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Imagine you spent an enormous amount of time creating your masterpiece. You filled your letter with unique content, your designers made a beautiful design. In other words, it was born to engage new customers. However, nothing happens next. You ask yourself what possibly could go wrong but can’t find an answer. So what to do next?
Maybe it even didn’t reach the end user and ended up in an email box? This means that all your hard work creating your content, building your opt-in email list, and designing your perfect mail could possibly go in vain.
In email marketing, it’s crucial to play by the rules so that the Internet Service Provider should understand that your users are interested in your email. However, you might not even realize that your behavior may resemble a strategy of a true spammer. For example, sending a letter without permission.
In this post, we’ll explain why you shouldn’t send your emails without a permission and what worst case scenarios can be.
Moreover, if you get to the end of the article, you’ll find a guide that will help you understand how to simply send mass unique emails using …
Why is mailing permission is so important?
Permission is an important brick in building a respectful relationship between you and your subscribers who want to receive your email campaigns.
On the one hand, if you build permission-based email lists, you’ll enjoy high open and click-through rates on your campaigns. Such a strategy allows driving significant levels of sales and revenue from your email marketing initiatives.
On the other hand, if you keep sending emails to people, who haven’t given their consent, they would probably mark your emails as spam. This means you can lose your potential customers. That’s why it’s in your best interest to play by the rules.
So what are the scenarios of sending you marketing emails without permission?
Basically, there are 3 possible scenarios:
Spam Filters
One of the scenarios of being blacklisted by your Internet Service Provider is spam filters. They can detect some kind of spammy content and flag your email campaigns.
At the same time, a Firewall could block any email with a URLs that have been reported as spam or blacklisted. And now imagine a situation. Some person writes an email with one of your domains, which has been blacklisted. What happens next? The ISP blocks that user’s email too.
If we dig deeper, we’ll see that ISPs and anti-spam services tend to share their records with each other. And if you’re blocked by one, you could also be blocked by others.
Spam Reports
Let us consider an example what happens when someone marks an email as spam.
As soon as a letter has been marked as spam, an Internet Service Provider gets a notification. Hereafter, the ISP tracks the number of spam reports (on their network) that relate to this specific letter.
If the ISP identifies that there are enough people sent spam reports, the ISP blacklists you.
Backlists
If you’re in a blacklist, any message you send will be automatically blocked. The main problem is that once you found yourself in the blacklist, it’ll be extremely difficult to get yourself removed.
To get a better understanding of how a blacklist works, take a quick look at the diagram below.
As you can see, if the incoming mail can’t meet the criteria for legitimate mail, the IP gets into the blacklist.
Examples of Compliant and Non-Compliant Lists
Now when we understand the true importance of getting permission and making your mailing list legal, it’s important to understand when your letter is compliant and when it’s not.
Let’s take a look at real-life situations. However, keep in mind that these tips are educational only and can’t be taken as legal advice.
So what if…
What if #1
What if people made a purchase from my store and I asked them whether they want to subscribe to my newsletters and promotional letters?
If people subscribed to your emails, you have the full right for sending your mailing lists. However, be aware of boxes that are checked by default as they require no action.
What if #2
What if I bought a list of thousands of emails from this guy? Can I use them?
Unfortunately, it’s not recommended to use not permission-based emails or those, which didn’t result in opens and clicks for your campaigns. As a result, this can lead to high bounce rates that could damage to your sender reputation.
What if #3
I have an online store and I decided to post some visiting cards to advertise my store by asking people to subscribe to my newsletter. Can I use their emails?
Great job! You collected a bunch of permission-based emails. Nevertheless, sometimes it may be difficult to prove the offline collection methods. Make sure you saved a copy of opt-in cards.
What if #4
I have decided to run a competition and collected users emails to allow them to participate in a contest. Can I use these emails for sending my mailing lists?
Despite the fact that people wilfully gave their emails, you didn’t specifically ask them for receiving promotional email campaigns/newsletters from you. So it’s better not to use them in your mailing lists.
How to Send a Mass Unique Emails Using Mail Merge?
When working in email marketing, you may need to send a bunch of similar letters (with some kind of unique content, such as text, format, and graphics). Hopefully, there are solutions that can save much time and efforts.
One of them is known as Mail Merge. Let’s take a closer look at it.
When you may find this tool helpful? Imagine, you need to send a bunch of emails with the same text, though you want to make your letter unique, for example, change the subject, address, as well as the name unique.
The main advantage of Mail Merge is that it allows making each recipient of the message the sole recipient (unlike sending an email to a group of people).
And now let us guide you through the process sending mass mails.
Install an Extension and Create a Spreadsheet
The first thing you need to is to follow the link and install an extension.
As soon as you installed, it’ll take you in a spreadsheet.
Click the Add-ons button, then go to Mail Merge with Attachments and select Enable Mail Merge.
Hereafter, select Create Merge Template.
Import your contacts
You’ll also need a list of people, whom you’ll be sending your mails. For this purpose, you need to import your contacts. Click Add-ons>Mail Merge with Attachments>Import Google Contacts.
You’ll be asked to choose a google contact group, which you want to be imported. You can also create a new group with all the contacts you want to include in your mail merge. As soon as you import it, you’ll get something like this.
Write your letter
Now you can start working on your letter. To do this, go to Add-ons>Mail Merge with Attachments>Configure Mail Merge.
As you can see, there’s a new window on the right side of the screen. It’s called Configure Mail Merge and includes several fields including Sender’s Email, Sender’s Name, CC Addresses, BCC Addresses, and Reply-to Address.
You can also create your own email template using a visual editor, gmail draft or coding your own HTML. We’ll show you how to write your email, using the case of coding your own HTML.
As you can see, such field as First Name, Executive Name, and Place will be replaced by the information you put into your sheet.
As soon as you’re sure your letter is good to go, you can test yourself using an option Send a test email.
To make sure the formatting is correct, there’s an option Send a test email.
As you can see, everything works good and all our recipients got similar messages.
The Bottom Line
A decent email marketing strategy doesn’t mean the superb quality of content you bring to your customers as well as permission marketing is not only about following the law and avoiding to irritate your customers.
Primarily and mainly, this practice helps secure approval from your customers and keep them engaged all the time. Mainly, it’s about emphasizing with your customers and making sure that their experience is the sort of experience you would want for yourself.
Remember that email marketing is a powerful way to connect with clients and bring much benefit to business. At the end of the day, the main goal of your business is to make sales.
As the proverb goes: “The money is in the list.” And this list refers to your email list. Combine your marketing strategy with an automated one and you’ll achieve great results.
Hopefully, our advices will help you make an effective, reliable and most importantly, legal strategy.
In any event, make your users needs the first priority and the results will be forthcoming.
