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Category: SEO & Online Promotion

The Complete Guide to E-Mail Marketing (Part 1)

Written by Leon on August 1, 2011 at 9:01 am with No comment

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This article will provide a complete guide to a successful e-mail marketing campaign and will cover, why it is important, the CAN-SPAN ACT of 2003, what e-mail marketing software to choose, how to not get blacklisted and taking your e-mail marketing further.

Why is E-Mail Marketing Important?

Two words, “it works”. For ourselves here at East Midlands IT we were very sceptical as to how effective e-mail marketing really is. We knew what we did with marketing e-mails and we just assumed that everyone else did the same and trashed them.

E-Mail Marketing can be a very cost effective and profitable means of advertising if you go about it the right way, you can reach 1000s of potential customers in a few hours at next to no cost, if you have your own e-mail server then after you have purchased your mailing lists you may never have to spend money on e-mail marketing again yet continue to reach 1000s of potential customers.

If you want some statistics then every dollar spent on e-mail marketing returned around $43.62 in 2009 according to the Direct Marketing Association, with many of these statistics only organic SEO beats e-mail marketing.

Another issue that was originally preventing us from trying e-mail marketing was that we were unsure as to how “legal” it is. E-Mail marketing done correctly and in accordance of the CAN-SPAM act of 2003 is a legal, safe and a profitable venture.

What is the CAN-SPAM ACT of 2003? Can I legally ”SPAM”?

The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 provides a range of guidelines that you MUST adhere to if you wish to legally send e-mail to other businesses and potential customers.

The guidelines are very straight forward but please read the guidelines in detail before you plan on doing any e-mail marketing to make sure you are covered. you can get this information from WikiPedia here.

So, there are 3 main points that really stand out, in all your e-mails you must:

Provide an easy and visible method to OPT-OUT of your mailing list
Always provide descriptive subject lines that are NOT misleading in anyway way
Be sent from a legitimate e-mail address and server

To me this is not much to ask for if the benefit is reaching so many potential customers. Ok, you know why you should do it and how to do it legally, lets take a look at the tools you are going to need.

E-Mail Marketing Software, what to look for?

There are 100s probably 1000s of different e-mail marketing tools available from free to very expensive but what should you be looking for?

To me there are some vital requirements that e-mail marketing software should provide:

The ability to import and manage your mailing lists
The ability to provide multiple SMTP servers for sending (See how to not get black-listed later on)
The ability to provide reports of who has opened, read and clicked a link in your e-mail
The ability to automatically manage your un-subscriptions (OPT-OUTs)

With these features you are fully equipped to run a successful e-mail marketing campaign as you will be able to easy organise your contacts, see who has found interest in your services and what services they are interested in and ensure your compliance with the CAN-SPAM act through automatic un-subscriptions.

If you spend around 30mins Googleing for some E-Mail Marketing Software then you will probably come across these two:

In my eyes these seem to be the best and most trimmed software packages available, they both offer a wealth of similar features that include all of the above mentioned points, but they both differ in price.

Atomic Mail Sender

At £54 for such as wealth of features at first you think it is the next best thing since sliced break, especially when many other packages start at a few hundred dollars. BUT! If you look closely most of the features it describes are optional extras. For example to be able to monitor and track your opens and clicks you will have to pay an additional £8/month and if you want to automatically manage your subscriptions you are going to have to pay an additional £39.85 on top and this application soon becomes quite an expensive piece of kit. So, be aware of what is included in the price when looking for e-mail marketing software packages!

SendBlaster

This software package at 85 Euro (£74.54) is more expensive than Atomic Mail Sender but does come with most of its advertised features included in the price. SendBlaster makes use of the free TrackReports e-mail tracking tools which allow you to track how opens and clicks your e-mails at no extra cost, the best thing is you don’t need to sign-up for SendBlaster to make use of TrackReports so you could even incorporate this functionality in another package that does not include reporting.

SendBlaster also has another nice feature that Atomic Mail Sender does not, a SPAM calculator. Once you have create your marketing e-mail SendBlaster can tell you with a numerical score how “SPAMY” your e-mail will look to SPAM blockers, a fantastic and very useful feature, again at no extra cost!

At this price with these INCLUDED features SendBlaster is the best on the market in our eyes and we would highly recommend them, the support is fantastic and the application is simple and easy to use. Go and download the free trial now!

LETS LOOK AT SOME FREE AND OPEN SOURCE ALTERNATIVES IN PART 2 >>