The purpose of this blog is to show you how to use free open source e-mail Marketing, that should have basic marketing principles applied to it, so that it fits in with your overall marketing strategy.  You also need to ensure that your e-mail campaigns operate within the law so that you avoid spam complaints from consumers.

Your e-mail marketing should combine with other mediums

A targeted follow-up using e-mail marketing is an excellent method to maximize your return on marketing spend.  For example, in one company I worked with (in the labelling business) they used the following strategy to attract new business:

• They only ever targeted warm leads. They had to know that the lead was already using labels.  They never cold called.
• A marketing assistant would call the company and ask for the name and other contact details, for the decision maker for labelling purchases.
• A small gift – usually boxed cookies or chocolates, free download – was sent direct to that decision maker.
• The following week a phone call was made to make sure that the gift had arrived safely and to enquire if we could assist them with labels in anyway.
• A follow-up e-mail was sent the day of the phone call as a courtesy thank you for their time, irrespective of the result.

It was a strategy that achieved great results – it was a bit different from the norm and wasn’t just a blanket e-mail campaign to all and sundry.  By predetermining that the lead was already a purchaser of labels meant more time and effort could be spent on fewer, but stronger leads rather than sending a mass mailing.

Keep your branding uniform

Make sure you keep your design elements and theme of your messages similar across mediums and across time – this all builds the branding of your product(s)/services.

Your e-mail messages will get a more positive response when recipients can identify with the brand.

Branding elements to ensure you have consistency include:

• Use of logo, so that it presents professionally and readable in various printing and digital formats – for both print and online.
• This needs to be across things such as product and price lists, e-mails, business cards, website, order forms, signs, online ordering, blogs and other social media marketing sites.
• Use of fonts, layouts, images, contact details, company name in a clear format
• Track link backs and clicks from your email marketing campaigns

Laws on SPAM

These vary from country to country. At the time of writing (October 2011) here are the key points for:

Australia

The Spam Act prohibits the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages - known as spam - with an Australian link. A message has an Australian link if it originates or was commissioned in Australia, or originates overseas but was sent to an address accessed in Australia.

If your business uses any form of e-marketing, including email, SMS (text message), MMS (image-based text messages) or instant messaging, you must understand and meet the following three key requirements of the Spam Act:

1.    Consent - the message must be sent with the recipient's consent. The recipient may give express consent, or under certain circumstances consent may be inferred from their conduct or an existing business or other relationships

2.    Identify - the message must contain accurate information about the person or organisation that authorised the sending of the message and how to contact them

3.    Unsubscribe - the message must contain a functional 'unsubscribe' facility to allow the recipient to opt out from receiving messages from that source in the future. Unsubscribe requests must be honoured within five working days.

A message does not necessarily have to be sent out to numerous addresses to be considered spam. Under Australian law, a single electronic message can be considered spam.

The supply or use of address harvesting software or harvested email addresses for the purpose of sending spam is prohibited.

Source: Australian Communications and Media Authority
For more information, follow this link:

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_310548#

There are e-Commerce Codes of Practice, Best Practice Marketing Guidelines and an Internet Industry Spam Code of Practice available from the same ACMA source:

http://www.acma.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WEB/STANDARD/1001/pc=PC_310321


New Zealand

There are a unique set of regulations for the New Zealand market, which has relevance to many Australian businesses due to the number that operate/sell in both markets.

The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs has the NZ guidelines clearly spelt out at the following link:

http://www.dia.govt.nz/services-anti-spam-index

United Kingdom

The Information Commissioners Office is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.  Their guidelines for the UK market can be found at the following link:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications.aspx



Others

SPAM laws for a variety of other countries such as the USA, Canada, various European and Asian countries can be found at the following link:

http://spamlinks.net/legal-laws.htm#country



Please Note: The various links provided have been sourced only by Mindiam and we do not infer that these have not been superseded in any way by any particular law in those countries.  Followers of this Blog are advised to make their own enquiries to the relevant authority in particular countries if intending to do business in those markets.

Here are some opensource email marketing programs you can use for your company.

PHPList - phplist is the world's most popular open source email campaign manager.

OpenEMM - OpenEMM is a feature-rich web-based enterprise application for email marketing, newsletters and service mails (transaction mails and event or time triggered mails). OpenEMM

Pommo - poMMo is versatile mass mailing software. It can be used to add a mailing list to your Web site or to organize stand alone mailings. Unique Features such as the ability to mail subsets of your subscribers set it apart from alternatives. poMMo is written in PHP and freely provided under the [GPL].