No More Email?

The End of Email Marketing and Ezines?

Marketing experts are looking a ways around the spam filters that block legitimate ezines and newsletters.

Listen to what this person says:

"Email marketing is dead," declares Chris Pirillo, a frequently quoted online marketing and blogging consultant and one of the keynote speakers at the Blog Business Summit in Seattle.

To read more, go to IMediaConnections.

In the meantime, because you will continue to broadcast your ezines and newsletters, remember these two points:

1. Savvy professionals have to up the quality of their email messages, ezines and newsletters. People don't want to be bothered with promotional  content and it can back fire.  Instead of building credibility and trust, you will destroy your reputation quickly when you ask them to buy without giving them something of value on a consistent basis.

Give your readers worthy content, information, and value. They will buy from you only if they like you.

2. Be careful how you recruite names into your subscriber database. Be sure they know they have signed up and subscribed to your newsletter. Most services require a double opt-in message, that is, they have to reply to a confirmation message that they actually want the newsletter before being added to the list. Unfortunately, many people don't pay attention to their email requests and never confirm. But this is the only way of have a squeeky-clean list.

It goes without saying, never rent or buy a list as you will get spam complaints. And that can cause you problems with ISP providers, not to mention your reputation.

I recently had a subscriber who wanted to send out his first newsletter to a list he had accumulated over a period of time. He wanted his message to read, "If you don't want to be included on my subscription list, please click the opt-out message."

I said no, he would have to send out an invitation first for people to opt-in. An opt-out invitation is not compliant with CanSpam or email marketing etiquette, in my opinion. Of course, you may not agree. Some will find this an astute way to go around the lack of confirmation response problem.

What do you think about this? Is this a clever idea, or not?

My other question to this client was, "Do you have a prior relationship with all the people on this list? Do they know you?" I am willing to accept a list of subscribers who have already received information or newsletters from a client, I would consider these people already confirmed.

Alas, some knew him, other "knew of him." So in my book, this list requires an invitation to subscribe.

Of course, I'm willing to entertain other opinions...

Because it is so hard to get people to confirm, you may think of ways to go around the double opt-in option. I know not everybody uses this system.

It seems the only people that the CanSpam laws affect are the legitimate publishers of ezines who don't want to be considered spammers. The spammers are not concerned at all and continue to proliferate.

I'd be interested in knowing what other professionals are doing to deal with the email blocking problems. Please click on the comment button below and share.

Patsi

P.S. I know this is one reason I am using blogs to communicate with people instead of blasting them with email messages. I feel like I am intruding into their inboxes...!

Comments

[Barry Zweibel]

Patsi - I can't agree with you more. While it's nice to have a growing and vibrant mailing list, the bigger goal, I think, is to have the people you mail to actually be interested in what you're sending them.

Yet direct mail (via post) and spam (via email) work because there ARE people out there with unmet needs/wants aligned with whatever we happen to be offering. Given that, what recommendations do you have for helping such people "find" our mailing lists so they can subscribe to - and derive value from - them?

[Patsi Krakoff]

Great question, Barry, and it is the #1 question I hear most frequently from my clients, and colleagues. One of the reasons I recommend doing an ezine AND a blog (and of course a web site) it to have more fishing lines in the world wide fishing pond.

And then there is the usual participation in online forums, commenting to other blogs, including signatures on emails, etc. Make subscription easy by putting sign up form in clear view up top on your web pages. And give people a bonus report just for signing up. I'm sure you know as much about the standard ways as I do, Barry. There are no easy answers, except to participate and deliver quality, consistently.

The truth is, it is becoming harder to recruit subscribers to ezines. Thank goodness for blogs and Bloglet. Patsi