How To Stop Being Accused of Sending Spam To Your Email List
If you are having a problem with spam complaints, here are some reasons this may be happening and tips that you can use to lower your complaint ratio.
First, everything (as in all marketing) depends on your market itself. Not everyone's market is "how to make more money on the internet". Those people, tend to be a little bit more net savvy than the average market.
Just yesterday, a family member sent their son's report card (showing off his straight A's) as an email attachment to my mother-in-law and one other person.
My mother-in-law forwarded the email to my wife and said she "doesn't know why they want to post this all over the internet"
Now, since my mother-in-law is not very net savvy she didn't realize it was an email attachment going to only 2 people. In her mind, this report card was posted somewhere online so a ton of people could see it.
She is not very internet savvy. And it's possible a lot of your subscribers are just like her.
They may not understand the difference in the delete button and "this is spam" button. Therefore they may use them interchangeably.
Unless you want to spend time educating your list about the difference in the two buttons, you will have to find another way to solve this problem.
Also, the way things currently are in the industry, it doesn't matter if it is wrong that people can push the "this is spam" button even when you are not sending spam.
This is the currently how things work so you have to find a way to work within these current rules. If you don't, your mailing list service provider will take certain steps if your spam complaint gets too high.
These include forcing you to use double opt-in (if you don't already) and possibly removing your account altogether.
Some procedures to use...
1) Email your list more often. Perhaps on a regular schedule. Or, at the end of your current email, build anticipation for your next email so they are on the lookout for it. If people haven't heard from you in awhile, they may forget they ever subscribed to your list.
2) When they took you up on your offer to get something free in echange for their email address, do you mention you will be sending them other emails as well? Or that by giving you their email address they are also subscribing to your mailing list.
3) Are the followups related to or reference what they signed up for to obtain in the first place? If you gave them the "Free Report About X" in exchange for their email address, did you followups ask what they thought about this report? If they have used the info in it?
If they wanted X, and were willing to give their email address in exchange for X, then talk about X - Not Z
4) Try putting a short paragraph at the very beginning of your email telling them they are receiving this email because they gave you their email address in an opt-in box and that they can unsubscribe anytime by clicking the link at the very bottom of this email.
( I learned this from Ben Hart - thanks Ben...)
First, everything (as in all marketing) depends on your market itself. Not everyone's market is "how to make more money on the internet". Those people, tend to be a little bit more net savvy than the average market.
Just yesterday, a family member sent their son's report card (showing off his straight A's) as an email attachment to my mother-in-law and one other person.
My mother-in-law forwarded the email to my wife and said she "doesn't know why they want to post this all over the internet"
Now, since my mother-in-law is not very net savvy she didn't realize it was an email attachment going to only 2 people. In her mind, this report card was posted somewhere online so a ton of people could see it.
She is not very internet savvy. And it's possible a lot of your subscribers are just like her.
They may not understand the difference in the delete button and "this is spam" button. Therefore they may use them interchangeably.
Unless you want to spend time educating your list about the difference in the two buttons, you will have to find another way to solve this problem.
Also, the way things currently are in the industry, it doesn't matter if it is wrong that people can push the "this is spam" button even when you are not sending spam.
This is the currently how things work so you have to find a way to work within these current rules. If you don't, your mailing list service provider will take certain steps if your spam complaint gets too high.
These include forcing you to use double opt-in (if you don't already) and possibly removing your account altogether.
Some procedures to use...
1) Email your list more often. Perhaps on a regular schedule. Or, at the end of your current email, build anticipation for your next email so they are on the lookout for it. If people haven't heard from you in awhile, they may forget they ever subscribed to your list.
2) When they took you up on your offer to get something free in echange for their email address, do you mention you will be sending them other emails as well? Or that by giving you their email address they are also subscribing to your mailing list.
3) Are the followups related to or reference what they signed up for to obtain in the first place? If you gave them the "Free Report About X" in exchange for their email address, did you followups ask what they thought about this report? If they have used the info in it?
If they wanted X, and were willing to give their email address in exchange for X, then talk about X - Not Z
4) Try putting a short paragraph at the very beginning of your email telling them they are receiving this email because they gave you their email address in an opt-in box and that they can unsubscribe anytime by clicking the link at the very bottom of this email.
( I learned this from Ben Hart - thanks Ben...)
Kind Regards
Richelo Killian
Email Deliverability Consulting
Free Email Marketing Tutorial