Practice Good Email Marketing Karma

I was talking to a customer today who had mentioned that they had obtained a large list of emails from their main office for prospects that hadn’t been closed yet. It may seem like they’re doing you a favor (hey, free leads!), but if you end up emailing these people, you’re really spamming them.

If you use an outside service like ConstantContact, or even ours, Ocho, we have strict anti-spam checks and balances in place. Because:

Spam is any email you send to someone who hasn’t given you their direct permission to contact them on the topic of the email.

So that list of 10k emails from the corporate office, of people that never ended up completing their online account openings or made an initial deposit? They didn’t give you, the separate branch, or dealership, permission to send them emails. You don’t like it when you get those types of emails either. Don’t be that person.

OK then, who CAN I send emails to? Here’s who:

• They opted in via your web site
  This could either be through a newsletter subscribe form or by checking a checkbox on another form. This checkbox cannot be checked by default (sneaky!) and it must clearly explain that checking it will mean you will be contacting them by email.
  
  
• They completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed
  If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can only contact them if it was explained to them that they would be contacted by email AND they checked a box indicating they would like to be contacted.
  
  
• They gave you their business card
  If someone gives you their business card and you have explicitly asked for permission to add them to your list, you can contact them. If they dropped their business card in a fishbowl at a trade show, there must be a sign indicating they will be contacted by email about the specific topic.
  
  
• They purchased something from you in the last 2 years
  By making a purchase from you they have provided their permission implicitly. Feel free to email them but at the same time, we think it’s always better to ask anyway, so why not include an opt-in checkbox as part of the checkout process.
  
  

Just to be clear, these following scenarios don’t mean its OK:

• You obtained the email addresses from a third party
  Whether you purchased a list, were provided one by a partner or bought a bankrupt competitor’s customer list, those people never gave YOU permission to email them and they will consider your email spam. No matter the claims of the source of this list, you cannot email them using our system (nor should you via other systems).
  
  
• You scraped or “copy and pasted” the addresses from the Internet
  Just because people publish their email address doesn’t mean they want to hear from you.
  
  
• You haven’t emailed that address for more than 2 years Permission erodes after time. Even if you got their permission legitimately, they won’t remember giving it to you. If you haven’t sent something to that address in the last 2 years, you really shouldn’t start now.
  

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Eric Gockel | Filed under Email Marketing | Leave a comment