The 3 Things To Avoid When Emailing Your List

Your email listed has a few subscribers now and you are happily sending you out your promotional newsletters or catalogs to people who are interested in you and your product. Suddenly you find some people are opting out of your list.  What can you do?

People for various reasons will unsubscribe from your list. Maybe they have lost interest in the niche you are going after or forgot that they subscribed to your list.

Remind people that they subscribed to your list. Some autoresponder companies let you include the date, time and isp location of the subcriber. You could put that at the top of your email.

Before they opt out of your list, make sure there is a reminder that says, "Are you sure you want to opt-out of this list?" Some people click on the opt-out link by mistake.

Make sure you follow the legal requirements when emailing your list.

It's important to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider (ISP).

There are now many laws and rules that are applied to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails. Electronic mail is a lot less expensive as a marketing tool than regular snail mail.  Many company’s have affiliates that send out emails to any email address they have scraped off the internet. When many people’s e-mail accounts are pummeled with promotional email that they didn't ask for, the company or website in question gets blamed for the spamming act.

You may ask, how can an affiliate be controlled? You can disable an affiliate link if they are spamming people's emails. Although everyone says how wonderful it is to have affiliates promoting your products, more than one website has gone down because of an affiliate who spammed someone's email account.

Most autoresponder services give you the option to confirm an opt-in email address or not to confirm an email address. If the person does not confirm the address you have lost the customer.

There are many reasons why a person would not confirm the email. The confirming email might have gone into a spam folder, the email might never have arrived at your email provider, the customer might have a full inbox and no more emails could enter. The customer might have forgot they visited your website and signed up for your newsletter. So there is a crowd of people saying, let people optin without the confirmation. This means later you have to clean out the people who opted in to your email list with false email addresses. It is better if you have people confirm their email addresses because you don't have to figure out who provided you with a fake email address. Legally you are covered if people confirm your email as date, name, email address and isp is recorded at your autoresponder service.

Most people when subscribing to your list want to receive your newsletters and promotional materials. They have consented to being on the list by subscribing themselves, just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe feature everytime in your opt-in list so that you avoid any confusion. There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe.

It is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. Arrange it by using the many tools and technologies available for your opt-in list. Do not worry; your investment in this marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales and then into profit. Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean. Your reputation as a legitimate business person and a legitimate website depends upon your being a straight and true marketing strategist.

As a tip, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1) Take notice of your unsuccessful sends. These are the e-mails that bounce. Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient. There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at that time but can still be delivered in another time. There are also bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at that time. There are those bounce messages that are simply undeliverable ever. The reason for this is that it may be an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or an email address that was abandoned and erased already. Manage your list by putting markings on those that bounce.

Most autoresponder companies allow you to have so many subscribers per price point. Delete any subscriber that has an undeliverable email address. Maintain accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail. 

2) Always provide an unsubscribe feature in your site and an unsubscribe link in your mails. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously. If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail. When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers. You will lose a lot of subscribers this way and many more in potential subscribers.

3) Do not provide misleading subject titles claiming to be someone you are not. Watch the type of material that is sent out in your newsletter. You may find that the lanuage or pictures suitable for adult viewing may end up in an email of someone who is not an adult. Avoid shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. It is hard to decipher the age of the recipient and many complaints may stem from these. Controversial issues also are to be avoided to not be branded by your subscribers. Stick to the nature of your site and business. Always remember these tips in this article so that you can have a healthy relationship with your subscribers as well as be kept within the boundaries of what is allowed in sending mails to an opt-in list.