Is It Email Marketing or Is It SPAM?

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Spam is unwelcome in anybody’s inbox. Luckily, most of mine goes into the Gmail Spam folder, all 4,124 of then right now.
I’m not ready to say Spam is any worse than the junk mail of yester-year but it is the reality email marketers have to live with. Until Spammers quit making money by sending mass emails, they’ll keep at it. Just like 20th century tele-marketers.
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But, you want to stay out of that Spam folder AND get your legit emails opened and read so how do we do that?
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First, you need to know…

• Is my email a legitimate marketing email or is it spam?
• What determines whether it’s legit or spam?
• What will happen if it’s considered spam?
• When can I send email advertising to a particular list of email addresses?
• When can’t I?

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Critical questions and not many easy answers.
Often, you have to answer those questions for yourself, making a judgment call about the emails you send out. To make that judgment, you need the information. That’s what this post will do for you.

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Finding a standard definitions for “spam” or “legitimate marketing email” isn’t easy because there aren’t any that everybody agrees on. Email marketing is more of a spectrum of possibilities.

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At one end, real spam is an email:

• You didn’t ask for
• You don’t know the sender (often uses a fake name & hijacked address)
• The subject line is misleading, sometimes bears no relevance to the content
• You have no interest in the content
• There is no way to get the sender to stop sending you the email

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Like the one I just pulled from my junk folder:

-Free_Trial- Weight_Loss Capsules from “Weight Reduction”

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At the other end of the spectrum we have the marketing email that is perfectly legitimate.
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For example, you visit an online store selling supplements. You use a form at their website to submit your email address and tick a box that says, “Please send me a weekly email with special offers on supplements.”

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The store sends you an email asking you to confirm the request by clicking on a link, which you do. From then on you get an email once a week with… special offers on suppliments from that store.

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So there are the two ends of the spectrum. The “good” end with clearly legitimate email. And the “bad” end with emails that are undeniably spam.

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That leaves all the rest – the tough part. A lot of marketing email falls somewhere along the spectrum. The further you move away from the “good” end, the more likely you are to find people calling your email spam.

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There’s no definitive line to cross because each email recipient has their own definition of what counts as spam.
But, the further you move along the spectrum from best practices, the greater the percentage of your recipients who will think of your email as spam. Exactly how many depends on the type of people on your email list.

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The best you can do to minimize your chances of being a spammer is by choosing to follow industry best practices.

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For example, with the supplement special offer emails, if the store included a special offer for diet pills, most people wouldn’t be bothered. But a small percentage would now begin to see that email as spam.

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What if you were a regular customer at that online store, always buying supplements. You never specifically requested diet pills by email. But they send you them anyway. Again, some people wouldn’t be bothered. Some would even welcome the emails. But many would see them as spam.

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And now, what if you weren’t even a customer of that store? What if you weren’t a customer and didn’t even use suppliments? Now we’re deep into spam territory.

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You see how the further you move away from that legitimacy ideal, the more and more recipients think you’re sending spam.

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So it comes down to risk management. The more you deviate from the characteristics that define the perfectly legitimate email, the greater the chance of being called a spammer.
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You need to know two things to master the risk management game.

1. First: what exactly are the characteristics that define that perfectly legitimate marketing email?
2. Second: just what is the downside of being labelled a spammer by some of your recipients?

1) Legitimate marketing emails are those where:
>>>>>The recipients explicitly requested it.
Note the use of the word explicit. You begin to deviate from the ideal by asking customers during the online ordering process to tick a box if they DON’T want to get emails from you. Those that don’t tick have given you permission but not explicit permission. Some of those people will be surprised to find themselves on your list, and you are moving towards the spammer side.

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>>>>>The email is relevant to the recipient.
When someone asks to get your marketing emails, they have expectations of what they’re going to get. The further you are from meeting those expectations, the more likely you are to be considered a spammer.
If you begin to send out emails more often than expected, or with content unrelated to your original agreement, then you can expect some people to begin thinking of those emails as spam, because permission is always temporary.

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>>>>>The email allows the recipient to quickly grasp who sent it and what it’s about.
Relevancy also means you need to pay attention to the design of your emails. If people can’t see or grasp your message, it’s irrelevant.
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>>>>>Additional “best practice” include ensuring your emails (reflected in the anti-spam laws email marketers are obliged to follow) include:

• A subject line that reflect the contents
• From a recognizable sender
• With clear contact information (street address) and
• Contain easy instructions on how to get off the address list

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The more you deviate from the ideal, the more people think of you as a spammer. So what?

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Sending spam is bad for you.

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Many online marketers believe that complying with the letter of the anti-spam law is sufficient. A widespread but untrue assumption. If you believe it, you’re in for a rude awakening when you start sending out marketing emails.

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Recipients don’t decide whether you are spamming based on the anti-spam laws. Each recipient has their own idea of what is spam and they don’t care what the law says.
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Most of the negative consequences of sending spam have nothing to do with the threat of legal punishment. And the ability to prove your emails are not spam in the eyes of the law will not save you from negative consequences.

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These include the erosion of their relationship with your business, weakening your image, your brand, and your reputation. It’s dangerous to underestimate how much people dislike businesses that send them unwanted or unsolicited emails.

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The obvious consequences include loss of customer loyalty, sales, bad word of mouth and negative PR. They may badmouth you in public and online (think Twitter). It doesn’t matter whether you think you deserve the spam lable or even that most of your other recipients think your emails are valuable. The closer you get to the spam end of the spectrum, the more people consider you as a spammer, and the more risk you take.

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Then there are the problems that arise when enough people decide to hitting the “this is spam” button at their webmail service. Once spam complaints pass a certain threshold, often much lower than you think, you can find yourself on one or more email blacklists. These lists are used by ISPs to label incoming email from those blacklisted senders as spam and prevent delivery.

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If you get enough complaints, the email distribution service you use will close your account and your hosting company may close your account. They can’t afford to be associated with spammers.

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You now know what makes a “good” marketing email and what can happen as soon as you start sending questionable emails, you can figure out whether the email you plan to send is going to be an asset or a libility. And, if you’re like most businesses who depend on a positive brand and good customer relationships, you’ll see that it makes sense to stay as close as you can to the “good” side of the email spectrum.

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Email marketing works. Spamming doesn’t.[ad#ClickBank Email Marketing 3 x 1]