your own use are:

1. Compile them yourselves, such as from lists of your own customers or prospects, or newsletter signups.

2. If you exhibit at a trade show, you will often get an email list from show attendees and/or exhibitors - sometimes with strings attached on their use.

3. If you are a member of a trade association of some sort, you will often get an email list of other members - sometimes with strings attached on their use.

Of course, no matter how you obtain emails, in broadcasting you have to follow the CAN-SPAM act rules, AND make sure you don't get on the wrong side of Internet Service Providers (labeled as a spammer). More about these issues in the next couple of days.,

If someone is telling you anything else, they are preying on your hopes and ripping you off.

So what do you do? Get busy and find ways to build lists using 1 to 3 above! Because email marketing IS one of the most cost-effective methods of marketing that exists. IF you can get or build a useful list.

Posted by Richard R. Byrd at 01:33 PM | Permalink