Be prepared to overcome these email marketing hurdles.
At Admail.net, we feel that it is our responsibility to aid our customers in navigating the complicated rules of email marketing while educating them about the possible dangers and pitfalls.
Many of our customers use Admail because they are unsure about the technical and legal aspects of email marketing. While we are always available for consultation, and do our best to get information out to our customers, there are still quite a few common misconceptions about the industry and a multitude of misunderstandings. Understanding the industry and the possible issues that may arise will serve to maximize your ROI and minimize your marketing headaches. Today we're going to address some of the issues email marketers face.
CAN SPAM is a federal law with penalties and you are responsible for understanding and following it.
The CAN SPAM act was put in place by the federal trade commission with hopes of regulating the sending of unsolicited material over the web. It's no joke, each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000. Luckily, the FTC goes out of their way to make it perfectly clear what needs to be done to be in compliance with the act. All the information you need can be found on the FTC website, here is just one example of a compliance guide.
Spamhause and Spamcop are self appointed guardians, or vigilantes, of the internet.
Not familiar with these names? They are organizations dedicated to stopping abusive bulk mailing, but they can occasionally be over zealous. They hold no real legal authority and therefore can’t enact any legal ramifications. Despite this, they do have a following and can hamper deliverability as much as 30% if you get on one of their blacklists. Spamhause is currently considered the most credible and is more widely followed. Spamcop is a subsidiary of Ironport which is owned by Cisco. Their practices concerning honey pots and using decoy addresses are questionable. There are approximately 150 organizations of this type with varying reputations and levels of creditability, ending up on the bad side of any of them can hamper deliverabilty and create problems. We monitor the reputation of all of our IPs, if one of these organizations has an issue, we resolve it. Our users, however, will be held accountable for their mail practices as defined in our terms of service.
Hotmail addresses are throw away addresses.
Based on the domain of an email address, you can get a general idea about it's quality. With Hotmail, consumer typically use them once to make a purchase or sign up for a free services and then never use them again. This is a generalization of course, but statistically it's true. Yahoo addresses are almost as bad, though recently they have partnered with some of the phone companies and as result some legitimate businesses are using them as a business contact address. Other free services like Gmail fare better in reliability but can also be abused. One algorithm used by ISP's, such as Yahoo and Hotmail, to determine the likelihood that a source is spamming, is to look at the total number of non-deliverable emails being sent to them from that source. When you analyze your email list, you can get a general idea of the quality based on the breakdown of address domains. If you have a very high number of Hotmail or Yahoo addresses, don't be surprised if you have deliverabilty issues. The quality of your list may be very low.
BUY LISTS AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Admail.net supports organically grown lists only. If you purchase a list we provide no guarantee that our compliance team will allow you to send to that list.
These are several of the issues that all email marketers face. Don't let them intimidate you. You're already in a better position because you are aware of them. Companies all over the world navigate these hurdles every day, you can too! If you are an Admail.net customer, you have a partner who is always there to help you do things right.
Relax, you're in good hands.