Are you a Good Emailer, but still Punished?

Sure, there was that time you left a penny for the blind, and the last time you littered, you shuttered and felt guilty for at least 30 seconds, and occasionally you've thought about helping old ladies cross the street ...

So why is it that everyone thinks you're bad? Why is it that you're blacklisted? Why, oh why, won't your emails get through??!

To help address the problem, Seth, of the brand Seth Godin, has built a lense (yes, a lense, get with the 2.0) to address the problem of good people ending up lumped in with the bad and how to avoid the blacklist.

Blacklists are a real problem -- people sign up for our newsletters, we don't spam, but yet we still end up being blocked by nervous IT admins or over zealous services.

We like to think that when we hit 'send' or 'transmit' that our emails zap through cyberspace like greased lightening, but it's much more akin to the pony express in terms of individual hand-offs. There are many pitfalls along the way, and it's best to get educated on the entire process before you become blacklisted right away.

And it's no easy bake oven -- there's no rotisserie 'set-it-and-forget-it' button -- you have to keep a watchful eye on the blacklists even after you've been removed.

Whew? So why do we put so much time in these things? Seth has an answer for that, too:

Email (sent with permission) has a different function. Its job is to get a response. To move a conversation forward, to help you learn a little bit about the person you're engaging with.

If your emails read like direct mail letters or look like brochures, you're wasting time and effort.

Comments

[Lori]

"Blacklists are a real problem -- people sign up for our newsletters, we don't spam, but yet we still end up being blocked by nervous IT admins or over zealous services."

There's a super-easy solution to this - do your email marketing through an email marketing service provider. They work with IT admins and web service providers to make sure emails aren't blocked or blacklisted. I know I don't have the time or inclination to do that.

I'm happy to report that my marketing emails have an average open rate of 54% and average click-through rate of 73.8% (!!) compared to an industry average for small businesses of 37% (open) and 8.9 (click-through). I must be doing something right =)