Email marketing should not be your sole business model, but a tool to reach your customers to whom you can sell your goods and services. Getting into email marketing as a get rich quick scheme could negatively affect your email reputation. The business model should come first and then you can think about email marketing as a legitimate email marketer. This is the first part in a series on how to start email marketing the right way. Let’s assume you already have a solid good or service you need to tell people about.

The List – Acquiring a list in a legitimate manner is extremely important. Spammers are notorious for sending their messages to any email address that they get a hold of, you do not want to do the same things as spammers or you will suffer the same fate. The best way to get a list is to grow it naturally with a web form on your website that points to a database where your records are stored. Invite people who visit your site to give you their email address in exchange for a newsletter or product update.

Purchased lists are a risky alternative to growing your own. People on lists, regardless of what the list broker promises, do not opt-in to receive your messages. Even if they opt-in to receive some messages that might be like yours, they are more likely to forget and reach for their spam button the first time you send them something. If you must use a purchase list, do so carefully and try to get them to confirm participation.

Confirm Opt-in – Once they sign up it is important to confirm their subscription. This can be done in a number of ways, but by sending a confirmation email to the email address they used, you can both verify the address they used is theirs and allow them to confirm. Granted, some people may change their minds or forget about confirming their email, but a confirmed opt-in will help you in the long run maintain a clean email address list and improve your email reputation.

Honor Opt-out requests – Requests for removal should be acted on immediately through any channel through which the recipient contacts you. If they call, email a reply, or log into a web page to manage their subscriptions, once they unsubscribe, you should not send them any more email. Even though the CAN-SPAM law allows you ten days to remove someone from your list, why would you want to continue to send email to people who do not want it and risk your email reputation.

Maintain a Clean List- Remote ISPs punish you if your list contains a large percentage of previously failed emails. You want to make sure that you have a way to remove failed emails from your list right away. If even a small percentage of your emails fail, your send may be slowed down to a particular domain, or blocked altogether. Many domains maintain rigorous whitelisting, greylisting, and blacklisting procedures that can ruin an email campaign in the middle of the process.

Gather Information – When people sign up, it is a good idea to find out more about them. You have to have a balance though, most people will not want to fill out their life history just to receive your email. Try to collect a name along with the address and maybe their geographical location. You can ask for that, or try to glean that information using the IP address on which they are logging onto your site. If have a subscription management area on your website, you can ask a number of questions that will help you segment your list.

Segmenting your list helps you send more targeted information to your customers. The more you know or can find out about them, the more specialized and personalized your email messages become. Message personalization and list segmentation are what make email marketing so valuable to your growing business.

Author: James Kinkade