You strive to deliver the perfect email experience to your subscribers. But if you’re glossing over email accessibility, you could be alienating those with visual, physical, cognitive, and neurological disabilities.
Read on to learn how to make your emails more accessible for all of your subscribers.
Email Permission
The CAN-SPAM law for sending emails allows for implied or explicit permission.
Implied covers anyone whoasks for a quote or sample, does business with you, etc. It can also coverprofessional colleagues after a one-on-one meeting. People who give you a card at your trade showbooth are included.
Implied does not cover: membership lists, lists from a strategic partner, emails for all attendees at atrade show or emails copied on an email you receive.
SMS (Text) Permission
SMS law for sending textmessages requires explicit permission. You also have to document thatpermission.
Yes, I know there are companies who break this law every day. They show up in my Inbox too. However, you want to aim for the highest level of professionalism and follow the laws carefully.
The Opt In Form Above
This form accomplishestwo goals:
It doesn’t say you are doing text messaging right now. So this is a way to start gathering SMS permissions so that when you have a sufficient list and a need for SMS messaging, you are prepared. You’re gathering now in preparation for the day you want to send a message. People are much more hesitant to give SMS permission so building your list is a slower process than building an email list.
Offering a Gift for Opting In
You can offer a gift or discount or special of some sort to encourage people to opt in. You can have 1 offer for email permission and 1 offer for SMS permission. I saw this alot when I did my holiday shopping in December. I might get free shipping for an email address and a 20% discount for my cell phone number.
If you are adding prospects and new clients to your email list, you have potential to grow with them.
Purpose of Email Marketing
Every email needs to educate your client base. They will forget that you offer ABC because they think of you as XYZ. Tell them. Tell them again. And tell them again! YCL has been in business for 29 years. We’ve been sending emails for probably 25 of those years. Occasionally I still will hear “Oh, I didn’t know you did that!”
It’s a busy world. A new client, in particular, can simply forget about you. They go for the new shiny thing unless you work hard to build trust and reputation.
Review every process in your company. Look for opportunities to ask for permission to add people to your email list. Does the person answering the phone keep an ongoing list of caller emails? Does your order desk ask everyone for their email? After a shipment or a project, do you confirm that you have emails for the proper people at the company?
Keep that email list growing and expanding! The effort will pay for itself many times over.
Example from Staying Alive
I used a QR code for the YCL opt in.
Offering a gift increases the number of opt ins you will receive. Otherwise, the forms have light response (Think of when and where you opt in!). Even with light response, the forms are worthwhile. You’re taking every opportunity you can to gather emails and cell numbers.
“At Litmus, we personalize our emails with purpose: to create tailored inbox experiences that go the extra mile—the kind that surprises and delights our subscribers (and goes beyond “Hello %%first_name%%”). It’s our way of making a more human connection with our subscribers, and is something we think is especially important during a time dominated by artificial intelligence (AI).
It’s a new era with personalized emails, and we’re here for it! Today, we’re sharing one of our favorite ways to add a human-touch to our email marketing campaigns—and that’s with Litmus Personalize Live Polls.”
Unlike social media and search engines, email lets you deliver personalized communication to your target audience. It’s a one-on-one channel that allows you to communicate with potential customers until they convert and maintain that relationship into the future.
Interactive emails continue to be a top trend in email marketing and it’s easy to see why. Email interactivity allows brands to add a wide variety of elements to their messages—from image carousels, offer reveals, videos, surveys, polls, and more.
“How’s our deliverability doing? Oh, it’s really strong—we’ve seen a delivery rate of 98% for the last few email campaigns, with only a small handful of bounces.” If you’ve ever heard someone say this sentence, you’ve witnessed someone fall for the often-confused difference between email delivery rate and email deliverability.
Deliverability is not the same as delivery rate.
Even if the latter is healthy, you can still have issues with the former.
In this post, we’ll go over each term and cover what you need to know to optimize your delivery rate and deliverability so they’re working together for your email marketing program.”
“In an age of instant messaging, social media, and video conferencing, some might think that email is an outdated communication tool. However, email remains a staple in professional correspondence.”
“The most frustrating part of email marketing? Putting weeks of planning and effort into an email campaign…only to have it fail to deliver. When we asked email marketers their key priorities for our annual State of Email Survey, monitoring their deliverability rates hit the top five.”
Writing good posts for your blog is a critical job. It is the least expensive, most effective way to make search engines rank your site in search results. This is called organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I like to re-use the content on social media posts and possibly in an eNewsletter to your clients who may not be bloggers. Three uses for one piece of content / effort!
Read this practical article from Lisa Marie Dias, a social media expert.
Call me at 480-433-9995 if you have any questions about the article or would like some help with blogging!
One of my clients had a great story this week about email marketing.
She met a woman at a luncheon. They exchanged business cards and had a good talk. My client put the woman on her email list.
20 years went by!! TWENTY!
The woman signed up for an event my client was hosting last week. She said, “I’ve always read your newsletters but never had a need for your services until now. But I certainly knew who I was going to call for help! The expert!”
Keeping the woman on the email list for 20 years had a zero cost. My client has over 30
00 emails on her list. So there was no cost. No special effort. But the woman came to the event with a friend and both are planning purchases!
Review your office procedures to be sure you are gathering every email possible. Add them to your lists. Make your content valuable so people will stay on the list. Watch your traffic reports to be sure the content is working with your audience. Build long term relationships!