Quick quiz: Is getting an email from me to you the same as getting an email from your business to your customers or your prospects?
If you answered “yes,” then read on. Email may be one of the most misunderstood internet topics by small to medium businesses. The misperceptions are driven by their daily use of email at their PC, which leads them to extrapolate a similar understanding of how to use email to communicate to their prospects.
So let’s quickly get you out of harm’s way of the most common dangers we see.
First and most importantly, do not send mass quantities (more than 25) of emails at the same time from your company email domain. Companies don’t send SPAM, servers do. So if a receiving ISP (Internet Service Provider) like Yahoo, or AOL flags that email, and subsequently your server, as SPAM, then any normal or business email won’t go through either.
Here’s a real world example. A client of ours who is a dermatologist was sending marketing emails from his aesthetician to his patient list (who had opted in fortunately). Some of those patients use AOL for their email. Not recognizing that the email was from their dermatologist, they clicked the “report SPAM” button, which is how a lot of people deal with SPAM.
Well enough of them did it to cause his server to be blocked by AOL. Now, he also sends out appointment confirmation emails. Slowly, over time, he heard some of his patients complain they weren’t getting their confirmation emails. It took awhile for him and his staff to deduce those patients were all AOL users.
His business email wasn’t getting through because his marketing email got blocked. When you get blocked by a large ISP they don’t politely call you on the phone to tell you what happened and help you resolve it. They just block you. Now you can get “unblocked,” but it is a somewhat time-consuming and annoying process.
Now keep in mind that this client wasn’t a large mailer. His list was only a little larger than 200, and most importantly, he wasn’t spamming. He was sending legitimate emails to people who requested them.
So very first step, if you are sending marketing emails from your regular business domain, stop and stop quickly.
In my next post, I’ll share some solutions and help you evaluate whether it really is a DIY job, or whether you should avoid the danger completely and outsource your emails.