Recently, a friend of mine shared the success rate of printed junk mail which lands in your resident mailbox is only 0.1%. It’s an awfully low rate if you ask me. If you sent out 1,000,000 resident junk mail the probability of you sealing a deal is only, 1000. Not to mention the habitat of Sumatran rhinos Honda and Nuffnang are trying hard to help rebuild.
Big horny animals aside (pun intended), this offline junk mail is online widely known as email spam. As countries like US and Australia too have instilled their CAN-SPAM act, Malaysia as usual is frolicking behind and many businesses are wasting their time spamming ‘customers’. While their outgoing number is very much higher than 1,000,000 their closing is less than 0.1%. Reason is simple, the email are ending up in the junk mail.
So how do you stop emails from ending up in the junk mail or be marked as spam by providers like Google, Yahoo! and Live! Mail (Hotmail). It doesn’t take rocket science to know the answer, adhere to the CAN-SPAM act.
The bill permits e-mail marketers to send unsolicited commercial e-mail as long as it contains all of:
- an opt-out mechanism;
- a valid subject line and header (routing) information;
- the legitimate physical address of the mailer; and
The content is exempt if it consists of:
- religious messages;
- content that broadly complies with the marketing mechanisms specified in the law; or
- national security messages.
Source: Wikipedia CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
Besides the information of Wikipedia, it is highly recommended to implement these best practices to your email campaign as well.
- Double opt-in subscription
After entering your Name and Email, you need to activate the subscription in your email. - Non-graphic optimization
If the images aren’t loaded, it should still display the important content of the newsletter. - Test send first
All email readers render an email differently. Kinda like Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. - Visible and easily located Unsubscribe option
Don’t be afraid of this but investigate by finding out why they have opted out. Have a form or poll at the end of the unsubscribe process. - Define the goal you want to achieve
Like a website or business, if you don’t have a goal to aim for then you’re neither here nor there.
Of course, the best thing to continue doing is only send email to recipients who have subscribed to your mailing list. Don’t spam people because you end up tarnishing your reputation in the end.
A grey area I’ve always thought about is subscribing people whom I’ve met but never gotten their approval to send my newsletter. However, the email would have a clear Unsubscribe button for them to do so if they liked. So…
Questions of the day:
- Will this be considered spam?
- Will they think I’m spamming them although I only send them specific articles suitable for them?
[tags]email ethics, email marketing, email spam, junk mail[/tags]
It’s OK to email ppl you’ve met. Just state a clear reason at the top of the newsletter, something along the lines of “You’re receiving this newsletter because…”
Thanks Mike. I can see where you’re coming from.
Do you also do this in your business..? If Yes, how has the response been with your recipients?
as the cost of advertising and promotion getting high and higher every day, bulk mail sending is the cheapest and fastest way to deliver a message to targetted clients. As so called spamming is seriously disturbing people’s peace, then what is the alternative way(s) to achieve objectives without being treated as spammers?