The Lyris training manager explains how to build healthy relationships with your email marketing recipients.
Why do recipients report some email as spam, and not other email? It's not just whether the email is unwanted or if it's commercial.
Take the case of the email I get from my Aunt Tillie (I've changed the name to protect family harmony). When Aunt Tillie first got her WebTV account, she loved to send me email -- oh, did she love to send me email. Every joke, chain letter and virus scare she received, she made sure she forwarded to me. If a website had funny cat pictures, I'd be the second to know, courtesy of Aunt Tillie. And then there were the solicitations to buy Girl Scout cookies, band candy, or to sponsor a cousin in a book-a-thon.
So why didn't I click the "This is spam" button when I got these messages from my Aunt Tillie? Although you could say I "opted in" (my mother gave her my email address), I certainly didn't want to receive every stale joke that had been circulating on the internet for the last five years, or yet another opportunity to open my wallet.
The key is the relationship. I didn't report my Aunt Tillie as a spammer, no matter how annoying her messages were, because I've had a close relationship with Aunt Tillie my entire life, and you just don't report as a spammer the person who got gum out of your hair when you were six.
It's unlikely you have a similar relationship with the recipients of your opt-in marketing email messages (I'd be appalled if you did). However, you can take steps to build your relationship with your recipients so they don't report your email as spam.
1. Build a relationship by asking subscribers to confirm their subscriptions.
Many marketers make opting into their email lists too easy -- making the subscribe box pre-checked during checkout, say -- and thus forgettable. They are afraid of confirmation, because they know they'll lose addresses when some people forget -- or neglect -- to confirm. They figure that sending email is so inexpensive that inadvertently sending messages to people who either didn't subscribe, or didn't consciously subscribe, is a cheap error to make.
But consider the bigger picture. The price to deliver the message to a thousand people who didn't consciously opt in may be mere pennies, but the cost to your email marketing program as a whole may be huge.
Sure, some of those recipients may convert. Some may just delete the email, or opt out. But others will report your email as spam, jeopardizing your overall deliverability so that other recipients -- who may really want to receive your email -- may either have to sort through their junk folders to find it or may not get it at all.
Confirmation makes subscribing conscious, and therefore memorable. If subscribers remember they subscribed to begin with, they may trust your email relationship enough to unsubscribe if they lose interest.
2. Manage expectations
Be clear what kind of email you'll be sending, and how often.
I made the mistake once of subscribing to the email list of a discount retail site I purchased from frequently. Nothing on the signup form prepared me for the daily flood of messages on everything from jewelry to bed sheets.
Only when I tried to unsubscribe was I given the option to reduce the frequency of the messages -- but by then it was too late. Not only had I soured on receiving their email, I haven't been back to shop since. If I had been given the option to specify what kinds of email I'd get and how frequently when I signed up, I might still be a loyal shopper.
Make your email exceptional, not excessive. If recipients are surprised by your email, it should be due to the quality of its content, its sizzling graphics or its stellar deals -- not because they are being blasted away by the sheer volume of what you send.
Sure, if you throw enough spaghetti at the wall, some of it's going to stick -- but you're likely to have a big mess on the floor, too.
3. Make your identity clear in the inbox
Have a consistent From: email address and look and feel to your messages.
Although they say familiarity can breed contempt, with email familiarity is more likely to breed trust and comfort with your email messages and brand.
The name portion of the From: address should be either your company name, or the name of someone readily identifiable by your recipients -- say, their personal account representative. Once you decide what it will be, stick with it so that name becomes a familiar "face" in the recipient's inbox.
Have a consistent look and feel that reflects your website, and be sure your message renders properly on a variety of email clients. If a recipient catches a glimpse of your message in the preview pane, it should be instantly identifiable as coming from you.
4. Notice when you've lost their interest
If recipients aren't responding the way they used to, it's time to reassess what you're sending.
Maybe the stories in your newsletter are old and stale, or the free shipping offer isn't compelling when your competitor offers it as a matter of course. When your content is fresh and compelling, you'll hear from your recipients again.
When I never replied, my Aunt Tillie figured out that I wasn't as tickled by those forwards as she was, and so she took me off of her cc: list.
Although I get much less email from her, when I do receive one I'm eager to open it because I know it has something I really want to read. And sometimes, when it's about a website with funny cat pictures, I click to look.
Wendy Roth is the training manager for Lyris Technologies, a pioneer in email marketing solutions since 1994. She works closely with enterprise-level marketing and advertising professionals to help them achieve their email-related objectives, and collaborates with engineering teams to ensure Lyris' products continue to be based on marketers' changing needs.