Do you have a great new product or service to offer your customers or prospects? Many business owners would love to do their own email marketing – but they may not have the time. If you work with a PEO like FrankCrum, you might have some time on your hands to start marketing – but you might not know where to begin. A popular way to spread the word is through an email campaign. Marketers sent more than 838 billion emails in 2013! As you might imagine, this massive amount of email being generated daily creates some problems as well. On a global basis, there are 44 billion emails sent on a daily basis. Of that, an estimated 69% of those are Spam, which equates to 30 billion Spam emails per day! So... how does this relate to your great marketing email you are getting ready to send?
First, let’s define exactly what “spam email” means. Spam is an actual word in the dictionary – Merriam-Webster defines it as “unsolicited usually commercial e-mail sent to a large number of addresses”. The software industry’s response to the mind-boggling numbers of daily spam is the “Spam Filter. The filter reviews incoming emails, searches for certain criteria that could indicate spam, and then moves the email to a special folder. Just take a look in your Spam or Junk folder. In my AOL folder right now is an email titled “C_A_N..A D I..A-N_-- M-E_D I C..A-T-I-O N..S-“ and “Congratulation! You have won $850.000.00 only!” By the way, I’m not sure what currency has two decimal points in their numbering system? ($850.000.00?) or what language drops off the ‘s’ in Congratulations?
So, how can you keep that great marketing email you are crafting from falling into a spam folder, never to be seen by your intended recipients? Follow some email best practices:
- Avoid using words and phrases that Spam filters key on such as ‘Free’, ‘Guarantee’, ‘Call Now’
- Create email content using mixed case and avoid using all Uppercase (Writing in ALL CAPS)
- Limit the amount of punctuation, links, and symbols (like !!! or ‘click here click here’ or $$$$)
- Create an effective subject line using 5-8 words or 40 characters
Finally, you should understand the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act, a law that defines rules for commercial email and gives recipients the right to stop you from emailing them. The law also defines penalties for violations, which could be up to $16,000 for each email that violates these rules. The rules are pretty clear:
- Don’t use false header information – From, Reply To, Domain Names and Email addresses must be valid and properly identify the person or business sending the message
- Disclose that the email is an advertisement
- Include a valid, physical address somewhere in the email
- Provide an ‘Opt Out’ feature that allows recipients to request no future emails
- Honor the Opt Out request within 10 business days, and allow at least 30 days after you send your emails to Opt Out
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines
Go ahead and get that email going! Following email best practices and CAN-SPAM guidelines will potentially enhance the results of your email campaign. Good luck! And if you’d like to have more time to focus on your business, consider working with FrankCrum. We’ll take care of the administrative burdens and let you work on the things that are most important to you. Learn more about how we can help.
