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 I'm hard pressed to think of a business - other than a funeral home - that doesn't rely on repeat business from its customers. Most retailers count on you coming back to purchase from them again, and constantly market themselves in print, radio and television to get you back in their stores.
It's no different in the online marketplace. The information you use to register on a web site may be used to send you emails containing notices about promotions, products of interest and new items in stock. Think about how often you get buying "suggestions" from Amazon.com, if you've been a previous customer. It's a brilliant method of staying in touch with customers and reminding them that Amazon.com may have something that they want.
If you have been selling online for a few years, you've built up an extremely valuable asset - your customer list. This audience has already been vetted by you and has a keen interest in the products that you sell. Why not keep them up-to-date on new items in your store or web site?
That's why one of the most important decisions you'll make is choosing a list hosting service. Oh sure, you can set up software on your server to send out your emails. There are robust open source solutions available. But sending out the emails is just a small part of maintaining your list, and a good list-hosting service can make the task of organizing your contacts and communication with them much easier.
A list is a constantly evolving organism. New email addresses are added and old ones disappear. It's not just a challenge to keep a database current, but keeping your server white-listed with ISPs to ensure that your emails are getting through requires constant monitoring.
So what are some of the features you should look for in a list hosting service? Here are a few things that are important:
- Price. I'll put this first, because I know it's one of the primary considerations for online sellers. List-hosting services tend to charge by the number of contacts you have in your database, or by the actual number of emails going out on a monthly basis. Most have tiered pricing, so find one that works within your budget.
- Free trial period. You'll want 30 or 60 days to kick the tires on a list hosting service, just to become acquainted with the features that they offer. Many list hosting services offer a free trial period and allow you to send email to a limited number of contacts. It's a great way to test all of the features of a service.
- Domestic-based company. There are two primary reasons that I would choose a company in your own country. A) The exchange rate. If you're depending on your list host, and are allocating a certain monthly budget to it, the last thing you want to do is be slave to fluctuating currency. B) ISPs do crazy things. One major service provider in the US blocked email from international IPs in an attempt to reduce spam to their users. They eventually reversed that decision, but it took months - and a lawsuit.
- Clear Privacy Policy. A reputable list hosting service should never share, sell, or rent your personal information with third parties. These are your contacts, and you should feel secure that they won't be solicited to others. This also includes finding out the ease of moving your list should you ever decide to change services. There should be an easy way to archive and download your list not only for moving the list, but as a regular back-up practice as well.
- Phone support. Yes Virginia, telephone support really does exist on the Internet! And you'll likely need it when setting up your list host. Check to see if it's Toll-Free support, and the available hours for reaching a tech. I like to talk to tech support during the free trial, just to make sure I get quality answers from several members of the support staff.
- Zero-Spam Policy. It's a lot more difficult to ensure that your emails are getting through to the recipients than it was years ago. That's because many ISPs (AOL is a prime example) block a sender if there is a whiff of Spam. It can be an arduous process to become white-listed again, which is why it's worth the money to use a list hosting service that works closely with ISPs, and has zero tolerance for spam. After all, you do want your emails read, don't you?
- Bandwidth. A good list hosting service should have a robust connection to the Internet. You don't want your mailings dribbling out over several days - especially if you have included time-sensitive information or promotions.
- Support forums. Forums are great places to pick up tips from other people using the service. You may find other people using the list host who will cross promote for you, or can give you their experiences on issues like, "When is the best time of day to send out my email?"
These are just a few points to consider when shopping around. Once you're up and running, there are issues that are bound to pop up. Through trial and error (mostly error) and asking lots of questions, I've stumbled over most of them. Here are some issues you may encounter and tips to make your life easier when using a list host:
- Keep your list clean. Periodically, delete the email addresses from your list that continuously bounce. It makes it much easier to keep track of your database and it also might alert you to a problem with an ISP blocking your emails. Make sure your list host offers a good interface for keeping track of undeliverable emails.
- Give recipients a clear way to unsubscribe. For various reasons, people will want to leave your list. Make sure there is a visible unsubscribe link contained within your email. Gmail, AOL, and Hotmail all have buttons that give the recipient a place to report email as Spam. Some users, rather than unsubscribe, will use that button to leave your list. If the percentage of Spam reports exceeds a certain threshold, it could cause your list to be reviewed or possibly removed.
- Keep your emails as short as possible. At one time, AuctionBytes published full-text versions of our newsletters. With ISPs becoming much stricter, we found that many of our emails were not reaching their intended opted-in recipients. What we send now is a newsletter with abstracts of the articles, and links back to the web site for the full-text story. It's a much shorter version, but far more emails get through.
- Avoid words that trigger spam filters. Besides all of the obvious words that George Carlin made a staple in his act, avoid words and phrases (if possible) such as Free, MLM and Winner, to name a very few. There's a good list of words to avoid here: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm. Also try to avoid all-caps. See if your list host comes with an Anti-Spam Check utility that gives you an idea how likely your email is to be blocked before you send it.
- Plain-text or HTML? Really a toss-up. Text emails are usually smaller in file size and tend to have a higher delivery success rate. HTML emails allow you to be more creative with your presentation, but take longer to create. You can insert graphics and images of your products for an immediate impact. HTML also allows you to track "open" rates of your emails (how many people opened up your email), as well as click-through rates. Plain-text is not really conducive to that type of tracking, since unique URLs would have to be generated for each link. Some list hosting services will auto-generate a tracking URL for your plain-text newsletter, but the URLs are usually so long that they "break" in many email clients, and become useless.
- Who can sign up for my emails? Some list hosts will not allow you to send email to addresses that they consider "distribution" or role email addresses because they can generate high spam complaints. These are addresses typically more than one person has access to, such as sales@, info@, or admin@. Make sure you find out how your list host handles this - do they allow people to subscribe with those emails without some type of warning that they will not receive your publications?
- Don't Spam! You must adhere to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act), including the requirement that you include your valid physical postal address in each mailing. The Act "establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them." Learn more on the FTC website:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.shtm
These are just a few things to consider. There are a lot of good list hosting services out there - many of them listed here http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/pages/marketing - and some that may fit your business model and budget better than others. If you've already started using a service to market to your customers, we'd like to hear your experiences and suggestions. We've started a blog post here http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2007/7/1185066885.html, and want to hear what you have to say.
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