What is the Difference Between Direct Emailing and Spam?

Email Marketing vs. Spam – the Biggest Difference

When it comes to email marketing and spam, many people might think they are the same thing, and yes, in some cases, they very well may be. However, this all depends on the mindset of the recipient, and what he or she consider to be spam. The biggest difference you will find  is that spam emails do not have permission from the recipient to be sent to them. In other words, spamming involves sending an extremely large number of emails to recipients that may not have necessary agreed, in any way, shape, or form, to receive emails from you.

On the other hand, real email marketing is when you send emails, maybe the very same emails, to people who have actually agreed to be on the recipient list. As you can see, the difference  is not really as much in the content of the email, but in terms of who actually wants to receive the emails. For instance, if you have a home improvement shop, sending a monthly newsletter to a regular customer would not be considered spam, for the most part.

However, sending emails to the people who go shopping at the baked goods shop next door, people who never come into your home improvement shop, this would be considered spam.

As you may have noticed, t is a really thin line  in terms of what is considered spam and what is not. This can be a problem, because even some of your regular customers might not appreciate marketing emails and may consider them as spam. Now, t are some ways to ensure that your marketing emails do not seem quite as spammy, which we are going to talk about.

How to Avoid Spamming

We want to talk about some really important rules, strategies, and tips for you to follow, that will ensure that your marketing emails don’t look or feel like spam. This won’t work for everybody and all customers, but if you follow these tips, the nuber of people who perceive your direct emails as span is sure to decrease.

Make Sure People Can Opt Out

One of the biggest issues which recipients of spam always bring to light is that there is never an option to opt out. Some companies will keep sending newsletters and promotions to people, without any way to opt out of receiving them. This is considered spam and it does nothing but annoy people. Sure, you don’t want people to opt out, as it is somewhat counterproductive. However, if you want people to perceive your email as the real deal, not just spam, you do need to give them the ability to opt out and stop receiving communications from you.

Good Subject Lines

Another thing that will cause people to perceive your direct email as spam is if you have a bad or overly sales-oriented subject line. Subject lines such as “free giveaway,” “win big now,” subject lines that are overly punctuated, written in all capitals, and other such things are just bad.

If your subject line is way too good to be true, way too in your face, or too sales oriented, people won’t even bother to look at the email because things that seem too good to be true are usually totally bogus. Stick with a smart and reasonable, yet still attention grabbing subject line.

Stay Relevant

Another mistake which some marketing campaigns make is that they will send all of their emails to all recipients, and include information which some recipients just aren’t going to care about. For instance, if you have a sports and recreation shop, and you have one group of people that loves tents and another that loves fishing gear, you don’t want to send all emails to both groups. It’s called generating a recipient lists based on segments.

Only send certain recipients what they are interested in. A mass approach, or sending all emails to all possible recipients, is not going to get you very far.

Try to Be Personal

The final thing that you want to make sure to do in order to avoid being perceived as spam is to personalize your emails. For instance, instead of just sending your emails to email addresses, you should begin the body of the email with the actual name of the recipient.

The rule  is that you want to be as personal as possible in relation to that specific recipient. Being too general is not good because people can tell that it is just a mass email and meant to fit everyone it comes to.

Conclusion

If you follow these tips we have outlined, you should be able to avoid having people think that your direct emails are spam.