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Why You Shouldn't Do Email Marketing
the Old Fashioned Way.
In 2000, over 7 years ago, email marketing was pretty simple.
You got someone's email address and you sent them an email.
Logic tells you that if you could do this one time then
doing it 1000 times was way better. Some felt that doing
this 10 million times was even better still.
Unfortunately, the result is the ongoing problem of SPAM.
We hate getting spam and we never send it.
But we have to deal with it. And we think our customers
want to hear from us and they want to hear from us using
one of the most popular internet applications of all time-email.
So what is the best way to send email to your customers?
When I mean best, I mean what is the most cost effective,
efficient, and effective way to send email to your customers?
One way is to keep a list in your email system. I've seen
a distribution list kept in hotmail, aol, yahoo and others.
The challenge with this is when you have more than a few
hundred names. Suddenly you find restrictions is sending
email (scratch effective) and it takes time to add and subtract
names from the list (so much for efficient) You can't argue
with the price though.
Another popular method is to use Microsoft Outlook to keep
a contact list then do a mail merge with your list to send
an email. The advantage of doing it this way is the sending
of the email is pretty efficient and Outlook sends the email
so that your ISP mail providers sees the messages one at
a time and won't reject your mail-within certain limits.
Again, if you get too big your ISM may reject your mail
and your emails don't get delivered. You still have the
issue of maintain the list. This takes time. Time you should
be doing something else.
Many people will keep their mailing list in a Contact Relationship
Manager (CRM). CRM's are great for keeping your print mail
list and phone list. Or your customer list.
But they aren't built for sending emails to large lists.
And here is why. In recent years, as spam levels have continued
to grow and spam filtering methods have tried to keep up,
the challenge has shifted from the method of getting the
email out, to ensuring your email is actually delivered.
You'll need to be paying full attention to deliverability.
If you don't you may send an email to your customers and
not even know that Yahoo or MSN have filtered your email
and sent it straight to the junk folder. Or even worse they
simply hold your email and it doesn't get through at all.
On top of that, many email systems have buttons that allow
the recipient to mark an email as spam. And today, most
any email that isn't welcome gets marked as spam.
You'll have two possible solutions that will make your
job easier.
One, use an email marketing solution. These software packages
have evolved to the level that collecting and maintaining
lists is easy. Even if you have thousands of names on your
list. Our favorite is www.aweber.com.
This software automatically looks after your list maintenance
and has relationships with the major ISPs so that your email
gets delivered and not viewed as spam.
Two, use an email marketing service. That's what we do.
We set up your system and handle the tedious work of email
marketing. That allows us to collaborate on the important
things and get the best results possible.
If you have found this site to be helpful, please recommend
it to your fellow winemakerss:
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