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Considering E-mail
As you consider email marketing as part of your direct response marketing strategy, you'll want to think about its advantages and disadvantages. You'll also want to make sure you comply with the laws and conventions that govern e-mail marketing, and that you follow industry best practices. An experienced vendor like Cornerstone can help you navigate your way through the world of e-mail, minimizing the risks while maximizing e-mail marketing effectiveness.Advantages
E-mail marketing offers two main advantages: cost and immediacy.Cost
Acquiring your e-mail marketing list may cost more—sometimes much more—than traditional postal lists. On the other hand, there are no postage costs. Those savings of between 35 and 40 cents per address can quickly offset your list costs, making the total mailing less expensive.Immediacy
E-mail, in terms of sending and responses, is also more immediate than traditional mailing. You deliver your messages and are at once able to gauge responses. With traditional direct mail, it can take much longer to verify the success of your campaign. With e-mail marketing, you know much sooner, sometimes in just a few hours.
Disadvantages
The biggest disadvantage of e-mail marketing is that you risk having your message being perceived as spam. Here's where following e-mail marketing conventions and laws to the letter offers the biggest payoff. Working with a firm like Cornerstone can ensure that you are following guidelines established by the Industry Canada Task Force on Spam. In fact, Cornerstone was an active participant in identifying these guidelines. You may view a summary of Canada's spam guidelines at the Strategis website.Conventions
While sometimes tricky to implement, the main convention to follow is really quite simple: Only send e-mails to privacy compliant lists.Privacy Compliant Lists
A privacy compliant list is one that has given the people on it ample opportunity to opt out. This means that those whose names appear on the list have had the chance to declare that they do not wish to receive any e-mail. Reputable firms like Cornerstone advocate this approach for business lists as well, even though this category is normally exempt from privacy legislation. View Cornerstone's Internet Privacy Policy and Offline Privacy Policy to learn how we work to protect our Clients, and their customers' privacy.Branded Messages
It's also important that your e-mail message bears your brand or shows very clearly who is sending the message. Not only does this make good marketing sense, but it reinforces to the recipient that they are receiving the e-mail because they have an existing relationship. (Your message's body copy should, of course, also state this clearly.)Include Opt-Out Option
You'll also want to give the recipient a clear and easy opportunity to opt out of future messages. That means you also need to put in place opt-out request procedures. Every e-mail should have an easy-to-see and easy-to-execute means of opting out of receiving future e-mails.A more detailed breakout of privacy conventions, as well as a comparison with U.S. laws, appears in the CAN-SPAM Versus Canadian Convention Table.
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