Mass mailing – 5 things to remember

ignat — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 21:13:38 +0000

To make your newsletters, product updates, and announcements easier to receive do provide the following things with each message you send:

Simple mechanism to unsubscribe. Provide the detailed information how to unsubscribe from the future mailings and make this process really simple. Do test your application to make sure that unsubscription actually works.
Information about where you got the address. Do remind your recipients why they wanted to receive your mailing. Gentle reminder such as: “you bought our product”, “you subscribed”, “you opted to receive” adds authenticity to your message.
Contact information and privacy policy statement. In each message have a link to your site with your contact information and privacy policy statement. The contact information should include your names, the mailing address, and possibly a phone number – just email address is not enough.
Appropriate recipient’s address with full name. Never send messages with recipient’s address in Bcc field. The address and the recipient’s full name should appear in To field.
When sending HTML messages include the plain text copy in multipart alternative format. If recipient’s mail client is unable to show HTML messages then the plain text copy will be shown.

These technics add credibility to your mailings, show your good intentions and professionalism. They let you avoid spam filters and reach more potential customers.

Reaching customers by email doesn’t work any more

ignat — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:56:47 +0000

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