As email service providers continue to develop and implement improved filtering systems designed to block spam, marketers must also evolve by increasing their focus on catering to customer preferences and avoiding spam complaints.
In addition to complying with regional email marketing regulations, the following is a list of recommended best practices to increase deliverability and avoid receiving complaints, thus optimizing the success of your email campaigns:
- Make sure you have been granted permission to email your recipients. Permission can be granted through an online opt-in process, or you might have been provided explicit permission offline. Developing a positive relationship with your recipients is the most important step you can take to help your email campaigns reach their inboxes.
- Send your recipients only email content that is relevant to what they have requested. If you start emailing irrelevant offers, they are more likely to unsubscribe, or to report you as a spammer.
- Give your recipients an easy and obvious way to opt-out or unsubscribe. If a recipient opts out or unsubscribes, remove them promptly from your mailings. Ideally, this happens immediately, using an unsubscribe link. However, if not automated, the request must be executed within a specified time period, according to email marketing regulations in most countries. For example, under the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, a contact unsubscribe request must be completed within ten business days of receipt. In addition, it reflects favorably upon your company when you act in a responsible manner.
Unsubscribe links are typically placed in the footer of the email. The following are common examples of unsubscribe text:
If you would not like to receive future communications from Oracle, please remove yourself by visiting http://www.oracle.com/unsubscribe.html.
You are currently subscribed to receive email as john.smith@email.com. You can modify your options or unsubscribe at any time by signing into your account at oracle.com/emailprograms.
If you'd like to unsubscribe from Oracle emails, click here or write to us at Oracle Corporation, 500 Oracle Pkwy, Redwood Shores, CA 94065.
You are receiving this message because you have requested information and updates sent by email. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this message with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line or simply click the following link: Unsubscribe
If you would rather not receive future e-mail updates from Oracle, please unsubscribe here. We respect your privacy and never share your information.
We sent you this offer because you are a valued subscriber to one of our newsletters. If you no longer wish to have these offers e-mailed to you, click here or reply to this email and place REMOVE in the subject line.
If you want to completely unsubscribe from any e-mail communication from Oracle, please send an e-mail to: unsubscribe@oracle-mail.com with the following in the subject line: REMOVE [EMAIL]
- Never fear the Unsubscribe. Remember that if a person unsubscribes from your email list, they probably are not your target customer anyway. Email recipients must be highly interested in your email, otherwise there is no point in marketing to them in the first place.
- Provide a valid postal address for your company in each email message. This gives recipients a way to contact you or your company. It is the law when marketing by email in most countries, and it provides another avenue of communication with the recipient. Postal addresses are typically listed in the footer of the email. The following is a common example of how to incorporate your postal address as part of your email:
Oracle Corporation
500 Oracle Pkwy,
Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA
Oracle Corporation | 500 Oracle Pkwy. | Redwood Shores, CA 94065 | USA
- Brand your From and ReplyTo lines. The From line must always be recognizable and clearly branded, for example, using an address of
newsletters@yourcompany.com
. If you use a From label that a recipient does not recognize, it can prompt them to unsubscribe, even if they are actually interested in your services. The value that appears in the From field must always be a valid email address or a merge field email address, such as ${Account.Owner Email Address}
, rather than ${Account.Owner}
.
- Make sure your Subject line accurately reflects the content of your email. It must refer to your brand name, products, or services. Keep the subject line short. Whenever possible, personalize the subject line to your recipient.
For example: VIP Invitation: Oracle Event Series – Email Marketing Outlook 2008.
- Add to your address book. Remind subscribers to add your email address to their address book. This reinforces your true email identity to your customers, in addition to providing further deliverability benefits, such as bypassing certain levels of filtering at some mailbox providers.
For example: To ensure delivery to your inbox please add replies@oracle-mail.com to your address book now.
- Privacy Policy link. Provide a link to your privacy policy, to explain your policy regarding the use of the recipient's email address, including any potential internal and external sharing of it.
- Combine images and text in your emails. Be sure to use the ALT tag in html for each image. Then, if the recipients' preferences cause graphics to be stripped from your emails, they are at least left with a text description in place of the image, rather than a placeholder (for example, in Microsoft email clients, the image placeholder appears as a red
X
).
- Personalize messages as much as possible. Tailoring the content of the email to the specific recipient provides the best results. You can personalize the To, From, ReplyTo, Subject, and Body areas of your emails.
- Use consistent visual branding in your email messages. This includes factors such as logo, font and color schemes. For example, you might want to match your email look and feel to that of your corporate Web site. Using consistent structure and organization in your emails also contributes to recognition by your recipients.
- Use separators in the text version of your email. Separate the relevant sections of your text-based email with dashed lines, similar to using a horizontal rule in Word or HTML. Separators make it easier to read a text-based email.
- Send a subscription confirmation email. Do this immediately after adding an email address to your list. Use this opportunity to reinforce what the recipient has signed up for and welcome the subscriber to your service. In this confirmation email, provide links to your privacy policy as it relates to the treatment of email addresses, and include an unsubscribe mechanism. It is also good practice to require that the subscriber click a link in this confirmation email to double opt-in.
For example: You are receiving this because you signed up to receive our newsletter at oracle.com. If you no longer wish to receive email communications from us, you can cancel your subscription by clicking the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of any future email message.
- Test thoroughly. Perform test emails before sending out the main campaign, to ensure all links and images work correctly, that the email renders correctly, and that it is delivered to your test inboxes successfully.
- Refine your recipient list. Further segment your list, try presenting different offers, using different subject lines, and mailing on different days of the week to determine when you receive the best response. Use split testing to small subgroups of recipients before sending to the main group, to see which of your emails had the best response. Split tests might compare one subject line to another, or might use different images in the body of the email.
Email marketing best practices do not end when the email has been sent. The way you manage the responses to your message has as great an impact to the ongoing deliverability of your email campaigns as the actual content.