3 strategies so your emails aren't seen as spam

Summary of a presentation delivered by Heather Maloney to the Corporate Chicks Breakfast, 21 September 2007, Melbourne.

When you hear “electronic marketing”, “email marketing”, “SMS marketing” or “bulk messaging”, do you immediately think “spam”? Or do you think “courteously keeping in touch with clients and customers, in a value‑adding way, leading to long‑term satisfied clients”?

Imagine your business regularly communicating with your client base where:

• valuable information is provided;
• news and special offers are appropriate and useful;
• there's the occasional snippet of humour for light relief;
• messages are sent at the right regularity, acting as gentle reminders for important things;
• your contacts look forward to receiving them;
• they can be dealt with at a convenient time, and easily filed for future use;
• they're easy to forward to a friend or colleague when appropriate;
• over the long term, your contacts are educated and helped to do business more easily with you;
• and your contacts don't forget who you are, feeling they know you and your business well.

Wouldn't that be brilliant? You can achieve similar with printed material or phone calls, but those modes are much more costly.

While the Australian Spam Act 2003 defines what spam is, I believe the most important thing for businesses is to ensure people receiving your messages don't perceive them to be spam — whether or not they are, according to the letter of the law. None of us want our contacts thinking we're spamming them. Here are three key strategies to avoid that perception.

Strategy 1 — make sure your contacts really are expecting your messages

There are three key things you must do to comply with the Australian Spam Act: gain consent, identify the sender, and let people easily unsubscribe. The Act includes a concept of implied consent — but to ensure your emails aren't perceived as spam, your contacts need to know they've consented, and actually expect both the messages and the type of content.

A simple example of acknowledged consent: at a networking breakfast you get chatting with someone interested in what you do, and ask, “Would you like to go on my mailing list to receive monthly information about topic xyz, news about what our clients are doing, and tips to help you in this area?” Nine times out of ten they'll say yes — and even if they never get time to read it, when it arrives as promised there's no surprise, and they remember your conversation.

By contrast, if you buy something from a website with a pre‑ticked box subscribing you to their newsletter, the first issue may arrive as an unpleasant surprise. Best practice is to leave the tick box clear by default and require the purchaser to proactively opt in. Someone who specifically clicks a link to join your list from your front page (I hope your subscribe links are on your front page!) will expect your messages — as long as you don't bombard them, which brings us to the second strategy.

Strategy 2 — choose an appropriate frequency, and stick to it

You'll have noticed that in the verbal‑consent example I mentioned the frequency (monthly). It's important to set the expectation of how often you'll send, and stick to it. The right frequency depends on your audience and topic — some suit daily updates (stock market info for day traders, say), but most regular communications are fortnightly, monthly or quarterly.

I once bought from an online printing business. They shipped promptly and the product was excellent — but from that day they emailed me nearly every day with “specials” that weren't really special for me. It drove me mad so quickly that I'll never buy from them again, nor recommend them. So an inappropriate frequency can create a perception that you're spamming people, even when you have consent.

Strategy 3 — add value

With that printing business, the offers sounded great in the subject line, but every time I tried to order, the special only applied to orders using their standard illustrations — and of course I wanted my own logo on the products. Making your messages appropriate to your audience, and actually giving them something of value, is critical to keeping people reading, forwarding, holding your business in high regard, and continuing to do business with you over the long term.

If you don't add value, people will perceive your messages as spam and unsubscribe — or worse, delete them on arrival, sight unseen, and never tell you their preferences. How you add value differs for every organisation, and it doesn't have to be about your business: consider occasionally promoting a complementary business's service. Overall, aim to make it easier for your clients to live their lives or run their business — and easier to do business with you.

One thing I haven't covered is how to ensure the anti‑spam software between you and your contacts doesn't flag your message — that's a separate topic, but using a solution such as eNudge goes a long way to helping ensure your messages are delivered.

If you'd like my fortnightly eNudge News, with tips on using email and SMS marketing effectively and stories of how other businesses use these tools, please subscribe here.

Heather Maloney
eNudge — the nudge they need!