4 ways to to keep your email marketing out of the Viagra Inbox

Viagra, Marketing and You

I don’t like spam. I’m sure like me, your spam folder is filled with emails that promise to fulfill your every sexual need. Unfortunately, I’m not the target market for Viagra and its counterparts. While the idea of spam is that by blanketing every findable email address with an ad for a given product, a percentage will buy it, this isn’t an effective marketing ploy. Don’t do it.

Spammers are careless marketers. But, if even 1% of 100,000 buy their product, that’s enough to pay for the time spent spamming! According to Techdirt, 14% of people read spam, and at least 4% admit to buying products from spam emails. Still, it’s an unsavory practice, and you can hope that spammers don’t sleep well at night.

How to stay out of the Spam Box

So how do you make sure only those people who are within your target receive your marketing message? In this case, we’ll focus on email marketing. Here’s a true or false quiz to see if you know the answer.

Dont buy email lists. Buying email lead lists is a great way to expand your audience. False. Many marketers will argue this one, but in my opinion, it’s a bad idea. I didn’t give out my email address and say “I’d like people to send me emails about pets, pools and parties.” Therefore, the “qualified” leads is a misnomer. It’s a waste of money.

Leverage the contacts you know. I should use business contacts that I know. True. Someone you met at a networking event will be much more receptive of your email than a stranger from a list. And if that person doesn’t need what you offer, she may pass your email on to someone who does.

I should use EVERY contact I know. False. I don’t send my Egg Newsletter to everyone in my contact database, simply because I know not everyone will get something out of it. It’s better to send emails to people who are more likely to read and enjoy them than not.

Allow your customers to opt in. Putting an email opt-in on my website is a great way to generate email addresses. True, true, true! In fact, stop reading this now and go add an opt-in to your site! If you use a service like Constant Contact to send emails, they give you an easy widget to put on your homepage. People visiting your site simply put in their email address and will start receiving your emails!

Need more resources?

Seoandso has some tips on email marketing.
Hideinmy.com also has some tips on email marketing.
Swiftpageact has some tips on how to stay out of the junk email box.
Digital Web magazine has an article called 7 deadly sins of email marketing management.