As I'm working for the company selling email marketing software, people coming to our website often ask me how to send bulk emails. I decided to cover this question in this article. I divided it into three points: 1) how to get an email list; 2) how to send bulk emails and 3) how to track emails. On my opinion, these are 3 key elements of email marketing. Now let's stop over each point to learn how to do email marketing in the right way.

How to Get an Email List

• Those people don't know you and don't expect emails from you. They are likely to treat your emails as spam and hit 'This is spam' button in their email clients. If your emails generate many spam complaints, this hurts your sender reputation and deliverability. But the worst thing is that the ISP can shut your account down for sending spam emails.
• You can't be sure that all email addresses you buy are valid. The list is likely to contain many invalid and spam trap emails. If you hit a spam trap account, you are labelled as spammer. Again, your sender reputation is spoiled and you come into troubles with your ISP.

How to Send Bulk Emails

How to Track Emails

• Put a signup form on your website or blog or create a squeeze page to get an email list.
• Download G-Lock EasyMail to send bulk emails to your list. Here is a quick guide how to send bulk emails using G-Lock EasyMail.
• Signup with G-Lock Analytics to track emails.

G-Lock Software - EasyMail, Email Verifier, Fast Blog Finder, Directory Submitter, SpamCombat, Email Processor

Many of us, email marketers, collect email addresses using an opt-in form on our website. Whether you will send a series of follow-up emails to your subscribers then or just a single email offering them the material they subscribed to, the very first email they receive from you is the welcome email. The impression your welcome email makes is very important because it introduces the subscriber into your company and to some extent determines their decision to stay with you or unsubscribe.

• "Hi Maris"! The salutation seems to be an obvious thing, however some email marketers often ignore it. On my opinion you can omit the salutation in your future emails [for example, if you send the newsletter every 2-3 days] but not in the welcome message. Even better if you personalize it with the subscriber's first name. This demonstrates your respect towards the subscriber and sets their mind to the long term relationship with you.  
• Subscription reminder. People may subscribe for email newsletters at different sites and/or buy products in different online stores. With time, it's hard to remember all the sources they may expect receive the emails from. To avoid any confusion that may lead to an unsubscribe request or spam compaint, include a short reminder  why you have the right to send them emails. 
• Email frequency. Tell them how often they should expect emails from you. By setting up your email frequency in advance you make one step forward to minimizing your unsubscribe and spam complaint rate. They may be unpleasantly surprised when you start bombarding them with your follow-ups every single day. To avoid the subscribers' irritation, prepare them in your welcome message. 
• Whitelist request. To ensure your follow-up emails will reach the subscribers, ask them to add your email  address to their address book or safe sender list. This also helps them immediately see the images you may send in your emails instead of having to download the images manually.
• Unsubscribe/update profile link. Let them easily unsubscribe from your list. Include the unsubscribe link either in the body of the welcome message or in the footer. If you choose to place the opt-out link in the footer, make sure it can be easily found there. A good idea is to let them update their profile (email address, name, and other personal information they gave you while subscribing) themselves in case they change the email address, or want to transfer the subscription to someone else. You can provide them with one link and call it "Modify your subscription", or "Manage your subscription" or the like. By clicking on that link the subscriber will have a choice to unsubscribe or update their profile with you. If you receive unsubscribe requests via email, you can automate their processing with our G-Lock Email Processor software. G-Lock Email Processor will extract the user's email address from the unsubscribe message and save it to a file, or remove the user directly from your contact database.  
• Incentive to stay on your list. In addition to providing them with the content they subscribed for (download, PDF, e-book or whatever you offer), give them an incentive to crave for your future emails. You may tell them about a subscriber-only offer that you will include in one of your follow-ups, or drop a hint about what they will receive in your next email to keep them intrigued.   
• "Forward to a friend" link. Many subscribers would be willing to tell their friends and colleagues about your company and products. Push them to do it now by adding a "forward to a friend" link. When they have that link in front of their eyes, they are not likely to put it off for the time being.    

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Amazon SES announced about the support for the SMTP interface. Now you can use the Amazon SES SMTP interface in your existing email sending systems, including G-Lock EasyMail. As before, you can continue sending emails using the Amazon SES API as described in this tutorial. You can choose yourself which method works best for you. From this article you'll learn how to integrate G-Lock EasyMail with the Amazon SES SMTP interface.

Step 1. Creating Your SMTP Credentials with Amazon SES

To send emails through the Amazon SES SMTP interface, you must create SMTP credentials — a user name and a password.

Important! Your SMTP credentials are not the same things as your access key and secret key!

To create your SMTP credentials:

• Log into the AWS Management Console.
• Click on the "Amazon SES" tab.
• Click on "SMTP Settings".
• Click on "Create My SMTP Credentials".
• Enter your SMTP user name [this user name will be used to identify you in the Amazon AWS panel only].
• Click Create.

A password and a user name for SMTP will be generated for you.

Copy your credentials or click on "Download Credentials" because you won't be able to view your SMTP password again.

After you created your SMTP credentials, you can configure G-Lock EasyMail to send emails through the Amazon SES SMTP interface.

Step 2. Configuring G-Lock EasyMail to Use Your Amazon SES SMTP Credentials

Open G-Lock EasyMail.

Click on the Accounts menu and then click on "Add New Account".

Enter your user information under the General tab.

Important! The "E-mail Address" and "Return E-mail Address" must be verified with Amazon SES.

Click on the Delivery Options tab and enter the SMTP settings:

Delivery Mode: Send via SMTP server

Server Name: email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

Port: 465

My server requires authentication: Yes

Login: your SMTP login

Password: your SMTP password

*My server requires secure connection (SSL): Yes

*Though on their website Amazon SES says to use the "Use Transport Layer Security (TLS)" connection, in G-Lock EasyMail you need to select the SSL connection option.

After you enter the SMTP settings, click Test to test your account.

If the test passes, click OK to save the account settings.

Step 3. Sending Emails in G-Lock EasyMail through the Amazon SES SMTP Interface

Before you send the email, open G-Lock EasyMail Delivery Monitor and enter the number of Threads according to your Amazon SES quota per second.

You can get your quota either in your account on Amazon SES or in G-Lock EasyMail.

In G-Lock EasyMail open your account settings where you use the Amazon SES API and click on "Get Quota Info".

Note the value in the "Max Send Rate".

For us it is 14.0 which means we can send 14 messages within 1 second.

You may see a different value depending on your quota.

After you enter the number of Threads in the Delivery Monitor, create the email, select your account with the Amazon SES SMTP credentials and click Send.

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This must be the first question that concerns email marketers after they've got a list of subscribers. The most simple answer is follow the subscriber's preferencies if you give a choice of email frequency on the signup form. If you don't allow people to choose how often they want to receive emails from you, read this article for some tips on sending frequency.

As a good email marketer you'll want to communicate with your list in the way you don't pass for their worst nightmare, crazy seller or in the opposite case someone who they'll forget in a month or so because you email so rarely. These are bad things we all want to avoid.   

On my opinion you should email them whenever you have something valuable to tell to at least 20-30% of subscribers. If you have 1000 subscribers on the list and you estimate that 200-300 recipients would get some value from your message, email them even if they got your last newsletter yesterday.

If you assume your financial compensation may be rather high, email them when you have something to tell even it would be valuable to only 10% of your subscribers.  

But I'm afraid they will unsubscribe…

Yes, some will do. It's normal. You cannot retain the full list forever. You lose subscribers and you get new ones. Unless you email to your buyers, your list is a list of accidental website visitors subscribed to your mailings for very different reasons.

Look, if you send the email to 1000 people and 10 of them unsubscribe, you lose only 10 contacts. If you care about those 10 potential unsubscribes and don't send, you lose 1990 who like your emails. That's not smart.

Be prepared to get unsubscribes every time you email to your list. You know unsubscribes are not a pain. Better if you get unsubscribes than spam complaints. To deal with unsubscribe requests, you can use our G-Lock Email Processor software. Plus, G-Lock Email Processor will help you process many other incoming emails with the same layout.  

I don't know what to write about…

Write about the things you find interesting and valuable. Talk about tactics and strategies that work well for you and encourge them to try. Share with them the tips and resources that have been useful for you. Don't worry if you tell them about something they've already heard. They might have forgotten about it. Send them surveys and ask them to answer some quick questions about their experience with your product or service. This will give you some food for thought as to how you can improve your service. And of course, send them your fantastic offers as the appreciation of their stay on your list.    

For example, if you don't know what to write in the Subject line, start with the simplest thing. If you released a new version of your software, write "The new version of [program] released” or “The new version of [program] ready for download". As far as you will be getting email marketing experience, you will write more intriguing Subject lines. A good idea is to add a factor of urgency to your Subject, for example, "limited edition" or, "only 100 coupons available", or "ends on Friday" etc. This works well for commercial newsletters.

Don't write "newsletter" in the Subject line even if your email has the informative purpose only. This word does not tell the reader what your message is about but only eats 10 characters of precious space. Write the Subject so that the subsciber is eager to know what is inside the email. You can find some ideas for inspiration in this article.

Well, I see but I'm still hesitating…

Why are you building your list? To make them read what you want to tell them and to make them buy what you sell. So, you must tell and sell. You must become their favorite series when they watched the first episode and loved it. After a few episodes they are solidly hooked on and don't want to miss it.  

The idea behind this is that you should not pelt them with your emails that do not give anything valuable to them with the only purpose to remind about yourself. My point is that you should frequently send a good stuff to people who like what you write and sell.  

As I've already told, be ready for unsubscribes. No matter how often you email them, people will unsubscribe except those who are a fan of what you are doing. But the good thing is that they will tell their friends, colleagues, relatives about you. That's the only effective way.

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When you send an email marketing campaign, you don't know in advance how effective it will be. But you can expect a higher response if you determine what works best for your recipients and what does not work at all. I'm talking about newsletter styles, designs, sending time and other parameters that do have impact on the recipient's response.

Here are 5 simple tests you can try to discover what works better for your audience:

• Direct selling subject line vs. soft selling subject line. As the Subject line is one of the first elements of the email the recipient sees, you can start experimenting with the Subject line.If the purpose of your email is sell a product or service, it is reasonable that you tell about it in the Subject line.Direct selling Subject line sometimes works and sometimes not. In some cases the Subject line only hinting about what is inside the email works better and generates more email opens. That's why the email Subject is what you can start your email testing with.
• HTML format vs. plain text format. It's believed that beautiful HTML emails attract the better recipients' response. In fact, HTML emails work well if they load fast and display well. When designing an HTML email, make sure the email is readable even with the images turned off. And don't forget about the plain text version of the HTML email. Ensure it can be read and understood by the subscriber too. For example, if you create and send emails with G-Lock EasyMail email sending software, you can edit the plain text part of the HTML email separately. G-Lock EasyMail sends both HTML and text versions of your email what is very convenient if the recipient can access email only in the plain text format.
• Call-to-action at the top vs. call-to-action at the bottom. The "call-to-action" button is the 3rd element in the email worth testing. You can try different call-to-action text ["Buy Now", "Add to Cart", "Order Now", "Get Your Copy Now", Grab Your Copy for Only $$" etc.]. You can try with and without the price and you can try different call-to-action button locations [at the top, at the bottom, in the middle and all of them at once].
• Short copy vs. long copy. It's also worth testing to see what your subscribers like best. If you have much news for your subscribers, you can try to post an article on your site and link to it from the email. Then monitor link clicks to see how many recipients went to read the full article. To track your email opens and clicks, you can try this real time email tracking service. If you see link click rate is very low, write the in-depth copy for the next email campaign and see how it performs.
• Morning newsletter vs. afternoon newsletter. Sending time does matter too. You should find your best sending time experimentally. You can split your email list into 3-5 smaller groups and send the same email copy to each group at a different time and day. Monitor email opens for each group using the realtime stats provided by G-Lock Analytics. You will clearly see which copy and at which time and day generated more opens and clicks. Plan your future email campaigns with regards to your tracking results.

After you test each of the element I've just described, you won't send your email marketing campaigns blindly anymore. You will deliver to your recipients the information they want and at the time they expect it. This will help you improve your open rates and thus, increase your sales. Testing is one of the aspects of email marketing that can't be ignored and that is worth to spend time for.

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Sure — knowing how to write a persuasive and attractive marketing email/newsletter is important, but knowing when to send that email is equally as important. You need to make sure that you send out emails at a time when consumers will be most receptive — otherwise, they'll just end up  just thinking your email is spam and keep it in their inbox for a while or worse — delete it immediately without even opening the letter. While there is no way to guarantee that a consumer will read your email, there are a few things you should take into consideration when sending them out. Continue reading below to find out what they are.

1. People Check their Email Less Frequently on the Weekends. While your target audience may have different work schedules, it can be safe to say that if you are aiming to grasp the attention of young and middle aged-business professionals, they will have a Monday through Friday, 9-to-5 work schedule. That being said, when the weekend rolls around they will most likely be out and about spending time with their friends and family, not glued to their computer screens as if they were at work (some exceptions of course). So refrain from sending emails starting at 5 p.m. on Friday. You may even consider avoiding Mondays as well — after all your costumers are just recovering from the weekend. We should also include holidays in this group — like with the weekends, customers are busy doing more leisure activities and are too busy shopping, etc to be preoccupied with checking their email.

2. Most People have a Morning/Afternoon E-Mail-Checking Routine. Rarely do people who work a 9-to-5 want to go home and play on the internet after being on the computer for 8 hours. So your best bet is to catch them at work. That said, most consumers typically have a "system" of which they do things — a routine if you will. For example, some check their email along with their social media accounts the moment they wake up, with a cup of coffee/breakfast, or as soon as they get to their desks; others choose to partake in email and social media site-checking during or after returning from their lunch break. That said, you should aim to have your email in your customer's inbox around 8 a.m. or 11 a.m. but no earlier than 8 a.m.– the reasoning is discussed further in the following tip.

3. Most Emails Are Aggregated to Smartphones. While smartphones are slowly making home phones obsolete, they are also getting rid of another device we once found important — an alarm clock. That's right, more and more people are using the alarms built-in their cell phones to wake them up for work in the morning as opposed to an actual clock. This means that your consumers will have their phones turned on throughout the night. So what does this have to do with you? Some marketers like to send emails at obscure times, like 3 a.m., but this is a huge no-no. Since most smartphones allow consumers to receive emails in real-time on their phones, this means that there is a good chance your costumer will be awaken by a loud buzz or bing at 3 a.m. Once they realize the object that woke them up during the middle of the night was an email from a marketer, they'll become annoyed and delete it or they will go ahead and request to be off your list serve indefinitely — and good luck getting your message across and selling your product then.

4. People Live in Different Time Zones. No matter if you choose to send the emails manually or use some assistance like G-Lock EasyMail to mass e-mail your newsletters for you, it's important that you also take into consideration time zones — your consumers may be spread across the country (or better yet the world) and it's important that each get sent emails at "appropriate" times. You will have the idea about what time is the best if you track your email campaigns using an email tracking service like G-Lock Analytics. Not only will G-Lock Analytics show you how many recipients opened the email and clicked links inside the email, it will also display the recipients’ activity in time. You will see at what day and time your email got the maximum number of opens and plan your next campaign for that day and time on the next week or month.

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It has become extremely rare for ISPs to leave the port 25 open for external connections. This makes it impossible for email verifier programs to check email addresses for validity using a direct Internet connection. We kept it in mind when developing the Advanced Email Verifier and implemented two alternate options in the program:

• ability to verify emails through a web script, and
• ability to verify emails through a socks proxy server.

The web script is provided with the program. Using the script is possible if you have a web site where you can upload the script and if the script test confirms that the script is working [you can test the script directly from the Advanced Email Verifier]. If the test fails, it means that one or several functions on your site that are required for the work of the script are disabled. You can't use the script to verify email addresses unless you fix the errors.

If using the script is not possible for some reason [you don't have a website, you can't upload the script or the script does not work on your site], you can use a socks proxy server to verify email addresses. The Advanced Email Verifier works through Socks 4, Socks 5 and Connect proxy servers.

Where do you get a socks proxy server? You can search the Internet for public socks proxy servers. But using a public socks proxy is not a good idea — it may not work reliably and it may be already listed in spam databases [you never know who used the proxy server before and for which purpose]. In this case you will receive the "Unknown" result for all email addresses you try to verify.

Thus, you need to look for a private socks proxy server with the port 25 opened. Researching the Internet for good private socks proxies may take hours. To save your time, I would like to share with you a good service that provides cheap private and dedicated Socks 5 proxy servers. Socks 5 proxies from http://www.bpsocks.com/ are authenticated, dedicated and permit unlimited connections and unlimited bandwidth. Plus, these socks proxies are online 24/7 in contrast to open Socks 5 proxies which die quickly and are very unreliable and insecure.

What's great is that unlike other socks proxy provider services BPSocks automatically configures Forward-Confirmed reverse DNS for your socks proxy server IP address. It's important for the verification of email addresses from *yahoo.co*, *aol.com, *hotmail.com, *live.com and some other domains. These mail servers do a FCrDNS lookup of the IP address the connection is coming from. If FCrDNS test fails, the IP address goes to a blacklist with those ISP. You can check if the reverse DNS for your IP address is forward confirmed here. 

After you get a socks proxy server, go to the Advanced Email Verifier settings, click on the Connections tab and check the "Connect through proxy server" option.

Enter your private socks proxy server IP and the port number.

Select the socks proxy type.

Check the "Use Authentication" option and enter your username and password for the socks proxy server.

Click "Test".

If the test passes, click OK to save the settings.

Now upload your email list and click "Start" to verify email addresses.

If you get several socks proxy servers, you can save them to a file and check the "Use random proxy server from file" option in the Advanced Email Verifier Settings. The program will take socks proxy servers in a random order from the file and the speed of verification process will increase. Example of the file format:

domain1.com:PORT: USER PASS
domain2.net:PORT: USER2 PASS2
domain3.org:PORT

How to Get the Most Accurate Results Using Socks Proxy Servers

Often mail servers do a lookup if the IP address the connection is coming from is associated with the domain name. If the lookup fails, the connection is rejected. That's why we recommend that you enter the domain name of the IP address you will verify the emails from into the "Domain name for HELO" field in the Advanced Email Verifier settings (DNS). If you use the direct internet connection mode, it is the domain name of your computer where you use the Advanced Email Verifier. If you use the web script, it is the domain name of the site you uploaded the script to.

But what about socks proxy servers?

In this case the Advanced Email Verifier will use the socks proxy server domain for HELO. This will help you minimize the number of rejected connections from the recipients' mail servers.

If you only have the IP addresses of socks proxy servers and don't know their domain names, go at www.debouncer.com and do a reverse DNS check.

Paste the socks proxy server IP address and click "Check".

Copy the domain name the IP address is resolved to and paste it into the "Proxy Server" field in the Advanced Email Verifier settings, or into the file with socks proxy servers.

This test also shows you if the rDNS for the socks proxy server is forward confirmed or not. If rDNS is forward confirmed, you can use the socks proxy server to verify email addresses from the *yahoo.co*, *aol.com, *hotmail.com, and *live.com domains without the risk of being blocked by those ISP.

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Our G-Lock Email Processor offers great features for automatic attachment processing. With G-Lock Email Processor you can automatically extract attachments from incoming messages and save them to the hard disc. Plus, G-Lock Email Processor can rename the attachment based on your settings and save it to a folder under a new name. This program recognizes email attachments in most standard business formats, including PDF, TIFF, Word and Excel documents.

Extract Multiple Email Attachments and Save Them to Local Disk

To extract email attachment(s), add the "Block Extractor" component to the rule in G-Lock Email Processor.

Type a block name, for example, Extract_attachment.

Select "Attachment file name(s)" in the Source menu.

Leave "Start Position" and "End Position" fields as is.

Click OK.

To save extracted attachments to the disk, add the "Save Attachment" component to the rule.

Type a component name, for example, Save_attachment.

Select a folder on the local disk to save attachments' files.

If you want to rename the files, you can type a mask to generate new file names. For example, the mask 2011-09-07-[%Extract_attachment%] adds the date before the original attachment name.

Click OK.

Start the service.

If you want to save attachments to a folder on the network drive, follow the steps below before you start G-Lock Email Processor service.

Save Email Attachments to a Network Drive

By default G-Lock Email Processor runs under the SYSTEM account. The SYSTEM account does not have access to any network resources.

Therefore if you want G-Lock Email Processor to save files, update databases, save attachments, etc. to network devices then you must run the service under a different user.

To do this, stop G-Lock Email Processor service by clicking on the "Stop Service" button.

Click Start -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> Administrative Tools.

Click on "Services".

Select G-Lock Email Processor service.

Click the right mouse button and select "Properties".

Click on the Log On tab on the Properties screen.

On the Log On tab un-select "Local System Account" and select "This Account".

Select a local user account that has access to the network resources you want G-Lock Email Processor to be able to access.

Type the password and confirm it.

Click OK.

Restart G-Lock Email Processor service.

Live example from my experience:

I was running G-Lock Email Processor on my computer under my local account.

I decided to connect to the Unsubscribe.mdb file on the network drive and update it.

I created an account on DISKSTATION.

I mapped to the DISKSTATION\public on the network drive from my computer.

I created a link from G-Lock Email Processor to the Unsubscribe.mdb file on the mapped Y drive.

The connection was successful but the rule execution gave the error:

"Y:\Unsubscribe.mdb" is not a valid path. Make sure that the path name is spelled correctly and that you are connected to the server on which the file resides.

So, I specified the full path to the Unsubscribe.mdb file as \\DISKSTATION\public Unsubscribe.mdb in G-Lock Email Processor and tested the rule.

Another error occurred:

"The Microsoft Jet database engine cannot open the file \\DISKSTATION\public Unsubscribe.mdb. It is already opened exclusively by another user, or you need permission to view its data"

I supposed that this error might be caused by a mismatch in the passwords I used to login to my system and create an account on DISKSTATION.

When creating an account on DISKSTATION I used a different password than the one I use to login to my system. The user name was the same.

So, I changed the password for my DISKSTATION account to match my system password and it worked well.

Now I could successfully connect to the Unsubscribe.mdb file on the mapped Y drive.

G-Lock Software - EasyMail, Email Verifier, Fast Blog Finder, Directory Submitter, SpamCombat, Email Processor

In some situations you may need to send a unique email attachment to each of your recipients. As an example, imagine that you want to attach an individual invoice in the .pdf format to each recipient.
 
You can follow these steps to accomplish this task with G-Lock EasyMail.

When you create a group in the address book, to which you will import the email addresses, insert an additional field and call it "Invoice".
 
If you have already created a group, click on the Edit menu in the address book, select the group name at the left pane and then click on the “Edit group structure” option on the toolbar. Now add a new field.
 
You will import the names of the .pdf files that will be sent as attachments into this field.

After you created the group and imported the recipient's information including the names of the files that you will send as attachments, you can create a message.

When the message is ready, click on the Send button.

On the "Send Message" screen click on the Advanced tab.

In the "Personal Attachment" section type the path to the folder where your invoices are located.

Instead of the .pdf file name insert the field name from the address book that stores the file names.
 
To insert the field name in the right format, click the right mouse button and select the field name from the list.

If you want the program to rename the attachment during the sending process, type the new name in the "File name to be displayed in email" field.

Click Add.

Now click OK to send the message.
 
The program will take the invoice name for every recipient from the address book, insert it into the path to the attachment, then take the right .pdf file from the disk and attach it to the email message.
 

G-Lock Software - EasyMail, Email Verifier, Fast Blog Finder, Directory Submitter, SpamCombat, Email Processor

One of best email marketing practices says that you need to obtain the recipient's permission before sending emails to them. On the other hand, if you send relevant emails to your customers who purchased your product or used your service in the past, you may not worry about whether they want to receive your emails or not. It's supposed that nobody will complain about a relevant email even if they did not opt-in for it.

It sounds promising and opens more potential to email marketers eliminating the risk to be flagged as spammer. Let's dig deeper and see if you can really ignore the permission element in your email marketing campaign.

Not all recipients treat marketing emails in the same way. Some consider any marketing email as spam, others treat as spam emails they did not signed up for. And there are those who consider opt-in but not relevant emails as spam.

The more you ignore the permission aspect, the more recipients will consider your email as spam. Increasing the relevance of your emails can partially compensate the lack of permission but it won't completely prevent readers from using "Report spam" buttons.

Permission does still matter because:

• It's the ethical aspect of email marketing. Permission is what differs good email marketers from spammers. By asking people for permission to email them we recognize that the Inbox is a private place and that the email address is a private information that can be used by anyone else only with the owner's permission.
• ISP don't like bulk email if it's not opt-in. If your email generates a number of spam complaints and you don't have a proof that the recipient wants to receive emails from you, you will end up on the ISP's blacklist.
• It's hard to achieve a high relevancy. Relevancy determines how the recipients will treat your email. If your email is highly relevant and valuable to them, they may ignore the fact that you didn't ask for their permission.

But the interpretation of "relevancy" is subjective. We can only guess what people find relevant relying on some facts we know about our recipients. For example, if a customer purchased a program from us in the past, we assume he is interested in the program updates, or in other products doing the similar thing. If you track your email campaigns, look at your open rate to know if your subscribers find your emails relevant or not.

Of course, we can allow people select what kind of emails they want to receive from us during the signup process. But it's already asking for permission, isnt' it?

So, what can you do to send more messages to your customers without worrying about permission? Here are the areas to explore:

Send to more active recipients

If you are hesitating about sending more emails to the whole list, identify your best recipients [those who opened your last email more than one time] and send more frequently to the most active people on your list.

If you use G-Lock Analytics to track emails, you can find your most active recipients under the "Most Engaged Recipients" report. Plus, you can select yourself how the most engaged recipients will be determined — you can set the number of opens/clicks to determine the most engaged recipients in your account. You just export your best subscribers and import them into a seperate group in your email marketing software.

Send transactional emails

These are order confirmation emails, product/service surveys, "thank you" and "welcome" messages, subscription reminders, etc. These emails are initially more relevant than regular marketing email newsletters because they are sent as a response to an action taken by the recipient (purchase, account registration, subscription, download, etc.).

Transactional emails usually get a better open rate [not many people report such emails as spam] and can act as a link to more marketing emails.

Provide more opt-in opportunities

Why not include a link to your signup page into a transactional email and invite customers to join your list? You'll want to make sure that your signup process is running smoothly and that you provide enough benefits to people to subscribe.

So, instead of using a risky email marketing tactic such as sending without permission, look for legitimate opportunities to send more emails to your customers and encourage them to subscribe to your list. And be sure NOT to send to those people who deliberately opted out.
 

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