Messaging News - December 2008 - (Page 20) MANAGING COMPLAINTS Good Email Marketing Gone Bad What happens when good email marketing goes bad? There are definitely repercussions for misusing online marketing solutions—from loss of reputation to loss of a vendor. Responsible email marketers care deeply what their recipients think. Popick explains that it is not So what’s a marketer to do to keep from ending up on the bad side of an email blast recipient? According to Groves, reputation is everything and it is important for organizations to build their reputation through consistent email behavior and a good permission-based list. “Your recipient’s behavior (whether or their receipt. “Marketers must move to more relevancy enabling tactics— such as click-based segmentation and the use of dynamic content to speak to similar pockets of their clients as groups of individuals rather than marketing the same message to the masses. The JupiterResearch study, The ROI of Email Relevance, “It can become very difficult for a company to send mail if they have been flagged or blacklisted within the industry.” J.D. Peterson, Lyris, Inc. unusual for people who abuse email marketing to get blacklisted by ISPs, which is why VerticalResponse takes so many precautions, “If we feel customers are taking advantage intentionally, we won’t let them email through us anymore.” Constant Contact has a no-tolerance spam policy and invests significant resources in its enforcement, “We only allow customers who comply with consent-based list collection methods to use our services,” Grove says. “If it is determined that a Constant Contact customer is in violation of this policy, its services are subject to immediate termination.” Peterson feels that the first thing the marketer loses when they have irritated a recipient is a golden opportunity to have a conversation with the subscriber, who might be a customer. Users, he adds, are quite reluctant to give brands a second or third chance if they feel abused or misled. Peterson notes there are several types of repercussions for mailers that do not follow the industry’s standards and rules, “ESP’s will block your mail from getting through and most maintain the rights to remove clients off of its servers if caught violating rules. It can become very difficult for a company to send mail if they have been flagged or blacklisted within the industry.” not they report your email as spam) is important to your reputation with them and with the ISPs. Anything out of the ordinary may convince recipients that they have been spammed: even opt-in mail becomes spam if a recipient labels it as such. Therefore, organizations need to make developing trust and recognition a priority.” Groves believes that the first step to achieving this is to organize the contact database. Keeping the distribution list updated and the email relevant will help to ensure a good reputation. Educating their users about how to avoid damaging their reputation is part of the ‘onboarding process’ for Lyris and is something that remains an ongoing part of the relationship with clients. “Your reputation is everything in email marketing and it must be maintained in order to reap the benefits of this high-ROI marketing vehicle,” says Peterson. “We maintain a staff of experts along with a toolset that specifically helps clients not only understand the best practices, but monitor their programs to ensure compliance.” Remember Who You’re Talking To Daniels believes the primary reason consumers unsubscribe from messages that they opted into is because they are no longer relevant to them, followed by the frequency of found that marketers adopting tactics that empower relevancy are nearly nine times more successful than marketers continuing to broadcast the same message to all of their clients.” Popick, who blogs regularly about successful email marketing on the VerticalResponse Web site, says she wants to make sure that all of their customers’ marketing efforts are as successful as possible. She also notes that customers need to understand that having recipients that receive valuable, well-targeted, content—which they signed up for—is essential to not only the marketer’s reputation, but also, Popick points out, to VerticalResponse’s reputation. MB/TMP FOR YOUR REFERENCE Constant Contact, Inc. www.constantcontact.com Lyris, Inc. www.lyris.com VerticalResponse, Inc. www.verticalresponse.com Forrester Research www.forrester.com 20 MESSAGING NEWS DECEMBER 2008 http://www.constantcontact.com http://www.lyris.com http://www.verticalresponse.com http://www.forrester.com
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