I just read an article that said most companies that use email marketing believe it has a better return on investment than almost all other types of Internet marketing. Sadly, it is also one of the types that is most often neglected. That is one reason that I've felt it was important to spend the last several weeks talking about it. We have talked about our list of recipients and how to grow that list over the last few weeks. I want to spend some time today talking about how to keep it legal. By legal, I mean conforming to the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act and your email service provider's terms of service. You must meet all legal oblications, and being identified as a spammer can drastically affect your delivery rates for email. For the purpose of this conversation, I am going to concentrate on email newsletters or campaigns. When sending email newsletters or campaigns, you can use a service that specializes in these types of email or simply manage it through Outlook or your email client of choice. Email services will often automate things like taking care of subscriptions and list maintenance. This can help you conform to the CAN-SPAM Act. Below are the key criteria to follow when initiating your email campaigns: Use accurate information in the header. It must identify the person or business that initiated the message in the From and Reply-To fields.Don't use deceptive subject lines on the email.If the message is an advertisement, you have to indicate that.There has to be a valid postal address on the email that reflects where you receive email.Give the recipents a way to opt out of receiving future emails from you.Promptly honor opt-out requests. You also must process the request within 10 days of receiving the request. You have to honor the request for at least 30 days from the time you sent out the initial email.Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. Even though you may hire a company to handle your email campaigns, the legal responsibility falls on both of you. This covers many of the items that the CAN-SPAM Act requires. You will, also, need to look at the Terms of Service for the company that you will using to send the email. If you are going to send newsletters using an email client like Outlook, you will want to see if your email provider has a limit on the number of people you can send an email to at one time. Many do! I hope I have answered all the questions that I have gotten by email. If you have a question about newsletters or anything that is Internet Marketing, please send it to me. I will be happy to help you out.
