Reaching customers by email doesn’t work any more
These days if you want to reach your customers via email you may find that many emails are lost because of aggressive spam filters, abandoned mailboxes, and unreliable (free or shared) hosting. People fight spam at their best and they don’t mind even losing some legitimate emails in the process. Below are some situations when email just doesn’t work:
Verification of users by email
You often can find a registration form when you are trying to download a trial software. They ask you for a valid email address and pass you to the download only when you can show a confirmation code sent to your email address. The registration form may divert potential customers. At the same time those who want to remain anonymous can submit a temporary email address instantly generated by online tools such as Mailinator. In result such registration forms appear to be useless and even can harm the business.
Announcements by email
If you are going to send an update to your customers 10 months after they’ve registered don’t be surprised that half of the emails in your database isn’t valid any more. These days it’s normal to have 5 emails for different situations: one for work, one for evaluations, one for friends, one for mailing lists, you name it. Opening new mailboxes is easy, so when one email address is got spammed many people just abandon it and create another one.
Sending big documents by email
Your customers won’t understand you if you send a 5Mb document as email attachment. Email is not a file transfer tool! You could upload your documents online and send a link only. If you don’t have your own servers where to upload then online tools such as SendThisFile should help you. And if you need to send updated versions of documents again and again consider Google Docs to store and edit your documents online.
When email is the only way to contact you
Do provide as many alternative ways to contact you as possible. Even most reliable servers may fail and your mail will hang undelivered or will be delayed. And nobody even can notify you about this problem unless you provide them with other ways to reach you.