As the modern era is the era of technology, communication through electronic means is becoming more popular and commonplace by the day. Email marketing takes advantage of people’s affinity for the internet, promoting products and services through the use of emails.
The effects of Email Marketing can be bolstered by utilizing customer databases, called Database Marketing. Database Marketing can be defined as making use of customer databases and Business data insight you need to generate a targeted audience. By creating a more specific list of consumers who are likely to have an interest in a particular service or product, the chances of customers availing or responding to marketing emails dramatically increase.
Email Lists
Email lists are records which serve as a catalogue of email addresses of different consumers. These can be classified into four types, as described below:
1. Transactional List. This is obtained by acquiring the consent and permission of the client, establishing an ongoing relationship with them. This is the safest and most accepted type of list, as conflicts between the provider and the client rarely, if ever, arise from transactional records.
2. Web-Researched List. This can be secured by visiting the business websites of the listed recipients, allowing for a more updated list than compiled lists.
3. Compiled List. This is the most common type of list that is purchased. Its data is collected from the public domain: such as publications, directories, and other sources of information.
4. Opt-in List. This is the list of recipients who have opted and agreed to receive marketing messages through email. However, this “agreement” commonly pertains to one between the recipient and a very specific supplier about a very specific topic; most never truthfully agreed to third-party messages, which could cause a dispute with the recipient. Also, be wary of suppliers of opt-in lists; ensure that their list is backed up by evidence of the recipient’s desire to opt-in.
How to Send Emails to Purchased Lists: Opt-in, Compiled, and Web-Researched
A common belief within the digital marketing community: you should NEVER email a purchased list. This idea stems from other service providers who are unable to do it because their software is modified in a way that disallows sending emails to purchased lists. Don’t let your guard down just yet; mistakenly sending marketing emails to a purchased list would cause repercussions. If done correctly, however, the results can be very useful and beneficial for the growth of your business. Thus, to put your nerves at ease, here are four myths about emailing purchased lists that have to be debunked:
1. Sending emails to a purchased list is illegal. This misconception can be rooted from the existence of laws like the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act) and CASL (Canada’s Anti-Spam Law), which impose rules and regulations about commercial emails, but do not explicitly illegalize purchasing email lists nor sending emails from said lists.
2. Emails send to purchased lists won’t reach their recipients’ inboxes. This frequently happens because companies use the wrong software or program, specifically those that are not tailored for sending emails to purchased lists. Thus, the solution for this problem boils down to choosing and using the correct software; a list of recommended software will be provided at the end of this article.
3. Purchased lists are dead lists. Companies that earn profit from selling email lists to businesses have a certain quality of work to maintain, else they risk losing their clients and, in turn, their revenue. However, it’s also unlikely that 100% of the components of the list are active, but don’t worry, some specific programs and services can identify inactive email addresses by verifying their validity.
4. There are no assistive services for sending emails to purchased lists. This is where the second myth is rooted from, so once this is disproven, so is the second one. The most well-known software designed explicitly for sending emails to a purchased list is Email Lead Generation which was developed by Infodataplace in 2011. By using similar software, one can utilize purchased lists to their maximum potential.
List of Other Software for Sending Emails to Purchased Lists:
- Direct Aim Media
- Infodataplace
- Database Marketing
Sending Commercial Email Messages: Other Methods
1. Email Delivery Services.
If one were to read the Terms of Services of most email delivery services, you’d find that most contain legal disclaimers stating that you can only utilize permission-based or transactional lists. Some of these delivery services (such as MailChimp and Constant Contact) are stricter with the implementation of these terms, while many (such as Email Lead Generation, Direct Aim Media, and MaxMail) are more lenient with them.
The lenient ones commonly offer a price for sending hundreds of thousands of emails to different people, without requesting a verification of permissions from the recipients. This can be considered a “go signal” to utilize these loopholes in their procedure to your utmost advantage. However, take note that if your recipients send too many complaints regarding the relevancy of the messages they received, you will be banned from ever availing their services again, which is where Database Marketing comes in.
Database Marketing, as previously explained, allows you to limit your recipients to those who have shown interest in the same type of product or service that your business offers. By combining the strength of Database Marketing with that of Email Marketing, it becomes increasingly unlikely to receive complaints from the recipients of the commercial emails you have sent, allowing you to continue to avail email delivery services.
Remember that every email delivery services should provide a report that contains the number of times the email was opened and read, some recipients that unsubscribed, and which accounts sent soft and hard bounces. In the occasion that an email delivery service does not provide this information, it is very likely that they have been blocked, and that your commercial emails were never delivered; a waste of time and investment.
Note:
A hard bounce usually contains reports such as “unknown user,” “non-existent domain,” and “non-existent account.” If you received a hard bounce, be sure to delete the address from your database, as these accounts are never going to receive your emails.
On the other hand, a soft bounce commonly reports “full mailbox,” “blocked due to content,” and “quota exceeded.” Soft bounces indicate that the email could be delivered at a later time or if the content were to be modified to pass specific mail filters.
How Should I Choose My Email Delivery Service?
Before subscribing to a particular email delivery service, always search on Google and The Rip off Report to check if they’ve received any particular complaint about their service. Be very careful of scams and false reports. For further information about how long a particular email delivery service has been in the business, you may check their Whois record. You may also ask them for evidence or testimonials from their previous clients, verifying the legitimacy of the service that they are offering.
If it’s the first time that you are availing their services, remember to include several email addresses that are active and under your control to check if the message was delivered. To take it a step further, add a few non-existent or addresses and see if they will report a bounce. These are a few precautionary procedures you could do to verify the service of a particular email delivery service.
2. Send commercial emails through the use of your internet service provider, web hosting account, or web-based services.
This alternate method is quite self-explanatory. By creating and using multiple accounts, it becomes possible to not go beyond the restrictions for each account and send thousands of emails per day.
What follows is a guide for web-based services (Google, Yahoo!, etc.) and internet service providers (Verizon, Comcast, etc.) It would do you well to remember that email policies can be changed without prior notice, so just to be sure, contact your provider and inquire about the limits and restrictions of their email send rate before sending vast amounts of mail to enormous addresses.
Web-based Services: Restrictions and Limitations
1. Gmail
Send limit: 500 recipients per message
Additional limits: 10Mb per message (attachments included)
2. Yahoo!
Send limit: 100 recipients per message; 500 emails per day
Additional limits: 10Mb per message using free Yahoo! Mail; 20Mb per message using Yahoo! Small Business Mail
3. Windows Live (Hotmail, Outlook, etc.)
Send limit: 100 recipients per message; 300 emails per day
Additional limits: 50Mb per attachment; 10Gb per message
Internet Service Providers: Restrictions and Limitations
1. Verizon
Send limit: 100 recipients per message; 500 emails per hour
Additional limits: 2Mb per message
2. EarthLink
Send limit: 1000 emails per day
2. Comcast
Send limit: 100 recipients per message; 1000 emails per day
Additional limits: 15Mb per message Policies these are the conditions which will help you to deploy email based on the boundaries of the free email sending service providers.
Aashish Sharma is an Internet Research Analyst and an aspiring social media marketer. He possesses hands-on experience in optimizing and promoting websites on leading search engines and web media. His passion is to keep updated with what masters of the internet such as Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook etc. are up to innovate & deliver. At EntrepreneurYork, he aims to be a part of most active online community and most widely-read blogs on the web, covering the insights of EntrepreneurYork Magazine that will help in preparing the leaders of tomorrow.
