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• If you use tele-sales, add an element that promotes your mail list
and asks if the person would like to join.
Promoting Your Private Mail List
Promote your private mail list wherever you can reach your target market:
on your site, on-line through various online marketing techniques,
and off-line. You will:
• Encourage your Web site visitors to join your list by making
sure you have “Join our mail list—click here” calls to action
throughout your site. You might enhance this with an incentive
“Join our mail list to receive our biweekly tips, tools, and
techniques and to be included in our drawing for a Palm Pilot—
Click here.”
• Include a viral marketing element as previously described to
encourage your subscribers to recommend your mail list to
others.
• Publicize your mailing list in postings to other mailing lists and
newsgroups if it is appropriate. There is a moderated mailing
list devoted to helping new list owners promote their list. To
subscribe, send a message containing the line “Subscribe NEWLIST
firstname lastname” to listserv@vm1.nodak.edu.
• Invite your friends, colleagues, current clients, and potential clients
to join your list.
• Remember to mention your mailing list in your e-mail signature
file. This is an easy way to promote the list.
• If you are looking for a large distribution list, you might even
register your mailing list with Topica (http://www.lists.
topica.com), or other public mail lists (see Chapter 13 on Public
Mail Lists).
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Your Communication with Your Mail List
To be successful with private mail list marketing, you have to have a
great targeted list and you have to know how to communicate effectively
with your subscribers. How often should they receive your messages?
When do you start to become an irritant? What time and day are
your recipients going to be most receptive? How should your communication
be formatted? Should it be text or HTML? These all are important
questions to be answered if you want to improve the response.
How often should you communicate? It depends on what you’re
sending and what they asked to receive. Newsletters should generally
be sent out every couple of weeks. Special promotions, coupons, and
e-specials generally will be sent out weekly at a consistent time. What’snew
updates would generally be sent monthly unless you’ve got something
“hot.” Tips of the day should be sent…daily. Tips of the week
should be sent…weekly.
When should your communication be delivered? There have been
many studies on this topic, and consensus has it:
• Never send your message late in the day or first thing in the
morning. If you do, your e-mail is included in that large group
that is in the recipient’s inbox first thing in the morning. You
know what happens to all that e-mail because you do it yourself—
the first thing you do is see how much you can delete—
starting with anything that looks remotely like an ad or
promotion.
• Not after 2 p.m. on Friday or afternoon on Friday in the summer
months. Being buried in that huge pile awaiting a recipient
on Monday morning is the kiss of death for your e-mail.
• Lunch hour is best for business-to-business messages. Generally,
people clean out their e-mail first thing in the morning and
again before they go to lunch. After their lunch break they are a
little more relaxed and the first thing they do is check their e-mail.
This is the best chance for your e-mail to get noticed.
When it comes to the formatting of your correspondence, if you
communicate in a newsletter, coupons, e-specials, or this type of marketing
content, an HTML message has a better chance of grabbing the
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viewer’s attention. If your message is meant to look like a personal oneon-
one message, then text-based is better. Your communications should
be personalized using the recipient’s first name appropriately throughout
the correspondence and in the subject field.
Your content should always be valuable, fresh, relevant, and succinct.
One bad message could result in many “Unsubscribes.”
Each paragraph should be written so it can be easily scanned, containing
no more than six or seven lines. Include calls to action. Always
encourage viral marketing—“Send a copy to a friend”—and provide
instructions for the friend to subscribe to be included in your list.
Use a personal name in the “From” field. You want to build a relationship!
Take time with your subject field:
• Avoid ad copy
• Avoid gimmicky slogans
• Build business credibility
• Use action words
• Be positive
• Personalize.
Stay Under the Spam Radar
These days anywhere between 5 and 20 percent of legitimate, permission-
based e-mail is filtered out by the spam detectors and never reaches
the intended recipients. Always run your marketing messages through a
spam checker before sending out. The spam checkers will give you a
spam rating score and tell you how you received that score. Today if
your score is 5.0 or higher it will be deemed to be spam by most of the
spam filters. If your message scores too high you should edit your message
to eliminate or change the items that gave you the score. Then you
should run your new message through the spam checker to make sure
you have an acceptable score before sending your message out.
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Many ASP mail list software programs have an integrated spam
checker. If yours does not there are a number of free spam checkers online
and others that charge a fee.
Some of the e-mail elements that add points to your spam rating
include:
• Using software and listservers that are commonly used by
spammers. The header identifies the software that you are
using.
• Spam words in the subject line. Things such as:
– FREE in CAPS
– GUARANTEED
– Subject talks about saving
– Starts with Hello
– $
• Hyperlinks—Using links without the http:// prefix or using IP
numbers instead of domain names.
• Color discrimination
– Color tags not formatted correctly
– Using colors not in the 217 Web-safe colors
– Hidden letters (same color as background)
• Background other than white
• HTML issues
– HTML message has more than 50 percent HTML tags
– JavaScript within the message
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– HTML forms within your e-mail
– HTML comments that obfuscate text
• Using excess capital letters.
• Using large fonts and characters. Fonts larger than +2 or 3 can cause
you to have points added to your score. Use H1, H2, H3 instead.
• Using spam words or phrases in the body of your message adds
points to your score. There are way too many of these to list.
Your spam checker lets you know what words are adding points.
The following are the type of words and phrases that they are
looking for:
– Great offer
– Risk free
– You have been selected
– Guarantee
– Call now
– Amazing
– Act now
– Millions
– Order now
• Carefully word your Unsubscribe. Claims that you can be removed,
claims that you listen to removal lists and list removal
information all add points to your score. Use text like “Use this
link to unsubscribe.”
• If your communication is a newsletter, say so. The spam rating
also allows points to be deducted from your score for certain
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elements. When the subject contains a newsletter header, or contains
a newsletter frequency, month name or date, you might be
spared some unwanted points.
• Use a signature file. This is another element that can cause points
to be deducted from your score. Spammers never include their
signature file.
• Don’t mention spam compliance—only spammers do this.
• Keep your message size over 20k. Spammers’ messages are very
small in file size because they often send millions in a mailing.
Always make sure you update your list and do your housekeeping
regularly. Remove any addresses that have bounced back to you as undeliverable
if your software doesn’t automatically do this for you. Remove
and “spam flag” addresses in your database—those that begin
with spam@, abuse@, postmaster@, or nospam@.
Set up test accounts for yourself at the popular e-mail hosts to ensure
that your mail is getting through. Set up test accounts at MSN,
Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and some of the popular ISPs.
Always monitor the Blacklists to make sure you are not included. A
number of Blacklists are included in the Resources section at the end of
this chapter.
Recent Legislation
It is essential to make sure you are in compliance with legislation regarding
anti-spam (in the U.S.), privacy (in Canada) and other rules and
regulations related to commercial e-mail throughout the world.
The U.S. legislation, which took effect January 1, 2004, is called the
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing
Act (CAN-SPAM). This legislation provides regulations for commercial
e-mail. The full details can be found at http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/
108s877.html.
The main rules for CAN-SPAM include:
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• You must provide accurate header information. The sender has
to identify him/her/itself accurately.
• You must provide an accurate Subject line for commercial e-mails.
• You must provide a functioning return e-mail address that is
clearly and conspicuously displayed and permits a recipient to
decline future commercial e-mails (opt-out) from that sender.
• Commercial e-mail must include the (snail mail) postal address
of the sender.
• Commercial e-mail must include clear and concise identification
that the content of the e-mail is an advertisement or solicitation.
• If a person opts out of your mailings you must remove that individual
from your database within 10 days and you are not allowed
to transfer, sell, or give that individual’s contact
information to anyone else after they have asked to be removed.
The Canadian legislation is the Personal Information Protection and
Electronic Documents Act, commonly referred to as PIPEDA. The Canadian
legislation establishes rules to govern the collection, use and disclosure
of personal information. It recognizes the “right of privacy” of
individuals with respect to their personal information. Full details on
the Canadian legislation can be found at http://www.privcom.gc.ca/legislation/
02_06_01_01_e.asp.
The main rules for PIPEDA include:
• Accountability—An organization is responsible for personal information
under its control and shall designate an individual or
individuals who are accountable for the organization’s compliance
with the following principles.
• Identifying purposes—The purposes for which personal information
is collected shall be identified by the organization at or
before the time the information is collected.
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• Consent—The knowledge and consent of the individual are required
for the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information,
except where inappropriate.
• Limiting collection—The collection of personal information shall
be limited to that which is necessary for the purposes identified
by the organization. Information shall be collected by fair and
lawful means.
• Limiting use, disclosure and retention—Personal information
shall not be used or disclosed for purposes other than those for
which it was collected, except with the consent of the individual
or as required by law. Personal information shall be retained
only as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.
• Accuracy—Personal information shall be as accurate, complete
and up-to-date as is necessary for the purpose for which it is used.
• Safeguards—Personal information shall be protected by security
safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information.
• Openness—An organization shall make readily available to individuals
specific information about its policies and practices
relating to the management of personal information.
• Individual access—Upon request, an individual shall be informed
of the existence, use, and disclosure of his or her personal information,
and shall be given access to that information. An individual
shall be able to challenge the accuracy and completeness
of the information and have it amended as appropriate.
• Challenging compliance—An individual shall be able to address
a challenge concerning compliance with the above principles to
the designate individual or individuals accountable for the
organization’s compliance.
Measure, Measure, Measure
You want to improve your effectiveness as you learn from experience.
This can only happen if you keep track of past performance. You want
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to track such things as delivery rate, how many undeliverables, how
many unsubscribes, click-through rates, gross response, and net response.
You want to compare response rates within different timings,
different types of creativity, different formats, different segments of
your list, and different target markets. Once you analyze what is working
and what is not, you’ll be in a better position to improve your
conversion ratios.
Where to Go from Here
In this chapter, we discussed reasons you might want to have your own
mailing list, how you can set up your list, and other issues you might
face once your list goes live. Private mailing lists are prime marketing
vehicles if you manage them correctly and actively promote them. You
can reach out to your target market with a mailing list. This technique
of permission, or opt-in, e-mail marketing is the key to your success. If
you have something to offer to people in your industry and it is feasible
for you to establish and administer a mailing list, give the idea strong
consideration.
Internet Resources for Chapter 14
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding private
mail lists. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources
section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques,
and resources.
Mail List Software
Professional Cart Solutions
http://www.profcs.com
This is the mail list software I use for my newsletter. It is a combination
shopping cart and mail list software solution. Great in terms of functionality,
easy to use and fantastic support. The program has built in
autoresponders, integrates easily with your Web site, automatically
handles the administrative issues of subscribes and unsubscribes, pro-
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vides great reports, and allows you to build the profile of everyone in
your database.
nTarget
http://www.ntarget.com
nTarget’s permission e-mail marketing software allows you to manage
your own marketing program with only a Web browser. nTarget’s permission
e-mail marketing software is so intuitive and easy to use that
even beginners can create an account, enter contacts, and distribute an
e-mail promotion within minutes.
Topica Email Publisher
http://www.topica.com
Topica’s Marketing Automation Software allows you to build and manage
your customer database, create and send targeted e-mail campaigns,
and track and optimize your campaign results.
Lyris
www.lyris.com
Lyris is a powerful e-mail list server that automatically delivers newsletters,
announcements, and discussion lists.
SparkList
www.sparklist.com
Sparklist is an outsourcing service for e-mail announcement and discussion
lists. With Sparklist, you don’t need special equipment or an IT
staff—all you need is a Web browser connected to the Internet, and
you’re ready to mail!
EmailFactory
http://www.emailfactory.com
EmailFactory helps you build superior customer relationships with sharp,
targeted permission e-marketing tools. A start-to-finish e-mail marketing
solution, EmailFactory offers you every tool you’ll need to achieve
your unique marketing.
Majordomo
http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/
Majordomo is a program that automates the management of Internet
mailing lists. Commands are sent to Majordomo via electronic mail to
handle all aspects of list maintenance. Once a list is set up, virtually all
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operations can be performed remotely, requiring no intervention by the
postmaster of the list site.
GotMarketing Campaigner
http://www.gotmarketing.com/index.html
E-mail marketing with Campaigner is fast, easy and affordable. Campaigner
has plenty of self-serve tools to help you get started. Tutorials,
live-chat assistance, online help and audio best practices are integrated
right into the product! Create and send campaigns whenever
you want, 24/7.
Constant Contact
http://www.roving.com
Constant Contact, Do-It-Yourself E-mail Marketing helps small and midsize
businesses and associations develop an ongoing relationship with
their customers and site visitors. Constant Contact makes it easy and
affordable to build and manage permission e-mail lists, create and send
eye-catching HTML e-mail newsletters, announcements and promotions,
and track results.
MailWorkZ
http://www.mailworkz.com
MailWorkZ—experts in the business of e-marketing software and services.
With products like Broadc@st’s E-mail Marketing Software and
services like ezListZ and the newest addition, ezTrackZ, thousands of
MailWorkZ customers have everything they need to increase market share,
revenue, and profits as well as improve their customer relationships.
EmailUnlimited
http://www.4officeautomation.com/EmailUnlimited/index.asp
EmailUnlimited makes it extremely easy to send professional-looking
e-mail messages to large lists of recipients. Just select your address list,
type in your message or select an existing text or HTML file, click on
the Send button and your customers can soon be informed about your
newest products and offerings.
Microsoft bCentral ListBuilder
http://www.bcentral.com/products/lb/default.asp?LID=32559
List Builder is the e-mail marketing software of choice. Use it to quickly
and easily create professional-looking e-mail newsletters, targeting different
customer segments with personalized messages.