Email marketing permission simplified

10 December, 2009

• email marketing

Letitia Power

Category: Online Marketing

Over the past few weeks we have had a few enquiries concerning email marketing campaign opportunities. It's the end of the year and what better, more cost effective way to run a campaign wishing your customers a merry Christmas.

Hold your horses!

There are a few things to consider before sending an email campaign to previous customers.

A lot of businesses have massive databases of 1000 or more emails. What continually surprises me is that some of these emails date back to the late 90s and haven't been cleansed in quite a while, or the fact that half the emails haven't been added correctly to the database. There are a few things that need to be considered before sending emails; the first one I'll start with is the concept of permission.

Permission doesn't need to be a grey area!

Here are a few tips to understanding if you have permission to send out an email campaign to your subscribers.

Have you got permission?

You can only email subscribers if you obtained their permission in any of the following ways.

• The subscriber has opted in via your website - This could either be through a subscription form, or by ticking a checkbox on another form. This checkbox cannot be selected by default.
• The subscriber has completed an offline form that indicated they wanted to keep in contact - You can only contact someone through email marketing if it was explained to them that they would be contacted using this medium.
• The subscriber gave you their business card - If someone gave you their business card and you have informed them that you would be in contact.
• They purchased something off you in the last 2 years - By making a purchase they have provided their permission implicitly. But as a precautionary method it's always best to ask.

Permission is by far the most important aspect of email marketing.

Permission is the only thing separating your business from the spammers of the world.

Here a few scenarios that don't equate to permission

As a general rule of thumb anything outside of the above examples doesn't equate to permission, but below are some ideas to further emphasise permission; what not to do!

• You obtained their email from a third party
• You copied and pasted their email directly from a website
• You haven't emailed them for more than 2 years

Still stuck?!

Permission can be a hard concept to grasp. If you have any questions regarding email standards and regulation please feel free to comment on this article or get in contact with us directly!