3 Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List
When you decide to start building your email list, it isn’t just a matter of sending your subscribers your promotional newsletters or bombarding them with affiliate links. There are many things to consider to help avoid upsetting your subscribers and to keep them opening your emails.
While there are many ways you can encourage people to subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to keep them on your list once you have them there!!
Apart from that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider or ISP. There are now many laws and rules that are applied to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails.
And this is especially important with the introduction of GDPR if you are collecting subscribers from the EU.
Email has always been a popular medium for marketing because of the low cost, and because of this, many companies have seized the opportunity and have flooded their subscribers email inboxes with promotional mail that offers very little in value to the reader.
This is a very big problem in the Internet Marketing and Make Money Online niches in particular.
The thing is, if people opt-in to your list it’s because something about you resonated with them and they want to receive your newsletters and promotional materials, just not to be bombarded with offer after offer.
They have consented to being on your list by signing up and giving you their valuable email address; just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe option in every email to make it easy for them to leave if they want to do so.
There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe, such as if the email account was hacked; it may be rare, but it does happen.
One thing to remember is that it is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. You can do this by using the many tools and technologies available within your autoresponder. For a great autoresponder, check out Active Campaign or Aweber.
Do not worry; your investment in any email marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales and profit. Plus, if you treat your subscribers well, they can become customers for life.
Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean.
Your reputation as a legitimate businessman and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist. To help guide you through all of this, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.
1: Take Notice Of Your Bounce Rate
These are e-mails that are basically undeliverable and for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.
There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at the time they were sent but these can still be delivered later, and you should be able to resend any email via your autoresponder service.
There may also be bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at the time.
Then there are those messages that will never be delivered. This could be because the subscriber has used an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or a dummy email address that was probably used just to try to get a freebie that you may have been giving away.
Manage your list by making a note on those email addresses that bounce. Remove these email addresses from your list regularly so that you have accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail.
You may also want to check the spellings of your email addresses in your list. One common mistake is when an N instead of an M is placed in the .com area.
Your bounce rate may affect your deliverability too, so it is doubly important to remove email addresses that are bouncing to ensure that your other emails aren’t being affected.
2: Make It Easy To Unsubscribe
Always provide an unsubscribe link in all of your mails. This is a legal requirement, especially nowadays with increased data protection laws. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously.
If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail.
When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers.
You could also lose a lot of subscribers this way and if you earn a reputation as a spammer, this will definitely affect future potential subscribers as your name will get around the internet via social media etc. so always act with integrity and have your readers best interest at heart.
3: Keep It Clean
Do not provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. You probably have no idea of the real age of the recipient and you could get many complaints from this.
Of course, if you are in this type of niche, you would need to have safeguarding measures in place to ensure that anyone who does subscribe to this type of material is of a suitable age.
This is why personally I would avoid these types of niches because they are very difficult to police from your end and if you are found to be sending age-inappropriate content, you could end up in a lot of trouble.
Controversial issues should also be avoided by your business unless it is relevant to the nature of your business. Perhaps something controversial has happened in the news that you can use in an email, but this should definitely be the exception and not the norm.
If you keep these tips in mind, you should be able to maintain a healthy relationship with your subscribers. Always remember that you are there to serve your readers; they have come to you for your advice and guidance so don’t exploit them. It’s fine to promote offers to them, but it shouldn’t be the entire focus of your email marketing strategy.
Just think; “Would I be happy to receive this email in my inbox?”
If the answer is yes, then you are on the right track…
If you want to know more about nurturing your list after they have opted in, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
