It’s 2017 and email marketing is back, alive and well. For now. If we, as marketers, want to make sure that our email marketing does not come close to death’s door again, we need to take stock and evaluate from our past mistakes. In particular, we need to look at how we can avoid being seen as spam again.
“But I don’t spam people!”
No, of course you don’t. You send relevant, targeted marketing communications – like most other marketers, I’m sure. The problem is if we’re all using the same techniques to shout our message out the loudest, pretty soon our prospects are going to be shouting “spam”.
It’s not just your prospects you have to worry about…
Convincing prospects that your marketing is relevant to them is one thing. Convincing the spam filters is something else entirely. That’s right, in the last five years technology has gotten even smarter. So now, if all of us are doing the same thing via emails, the spam filters are going to recognise it. The most common phrases? Spam. The most common symbols? Spam. The same email address contacting one sender every two days? Spam. Pretty soon, you’ll get the most common emoji seen as spam if we’re not careful.
Like search engines, spam filters now adapt to your behaviour as email marketers. Which means you always need to be doing something new and innovative in order to keep ahead of the curve. After all, your email marketing can’t be successful if it doesn’t even land in the inbox in the first place.
Ok, ok…so how can I get ahead of the rest of the pack?
Ah, see here’s the tricky bit. If we all follow the same best practices, we all start doing the same thing and soon enough that repetitive email behaviour is labelled as spam too. Luckily, we all have different top target audiences. They all have different needs and desires, they all communicate in a variety of ways. You just need to find out what your audience wants first.
Remember, the inbox is a personal space now. It has no room for mass-marketing emails or advertisements. It’s a place where busy business employees can communicate with the people they need to. So why do they need to be in contact with you? What pain points can you help them solve? How can you work together to create a solution?
These are the questions your email marketing campaigns should be answering in the first two lines of your email. That’s the bit your prospects see in their inbox before they decide if your email is worthy of their attention.
That’s the way you outsmart the spam filters. But, if writing isn’t your strong point, then there’s always the spam filter technology and techniques to help you stay one step ahead.