The world is full of spammers and scammers. Where does your direct email marketing stand? With spam regulations getting harsher every year, businesses must be increasingly careful with their direct email marketing. Unwarranted emails could lessen your customers’ trust or even cost you a huge fine. Luckily, a few small changes can keep you compliant and raise your success rate, too.
Most direct email marketing tools use an opt-in system that lets you directly reach the people who request to receive communications from your organization. But new businesses may have a hard time developing large mailing lists. While it’s important to remember that growing your direct email marketing list is a long process, you can easily get started by offering a subscription button on your website. That way, people can sign up to receive your direct email marketing communications with one easy click.
If your direct email marketing pieces have great content that is relevant to your audience, be sure to include a button that allows your audience to forward the information to a friend. This will widen the scope of your direct email marketing reach.
Direct email marketing’s opt-in feature has another hidden benefit: you can use it to gauge your customers’ interests. Most opt-in programs send a confirmation email when people join. Why not use this confirmation email to ask direct email marketing subscribers about their interests? The information will come in handy if segment your list in the future.
You can use the opt-out policy to your advantage as well. When people cancel their subscription to your direct email marketing, send a short survey asking why they decided to leave. You can use the information to improve your direct email marketing. Better yet, give unsubscribers incentive to stay with a last-chance offer or a parting coupon. Doing so will really drive traffic to your website and could increase sales.

