Keep in Touch Using Email - Part 3 of 4

By Melvin Ram - August 16th, 2007

Use an Email Marketing Software… not Outlook!

In the previous posts, we talked about how to use email to provide value to people and how to use email to supplement 1-to-1 communication instead replacing it. Now what?

The next question you need to consider is: “How will I be sending my emails?”

You may be tempted to reach for your normal email program such as Outlook, Hotmail or Gmail and using the BCC or CC functionality of these programs… but in most cases, this will be a mistake.

Without a specialized email marketing software, you’ll face many problems:

You won’t know who opened your email
Your emails will probably get caught in the spam/junk folders by the major email providers such as Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL & Gmail
Your emails will look like they were send to a massive list… and won’t get the attention it deserves
You’ll violate many laws introduced under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

What do smart email marketers do? They use a good email marketing software.

If you’re going to be sending out ‘1-to-many’ type emails, you need a good email marketing software. Why? A good email marketing

software lets you personalize your emails, deliver more emails to the inbox instead of the junk folder and track vital usage information such as who opened your emails and clicked on the links in your email. Let’s look at each one closer:

a) Personalize your emails (Whisper, don’t shout!)

When your email looks like it was sent to everyone, people are much less likely to read it. When an email looks like it was sent to just you, you are more likely to open & read it.

A good email marketing software will deliver your email so it looks like it was sent just to them. Higher end solutions even let you personalize content based on different criteria. For example, women may get a different email then men.

b) Deliver emails to the inbox… not the junk folder

If you send a ton of emails at once using Outlook or other email programs, major email providers such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail & AOL might move your email to the junk/spam folder.

Good email marketing software companies have built up relationships with the major email providers to increase the deliverability rate.

For example, Constant Contact has very strict opt-out policies. If someone clicks on Unsubscribe at the bottom of your emails, it will be very difficult/impossible to ever send them another email using Constant Contact. For this reason and others, the major email providers treat Constant Contact mail with a little more care.

c) Track vital information

Tracking is the nature of the sophisticated marketer. With normal email programs, it is near impossible to do any kind of tracking that is useful.

A good email marketing software can track vital information such as such as who opened your email, how many times they opened it, who clicked on your links and who doesn’t view your email.

d) Compliance wih CAN-SPAM Laws

When you conduct email marketing using your regular email program, you are violating many laws.

Good email marketing software, such as Constant Contact, automatically set you up with everything you need to be compliant with these laws.

Recommendations for email marketing software

There are many email marketing software services on the market today. Here is a short list of the top:

Constant Contact - CC is our recommendation to most clients. It’s simple and their customer service is great.
iContact - Offers a decent combination of an autoresponder, blogging tool and a rss tool.
Aweber - Great as an autoresponder… but not as your primary email marketing tool due to it’s reporting deficiencies.
ExactTarget - Great for medium & large size companies.
SilverPOP - Also great for medium & large size companies.

Already using an email marketing software?

What email marketing software are you currently using? Please be candid about your experience. As long as it helps others make good decisions, we’ll let things roll.

‘Keep in Touch Using Email’ Series

~ mel

Melvin Ram
CEO, Volcanic Internet Marketing
Direct: (916) 743-9369
Email: melvin@volcanicmarketing.com

Technorati Tags: email marketing, relationship building, keep in touch, email marketing software