Opt-In Email Mailing Lists
The difference between email marketing and spamming
What is an email opt-in list?
An email opt-in list is a list of email addresses (and often recipient names) which the address owner has specifically given permission for the list owner to send emails directly related to the original registration topic - for example a list of people who have registered their email address to receive company newsletters. Opt in lists are often referred to as "permission lists".
Why use opt-in lists
Opt In mailing lists will always return higher open, read and click-through rates compaired to purchased or self-generated lists. Opt-in emails are not considered as spam and users are much less likely to report opted in emails as spam. If emails are reported as spam by more than 1/1000 people the ISP (Internet Service Provider - you know, the people like BT who provide your ADSL connection) of the sender can and usually will start blocking all emails for that particular company/address/server. It is vitally important that all email marketing cmpaigns take account of this as being marked as a spammer can have devastating results not only to that campaign but also on all email traffic in and out of the offending company.
Opt-in lists are not...
There are many companies who sell either access to opted in email lists or complete purchase of opt-in lists. Whilst the original email address owner may have opted in to one list you cannot guatantee that the site collecting the subscriptions made it clear enough that all subscribers' email addresses will be sold to the highest bidder. Therefore, even with rented or purchased opt-in lists the risk of being marked as a spammer is high, and nt only that, the success of the email marketing campaign will rest on the strength and quality of the list.
Opt in lists are most definately not purchased lists! Purchased lists are often low quality, out of date and sometimes irrelevant lists. Plus they can be expensive for what they are! You may be one of the lucky ones who actually manages to source a high quality purchased list but it is very difficult to ascertain the quality of a list without running a campaign on it - but then you'd have to buy it and run the risk! If you are hell bent on purchasing a list then the best advice is to get the seller to post your first batch of emails from their server - then if your emails are reported as spam it's the seller's server which gets blacklisted and not yours. If the seller is not prepared to do this for you then it may say something about the quality of the list!
Create your own opt-in list - quickly!
OK - the above line may sound a bit spammy but there are many ways you can start up your own email list quickly - although some ways are harder than others.
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The first way is to collate a list of all your clients who you have done business with over the last 6-12 months.
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Create something enticing on your website which provokes peoples' interest - and then ask them to register to receive information on it or updates etc - yes it's a bit like we do with our online marketing
free advice newsletters
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Get all your staff to collate together their Outlook address books - BUT you absolutely must manually qualify every single address before dumping them into a list - remove all the sales@ or info@ emails - and also ask your staff to weed out any personal or non business related addresses.
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If you have an online contact form or web shop etc then collate together all relevant emails gathered through these - again you MUST qualify each eamail address manually.
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Gather all the relevant emails from your CRM - again they need qualifying
** REMEMBER: you must always qualify and clean your list before sending any emails out. Too many bounced emails can also make you appear as a spammer to your ISP.
Email List cleaning and best practices
Email list cleaning and regular maintenance is crucial for keeping spam reporting at a minimum, reducing bouncebacks and generally making your email marketing campaigns more successful. Below are a few things you should always bear in mind when sending emails out to your list:
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Your first email should re-introduce yourself and make it clear that the recipient can unsubscribe from the list at any point - but you should also give them good reason why they should stay subscribed!!
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Maintain a list of all the people who have unsubscribed - and never send them emails again - unless totally necessary.
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Keep a check on your email sending frequency - don't send emails out too frequently that the recipient gets bombarded with your emails. With that said you should always try and send at least one email per month to keep the relationship going and your company familiar to them - email addresses which have not been contacted after 6 months are considered stale and therefore less receptive to future messaging.
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An opt-in list should not be seen as a quick and easy way to mass mail your prospective customers but more of a list of all the people you have a 1-1 email relationship with. Each email address is a unique person and should be treated as such - just remember how you feel when you receive irrelevant mass mailed emails.
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Make a point of revewing and pruning your email list at least every 6 months.
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Group your list into interest areas to send more targetted emails.
Serious email lists
Serious offer a full range of ideas to help build your opt-in lists. Serious aso offer list cleaning and de-duplication services. If that's not enough we can enev plan, run and manage complete email marketing campaigns, tracking the responses and driving traffic through to optimised web/landing pages. For more on uor range of services phone 01932 835850, email
email-marketing@seriousideas.com or see some the following pages:
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Email Marketing
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Autoresponders
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HTML email design
- Link Baiting
Let us help you take opt-in lists Seriously
Top tip
When cleaning your lists dump them all into a single list - use something like Microsoft Access or Excel - then sort them by email to immediately see duplicates and generic emails (info@, sales@ etc). Then you can use search facilities within these programmes to pull out the obviously bad emails. One thing to always look for and remove is spaces within email addresses - as these will cause the address to fail.
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