Common Objections
I do not understand the new legislationCurrently the government is attempting to close the loopholes in the law for email marketing, at the moment it stands that business email addresses are not covered in the new legislation and unfortunately they are still viable targets for Spammers (spammers will be required to give each employee the opportunity to 'opt-out' of their individual spam campaign). However this law is very likely to be redefined in the future as no business wishes to receive unsolicited emails which cost the business community around 30 Million Euros a year.
If your email marketing campaigns are targeting individuals then you must have prior consent to using that persons email address to send them information regarding your services or products. Starting from the 11th December people who breach this law will be held accountable by law and could be fined £5,000 in a magistrates court or an unlimited penalty from a jury.
So act now and implement a permission based marketing strategy so when the law does change regarding the business email addresses you will still be in the confines of the law.
- Get individuals' permission to collect personal data if you do wish to use it for marketing purposes.
- Indicate what data is being collected.
- Advise what will be done with the data.
- Specify how long the data will be kept.
- Allow individuals to opt out of receiving future information.
- Maintain your database so you know who has opted in and who hasn't
- Measure the results of each campaign
Why the urgency?As this directive has already been implemented leaving this activity any later than today will literally affect you using your current and future prospect lists for future campaigns. It is no longer good enough to offer the individual subscriber a chance to opt out, very soon you will have to get clear permission from them to be included in any email marking or SMS.
If your existing database of subscribers have requested to receive information about your company and at the time they were clearly informed and given the chance to object to the use of their data being used in any way, you are permitted to use retain these subscribers as there is already a direct relationship and therefore they will be exempt.
Now is the time to act by starting permission-based email marketing campaigns!
Further information is available from http://www.dma.org.uk and http://www.asa.org.uk
I do not want to be associated with spamSpamming is the sending of bulk, unsolicited e-mails that are often irrelevant to the recipient. It often causes serious offence and is a nuisance to the recipient. You must avoid spamming - you do this by targetting your contacts and speaking to them about your products or services that are relevant to them. If you are targeting individuals rather than businesses, you must only contact them if they opt-in.
More about spam...
Some Spam campaigns even include an opt out option but this is not always what it seems, by replying or clicking on the opt out link it only confirms to the spammer this is an active email account thus helping maintain their database of contacts.
It also generates problems for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) whose networks can be blocked or slowed down. They have taken it upon themselves to track Spam and now have collective arrangements to deny access to the Internet to offenders.
It costs too much!No it doesn't! We offer a flexible solution that has a proven return on investment. You can be set-up with a full-blown e-Marketing solution for as little as £2000 including your company branding, the ability for you to create as many newsletters, bulletins, alerts or announcements as you want and you can send up to 5,000 emails a month for an ongoing license and support fee of only £50 per month. Over a year this represents a cost per email of less than 0.5p!
One good new lead or sale could cover your yearly costs, that's a great ROI and how possible do you believe that success rate could be from 60,000 emails!?
We do not have any email contactsThere are a number of methods that you can make use of to build your database and we can help you in this activity.
- Gather email addresses from your existing customer base
- Use your own or our proven and cost-effective telesales staff to build a list of the decision makers in your marketplace
- Switch your web site on and offer incentives to gather leads from your site
- Leverage your business USPs and ask people to pass these on to their colleagues to opt-in to your list
- Continue these processes over time to expand and clean your database
It will not work for our businessThere may well be some businesses where e-Marketing may not yield significant results. These are few and far between and some creative thinking can open up avenues for its use. Even if you use the system to:
- Qualify your contacts and allow them to update their details and opt-in to your future marketing initiatives
- Send newsletters to keep your business in the front of your clients/prospects minds
- Provide valuable industry information to re-inforce your business profile
- Use these contacts to on-sell new products/services and upgrades
You will gain benefit!
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