Email Marketing

Email Marketing Definition

All following is some ideas of the email marketing definition.

Email marketing

Email marketing (or e-mail marketing) is the use of email to send a targeted message, information or offer to a designated set of customers. Email is a powerful ‘push’ method for online marketers as opposed to the pull medium of websites, but due to the rise of SPAM, it is essential to use full opt-in list for email marketing to ensure ethical and legal compliance.

Email marketing

Business promotion through the use of email broadcasts. Email marketing takes many forms and has become one of the preferred methods of unscrupulous online marketers resulting in spam. There are laws to protect consumers from spam abuse.

Email marketing

In a similar way to traditional direct mail, email can be used to send messages, promotions and information to members of a mailing list. In comparison to direct mail, it is far cheaper and it is possible to monitor exactly who has received the email, who has opened it and who has gone on to visit your website as a result.

Email Marketing

Any email campaign whether it is to your own personal opt-in list, or to a purchased targeted list or to millions of general email addresses is called email marketing. You can also buy opt-in addresses from various email list providers. Although bulk and targeted email sending is not illegal, provide you work within the established guidelines, it is often considered the low end of internet marketing and advertising approaches. Sending to you own opt-in list should be considered a standard marketing program. Email addresses can be collected in a variety of ways including having a place on your web site where people can sign up for a newsletter, offers of specials or updates on the current state of a particular market.

Q & A about Email Marketing Legal Requirement

Q1 . How do I know if the CAN-SPAM Act covers email my business is sending?

A. What matters is the “primary purpose” of the message. To determine the primary purpose, remember that an email can contain three different types of information:

• Commercial content – which advertises or promotes a commercial product or service, including content on a website operated for a commercial purpose;
• Transactional or relationship content – which facilitates an already agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer about an ongoing transaction; and
• Other content – which is neither commercial nor transactional or relationship.

If the message contains only commercial content, its primary purpose is commercial and it must comply with the requirements of CAM-SPAM. If it contains only transactional or relationship content, its primary purpose is transactional or relationship. In that case, it may not contain false or misleading routing information, but is otherwise exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Q2. How do I know if what I’m sending is a transactional or relationship message?

A. The primary purpose of an email is transactional or relationship if it consists only of content that:

• facilitates or confirms a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to;
• gives warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service;
• gives information about a change in terms or features or account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan or other ongoing commercial relationship;
• provides information about an employment relationship or employee benefits; or
• delivers goods or services as part of a transaction that the recipient already has agreed to.

Q3. What if the message combines commercial content and transactional or relationship content?

A. It’s common for email sent by businesses to mix commercial content and transactional or relationship content. When an email contains both kinds of content, the primary purpose of the message is the deciding factor. Here’s how to make that determination: If a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line would likely conclude that the message contains an advertisement or promotion for a commercial product or service or if the message’s transactional or relationship content does not appear mainly at the beginning of the message, the primary purpose of the message is commercial. So, when a message contains both kinds of content – commercial and transactional or relationship – if the subject line would lead the recipient to think it’s a commercial message, it’s a commercial message for CAN-SPAM purposes. Similarly, if the bulk of the transactional or relationship part of the message doesn’t appear at the beginning, it’s a commercial message under the CAN-SPAM Act.

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Email Marketing Legal Requirement

Email Marketing Legal Requirement

The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business

Do you use email in your business? The CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

For more information about Email Marketing Legal Requirements.

HTML Email

How HTML Email Works

Before you can start designing, coding, and sending HTML emails, you should know how it works and what tools you’ll need. Here’s some background information every email designer and marketer should know…

The Multipart/Alternative MIME Format

The most important thing you need to know about HTML email is that you can’t just attach an HTML file and a bunch of images to a message and hit “send.” Most of the time, your recipients’ email applications will break all the paths to your image files (because they’ll move your images into temporary folders on your hard drive). And you can’t just paste all your code into your email application, either. Most email apps send messages in “plain-text” format by default, so the HTML won’t render. Your recipients would just see all that raw source code, instead of the pretty email it’s supposed to render.

You need to send HTML email from your server in “Multipart-Alternative MIME format.”Basically, that means your mail transfer agent bundles your HTML code, PLUS a plain-text version of the message, together into one email. That way, if a recipient can’t view
your beautiful HTML email, the good-old-fashioned plain-text version of your message is auto-magically displayed. It’s kind of a nerdy gobbledy-geek thing, which is why a lot of people mess things up when they try to send HTML email themselves. You either need to program a script to send email in multipart/alternative MIME format.

Image Files in HTML Email

Embedding images and photos into messages is the number one reason people want to send HTML email. The proper way to handle images in HTML email is to host them on a web server, then “pull them in” to your HTML email, using “absolute paths” in your code. Basically, you can’t send the graphics along with your message. You host the graphics on a web server, and then the code in your HTML email downloads them whenever the message is opened.

Incidentally, this is how “open tracking” works. You place a tiny, invisible graphic into the email, and then track when it’s downloaded. HTML email, not plain-text, and why the new email applications that block images by default (to protect your privacy) can screw up your open rate stats.

HTML Email Hosting Services

When it comes to hosting the images for your HTML email, you really need your own server to do it. Don’t try hosting images on a free “image hosting service,” because those websites often put scripts in place to prevent you from linking to them in emails (they can’t handle all the traffic). And since you really do get what you pay for, free image hosting services tend to be pretty unreliable under heavy traffic conditions. Also, spammers use free image hosting services all the time, to “cover their tracks.” If you don’t want to look like a spammer, use your own web server. If you use an email marketing service they usually come with a newsletter builder tool with image hosting capabilities built-in.

Delivering HTML Email

Many newbies make the mistake of setting up forwarding lists, or “CC’ing” copies of a message to all their customers. This causes all sorts of problems, like when a customer hits, “reply to all.” Plus, there’s no way to do any kind of individual tracking or personalization when they CC: a big group like that. Finally, it just looks so unprofessional and impersonal when recipients can see your entire list of other recipients like that.

That’s why when a direct email marketing system sends your campaign, we take your message and send it one at a time to each recipient on your list (really, really fast). Unlike your or computer linked to your local ISP (which probably has a standard monthly bandwidth limit), email marketing vendors like us use dedicated mail servers that are capable of sending hundreds of thousands of emails (even millions, for larger vendors) per hour.

Common mistakes people make when coding HTML emails

Here are some of the most common mistakes people make when coding HTML emails:

1. Not coding “absolute paths” to their images. Remember, attaching graphics and using “relative paths” won’t work. You need to host the images on your server, then link to them in your code.

2. Using JavaScript, or ActiveX, or embedding movies. That stuff just doesn’t work in HTML email.

3. Getting over ambitious with designs. Designing HTML email isn’t the same as designing web pages. You can’t have all the CSS-positioning, DIVs, DHTML, and complex, embedded tables like you can in web pages.

4. Forgetting—or refusing—to include an opt-out link. It’s stupid and unprofessional not to allow recipients to unsubscribe from your list. Oh yeah, it’s illegal, too. Be sure to read and understand The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.

5. Linking to an external CSS file. You usually put CSS code in between the tags of web pages, right? But browser based email applications (like Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail) strip and tags from HTML email. Embed your CSS below the tag.

6. Letting your permission “grow cold.” If you’ve been collecting opt-ins at your website like a good email marketer, but you haven’t sent an email in several months, your subscribers have forgotten all about you. So when they receive a full blown email newsletter from you “out of the blue” they’re going to click their “this is spam button” in their email application (related blog post: Surviving the inbox whack-a-mole game). Don’t let your permission grow cold. Send occasional emails. If you’ve been collecting emails for years, and you’re only just now sending your first email to everyone, you should send a little “re-invitation” to your list. Something like, “A really long time ago, you subscribed to my email list. Well, I’ve finally got some time to start sending my really cool newsletter, and I want to make sure you still want to receive it. Click here to sign up…” At the very least, send an email and place some kind of text at the top that reminds them of where and when they opted in. People usually forget about opting-in to something after about 6 months or so.

7. Sending to a list without permission. This is the worst offense. Lots of “innocent” marketers, who “mean well” commit this heinous crime. Here are some common ways legitimate marketers can inadvertently become known as “evil spammers:”

Getting an email list from a tradeshow. “But I’m exhibiting there, and the tradeshow host said it would be okay, and when people purchased tickets, the fine print said that we could email them, and…” Nope. You’re spamming. Don’t do it. If they didn’t give you permission to email them, they didn’t opt-in to your list. If they didn’t opt-in, you’re spamming. Even if you can legally send them email marketing, those recipients are more likely to report you for spamming them. Then, you’ll get blacklisted. Plus, your company will look really slimy. Don’t do it. If a tradeshow host is collecting email addresses, then they should be doing the emailing. It’s all about permission, and setting expectations.

• Getting a list of “fellow members” from some trade organization. Just because they joined a club, and the club posted contact information so everyone could keep in touch with each other, it doesn’t mean each member gives you permission to send them newsletters and offers. If you sent them a personal greeting from your own email account, they probably wouldn’t mind. That’s what the organization’s “members list” is for. But add them to a list and send them a huge email newsletter, and you’ll be reported for spamming. Don’t do it.

• They go to events, and swap business cards. The business cards just get thrown into a “prospects” pile. Years later, they get an intern to finally type all the contact info from those cards into a database. Then, one day out of the blue, they send a big, fat email newsletter to everyone. As if they actually want to hear from you! Trust us, they don’t.

• Fish bowl of business cards. Similar to the example above, but they hold an event, and collect business cards in a fishbowl to win a “door prize.” The people who dropped their business cards into the bowl wanted the coffee t-shirt you’re giving away (plus all the fame & glory). They didn’t opt-in to your list.

8. Using a WYSIWYG to “code” your HTML. WYSIWYGs are notorious for generating absolutely horrible HTML. They insert so much junk code, it’s unbelievable. Even the ones that generate “clean” code don’t know how to “rig” things to work in email applications (like sticking your embedded CSS below the tag). To code HTML email properly, you need to learn a little HTML. It’s really not that hard.

9. Forgetting to test. Thoroughly. When you send HTML email, you’ve really got to test it in as many email applications you can. Then you have to test on different operating systems. Then different ISPs (we’ll explain shortly). If you keep things simple, and build a rock solid, thoroughly tested template for each newsletter, you won’t have to test so much. But you should always send at least a few campaigns to yourself before sending it out to your entire list.

10. Sending nothing but a big, gigantic graphic as their HTML email. Sigh, that’s what spammers do. And since most email programs block images by default, what do you think your recipients see when (if) they open your email? Many spam filters will block your email if you don’t have a healthy balance of images and text.

Direct Email Marketing – A website provide information about definition, history, key terms and concepts of email marketing, opt-in email advertising, email spam, legal requirement of email marketing, advantages and disadvantages of email marketing, email marketing campaign, web-based email marketing service providers and email marketing software.

Source : HTML Email

History Of Email Marketing

Email is probably a necessity to you, but there was a time when there was no email! Today email is considered the backbone of all digital communications. Just like the printing press 500 years before it, email is an effective and efficient means of mass distribution. Email also provides an easy way to conduct personal one-on-one dialogue.

Email is a way of sending messages or data to other people means of computers connected together in a network. Email actually predates the Internet, and was first used as a way for users of the same computer to leave messages for each other all the way back in 1961. Ray Tomlinson is credited with creating the first network email application in the year of 1971. He initiated the use of the @ sign and the address structure that we use today (username@domainname.com). Email was used to send messages to computers on the same network, and is still used for this purpose today.

It was only in 1993 that large network service providers, such as America Online and Delphi, started to connect their proprietary email systems to the Internet. This began the large scale adoption of Internet email as a global standard. Coupled with standards that had been created in the preceding twenty years, the Internet allowed users on different networks to send each other messages.

The first email spam dates back to 1978. Spam is defined as unsolicited commercial or bulk email, and today is said to account for 80 to 85% of all email (Waters, 2008). Direct marketing has long played an integral part in marketing campaigns, but the high cost meant that only large companies were able to pursue this. However, with the growth of the Internet, and the use of email to market directly to consumers, marketers have found these costs dropping, and the effectiveness increasing. That is the born of direct email marketing.

Source : History Of Email Marketing / History Of Email Marketing

Direct Email Marketing

Direct email marketing is a method of direct marketing which is using of electronic mail (email) as a means of communicating commercial messages to an audience. In other word, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered direct email marketing. Direct Email Marketing (Email Direct Marketing) is a marketing strategy to promote your product or service through the application of direct email communications. Direct Email Marketing represents the email you send to a customer, a prospect or public. Direct Email marketing is a tool for building relationships with both existing and potential customers.

We would like to invite you to visit http://email-marketing.web96.co.cc to know more information about direct email marketing. Information in the website including;

Direct Email Marketing - Direct Email marketing is a method of direct marketing which is using of electronic mail (email) as a means of communicating commercial messages to an audience. Every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered direct email marketing. Direct Email Marketing is a marketing strategy to promote your product or service through the application of direct email communications. Direct Email Marketing represents the email you send to a customer, a prospect or public.

Key Terms and Concepts of Direct Email Marketing - Share about the main key terms and concepts in direct email marketing such as opt-in, double opt-in, opt-out and email list est.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Email Marketing - Discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of direct email marketing.

Opt-in Email Advertising - Opt-in email advertising, or permission email marketing, is a method of advertising through email whereby the recipient of the advertisement has consented (agreed) to receive it. This method is one of several developed by email marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of direct email marketing and against spam email.

Email Spam - Email spam, known as unsolicited bulk Email, junk mail, or unsolicited commercial email, is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.

Legal Requirements of Email Marketing - he CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorizes a US$11,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient. Therefore, many commercial email marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the Act.

Email Based Marketing - Email based marketing means different things to different people. Some people see email based marketing as a critical communication link between consumers and the brands they love and trust, others will people see email based marketing as an intrusive marketing tool. Either way, the email based marketing today faces tough competition from the email communication that is now the backbone of our digital lifestyles.

Four Steps Of Email Marketing Planning

1. Define Your Goals - The first part of any direct email marketing campaign should involve planning around the goals of the campaign we expect to achieve. These will probably be in line with the goals of your web site such as sales generated, web traffic, inquiry received est., with direct email marketing campaign being developed as a tool to help you achieve those goals.

2. Develop Email List - Running a successful direct email marketing campaign requires that a business has a genuine opt-in database (opt-in list). This opt-in database, the list of subscribers who have agreed to allow your company to send them (subscribers) emails with marketing messages, is the most valuable asset of a direct email marketing campaign. Email Sign-in Form or Newsletter Subscription Form is the important tools for develop an email list especially opt-in email list.

3. Create an Email / HTML Email - HTML emails are the emails with all things. HTML emails can contain images, different fonts and hyperlinks. HTML email is the use of a subset of HTML to provide formatting and semantic mark-up capabilities in email that are not available with plain text.

4. Report Analysis for the Performance of Email Marketing - Tracking, analysing and optimising is key to growth of your direct email marketing campaign. Email tracking systems generate statistics in a user-friendly manner.

Web-based Email Marketing Services - Web-based email marketing service provider is a company provides email marketing services totally based web interaction with using internet browser. Service provided including create a email sign-up form, provide database to store your email list, provide newsletter template to create your HTML email, sending bulk email, provide various report for your performance analysis, images hosting, auto respond and email survey.

Email Marketing Software - Email marketing software solutions makes it easy for organizations of all sizes to create, send and track professional direct email marketing campaigns that give you an extra edge.

Two types of Email Marketing Software as following;

1. Professional Email Marketing Software


2. Free Email Marketing Software

Email Marketing

Email Marketing

What is email marketing?

Email marketing simply put is the use of Email (Electronic Mail) for marketing. It is a form of direct marketing strategy whereby a marketer or advertiser communicates information to current or potential customers. Email marketing is one of the oldest online marketing strategies that successful entrepreneurs employ in acquiring and retaining customers for their businesses. Email marketing, has been and will continue to be for a long while, an effective marketing tool.

There are different types of Emails and marketers send them for different reasons. For example advertising messages inserted as footnotes in ordinary emails. You find a lot of such short advertisements you in emails sent to you by friends especially those using free services like Yahoo, Hotmail etc. Many corporate organizations also add little advertisements as auto-signatures to their corporate emails.

Email Marketing Strategies

The various types of Emails and their goals can be easily classified as follows:

1. Direct Email – This involves sending a promotional message to customers or prospects. For example, an announcement of special sales.

2. Retention Email – These are emails meant to retain and encourage customers loyalty. They usually take the form of regular emails and are popularly refer to as newsletters. A newsletter even though it may carry promotional messages focuses on providing value to the recipient in the form of valuable information or entertainment. Its main goal is to establish a long-term relationship between the entrepreneur and the recipient.

3. Rented Email List – Sometimes, online marketers rent other peoples email list for their advertisement. For example, an entrepreneur who is just starting can put his advertisement in another online marketers Newsletter in other to reach a wider audience than he could possibly do by starting his own newsletter. There are many well established online marketers that sell advertisement space in their newsletter to other entrepreneurs.Emails composed and sent with the purpose of establishing, fostering, retaining or encouraging customer loyalty or patronage.

In several corporate organizations, email marketing is preferred to orthodox marketing tools such as Direct Mailing, Print Newsletter and Placing of advertisements in subscription magazines and newspapers. The reason for the preference is not far-fetched.

Benefits of Email Marketing

1. It provides an entrepreneur the ability to communicate with a large audience at a relatively low cost.

2. The entrepreneur has the opportunity to communicate specific details to a targeted audience.

3. The delivery time is short.

4. The effect or performance of the email marketing campaign can easily be tracked.

5. Unlike a website that requires the audience to visit, Email marketing delivers the message to the audience.

6. More than half of internet users spend more time checking their Emails than any other activity online.

7. It affords the entrepreneur the opportunity to interact with potential customers. Messages can be structured in such a way that upon request by a potential customer, a predetermined series of responses are delivered automatically to the potential customer.

Opt-In Email Marketing System

The Opt-In Email Marketing System provides ready solution for each of those hurdles listed above while retaining all the benefits of a traditional Email Marketing System.

Opt-In Email Marketing is a system whereby potential email recipients are requested to give permission that commercial emails should be forwarded to them from an online marketer. The email recipients will be requested via an opt-in form (squeeze webpage) to voluntarily fill in their names and email address in order to be added to the mail list of the online marketer. Once such request is made via the opt-in form, a confirmation link will be sent in an email to the email address filled into the opt-in form. The email will request that the recipient confirm that he or she requested to be added to the email list. If the confirmation link is not clicked by the recipient, no further emails will be sent to that particular email address. However, if the confirmation link is click, then the recipient will be added to the marketer’s email list for future correspondence.

The Opt-In Email Marketing System eliminates the issue of your emails being considered SPAM. Also, the Opt-In Email Marketing System ensures that each email sent to customers have embedded an unsubscribe link that will enable the recipient unsubscribe from the mail list. I recommend that you use an Opt-In Email Marketing System provided by a reputable company like Aweber or Getresponse. Even though the service will cost you money, it is better than getting involved in a lawsuit for unsolicited email.

Two Quick Tips For Your Email Marketing Campaign Startup

To avoid getting your Email Marketing Campaign classified as crappy because of poor design or message, get a reliable professional copy-writer to design each email message. He will ensure that the design and content of the email message is professionally done. That will reduce to the barest minimum the risk of your Marketing Emails being deleted without being read by the recipients.

Secondly, get the service of a reliable firm like Aweber or GetResponse to handle the delivery and tracking of your email marketing campaign. They will ensure that your email marketing campaign will be based on Opt-In Email Marketing System.