What are your random sales emails like?

Don’t know about you, but recently we have seen a massive increase in the use of random emails which promote a company and / or its wares.

Some emails are sent through what we’d refer to as the normal way i.e. through the likes of outlook express and Gmail, and others are being sent more and more via the likes of LinkedIn and Twitter direct messages.

How do you look at such activity? Is it a sales action? Or is it an action of desperation?

For us personally we do feel that engagement is what’s needed, and this can be achieved via emails and newsletters to a cleansed database. We tend to immediately ignore the random sales type messages which come through email and / or social media for no other reason than... Who are these people as more often than not we don’t know them? or heard of them, or we have no use or need personally for the products and services which they offer.

One thing which is extremely annoying though is when the person or business sending the random sales email seems to have no regard for how they do it….what we’re talking about here is, why on earth do such people cc fifty plus people for all recipients of the email to see each other’s email address – surely in such an instance the ‘data protection’ question has to be raised.

Because of the whole cc thing being used incorrectly we’ve even received subsequent sales email messages from some of the recipients of the first email,  who cheekily replaced the email content with their own sales details and carried out the reply to all action.

Do you do such a thing when doing your own marketing to businesses in the West Midlands?

If so then we’d strongly advise urge you to stop with immediate effect, as not only is this type of practice wrong, it’s also against anti spamming regulations – it can also have a disastrous effect on your company’s brand awareness.

There are those who try with the best will in the world to adhere to certain protocols when sending sales emails and you can usually workout who these people are, usually (but not always) they are single employed individuals therefore you can tend to allow leniency.

Regardless whether or not you’re in full control of your senses when sending out random sales emails you enter the danger zone of getting your IP address blocked for spamming and / or sending out high volumes of emails in any given time.

The best way in our view to send emails is to use an email marketing and email list manager.

There are many options and providers available out there and they allow you to upload your database and fully manage it without the risk in being black listed providing of course the list your managing is a bonafide list i.e. that it’s yours, that the people on it have accepted to be on it and so on.

By using an email marketing and email list manager you are also able to see who opened your company branded email, and what it was they clicked on if anything. This provides you with information so that you can do a follow up phone call in the full knowledge that at least they’ve not only received your email that they’ve opened it as well - weather they’ve read it and fully understood it is another question. You will also know who has unsubscribed from your list thus helping to keep you database nice and clean and more importantly up to date.

To use such a service does carry a cost, but such a cost is relatively small for the possible returns which can be made for looking more professional, having your services and products being perhaps more openly considered for purchase, and the ease of sending emails once all is set up saves on large amounts of time and effort.

The use of an email marketing and email list manager is one way to better connect with your customers.