Email marketing is an incredible tool for expanding your business and making your brand recognizable, but bad email practices could cause you to lose potential customers and create a bad reputation for your company. In this day and age, where an awful lot of marketing is done on the internet, it’s important for your company to have a trustworthy online reputation. The first step in gaining trust and reliability is complying with email marketing laws.

Understanding and complying with the CAN-SPAM Act is crucial for any business wishing to dive into email marketing. It’s important that you follow these laws because each violation could cost you thousands of dollars in fines, and more importantly, destroy the reputation of your company. Ultimately, refusing to follow these email regulations could get you marked as a spammer, and that could put an end to your email marketing efforts for years to come.

A few things to remember about CAN-SPAM laws—

•You must provide a clear way to unsubscribe or opt-out of future emails and you must honor those requests. This means—you need to give people the option of NOT receiving your emails.

•Avoid using deceptive subject lines. You need to make it clear what your email is about and what you’re offering.

•You must provide the location of your company or business in the email. Include a physical address or a P.O. Box where you can be reached.

There are more aspects of the CAN-SPAM laws to look out for, but these are the basics you must adhere to.  These laws are readily available online, and reading through them will help you remain compliant.

Once you’ve covered your bases on the legal front, email marketing becomes more about how to entice potential customers and prove to them you’ve got something to offer. Since the average person receives many emails a day, how can you avoid having your emails deleted without even being opened? How do you make sure your message will at least reach your potential customers?

While there is no way to guarantee your emails are being delivered, there are definitely some things you can avoid in order to increase your chances. Included below are things you SHOULD NOT do in your email marketing campaigns:

1. Tell your potential customers that they NEED your product. Obviously, the point of marketing is to get people interested in what you’re selling, but trying to force your product on people will not be fruitful. You need to make it clear what you’re offering and how it can benefit them, but ultimately, you need to allow your potential customers to make their own decisions. If you are respectful, people will remember and possibly think of you again in the future.

2. Make your email too long. If your emails are overloaded with information, your readers will be more likely to delete it or disregard the message. Developing email creatives can be difficult, don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be; they should be short and sweet—with only the necessary information provided. The receivers of your emails only have so much time to spend searching through their inbox, so make it worth their effort.

3. Make your email confusing. Your marketing message needs to come through loud and clear, and your potential customers need to understand what your business is. If they don’t understand, they’re more likely to mark your emails as spam. Make your subject line clear and directly related to the content of your email. Be honest and upfront.

4. Ignore interested recipients. If you ignore someone’s questions about your product or they can’t find an easy way to contact you, people will lose interest immediately. You need to make your customers feel like you care and you’re interested in their business. You do want more business, right? You need to follow up and make sure your message comes across. If someone expresses interest in your product or services, they just became a lead; follow up and make sure you don’t leave hot leads on the table.

5. Design a poor email creative. Your marketing email should be about 60% text and 40% image. People reading your emails will not want to load images unless they know what your email is about, which is why you want to avoid image only emails. Work at making your emails visually appealing and you might find that more potential customers are reading them. Remember that many people will be reading your emails on a mobile device, so they need to be formatted accordingly. To learn more about designing effective email creatives, please click here.

If you make a conscious effort to avoid what’s listed above, your email marketing campaign should be off to a great start. Following the laws regarding spam is of utmost importance, so make sure you take the correct measures to ensure you don’t make any unnecessary mistakes. Good luck getting started!

Email marketing is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to get your company out there. If you have any questions about our mail marketing services, please don’t hesitate in contacting one of our experienced sales representatives at (888) 578-3282.

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