Posted by Drew Miller on June 4th, 2009
Is US Airways following best practices and enhancing the customer experience with their email marketing efforts? Find out if they earn their wings with flying colors, or get sent to the hangar for a major tune-up in the latest email review.
More Email Marketing Reviews:
Costco
West Elm
Related Post:
How Using the Wrong Verbiage Can Cause a Negative Customer Experience
Posted by Jordan Ayan on April 27th, 2009
I recently booked some travel on the popular travel site Travelocity. I actually like using their service. Their email practices however leave a bit to be desired. When it comes to unsubscribing those on your list, there are no excuses. Here’s a summary of what happened when I tried to get off the travel email treadmill.
Posted by Dave McCue on April 15th, 2009
If you climbed into the ring against a heavyweight boxer, wouldn’t you want more than just a mouthguard to protect yourself from harm? Email marketers should think of themselves the same way—CAN-SPAM compliance is your mouthguard, and that heavyweight opponent (in the form of thousands of email subscribers) is poised to start swinging.
Plenty of email marketers wisely learn the ins and outs of CAN-SPAM laws early on in the process to protect themselves from harm, but too many mistakenly believe that adhering to the rules of CAN-SPAM means they don’t have to worry about SPAM complaints. This is far from the truth; as long as “Junk” and “Spam” buttons exist on every popular email client, any message being sent is at risk for SPAM complaints.
So what’s a marketer to do? Don’t get complacent just because you’re compliant; there are always gray areas.
Before every email marketing campaign, think carefully about any potential negative reactions the campaign might cause. Your standard approach may be enough to satisfy the law of the land, but the moment you set foot in a recipient’s inbox you are no longer in control. CAN-SPAM says you can email a recipient one time without his/her permission; does the recipient know that? Not only is it a mistake to assume that your audience knows what truly constitutes a SPAM email, but it’s even more unrealistic to believe they worry about the damage they could be doing to your reputation as a sender by marking your message as SPAM.
To put it simply, the best defense against SPAM complaints is common sense, but it’s an approach that is all-too-often pushed aside. Never forget that all of the email addresses on your mailing list, as well as any other addresses you “acquire,” represent actual people. Try their patience, and they’ll act the way people do.
To go back to the boxing analogy, if compliance is your mouthguard, let common sense be your headgear. If you find yourself justifying an email strategy by saying “technically, this is totally legit,” you’re going to want to stop and re-evaluate things. If it means sending less email—if it means sending to less people—it might help you take a lot fewer punches in the ring.
Check out Part 2 of The First 2 Weeks: Arts and Crafts available now only on The Digital Spin! http://budurl.com/2wksarts2 #
