by Sarah Santacroce
If you are a Small Business owner who is still using Outlook for their e-mail marketing campaigns, don’t be ashamed. You are not alone. There are so many entrepreneurs who are in the same situation as you: pulling their hair because they just don’t know how to keep their e-mail lists and campaigns organized.
If I can give you one advice though: Outlook is not the answer for e-mail marketing campaigns. Here is why:
- Outlook doesn’t apply to the CAN-SPAM Act
- You could be penalized if you send e-mails to people who didn’t agree to receive them
- Your Internet Service Provider might flag you as a Spammer
- People cannot automatically unsubscribe from your list
- You will be bombarded with “Out of Office”, “Undeliverable” and other annoying messages
- You cannot track who opened your messages
- It’s an administrative nightmare !
You see, you really need to get things under control and switch to a system that has been specifically designed to handle mass mailing of commercial e-mail campaigns. You need to use a service that will help you verify that people want to be on your list, will help you easily remove people from your list when they no longer want to hear from you, and will give you information about email bounce rates, email open rates, link click through rates, and much much more.
And don’t worry, this service won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Some providers even offer a limited service for FREE. For more information about E-Mail Marketing tools, please read my previous post “Newsletter Marketing – Available Tools”. In this post I focused on newsletters, but the same applies for traditional e-mail marketing campaigns.
Now it’s your turn ? Which tool are you using ? Share your experience in the comments below.
