We all down­right annoy­ing. Yet when it comes to our own busi­ness most never think twice to shoot out an email to every address they can get their hands on think­ing, “but this is dif­fer­ent”. Unfor­tu­nately, it’s not. You could be los­ing poten­tial clients by annoy­ing the heck out of them and even worse you could be break­ing the law.

Ten signs your email campaign might need an overhaul

Just because they gave you their busi­ness card doesn’t mean they want spam.

Peo­ple give out busi­ness cards for all sorts of rea­sons. To be added to an email spam list is usu­ally not one of the rea­sons. If some­one trades cards with you it’s because they might want to do busi­ness with you in the future. If you start blast­ing away the like­li­hood of this diminishes.

When some­one hands you their card ask, can I add you to my email list?

If some­one buys some­thing from you it doesn’t give you a license to kill (their email in box)

These are exist­ing clients and cus­tomers. They have already pur­chased goods or ser­vices from you, why risk upset­ting them and run­ning them off with daily updates on cat lit­ter sales?

Instead of assum­ing they want to be on your list con­sider a friendly fol­low up call or email. “How is that lit­ter box 3000 is work­ing for you? If would like to stay updated on future soft­ware scent updates I would be happy to add you to the list.”

Express­ing any amount of inter­est in your prod­uct or ser­vice isn’t an open inbox to be filled.

When some­one asks “What is the going rate on a Vespa these days?” that doesn’t trans­late to “Please send me daily updates on the price of scoot­ers, Harley’s, wave-runners, 4wheelers, spe­cial financ­ing, and any­thing else you can cram in my inbox”.

When a cus­tomer asks a ques­tion it’s the per­fect time to ask about adding them to your email list.

It’s not spam because I put the addresses in the car­bon copy line so every­one can see them.

This is just flat out wrong in so many ways. This is the email equiv­a­lent to putting your feet up on the table and using grandma’s prized vase as a spit­toon. Seri­ously, it’s that bad. Not only is the email messy it makes every­one on it com­pletely vul­ner­a­ble. Now every­one that gets the email can zoinks (tech­ni­cal term) any of the email addresses and add them to their email list. It’s like spam to the 10^th degree.

I know it’s rude to send emails with a ton of CC’s in them, that’s why I put my name in the to line and every­one else in the blind car­bon copy line.

This sounds good in the­ory. If I get a spam using car­bon lines I much pre­fer this one. When I see a let­ter with the same name in the from and to line I think “this is a cour­te­ous spam, I’m glad they took the time to read up on this and do it” then I promptly delete the mail. Noth­ing screams “this is spam” more than the same email address in the from and to lines.

Try using a ser­vice such as http://mailchimp.com to tidy up your email list.

He’s a friend of mine of course he wants to be on my email list.

This doesn’t even make sense if you think about it. I have a lot of friends that have absolutely no inter­est in social net­work­ing or Inter­net mar­ket­ing. Why would I want to add some­one to a list that has no inter­est in it? Friends might not unsub­scribe or say any­thing for fear of sound­ing rude. It’s just not nice to back friends in a cor­ner like that. Ask if they are inter­ested in your email list and give them a fair chance at say­ing no.

This per­son didn’t mean to unsub­scribe, I know they love this email so I’ll add them again.

I don’t know where the logic for this comes from but I know its hap­pen­ing. I have one spe­cific spam mail I’m mon­i­tor­ing at the moment I have removed myself from 3 times now. To make mat­ters worse it is a friend and past real estate client. I don’t want to upset the busi­ness rela­tion­ship so I chalk it up to “this rela­tion­ship costs me a delete click per week”.

When some­one unsub­scribe they mean it.

I don’t need an unsub­scribe option, it’s just a small list and my con­tent is awesome.

Have you ever got­ten on a spam list you could never get out of? There’s no unsub­scribe any­where, no direc­tions on how to do it, and when you reply to the email it bounces back say­ing that address doesn’t accept emails? This is frus­trat­ing. If some­one doesn’t want the mail in the first place at least give them the cour­tesy to opt out. Not to men­tion the law says you have to have it in there.

I don’t need to put any phys­i­cal con­tact info in the email, they know how to find me.

Assum­ing that con­tact info doesn’t need to be in the mail because the recip­i­ent has our email, plus they can click the link we’re spam­ming and find out more about us on our web­site any­ways is not a good idea. You’re basi­cally forc­ing some­one to act on a call to action (get­ting them to your web­site for instance) just to get off your list. This takes even more time to get off a list and if some­one is at this point land­ing on your beau­ti­ful flash site is prob­a­bly not going to change their not so good opin­ion of your business.

Once again it’s also sim­ply the law. Include a mail­ing address in all busi­ness email.

They wanted to unsub­scribe but I’ll wait a few weeks so they get a few more emails that will change their mind.

If some­one doesn’t want your email in the first place and they unsub­scribe it’s prob­a­bly not a good idea to hit them a cou­ple more times. The chance of them chang­ing their mind is pretty small. When some­one asks you to do some­thing in per­son it’s rude to ignore them, so don’t do it with your mar­ket­ing. When some­one asks to unsub­scribe, do it.

I’ve got every­thing under con­trol; I pay some­one else to take care of it.

Pay­ing some­one to man­age your email cam­paign in no way gets you off the hook. First of all it is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of your busi­ness. No one is going to get an unso­licited spam and think “it’s ok, it’s the email com­pa­nies fault, not your busi­nesses.” They will think “this busi­ness is annoy­ing, I don’t want this”.

It also in no way removes your legal lia­bil­ity. The law says you are respon­si­ble for any email that goes out for your business.

What do you think? I see these 10 things all the time but I know there’s more out there. What annoys you the most (besides just get­ting tons of spam)?

Legal info on email spam: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

*Image cour­tesy of twi­cepix