Email Marketing – The New “RAGE”
01.02.08

Viagra, pen!s enlargement, meet singles in your area… If you’re like me, you logged into your email account this morning and sifted through your Inbox trying to identify the “good” emails from the SPAM. Sadly, this has become a never ending routine that somehow seems normal to me. Personally I love email since it’s an easy, quick way to stay connected to my family and friends and it’s an even more effective way to keep our customers informed on important company information.

With businesses always looking for inexpensive options to market to their existing and/or future customers, email provides a unique opportunity that is getting increasingly more complicated. The days of legally blasting an email to all the email addresses you’ve been collecting are but a vapor. Today, confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in which sends a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information - most likely from your website. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Because many salon owners are utilizing some sort of Client Based Point-of-Sale software the capturing of email addresses can also be obtained in person at the counter. This process would fall into the opt-in category too, but with every opt-in opportunity there also needs to be a way to opt-OUT. The opt-out process is the more scrutinized since its fairly understandable to get spam from time to time, but the problem arises if I’m not provided a way to unsubscribe (opt-out) or if I receive more spam from the same company after unsubscribing.

The Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) are putting more and more restrictions on bulk emailing practices requiring serious and legitimate businesses to search for ways to remain compliant with the Federal Trade Commission and still reach their customers. The FTC oversees the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) which establishes requirements for those who send commercial email. In addition to these requirements it also spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law. The CAN-SPAM Act was enacted in order to give the consumer the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them and if the spammer doesn’t comply they could face substantial fines. The penalties for spamming are significant too with each violation subject to fines of up to $11,000.

So what can you do to avoid any violations without painstakingly having to micro-managing your email campaigns? It’s actually rather easy and in most cases will only cost you pennies. There are a number of companies out there that provide an engine to process your emails, but they do require that the emails you provide were permission based meaning the person knowingly and intentionally gave you their email address. Some of these companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with an entire department working on nothing but deliverability with these ISP’s and building their relationships to insure every email that is sent out using their engine reaches its intended target.

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification so make sure your provider is up to code otherwise you may be looking at some steep consequences. My recommendation would be to leave the spam filtering to the experts. Like the old Fram oil filter commercial used to say, “Pay me now or pay me later!”

PEACE!