By Mark Brodsky
Your customers have given you their email address so they can receive news and new listings from you. You want the email to go through. They want to read it. So what’s the problem?
Spam filters.
The vast number of unwanted and unsolicited emails that get sent on a daily basis have resulted in all of the large email providers developing increasingly sophisticated filters to prevent these emails from getting to clients and prospects.
The issue is that spam filters can catch emails that they want to receive. Some are caught because they contain a suspicious attachment, a link that seems fishy or words that are commonly found in emails advertising Viagra, penny stocks or something more salacious.
Whether you’re sending a single email from one person to another or copying a number of recipients on it, the email has to pass through a number of filters before it gets from one place to another.
When you’re sending an email to one person, you’re using a system meant to send personal email, like Outlook, Gmail or another web-based program. So when you need to send an email to a large list, your first thought may be to use this system, but there are risks.
Your Internet provider has mechanisms in place to prevent you from sending a large number of emails at one time. This protects them from clients using their system to send spam, but it also prevents you from sending mass emails to people who may want them.
The system doesn’t differentiate between an opt-in email list and one that’s been purchased. Sending a large number of emails from your desktop can result in your email address being blocked from hitting inboxes and get your URL flagged and possibly blocked.
The solution: A system that’s designed to send bulk email.
There are a number of different companies that offer this service, including MailChimp, iContact, AWeber and Constant Contact.
What they offer that Outlook does not:
* Relationships with major ISPs. These companies have policies regarding the email addresses people are allowed to send to. Clients cannot use lists that have been purchased. The ISPs recognize this and therefore allow emails coming from one of their servers through.
* An HTML-based email looks more professional. It can match your branding so that people immediately recognize who it’s from.
* You can track the email effectiveness through reports. With each email you can find out how many people opened it, who opened it and what links they clicked on. This information is invaluable to help you revise future campaigns to make them more effective.
Personal email programs work well for personal emails, but when you’re sending email out in bulk, trust the professionals.
Mark Brodsky runs Mark Brodsky Digital Communications, a company that specializes in email marketing and social media. In addition to email newsletters and targeted campaigns, MBDC co-ordinates the setup for major social networking sites and ensures that they’re co-ordinated, so one piece of content gets shared many ways. www.mbdigitalcommunications.com; Email [email protected]
