Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Email Opt-in techniques and Deliverability

Email Opt-in techniques and Deliverability - Part of 4Rs of Email Marketing

Opt-in means that your prospects and customers have chosen to communicate with you. Opt-in status “yes” means that the user wants to communicate with you or your company so its fine your communication is not unsolicited. Also your email should comply with the CAN SPAM act.

There are a lot of ways that marketers leverage to create an opt-in status of a user.
Some of the questions that you should ask to see how you are building database.

· How do you collect consent from recipients to send commercial or promotional email: double opt-in, opt-in with verification; opt-in; preselected option with verification; or other?
· How do you collect consent to share email addresses with third parties or affiliates: double opt-in, opt-in with verification; opt-in; pre-selected option with verification; or other?
· How do you determine whether third parties who provide you email addresses have obtained their users’ consent: in writing; reviewed their consent method; reviewed the URL where the third party obtained consent; or other?
· Do you send commercial or promotional email based on prior business relationships but without prior consent?
· Do you require users to accept your commercial or promotional email as a condition of doing business with you?

You can run whitepaper, survey, e-book, research reports, webzines, webinar download campaigns, and generate opt-ins. You can look at even banner ads or you can hire in some space in newsletters or run a contest or even better may be a viral campaign etc depending on your business needs.

Here are two email opt-in and deliverability guides from Email Labs which are a must read.
-EmailLabs – Grow Email Opt-In List

-Email Deliverabilty Guide

2 comments:

Gagan K said...

It is nice to see opts in Box but I came across Privacy and Electronic Communications ( EC Directive) Regulations 2003.The regulations apply to all organisations that send out marketing by telephone, fax, automated calling system, email, SMS , MMS or using any other form of electronic communication.

I think following this include an opt-out box, which allows the user to select to opt-out of email marketing communications.

The benefits of opt-out over opt-in are clear – where the default position presumes the right to market, and requires no further action by the recipient, average collection rates are considerably higher, meaning more emails can be sent to more people.
The best way of achieving this is to include an opt-out tick box as a part of the data protection notice.

Unknown said...

Thanks Gagan for visiting my blog. I like the way you think. The opt-out box is a good idea, actually how many organizations are doing it these days is by providing a one click unsbscribe link. Which automatically unsubscribes you from the mailing lists.

However, I am not aware of any standard tool for SMS/MMS/FAX. Mobile marketing association has laid down the guidelines and best practices for the marketing channels and companies are leveraging DND Do not disturb directories on there websites to opt people out.

However, apart from it, I am not sure if the mobile advertising and marketing solution providers have the capability to provide unsubscribe options apart from SMS replies to DND.

Keep reading and sharing your idea.

-Sachin

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