5 Reasons to Never Use Microsoft Software for E-Mail Marketing.
by Ed Rivis.
Occassionally I talk to small business owners who after finding out what I do proudly tell me they perform e-mail marketing.
On further discussion I find out that means they write an e-mail in Outlook, then add the e-mail addresses of everyone they want to receive to the recipient list and click send.
Now that’s fine if you’re sending a joke e-mail to a small group of close friends.
But here are 5 reasons why it’s a dreadful thing to do if sending e-mails out in the hope you’ll garner some sort of commercial response. (E.g. to generate an enquiry or actual sale).
1) Firstly, you’re sharing everyone’s e-mails with everyone else in the list.
That’s not only rude, but worse… what if one of your competitors has signed up to your newsletter? You just gave them e-mail addresses of your customers!
2) You won’t be able to mail-merge even basic information like a contacts firstnames as "Hi Joe" salutation.
One of the most powerful e-mail marketing tactics you can employ is to personalise each e-mail with contact details, like first name, surname, company name and so on.
You will find that when recipients open personalised e-mails, you’re far more likely to get a positive response.
It’s for that reason many online markteters put a person’s firstname at the beginning of the subject line. To prove a prior relationship exists and that the person is known and has mad previous contact with the company sending the e-mail. (To join a newsletter for example.)
Spam e-mails are usually unpersonaised, so the moment you add a person’s firstname to one, you’re instantly proving it’s a proper e-mail.
3) A third reason to not use your e-mail software is that it can increase unsubscribe requests.
You’ll get people leaving your list like rats off a sinking ship… because unpersonalised messages scream "bulk e-mail" and "junk".
4) Some ISPs take a hard-line against companies who abuse their terms of service.
Check out the small print in the contract documentation you got when you signed up for your business broadband or dial-up connection. I’ll bet there’s a "no e-mail marketing" clause in there!
5) It can ultimately damage your companies ability to even get standard (one to one) e-mails from being delivered successfully!
When you send marketing e-mails out you always run the risk of recipients — rightly or wrongly — reporting your e-mails as "spam" (junk or ‘unsolicited’ e-mail.)
If enough people report your e-mails as spam then you get your companies IP address ‘blacklisted’. That’s not good.
In a nutshell, sending e-mails from your desktop is a drastically inefficient method of e-mail marketing.
Luckily there are 3 alternatives:
1) Use proper e-mail marketing software or…
2) Use a dedicated server or…
3) Outsource entirely.
In the first case, you can buy proper e-mail marketing software. Install it on your computer, link it to your contacts database and NOW you can send very personalised e-mails that look to the recipient as though you only sent a single e-mail, to them.
The caveat to this first option — make sure you set what’s called the ‘throttle’ extremely low. The ‘throttle’ is a software setting that determines how fast e-mails are sent out from your computer.
Set the throttle too high and your ISP may notice what you’re doing and shut down your Internet connection — maybe even take legal action against you if they prove you’re using their service to send bulk mail.
For this reason I don’t recommend the first option. Especially if you have a large list of contacts who you want to regularly e-mail.
So in the second case, a Dedicated Server is a computer you pay monthly rental on and get remote control access to.
You can usually install any software you want on a dedicated server — including proper e-mail marketing software like the one I’ll recommend in a moment.
And because the computer is not located in your office (you usually connect to them through a web browser), you’re protecting yourself from spam complaints.
(Although again check with the dedicated server company first to check you can perform e-mail marketing from it.)
The third alternative to not using standard software when E-Mail Marketing campaigns is to completely outsource the delivery of your e-mails. In this latter case I recommend you check out www.AWeber.com — I use them and their service is awesome.
However, to my private clients I initially recommend the second option — get hold of Gammadyne Mailer. Install it on a dedicated server. Then import all existing contacts into the software and start e-mail marketing. It’s the fastest least pain way of getting sales for nothing. Try it!
Ed Rivis is author of The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy — a comprehensive guide for small businesses looking for ways to get more profits and sales from the Internet. Visit => http://www.ultimatewebstrategy.com
