Email Marketing Strategy

Posted By emailadmin on August 21, 2009

I’ve been helping some new clients set up their mailing lists, and I have some lessons for you.

First, it is a good thing to capture email addresses. However, you have to ensure that they know you’re doing it. What if they order something from you, and you ask for their email address to send them a confirmation. Make sure that you have some notice in your order process that you will protect their email address, that you will not sell it, and most importantly, that you reserve the right to contact them in the future through this email address.

It can be something simple like: We’re asking for your email address to send you a confirmation, and potentially notices in the future. We will never sell your email address or send you garbage, and you’ll have the right to opt out at any time.

Another method is to put a link near the web form where it asks for email address, with the text “about this” or “privacy info.” You can then either do a pop-up window or send them to another page which has the boilerplate on your privacy policy as well as a single line that you retain the right to contact them via email in the future.

Why should you care? Well, if you have been saving email addresses, and you sign up with a place such as aweber.com, they are going to ask you if you have permission to contact these people. And if you cannot say in good conscience that you have these privacy policies in place, they’re going to reject your list.

Which means that you’ll be putting the email addresses in one at a time. Or does it? Nope, sorry again, but aweber.com does limit the amount that you can put in at a single point in time.

So let’s think it through.  You should have permission to contact them, so cover all your bases and have that line in first.  And then start saving email addresses until you’re ready to start sending emails on a regular basis.

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