Many wonder if they should begin an email blast campaign to increase their business. We have a couple of thoughts…
Is your email database yours, did you buy it from a broker or did you copy and paste it from a bunch of websites?
Will your email blasts contain relevant content that people want to read?
Will you want to use a template or will your email blasts be custom designed each time your send it out?
Those are just a few of the questions we ask our clients when determining if they should embark on an email blast campaign. For several years email database brokers convinced many folks (including us) that if they bought a list of 10 gazillion emails and sent out an email blast the phones would ring off the hook. Well guess what happened along the way to email blast heaven the CAN-Spam ACT of 2003 came down hard on spammers, i.e., those that send unsolicited emails to people. So, everyone began dropping in “opt-out” links on their email blast in order to comply with the federal law, but little did advertisers know that the consumer cranked up the “spam filters” on their email applications. These spam filters typically catch and dump the majority of unsolicited emails coming to their email address.
These are our basic rules for launching an email blast campaign:
1. Only use “opt-in” email addresses, i.e., the folks you send emails to should only be those that have explicitly signed up for your email communications.
2. Use a text-based email blast template rather than a graphic-based email blast. Using a text-based template will give your email blast a better chance of making it past the spam filter and into the inbox of the intended recipient.
3. Make sure you provide relevant, interesting and concise content in your email blast.
4. Your subject line should be attention getting and prompt the recipient to open the email.
5. Be sure to use a professional email service such as Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor to distribute your email blast. These services keep you complaint with federal regulations and they provide exact tracking of your campaigns.
6. Enlist a professional ad agency like Navigation smile to design, write and distribute your email blast campaign.
7. Last, but not least. If your audience doesn’t respond to your email blast campaign with either views, click thrus, or forwards to a friend, then by all means just blog, blog, blog…
For any questions about email blast campaigns, direct response campaigns, corporate branding, tv commercials, radio commercials, billboards or a really nice brochure please call us at 615-898-1496.