|
||
Free email marketing is a branch of bulk email marketing – a method of advertising on the net, which unfortunately also comprises of a more sinister part called spamming. Spamming is a type of bulk email marketing that we all get to see whenever we log on to our email clients and look in the spam folder. There is no reason why we should get it, there is no reason for us to even look at it, and, worst of all, we don't even ask for it. We end up getting spam because somewhere on our daily internet browsing activities, we left our email addresses out there to be picked up by some kind of spider software or we simply were part of a lottery of email addresses. This occurs when a spammer simply mails people from a certain domain at random with address combinations and what doesn't bounce back becomes a valid address to spam forever.
The really unfortunate part is that regular bulk email marketers end up being categorized in the same vein not just by the internet community but also by spam filters, which are indiscriminate in their filtering. Therefore, there are some simple tips that you should follow to ensure that you keep the line of distinction between you and a spammer clear.
Free email marketing professionals must first of all ensure that they acquire email addresses legitimately. This means getting opt-ins from potential recipients. This is a simple procedure of asking a user during a registration operation whether he or she would like to receive updates and sales promotions at a particular address. This is the best method of getting your email addresses. To further enhance this technique, you could also enter into a meaningful tie-up with a larger entity in terms of user numbers and then get opt-ins from those users. Never make the mistake of transacting databases with a known spammer or using spider software as they do.
The next important tip is to avoid spam filters. This can be done by understanding how spam filters work in the first place. Spam filters work by finding patterns of keywords or phrases in mails, computing a score, and then sending a mail into the spam folder. This means that you must change the way you present information and make your mailers sound more like informational pieces rather than bland sales spiel.
Another important tip is related to the design of mailers. Most free email marketing campaigns tend to go over the top with the use of text or they end up using colors that most spammers do. Therefore, use mellow hues and not loud garish colors. Try and place more of the text of your mailer inside an image, especially those that have a maximum number of keywords.
Most of these guidelines can only be practiced by consciously understanding that today's internet users are hungry for information and not for the best deals in town and therefore the change in content style to informational.
Free email marketing and bulk email marketing are especially tricky modes of advertising. On the one hand there is pressure to ensure that the prospective customer is dazzled by what he or she sees but, on the other hand, is the pressure to ensure that the mail isn't loud enough to be noticed by a spam filter. This is indeed a tight rope walk but not one that cannot be resolved. If you look at the real world of bulk email marketing, you will notice that some of the most trusted bulk email marketers are those with the most sober mails, from a design perspective. Banks are a classic example. Probably the only thing garish and gaudy about a bank's email design format is the branding colors themselves. Apart from this, everything has a nice and neat, professional look.
The first design tip that you must follow is to limit the amount of text that you use. This serves two purposes: the first being that the less the text, the less available for a spam filter to check and, second, the more space for images – and images speak a thousand words. This also allows you to make more redirects to your main site and use tools like links in your emails.
The next design tip for your free email marketing campaign relates to the use of HTML. Anybody with a technical background will tell you that the more you encode, the easier it is for other software to read those tags and block them as spam. This is especially true when you use too much bold, capitalization, and colors in an email. Therefore, stick to internet etiquette, use colors that are not too bright, try and stick to one color only.
The third design tip is the use of imagery. Some spam filters are designed to scan images for hues that correspond to human skin color. This was specifically designed to filter out pornographic images but this can also affect other advertising that requires showing skin like deodorant ads, for example. Therefore, try to not use imagery of humans as this can be a trigger point.
The last and most interesting point is widening your scope of multimedia use in an email. This is a contentious argument because some would say that most email clients block images and video from displaying. However, the counter argument could be that, if this occurs, then you need to modify any written words you have to encourage a person to allow the display of images. The other argument is that assuming that spammers are not the prime focus of a mail user, those mails that do end up meeting the eyes of the user are going to be seen anyway and investigated further, so therefore it makes sense to have multimedia. In either case, make your decision based on the consequences of using multimedia. One guideline would be to use this option only when mailing users of a webmail domain.