Email marketing is one of the best ways of marketing your product or service efficiently to your prospective clients or customers. It helps you to promote your business and reach out to hundreds and thousands of prospects at the fraction of the cost compared to other forms of marketing. The return on investment for any email marketing campaign can be very high provided you do it with the right approach and methodologies. In this article, we will tell you how to effectively use email marketing without spamming. Before that, let’s clear some basic stuff first.
What is Email marketing?
In simple words, Email marketing refers to the marketing of products or services done by using emails. In this form of marketing, companies or organizations generally send an email message to an individual or a group of individuals. The email message may contain information, ads, transaction details or anything else suitable.
Different types and examples of Emails
Transaction Emails
As the name suggests, these types of emails are received by a person for completing a particular transaction.
Example: A customer who buys any product on an eCommerce site receives an email with the details of his transaction.
Newsletter Emails
These types of emails are typically sent to subscribers of the newsletter and contain details about promotions, offers, blog posts or article links, information about new products, etc.
Example: A blogger sends weekly newsletter email to its subscribers with links/details of all blog posts published in that week.
Survey/Invitation Emails
These types of emails are sent keeping a specific intention in mind- like inviting customers for the new product launch or asking a customer to fill in a short feedback survey, etc.
Example: An e-commerce site sending its customers an email containing a short questionnaire/survey to be filled.
Apart from the above-mentioned types, there are several other examples and types as well but the above-listed ones are more commonly used.
Benefits of Email Marketing:
There are many reasons why businesses prefer email marketing over other forms. Below are some of the major benefits which you will receive if you do an efficient email marketing campaign for your brand or business.
- Cost-Effective- Email marketing is extremely cost-effective. You can see astonishing results from an email marketing campaign provided it’s done by following a proper approach.
- Calls to Action- Since accessing emails require internet connection, email marketing calls to action. You can ask the recipient to purchase something, fill a survey, submit the lead, etc.
- Ability to Target Specific People- With email marketing you can target specific customers or subscribers of your choice. Say if you have an email marketing list of subscribers with their personal details, you can choose to send emails only to those subscribers which fulfill certain criteria.
- Global Outreach– With email marketing, you can reach all your global audience at ones. There is no need to create a separate campaign for each region or geography.
- Easy Sharing– Recipient can share the email contents within their individual network as well by forwarding the mail to them or sharing it on other platforms. This may help you with increasing your reach and prospective customers.
- Excellent ROI– Email marketing can generate excellent returns on your investment. The cost of running an email marketing campaign is extremely less compared to various other marketing techniques and results produced are excellent.
What actually is Email Spam?
Spam emails are irrelevant or unsolicited messages which are sent to hundreds and thousands of people for various reasons like advertising of products and services, spreading false information, phishing, circulating malware, etc. With an increase in internet users across the world, spamming has also increased exponentially. However, email service providers have robust Spam filtering systems in place due to which most of such messages land in the Spam folder of the mailbox instead of the primary Inbox.
It is important to note that if your promotional mail lands up in the recipient’s ‘Spam’ folder, then there is not much use of it as very few people even read/access their Spam folder. Your email marketing campaign won’t show the desired results.
Why emails go to spam instead of the inbox?
There are quite a few reasons which will cause your mail to be labeled as Spam. I have mentioned some of the common possible reasons below.
- You are sending emails in bulk to hundreds and thousands of recipients using a freely available email address.
- You are sending emails to recipients who haven’t permitted you to send emails or they haven’t opted for your emails.
- Your email message or the email subject contains words or text that triggers spam filters.
- You have used only a single image or graphic in your email body. The image to text ratio is not optimum.
- You are changing your email address (from which you send emails to large recipients) frequently.
- The email server from which you are sending the emails is on the blacklist.
- Your email message contains large attachments.
- Your email message contains embedded material like videos or heavy scripts.
These are only a couple of reasons. The real reason why your email is landing in the spam folder may or may not be from the above list. Check out our below section to know how you can prevent your emails from landing in the spam folder.
Best practices to avoid Email marketing without spamming?
Below tips will help you to make sure the email doesn’t land up in your recipient’s spam folder.
Keep your subscriber list updated
Make sure your subscriber list is always updated with the most active and engaging recipients. Inactive recipients must be removed from the subscriber list. You can also provide an option to the recipients in the email message to unsubscribe from your list anytime.
Don’t use the freely available email address in ‘from’ field:
When you start an email marketing campaign, make sure you use your company email address on a custom domain. Don’t use a freely available commercial email address or your individual email address in ‘from’ field of the email message.
Try running a small pilot or trial campaign first
Before you take up a fully-fledged email campaign, try it out on a small set of recipients or subscribers. Try using the different set of subjects-headings-content etc to find out which gives the best results.
Avoid sending only one single image/graphic in the mail.
When designing your email message, avoid sending only a single image or a graphical item in the mail body. A healthy combination of both text and graphic is always the best. Try to maintain Image to text ratio at the optimum level.
Use spam checkers available online
Before sending out your emails, make sure you use one of the many available online spam checkers. Most of them check your emails for spam and suggest you few modifications. Some also tell you about the deliverability of your emails.
Check the content in your mail
Spam filters pay special attention to the content which is included in the body of an email. Make sure your email doesn’t have any sort of content which can trigger spam, especially in the mail title or subject.
Pay attention to the links in your email
Make sure the link you include in the email links to a domain that has a high reputation. Also, as far as possible, link to the domain name directly. Avoid links that are shortened using link shortening programs.
Keep your HTML code clean
Make sure you keep the HTML code of your email message clean and neat. Avoid any unwanted tags, styling, etc. Make sure the message loads quickly. Don’t make the message too heavy as it may cause problems during the delivery of the message to the recipient. As far as possible, do not include any high-level scripts or even videos in your mails.
Provide an option for recipients to unsubscribe from your list
Make sure your email messages contain a link in the footer or bottom of the mail to unsubscribe from your list. It has 2 primary benefits. The first one is that the subscriber list stays updated with only active recipients and the second is that since people can safely unsubscribe from your list, they won’t mark your email as spam.
These are some of the easiest yet highly effective tips to design excellent email campaigns that generate the best results. I am quite sure that the above tips mentioned in this article will help you to effectively use email marketing without spamming and you can expect a decent ROI from your email marketing campaign.
That’s it, guys. I hope you found this article valuable. Have you recently done an email marketing campaign? What strategies did you use to use it effectively and avoid spamming your recipients? Share with our readers your valuable tips as well. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our email newsletters so that you don’t miss out on any interesting article from our blog.