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If you’re thinking of beginning an email marketing campaign, you should remember to treat email consumers with the same respect you’d give to traditional consumers. The honesty and fairness rules that apply to traditional marketing still apply in emails.

Many companies want to use email blasts as a fast, easy way to direct traffic to their site. As a provider of corporate email services for almost 15 years we’ve seen first hand how effective this can be, however; fast and easy can also lead to laziness and sloppy advertising, something we know you want to avoid.

While it may be tempting to exaggerate claims to drive traffic to your site, email advertising does not provide a free pass for misleading and untrue statements. To write a good, and legal, email advertisement, you must be able to back up all the claims made in your email. This includes product offers, prices, and especially removal requests. Just as in any advertisement the Federal Trade Commission prohibits deceptive or unfair advertising. This includes all out lies, and any attempts to “trick” consumers. This will protect you from personal and legal ill will from the recipients for your emails. Driving traffic to your website is important, but if the customer ends up feeling deceived and violated you’ll be doing yourself more harm than good.

Another requirement is that all removal requests must be honored and all removal links and removal email addresses must function as promised. It can be difficult to manage removal requests if you have a large mailing list, that’s why at Admail.net we’ve developed Accu Trak, our premier list management service. This system will manage your removal requests to ensure that you’re keeping your recipients happy and remain within the statutes of the law.

Honesty is the best policy when it comes to email marketing. The industry is large and strictly monitored. If you try to lie, trick or abuse your customers, your campaigns will fail and you risk serious legal trouble.

At Admail.net customer service has always been number one. To maintain that quality and to provide their customers with an even higher level of support, Admail.net has hired Dan Lukens as their new Content Manager.

Aurora, Ohio

November 9, 2009 — Fueled by an ever expanding customer base as well as an immediate need for a team member to manage their online message, Admail.net has recruited a new Content Manager.

Admail.net’s new Content Manager will be responsible for a multitude of duties including but not limited to: the maintenance and development of written content for Admail.net’s website and print materials, spearheading Admail.net’s drive to publicize their services while informing potential and current customers of their area’s of service and expertise, and assisting in Admail.net’s already expedient customer service.

Dan Lukens is a graduate of the University of Dayton where he obtained his Bachelors Degree of Arts and Science. He focused his studies on writing and effective communication and graduated with a double major in Communications and English, which he achieved in four years. His experiences prior to joining the team at Admail.net are many and varied. He has experience writing in newspaper, public relations, broadcast, and most recently, at an advertising and marketing firm in Akron, Ohio. Dan’s experience allows him to communicate effectively with many different audiences, a quality that will be a great benefit to Admail.net’s clients and an invaluable asset to Admail.net’s continued growth.

“I’m very excited to be a part of such a great company. I truly believe in our product.” Dan said. “Although email has been around for a long time, many companies and individuals are still failing to use it to it’s utmost potential. I’m excited to be a crucial part of helping Admail.net clients use email appropriately, courteously, and effectively so they can attract new customers and better serve and maintain current ones.”

The public can expect to see Dan’s work in the coming months as he begins to revise and improve Admail.net’s existing website, blog and social media content.

Since its inception in 1995, Admail.net has become a premier provider and developer of email marketing and database management systems. Admail.net strives to provide its clients with the most convenient and effective email marketing available. They offer affordable, quality service, supported by experienced and motivated individuals who genuinely care about their clients. While email marketing and technology trends have changed drastically in the past 14 years, the team at Admail.net has adapted to each change, constantly improving their service and moving forward with each new evolution.

For more information about admail.net and their services, please visit http://www.admail.net or call 800-479-6233

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Contact Information:
Dan Lukens
Admail.net
Dan.Lukens@admail.net
http://www.admail.net
800-479-6233

The most dreaded word in the email marketing industry is “SPAM”. No tech word invites more universal hatred than this simple, but very dirty, four letter word.

If an email you send is deemed spam, it will most likely never get across to your clients. Perhaps even worse, if your message does reach their inbox, it will be an annoyance. Once your email address makes its way into a spam folder, it’s very hard to reach that potential customer ever again. Sending spam damages your company’s reputation and is against the law.

Below are guidelines taken from the Federal Trade Commission that you can follow to keep your emails in the inbox and your business out of trouble.

“Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible”

(Information re-posted from the Federal Trade Commission at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm)

At Admail.net we take these, and many other regulations, into account to maximize the deliverability of your emails and keep you out of spam folders. More importantly we make sure your messages follow all CAN-SPAM regulations to keep you out of trouble.

Visit our website (http://www.admail.net) to sign up for a free 30-day trial, or call us at 800-479-6233

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Today, consumers are using mobile devices more than ever. Since you’ve been reading most people have done something on their mobile device, either sent a text message, surfed the Internet, or checked their email. With such a large and captive audience, a big question arises; is your business addressing the needs of your mobile customers? There are many simple things you can do

to make your emails more mobile-friendly, that is, make it look better on your recipient’s mobile devices. Here are a few rules to consider when creating your emails, if you have recipients who might be reading emails on their mobile devices.

1. Don’t Make them Download the Rest of Message – Your message might get truncated if it is too big. A large file size may cause your recipient to be prompted to “download the rest of the message”. Consumers are wary of downloading messages and frankly its just a hassle, so avoid large emails or you are running the risk of them not seeing your entire message or worse, deleting it.

2. Don’t Make them Scroll – You will want to avoid having your recipient do a lot of scrolling. Attention spans are limited, especially when dealing with mobile devices. Make sure your key takeaways don’t get buried at the bottom of your message.

3. Let them Know Who You Are – Make sure you include your logo at the top of email so you’re recognized immediately. If you are a trusted brand your logo will give your message a better chance of being read. At the very least, even if the customers only glaces at your message, with your logo and name at the top, you’ll have been exposed.

4. Click To View in a Browser – You’ll want to have a link for them to click to view your message in a browser, however you might think about putting it somewhere other than at the very top of your email. Many mobile devices display the beginning of the email in the inbox so your recipients can decide if they want to click to the entire email or not. Including the link text, to view in a browser, might take up some valuable, attention grabbing, space.

5. Make Your Email Lose Weight! – Smaller devices, smaller screens, the next step to making email suitable for phones? Smaller emails. Make your emails 500-600 pixels wide.  The Admail.net Advantage Template labeled “White-Paper” is preset to 500 pixels already.

6. Let Them Call You – Include a click-to-call link if possible. The easier you make it for your recipient to contact you, the better.

7. Text Version is a Must – Make sure you have a text version of your emails in the event that your mobile recipients can only get text. Make sure you keep it short. Since emails usually have line breaks at about 60 characters and mobile devices 20 characters, you’ll want to cut back on some of your copy and direct them for more information to your website.

You want to reach all of your customers and checking email on mobile devices is only become more predominate, so follow some basic mobile guidelines and your email marketing campaign will be accessible to all of your clients, no matter how they check their inbox.

We understand the difficulties involved in developing a good customer list–it requires dedication and perseverance.  Taking short cuts and purchasing third party lists requires a significant amount of due diligence.

1. Are list members customers of the seller?
2. Is there an active sign-up  form you can see?
3. Is the seller/list owner willing to be disclosed as the source of the list in your email?
4. Can the list owner or broker provide references?
5. Claims like Double or Triple Opt-in are a Red Flag.
6. When was the list last emailed?
7. You get what you pay for – If sounds to good to be true it is
8. Can I pay you(list owner) once the list passes an Admail Compliance check?

Below is a prime example of a third party list that got a client permanently suspended from our service. The client purchased a list from Data Depot. It was “Opt-in” according to the list broker and while it initially was able to get past our Compliance check the end result was only 67% was deliverable. To make matters worse it triggered an RBL listing so the client even jeopardized their web site hosting service.

Why third party lists are a bad idea!

An organically grown list takes more time but the list members are worth that much more!