Related Posts

Permission, Part 1

Before I can talk about permission and how a mailer can collect permission from a recipient to send them email I really need to define what I mean by permission as there are multiple definitions used by various players in the market. Permission marketing was a term coined by Seth Godin in his book entitled Permission Marketing.
The underlying concept beneath permission marketing is that all marketing should be “anticipated, personal and relevant.” Others have defined permission marketing as consumers volunteering or requesting to be marketed to.
When I talk about permission in the email marketing context I mean that the recipient understood *at the time they provided the sender with an email address* that they would receive email from that sender as a result.
Let’s look at some of the relevant parts of that definition.

Read More

It really can be your email

Yesterday I wrote about activist groups getting blocked at major ISPs and how the ISPs don’t block mail because they don’t like the political viewpoints in email. This morning Mark Brownlow has a post up about delivery in general and the cause of many delivery problems.

Read More

Visiting customers through email

A few months ago I was working on a deliverability problem with a new client. They are a social networking site heavily branded with black background and pink text. One of the questions they asked me during the course of troubleshooting their delivery problems was if sending pink and black branded emails to match their site branding would decrease their deliverability.
That was actually a more interesting question than many I have received and led to the following analogy. A website is your showroom on the web. It is the equivalent of a brick and mortar store where people visit you and come to see what you have to offer for sale. Heavily branding the store is the right thing to do.
An email, be it marketing, transactional or relationship, is the equivalent of sending a traveling salesperson to someone’s house. That sales person is entering the customer’s space. In this case overly branding your presence in the customer’s space which can annoy or completely turn off your customers.
Branding emails to customers is a good thing; it builds brand recognition and customer relationships. Just remember, though, that you’re entering the customer’s space. Be respectful of that space.
As an aside, I did actually ask AOL about the color of email would decrease delivery. The nice folks over there did reply “AOL SAYS NO PINK!” But I’m fairly sure they weren’t serious.

Read More