email campaign
Spam Score - What's Your Number?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the top ten email campaign tips to get your message through to the user's inbox. The last hurdle in this process is the spam filter, which warrants more explanation about how it works.
SpamAssassin is one of the leading open source spam filters that is widely used, and will serve as our example product about how it figures out if a message is spam or not. When a message comes in, it examines its content, structure, and format and applies a series of rules to evaluate it. Each rule has a number of points associated with it, which can be modified by each email administrator.
Top 10 Tips for Effective Email Campaigns
Whether you are sending marketing information or a newsletter, your email is only worthwhile if the end user gets to see it. Here are our top 10 suggestions for effective email campaigns:
- Don’t send spam. Really. Put processes and procedures in place to make sure you and your servers are not sending spam. If a client wants to use your system to send spam, make sure your end user license agreement says that you can cancel them – and then do it! If you send spam the email administrators of your recipients will eventually figure it out and blacklist you from sending any email to them at all!
- Have a database to track and send your emails. If you manage a list of any significant size, it takes too much time and effort to implement the other things on this page with just a spreadsheet.
- Have a one-click unsubscribe link. In each email, there should be a link that the recipient can click on that automatically removes them from your mailing list. To save you time, it should just up
Put your professional network to work in a database
Networking... an important aspect of every successful professional's career but especially important now. The act of networking has changed with the introduction of the many online networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and even Seth Godin's invitation-only Triiibes network are great tools for staying in touch with new and old colleagues. But not everyone is using these tools and let's face it you don't want everyone having access to your profile. These tools have really enhanced the ways in which we stay in touch with our networks but relying on these tools to manage your contacts is just not enough. As I write this, there is a reporter on TV talking about a recent increase in identity theft on Facebook. If your profiles are compromised, what happens to those contacts?
