Market with email and avoid the 'spam' label

In recent years more businesses have been including email marketing as part of their overall marketing effort. And, based on trends in email usage from businesses and homes, on handheld Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and even cell phones, why not? Email marketing is relatively cheap to create and deliver, and it doesn't even take a great response to get an impressive return on investment for your advertising dollars spent.

Unfortunately though, for the consumer, sometimes it is difficult to differentiate good, informative and potentially helpful email advertising messages from spam. It is estimated that four out of every five emails sent can be considered spam. And, with tens of millions of email messages being sent each day, that's a lot of spam!

Fortunately, there are many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that do have controls in place to at least limit the amount of spam that goes to their customers' inboxes. However, as a result, many emails are not getting through because they are being flagged as spam. So, the potential or existing customer who actually wants to hear from a business by email never gets the email message.

As a business, how do you create emails that are compliant with all the "No-Spam" rules so you can make sure your emails have the best chance to be delivered to your customers and prospects?

Here are some suggestions to help in the deliverability of your emails:

Get Your IP Address White Listed - This is a not so easy process that you go through with major ISPs you typically send emails to, like AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.

Understand and follow all anti-spam guidelines. These are easy rules to follow, such as including your contact information and removal instructions on all emails sent.

Use permissionbased email lists. All businesses should collect email addresses of their customers who are interested in receiving occasional VIP customer offers. You can also purchase permission-based email lists that target most demographic groups.

Create interesting emails with effective subject lines. It doesn't matter if your email gets delivered to inboxes if you don't get through door number one: the email subject line; and then door number two: an appealing and enticing email message.

This is the first in a series of articles that will be written to help you with the dos and don'ts of email marketing. In our next article we will detail specifics about getting your email address White Listed.

George Scarborough is President and Owner of Scarborough Consulting, Inc., an award winning Marketing Consulting and List Brokerage Firm based in Gulf Breeze. Scarborough can be reached through his website at www.scarboroughconsulting. com or his email address at George@scarboroughconsulting.com.