Today’s message on The Methodology Blog: there’s no need to associate email marketing with SPAM.

Robby Slaughter, principal of Slaughter Development, discussed the topic of legitimate email marketing in a recent blog post. Below is his guest entry on Delivra’s blog, Emailchatr: 

When people hear that I’m a productivity expert and run a consulting company specializing in helping people be more efficient, they often assume that I can’t stand email marketing. But, in truth, the opposite is true. I love email marketing, because it’s a great way to be more efficient and effective in our daily lives.

Too many people falsely associate legitimate email marketing with spam. But thanks to the efforts of email service providers like Delivra and laws like CAN-SPAM, email continues to be a thriving mechanism of communication. And although it seems like the simplicity and widespread availability of email marketing would overrun us with messages, in reality this technology is used more judiciously and selectively than ever.

For example, Chris Broshears points out that you should scrub your list of non-engaged subscribers. Doing so, increases efficiency because you are sending  fewer messages. Doing so also increases effectiveness because a larger percentage of your subscribers are actually reading marketing messages.

Likewise, you can increase productivity through segmentation.  If people don’t want to receive marketing messages about all of your products and services, they can just select the kinds of communications that interest them. And you can help your customers and partners to be more satisfied by showing them that you are human — with an apology email. After all, there is may be no better way to keep people engaged than to admit to your mistakes and make things right.

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