Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Hotmail users miss out of great deals

Like most marketers I use email as one of my main routes to market. It's obvious why, it's cheap, quick, easy to test and gives instant results.

The hardest bit of doing email marketing though is the fact that some people are so afraid of email that they hide away and won't let you talk to them even when they've given you permission.

I'm taking mainly about Hotmail users, but plenty of other people are guilty as well.

Hotmail users feel more than happy to come and register on my site and ask for services. I'm grateful for that because without them I'd have no custom. The problem comes when I email them about offers which are relevant to them. Your average Hotmail user just hits the mark as spam button. (Sorry to tar all Hotmail users with the same brush). That's fine but there are more sensible ways to get out of receiving email.

On all my emails I include an unsubscribe link, click it and you're off the list no questions. I'm not a spammer and I really don't want to send emails to people who don't want to read them.

What am I doing about this? Easy Before I send any emails I remove Hotmail and a lot of other similar services from the list. That way I guarantee I won't get marked for Spam.

The sad bit is that due to a few users running loose with the mark as spam button no Hotmail etc customers ever get my emails, this probably means they don't get any others either. They must be missing out on some great deals and services, still it's their loss.

The lesson is, if you signed up for something by mistake of if the service isn't relevant any more just unsubscribe. Please!

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous8:28 am

    Not all companies put an “Unsubscribe” link in their messages and the ones that do will most likely just mark you as a “valid” e-mail in their database once you use it. Companies usually send out messages, or let’s just call it spam as we don’t opt-it for it, to a large amount of e-mails, most likely purchased from another company that collects them. They have no way of knowing which e-mails are still valid and are in use.

    Last month I received an e-mail from a company called Plexxa, not sure what they do, not sure how they got my e-mail address (crawled perhaps?), but I decided to opt-out of their newsletter by using the “Unsubscribe” link. Needless to say, a moment later I got another e-mail from the same company offering me yet another product. This happened again the next day, and the next one, eventually I just used the “Mark as Spam” button.

    Users (or shall we call them Customers?) don’t usually bother to opt-out using the “Unsubscribe” link or they are –afraid– to do so. What I would do is put a header (with black background and white foreground?) across the top of the e-mail with the links we usually put at the bottom – Unsubscribe, Term of Use, Company Policy, etc. If the Customer is interested in what we have to offer, she will simply ignore this and will continue to the message itself. If she decides to mark the e-mail as spam, chances are that she will spot the header before hitting the button and will eventually use the link provided to opt-out.

    Cheers,
    - Stani

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