You can’t have an email marketing campaign — or any sort of marketing campaign — without content. But it’s a matter of whether or not that content is good that will separate the good email marketing from the spam. Content in vital. It’s what makes the message worthwhile, and keeps people on board to hear what you have to say next time. It’s the foundation of your email marketing campaign pyramid.

Here are our tips for making sure your content is great every time:

• Consistency trumps creativity — ultimately, you’d love for your campaign to be both consistent and creative, but sometimes you just don’t have the time that month to find the perfect balance. And the worst thing you can do for your branding is have emails that are off the wall, irrelevant or unrecognizable.
• Match your branding – that means the logo, colors and content in your messages should be similar to, if not that same as, your website and other marketing materials. If people can’t match you up with other contact they have with you or they can’t even recognize that the email they received is from you, they’ll probably think you’re spam.
• Plan ahead, not last minute — if you’re pressed for time and struggling for content, you may throw something totally irrelevant into your message. Remember the saying, ‘if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it at all’? Well, that goes for good content too. Your subscribers aren’t going to want to read something that has nothing to do with you or your business. It’s a great way to end up in the spam pile.
• Brainstorm your ideas & use a list – we recommend setting aside a designated time for brainstorming content for your messages. Think of as many as you can, without edits. Write them all down. You will need to go back later to make sure that the idea is consistent, but brainstorming provides you with a great way to come up with a bunch of creative ideas and keep them for backup. Don’t get stuck trying to think of one thing to say a day before you want your newsletter to launch — get a whole bunch of ideas that you can come back to and draw on.

Content is a way to hook a reader in and make them want to read what you have to say. Don’t spoil that or spam subscribers with bad content — you’re only harming yourself.

Generic emails are boring. But it’s not too difficult — or too late — to personalize your email marketing campaigns.

Other than a boring email, why would you want to spend extra time to personalize? Because it is yet another way to develop a relationship with your customers and clients. We’d hope that building a relationship with the people you serve is a priority to you and your company — it should be — and that your goal with email marketing is to further this relationship. There’s almost no better way to do this than to personalize your messages.

Personalizing will provide you with a two way connection. First, you’ll know more about your customers, and second, they’ll see that you took the time to include some information about them and reach out.

Now that you know why you should personalize, here’s how.

First, of course, you will need information about your customers. Basically every piece of data you collect about those on your email list can be used to personalize a message. The important first step is to make sure you’re getting permission, of course — meaning, in this case, that each person is supplying their information to you. Like we mentioned in the last Email Marketing tip, Get Permission, it’s important that the people receiving your messages have given you the go-ahead to use their data.

The easiest way to gather information within the rules is to include an Update Profile link in your emails. This does a couple of things.

1. Initial sign-up is easy — just an email & name — so that there aren’t a thousand boxes to fill out to get your newsletter. This will make sure that you get the highest initial opt-ins, while still giving each person the chance to enter more information later. The less initial information one has to give to sign up, the more likely they are to subscribe. Some studies have shown that even just one extra box can reduce opt-in rates by 40%.

2. If at any point a subscribers information changes, they can easily find and update their profile.

This profile information can be used inside an email message, such as referring to a subscriber’s first name in the greeting or title, or to their company name in the message. It could also be used for segments to send out different, highly relevant information and deals, for example by using their zip code to let people know when a nearby store is having a sale.

The second way you can easily gather information is when customers interact with you. You can document when they purchased an item, when an item was delivered, and even the name of the sale associate that helped them.

This information is great for adding in details to your messages, or to use for triggers. Want a message to be sent to a customer if you haven’t seen them in 60 days? You can do that. Want to send a special thank you to someone for purchasing an item? That’s possible too.

Of course, you can always use Profile information for triggers too — the best example being happy birthday messages.

There’s almost no limit to the categories you can create to personalize your messages.

However…

You don’t want to go overboard. There’s no set maximum amount of personal information to use in a message — that’s a judgment call — but we would recommend you keep it to just a couple key pieces. If you include too much personal attributes, it may distract from your message or be overwhelming to the reader. It’s also a bit Big Brother, and could creep your reader out or turn them off from giving you information.

The best strategy…

Would be to sit down with your team and discuss what the most relevant, useful data about your customers would be. Is it their zip code because you have multiple stores? Is it their birthday so that you can provide special incentives and deals? Is it just who last helped them in the store so they know who to ask for in the future?

Figure these sort of things out, and decide on the methods you’ll use to collect that data. Get to know the people you serve and personalize your messages for them. The benefits are greater than you might imagine.

We here at Email Broadcast love stunts. You may have been able to tell. We think they’re a great way to get people’s attention and get your point across. On September 10th we held a silly stunt at Westlake Center in downtown Seattle, consisting mostly of smashing the guts out of innocent cans of SPAM™. There was, however, a serious point to be made with each blow of the hammer. As a business owner helping legitimate operations stay in touch with their customer base, spam is the scourge of our industry.

A recent study by The New York Times reported that up to 94% of all email traffic is SPAM. That’s hundreds of millions of emails clogging one of our most important communication channels and it’s getting worse. Though each of us may only spend a few minutes a day dealing with it, the collective drag on productivity is astounding. The National Technology Readiness Survey says it costs us 21.58 Billion per year. That’s $131 per year for every Internet user in the US.

As ISP’s have become more capable at filtering SPAM, and an entire hardware industry has been created to fight the problem, it seems that our government has taken a back seat in its enforcement.

Robert Solovay, aka the “Spam King” was finally convicted last year by the state and sent to prison for a mere 4 years. Microsoft successfully sued Solovay as far back as 2003 and his exploits were widely known according to SpamHaus. Why has it taken the state 6 years to track down such an obvious offender even with him mocking the legal system? Before this conviction, the state’s last legal victory, according to the Attorney General’s website appears to be in 1998. So for 10 years our state has not been able to prosecute a spammer even though the problem has grown exponentially?

Similarly, the Federal Government’s record is not much better. While they did just receive a guilty plea from a 5-man SPAM operation lead by Alan Ralsky and his son the penalties seem to be quite light. While the spam induced pump-and-dump stock scam they ran reportedly raked in millions, the sentences sought are only “up to” 24 to 84 months, and the corresponding fines from only $30,000 up to 1 million dollars. Sentencing occurs Oct. 29, 2009.  The CAN-SPAM act says that offenses are supposed to be subject to $11,000 fine per email incident. At billions of emails sent by this ring, the math simply doesn’t add up. And that ignores the wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, and lying to the FBI charges that are included in the guilty plea.

While any conviction is laudable, is this the best we can do? For a major player in the 21 Billion dollar problem (not counting victims ripped off by scams) we get a couple of years behind bars, and a penalty less than the amount swindled? That might even be palatable if these convictions occurred regularly, but it is years between major convictions. It seems that the government (we the people) are not angry enough about the problem, or are not directing our ire in the proper direction.

It’s time that we aggressively punish those that punish us with their time-wasting email. Prosecution needs to be extended to those selling email list and companies that are paying spammers to advertise their wares. Below is our list of things you can do to help can spam:

1. NEVER respond to a spam e-mail, or even “download images.”

2. Click the “This is Spam” button, if you have one. This alerts your ISP and allows them to refine their proprietary spam filter.

3. Forward all spam to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov BUT:

4. If it’s an e-mail you signed up for, don’t use the spam button. Just click unsubscribe and you should be removed. Be fair!

5. Reply to legitimate “over-senders” and tell them to reduce their frequency. If they don’t, unsubscribe and warn your friends about them.

6. If you are not willing to take the time to read the sender’s privacy policy, don’t give your e-mail.  If it’s more than one paragraph, forget it.

7. Use two email addresses. If the content is good, use the “update profile” and give them your real email address.

8. Use your own e-mail filter. A free, personal version is available at cyberdefender.com, but there are others. Check frequently for false positives, especially when first installed. Your legitimate mail may be getting trapped.

9. Write to your Congressional representative, and insist that they introduce legislation intensifying pursuit and prosecution of spammers and their business partners.

10. Reward only email marketers who “Do Email Marketing Right” with your business.