{"id":882,"date":"2013-04-07T10:26:02","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T14:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/?p=882"},"modified":"2013-04-29T22:44:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T02:44:15","slug":"email-lists-opt-in-opt-out-or-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/email-lists-opt-in-opt-out-or-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Email Lists: Opt-In, Opt-Out, or Surprise?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mrg.bz\/TgtGRJ\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" alt=\"Junk Mail\" src=\"http:\/\/mrg.bz\/TgtGRJ\" width=\"243\" height=\"181\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Congratulations! You&#8217;ve just sold somebody your product online! Now you&#8217;ve got <strong>marketing gold<\/strong>:<em> Their email address, <\/em>other contact info, purchase history, and other dirt on &#8217;em<em>.<\/em> Time to add them to your <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Bulk mail\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bulk_mail\" rel=\"wikipedia\">bulk mailing<\/a> list and start sending promotions their way, right?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Not necessarily. Let&#8217;s say you want to give your new customer recommendations on other products you have that are similar to what they bought. Even if they&#8217;ve bought a product from you, they&#8217;ve technically <strong>only given you permission to contact them about that one single purchase<\/strong>, and perhaps send them a package. While emailing customers with product suggestions is an excellent idea, I strongly advise you to <strong>make your plan to email them and their consent explicit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><strong>Surprise Emails: We won&#8217;t tell you before we send you a letter<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>If you put no reference to the fact that you may email the customer on your order form, you may be <strong>accused of sending <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"E-mail spam\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/E-mail_spam\" rel=\"wikipedia\">unsolicited commercial email<\/a> (<\/strong><strong>spam<\/strong>), and <strong>will be punished<\/strong> accordingly. This may include the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>your messages being flagged as spam and blocked automatically<\/li>\n<li>customer complaints due to being contacted without their request or permission<\/li>\n<li>damage to our business\u2019 reputation for allegedly using shady practices<\/li>\n<li>your <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Internet service provider\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Internet_service_provider\" rel=\"wikipedia\">ISP<\/a> pulling the plug on your account because they consider you a mass <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Spam (electronic)\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spam_%28electronic%29\" rel=\"wikipedia\">spammer<\/a> (which you are if you don&#8217;t do your email right)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of these are enticing options, and they can really put a damper on your company&#8217;s image. It&#8217;s hard to clean up a ding like that, even if it wasn&#8217;t done on purpose. <strong>Skip the headache.<\/strong> Make it easy on yourself and your clients by using another option.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-img\">\n<div style=\"width: 132px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:No-spam.svg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"no spam!\" alt=\"no spam!\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/c\/c8\/No-spam.svg\/240px-No-spam.svg.png\" width=\"126\" height=\"126\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image via Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><strong>Opt-Out: We&#8217;ll email you unless you check the box<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>An <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Opt-out\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Opt-out\" rel=\"wikipedia\">opt-out<\/a> process, in which <strong>customers must check a box to avoid being on your <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Mailing list\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mailing_list\" rel=\"wikipedia\">mailing list<\/a><\/strong>, is better but not ideal. Users may assume that they should leave the box unchecked if they aren\u2019t interested, as is the case with many other website sign-up processes. They may forget that the default option was to be on the list and send your messages to the junk mail abyss, never to see the light of a monitor again. If you make the checkbox easy to miss, it seems a bit underhanded; if you draw attention to it, they may be more likely to opt out. In short, it&#8217;s not worth it.<\/p>\n<p>In the same category is <strong>automatically checking an opt-in box<\/strong> to join your mailing list, etc. It may be in black and white, but it&#8217;s still confusing. A person suckered into subscribing isn&#8217;t valuable like a truly interested one. Better to just be straightforward: <strong>Skip the grey-hat tactics<\/strong> and read on.<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><strong>Opt-In, a.k.a. <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Permission marketing\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Permission_marketing\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Permission Marketing<\/a>: We&#8217;ll only email you if you allow us<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The best solution is an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Opt_in_email\">opt-in<\/a> process. You display the option prominently, explain how you want to give them recommendations which match their tastes, and tell the customer that they&#8217;ll be rewarded for allowing this email. <strong>They look forward to the messages<\/strong> and you&#8217;re seen as the hero company, helpfully sharing new product suggestions with them. Okay, maybe not hero, per se &#8212; more like his slightly-annoying yet lovable sidekick with a side job in sales &#8212; but it sure beats the junk-mail-toting bad guy image you could have accidentally put on. <strong>Get permission to contact people<\/strong> the first time and you&#8217;ll have a much better chance of your carefully-crafted, spam-free messages drawing them back again and again.<\/p>\n<p>P.S. &#8211; Though it&#8217;s several years old,\u00a0<a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Seth Godin\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sethgodin.com\/\" rel=\"homepage\">Seth Godin&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Permission-Marketing-Turning-Strangers-Customers\/dp\/0684856360\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1299047505&amp;sr=8-1\"><em>Permission Marketing<\/em><\/a> goes into great detail about this whole spiel, and is still relevant at its core.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3180\/3624264627_56cb1ede3d.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Permission Marketing\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3180\/3624264627_56cb1ede3d.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"93\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?x-id=f5a0acc2-f8c5-4bda-bbb7-5860e9aaa599\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congratulations! You&#8217;ve just sold somebody your product online! Now you&#8217;ve got marketing gold: Their email address, other contact info, purchase history, and other dirt on &#8217;em. Time to add them to your bulk mailing list and start sending promotions their way, right? Not necessarily. Let&#8217;s say you want to give your new customer recommendations on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biz","category-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":982,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awgentry.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}