The thing that annoys people the most when you send them e-mail is when you don’t give them any choice but to get your e-mail.

Let me illustrate:

I get e-mails from these annoying article directories that I submitted articles to. They are constantly bombarding me with all these great “offers”.

I am sick and tired of getting these e-mails. I have sent many of the senders e-mails asking to get off their list.

But…I typically get these responses:

1. The e-mail bounces
2. No response
3. An e-mail reminding me “you signed up for our article directory and said we could send you e-mail. So, we are.”

Well, what choices am I left with? I have to block the sender or tag them as spammers, which, technically, they are not.

But nothing can piss a person off more than when they feel like their inbox is being violated by people who insist on having their offers down their throats. So, I feel no guilt or shame about tagging these people as spammers and hope they get blacklisted.

But this doesn’t have to happen when you e-mail market. You see, some people do this type of thing without even knowing it. Some people use a database program and then “mail merge” in Word. This is great for getting out a lot of e-mails, but it has a fatal flaw. And this brings me to the message of the day:

Give your subscribers an easy way to opt out of your list.

There are two ways to make this easy.

1. Provide an unsubscribe link on every e-mail. Since I use a service called Aweber, this is done automatically for me. At the end of every e-mail I send is a message asking people to click a link to unsubscribe. This lets people who do not wish to get e-mail from me an easy way to stop getting them. And actually, this is a good thing for me. If some people think I send them too much e-mail, then they vote with their computers. As a marketer and business owner, we must make sure we have people on our lists that are responsive to our offers. Those that don’t want even the occasional e-mail is not likely to be a good prospect. So, it’s best for everyone if they can easily get off your list.

2. Let them subscribe to your RSS feed. To me this is the best way to empower your list. Without being too technical here, an RSS feed gives your list the ultimate control. They can subscribe and unsubscribe without giving up their contact information. So, you are completely out of the loop. Though RSS feeds are popular now, I do not suggest only having a feed. I recommend giving people both options of subscribing to your feed and e-mail updates.

A surefire way to frustrate people when you send them e-mail is to force them to continue receiving them. By giving people easy ways to opt out, you can prevent that.

Tune in for the last installment when I talk about the e-mail marketing issue most people ask me about: how to determine when you’re sending too much or too little e-mail.

Topics: Marketing Archive |

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