Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Yikes, Are You Making These Email Appending Blunders?

Many of us suffer from the misconception of email appending is only about attempts to match email addresses to a database of names and addresses. However, in reality email appending goes much deeper than it seems.

Although email appending is a quick and effective way to build an email database, if wrongly handled, it can turn into a disaster. As you read on, you’ll soon find out how to avoid the mistakes and use email appending as a brilliant marketing tactic and save yourself from a complete customer relation catastrophe.

Even before you consider an email append, have you already started looking for email addresses? And what through which medium are you looking for them? Your Website or landing page, Your call centers, Social Media Networks, & Others.

Listed below are few mistakes we tend to commit while taking up email appending services:

  • Email addresses that are obtained organically are said to be less costly and more fruitful. However even doing everything right will probably only yield e-mail addresses for approximately 25% of your customer or donor base and your growth rate, while steady, might not meet your marketing goals.

  • Beware of shady vendors out there. Do a little sleuthing yourself before you actually decide upon a service provider. Know in details about the company, its reputation in the industry standards, its clients, and its present location. Companies having incomplete contact information are not to be entertained.

  • Knowledge, expertise, and hands-on experience are crucial but reputation and integrity must be your initial screens. Ask the vendor how long they’ve been in business, which professional associations they belong to, what kind of industry presence they have, who their partners and clients are, and what other services they offer. Don’t risk being a guinea pig for some fly-by-night company.

    Ever heard the expression “a penny wise and pound foolish?” The least expensive solution is not always the best solution. If you do opt for a low-cost provider, be sure you know exactly how that vendor is providing you quality service and results for that bargain-basement price.

  • Email append performing poorly can bring down your entire effort you have put on the email program. This will also make you lose the few pennies you had saved per address; the revenues you had spent on this program and damage your reputation big time – all this you’ll incur only because you picked up invalid e-mail addresses and spam traps.

    Oops! You better watch out! By appending emails to a third party or prospect list will only result to high spam complaint rate. Be careful when you attach emails to your database. Make sure these individuals are those who never got around to share their email addresses with you.

  • A vendor who promises you 100% opted-in emails can be trusted and considered as high-quality. Your vendor should be able to tell you exactly where their data came from.

    Don’t forget to insist your vendor to send a permission message to the email addresses that are to be appended. This will confirm deliverability and provide your customers with an opportunity to opt-out before results are returned to you.

  • Your vendor should automatically perform robust hygiene services on your list—scrubbing for typos, errors, and other problematic addresses—to ensure your results are clean and deliverable.

    On top of that, your vendor should adhere to all CAN-SPAM regulations and run all required suppressions, including the Do Not E-mail list, and your own unsubscribe list. Bottom line, your vendor should be as vigilant with your data as it is with its own.

  • Don’t let your email appending attempt turn into a nightmare by attaching wrong emails to wrong individuals. You don’t want gary.rushmore@gmail.com to receive a personalized email with a salutation, “Hi Jessica”. Rest assured you will be spam listed immediately and will lose a prospective customer.

    Be careful. If your e-mail appends are the result of a household match, skip the personalization. On the other hand, if your e-mails are a result of an individual append, go for it.

  • Just because you now have the e-mail addresses of your customers doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready to buy. Yes, they may be customers, but they didn’t ask you directly to solicit them via e-mail. So, how do you handle these newly-appended e-mail addresses?

    When introducing yourself, a welcome note is a must when you send any email to your recently appended list. Let your new list get used to this mode of communication. Explain what you plan to do and what you want them to do as well.

As repeated earlier – always keep a link where your recipients will have an option to unsubscribe or opt out the moment they want.

Once the appending process is done, don’t expect your list to start performing at once. Email as a marketing medium is no different than others. With time, these e-mails will perform as well as those on your house list.

Always play by the rules if you decide to pursue email appending. Prior to any decision-making, planning is extremely important. E-mail appending, when performed in an ethical, conservative, and conscientious manner by an experienced and reputable vendor, can provide you with guaranteed deliverable e-mail addresses for up to 20% or more of your customer/donor base on your first project.

The potential gains in revenue growth, market penetration, and deeper relationships with your customers are yours for the taking… and yours for the losing. You just can’t afford to make mistakes!

Want to completely avoid any of these email appending mistakes mentioned above? Remember that consumers these days are far more choosy and picky than they used to be. What you want to do is build a list of active subscribers by giving them content that matters.

You need to walk that extra mile for them, on their behalf. Period.

Finding the most profitable customers and search for similar customers with these profiles. The common traits like Industry, employee size, title, sales volume etc. are marked and used as a reference to reach new prospects.

Want to own a complete verified email marketing list that will do wonders to your email marketing campaign? Instead of preparing a house list yourself, why not leave the entire thing to the experts? On your behalf we are walking an extra-mile for you. We will prepare the entire database for you for your own benefit. Our Email Appending Service will help you build your own customized database.

Our Email Appending Services include complete contact details including:

  • Name
  • Job title
  • Verified email id
  • Phone number
  • Direct mail address
  • SIC
  • Industry
  • Company size
  • All this and more.

Would you like to avail the best Email Appending Services? Fill in the below given form and we will contact you soon.


Click Here To Buy Any of These Hot Selling Products or Services
Share |

No comments:

Post a Comment