Email Marketing Part 4: Permissions
As part of our continuing series on email marketing, in this piece we’re going to talk about permissions and their importance. “Importance” is sort of underselling the concept of permissions here, because in reality they’re an absolute necessity.
But first, a little background: what exactly are permissions?
Permission is exactly what it sounds like as it pertains to email marketing. You’re effectively obtaining permission by recipients to email them offers, newsletters, updates, or anything else related to your business. When you submit your email to sign up for a free trial account, usually there’s a check box that asks if you’d like to receive email updates, known as an opt-in. This is the most basic form of permission.
The business is effectively seeking your permission to contact you for commercial purposes. This is important for reasons we’ll explore in a minute.
Permission-based email marketing operates on the principle that the sender or business obtains email addresses through legitimate means only, meaning that recipients have consented to receiving emails before they are sent.
This means that, as a business, you should always gain permission first through a sign up form or opt-in box of some kind. The objective is that you clearly communicate they will be receiving emails from you upfront.
Okay, so why are permissions important in a legal sense?
Well, because it’s the law. More specifically, the CAN-SPAM Act expressly prohibits abusive email practices, of which unsolicited emails are one. There are a lot of rules this act lays out, but one of the most important ones is requiring permissions.
We all know how annoying it is to receive spam emails, and that’s a large part of what the act seeks to correct. In other words, it’s illegal to send unsolicited emails to people who didn’t sign up for them.
When a business solicits subscriptions or email addresses for accounts, they’re required to let the subscriber know that they intend to contact them with emails, and obtain their permission.
However, the government only has so many resources. They can’t possibly prosecute every infraction, right? If you think your business is small enough to fly under the radar in sending unsolicited emails without consequence, think again:
ISPs and email providers actively police abusive email practices and punish violators.
Google is a notable example. They already intercept incoming spam emails and put them in a separate folder, which most email providers do for their customers. Also present is the “mark as abuse/spam,” which allows users to flag content or emails they find intrusive or objectionable.
In other words, a business is playing with fire by ignoring these features. You’re infinitely more likely to run across ISP or email provider bans, blacklisting, or penalties than legal action, and in the long run these consequences are equally as damaging.
If you’re sending unsolicited emails from your website domain, multiple spam/abuse flags will blacklist your domain, effectively blocking incoming emails from that domain – even legitimate ones sent to colleagues or recipients who have given permission. This is part of why you want to make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe and keep your abuse reports low.
Removing your domain from an ISP blacklist is extremely hard to do and takes a long time, so it’s best to not even come close to illegal/unscrupulous email practices. Blacklisting also affects your search ranking, meaning users will have a harder time finding your website in search engine results.
The reason for this is simple: consumers demand a certain standard (and legal compliance) in their email experience, and providers are eager – and legally obligated in some cases – to deliver that.
Permissions are a large part of why email marketing is effective.
What makes email marketing an effective strategy to begin with is the concept of permissions. Consumers are unlikely to subscribe to – and consent to receive emails as a condition – your email list if they’re uninterested in what your business does.
This is why businesses get the largest returns on their investment and time from email lists. You can, for example, put up a big billboard by the highway or spend thousands on radio ads, but you can’t be sure that every person who sees or hears it is going to be interested. This is much less efficient than sending targeted emails to consumers who have signed up for your email list and opted in to receiving your emails because they’re genuinely interested in your business.
Use this to your advantage. Instead of being a burden, permissions are actually a boon to your overall marketing strategy.
Final note: This is why you should never, ever buy email lists. Put simply, the consumers on the list didn’t consent to receiving emails from your business specifically, and may have been obtained through illegal means. It’s also why you shouldn’t just add contacts to your email list just because someone gave you a business card at a networking event. Not only can you get flagged, the recipient isn’t going to look too kindly on you anyway.
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- Get It Right Solutions