If you're new to email marketing, we should go over some basic principles before you start sending campaigns. We'll go over best practices, legal issues, and how to measure your overall performance...

The Definition of Spam

If you get an unsolicited email from someone you don't know, is that spam? Not necessarily. If you get an email that was obviously sent to a whole list of people, is that spam? Not necessarily. So what's spam? Spam is when you send an unsolicited email to a whole list of people. So let's say you just bought a list of email addresses from some local business organization. These are great prospects for your business, right? You want to send them an email with a relevant offer they can't refuse... It's spam if you upload that list into euro.message LIVE (or any other email service provider like us) and send that list an unsolicited email. It's not spam if you take that list, and write personal, one-to-one emails to each recipient, and the content is unique for each recipient.

Royal Screw-ups to Avoid

If you are reading this guide, you're obviously interested in doing the right thing. You're probably not an evil spammer. But even the most well-intentioned legitimate email marketer gets reported for spamming. Do you know how you get reported? Some people think it requires a lot of work. Actually, all it takes is for one recipient to click a little button in his email program.

When he clicks his "this is junk" or "report spam" button, a little alert gets sent to his ISP. Then that ISP sends a warning to the sender (so long as the sender has responsibly signed up for that ISP's feedback loop). If an ISP sends you 1-5 warnings, you're in trouble. 5-10, and you can expect your emails to get throttled. More than that (some of them say less than 1% of your list) and your email server gets blocked. None of your emails will get through to that ISP anymore (unless you can provide proof of opt-in for those complainers).

And ISPs aren't just blocking email servers anymore. They're scanning reported spam for URLs and domain names. If they find your company's domain name in reported spam, they'll block any future emails they receive with that domain name in it (no matter where it was sent from, or who sent it).So it's very easy to get blacklisted. When that happens, it can take months to get your name cleared (if ever). Usually, companies get blacklisted because they made some simple little (avoidable) mistake.

Double Opt-in

We highly recommend the double opt-in method when managing your email lists.

Double opt-in is fast replacing the (single) opt-in method, where someone submits a form, and bam---they're added to a list. There are too many chances for someone to get signed up to a list without his permission, either erroneously or maliciously. And there's no need to even discuss the old opt-out method anymore. That's getting phased out due to all the spam complaints marketers get, from people who never saw the opt-out check. Don't be so desperate to grow your list that you put your company's reputation on the line.

Pros & Cons

There was once a big concern about double opt-in, where marketers complained, "but nobody's going to click the confirmation link! I'll lose all my prospects!" This isn't a huge issue anymore. People are used to the double opt-in method these days. Plus, it just looks more professional. Sure, if you compare a double opt-in list to a single opt-in list side-by-side, the single opt-in list will be larger. It's just too easy to subscribe (anyone) to a single opt-in list. But it will also have more "accidental" members, a higher bounce and unsubscribe rate, higher abuse complaint rate, and lower response rate. Double opt-in ensures that every single recipient truly wants to hear from you.