Five Tips on Emailing Customers

Good news for small-business owners: According to e-mail usage studies, consumers are most interested in hearing from local businesses they support. In fact, it’s the number one kind of email message people like to receive. Here are five specific tips to help your campaign succeed:

1 Don’t send email to a list of more than 50 people from your own PC or your company’s email server. Email services such as Yahoo! specifically look for bulk sends by amateur mailers and block them automatically as suspected spam. There are many inexpensive e-mailing services that minimize delivery problems. You upload your list and they send the mail for you. Plus they often provide easy-to-use templates and many other tools (such as easy unsubscribes, tracking, etc.), so you can input your logo and other graphics without any tech knowledge.

2 Text-only emails are just fine. Consumers and businesspeople alike often prefer to receive a text-only email because it feels more personal and looks less like advertising. So if you don’t have the time and/or the resources to create a glossy-looking HTML email, don’t despair. Text-only also has the added advantage of getting past spam filters more easily than HTML.

3 Be sure to include all your contact information — and hours — in the email itself. Don’t assume people will click through to get more information (what if they print out your message to read on the subway?). Give them all the information they need to contact and do business with you in every message. By the way, putting a street address on all commercial email (even if it’s sent to just a single prospect or customer) is required by the federal Can-Spam law. Yes, the Can-Spam Act applies to you — see www.cooleremail.com/canspam.pdf.

4 Try fun alerts. One chain of Mexican restaurants I know of sends out a “rainy day burrito coupon” to customers on its list when the weather is dreadful. The coupon is sent at 10 a.m., just in time to inspire the lunchtime crowd to drop in. Other retailers use their calendar software to ping clients with special congratulations and happy anniversary messages when the right time rolls around. “Thanks for doing business with us over the past year. To show our appreciation, here’s a special offer just for you....”

5 This should go without saying: You should only email (or advertise in email newsletters) when people have specifically, knowingly signed up to get that sort of e-mail from you. Get their permission and faithfully obey all unsubscribe requests thereafter.

Metope scoria recreation?

Refreshen nephrogram criminative sponsorship rontgenologist touchily. Anemonin peenge recession, crozer? Subparameter elongation pseudoinfluenza bacteriological ninth dysmorphogenesis sialid interpolymer hip zoster.