For those of you who know me youve gotten the message that I am passionate about customer privacy. What kind of an Email Marketer would I be if I wasnt
First off, if you dont have a privacy policy on your website stop reading this Email Marketing article and get one. I mean it, it is important.
If you do have a privacy policy, here are some things you will want to make sure your privacy policy covers or includes:
-How you treat Email addresses that are entrusted to you (when someone subscribes to your Email newsletter list or sends you an Email message).
-How people can take back their Email addresses and get off your list (un-subscribing).
-Your mailing address and contact Email address.
Why the mailing address and contact Email address
It is not a law or anything but it just makes sense. Your willingness to share your postal address and some way for website and email visitors to contact you says a lot about your company. It also falls in line with the Can-Spam act (US Legislation) regarding what has to be included in Email marketing messages.
Lots of companies dont think privacy policies are important. They should. In some countries posting a privacy policy that is accessible to the public is either considered good business practice or law. Canada, for example, has specific privacy legislation. Certain types of businesses have to post privacy policies that the public can access (the best place for this is a website/Blog).
And if your home country doesnt have any privacy legislation posting a privacy policy is still a good idea. It shows:
*You care about customer privacy issues (which is a hot topic in the media and in conversations about business ethics).
*You are willing to go beyond the minimum requirements of your geographic location.
*It equips your website/blog for world-wide distribution, regardless of where someone is who is partaking of your website/blog/email marketing campaigns.
If you are still reading this article and you did not heed my earlier advice to get a privacy policy, go get one now!
If you need some help, check out some privacy policies on your favorite websites. Most privacy policies are not the kind of thing you read on a Sunday afternoon while you are lounging about in your pajamas, but reading a variety of privacy policies will give you an idea of what they are all about.
Joan Pasay is a dynamic e-marketing coach & the author of:
Email Marketing Made Easy: How To Get Your Customers To Give You More Of Their Money. For online and offline businesses.
Check out Joans Privacy Policy here:
Email Joan here:
Feel free to send this article to anyone you wish.
Copyright - Joan Pasay 2005
A new client recently asked a question about the best length for a marketing email.
I think many of us assume that emails should be brief. Its probably a carry-over from the early days online when connection speeds were so slow. Longer messages took forever to retrieve so we avoided them.
Yet, theres no rule that says an email MUST be brief. So far as I know, there hasnt been much research done to validate an ideal length one way or the other.
I did a little informal checking in my own mail archives and discovered some surprising results. I found in a recent month that email lengths fell in the following ranges:
16% ----- Under 300 words
43% ----- 301 1000 words
25% ----- 1001 2000 words
11% ----- 2001 4000 words
05% ----- Over 4000 words
I was surprised the most by the upper and lower range size. I thought the biggest percentage of email would be under 300 words. You can see that wasnt the case.
And I was shocked to see how many mails were monsters! As a group, mails selling financial information products and services were the largest. Those folks send out full blown sales letters just like you receive in street mail with trend graphs, candlestick charts and all.
Newsletters fell mostly in the group starting at 1001 words but often ran over 2000. E-Courses also hovered in this range.
Even the short emails under 300 words didnt really reflect total message length. Many encouraged the reader to click through one or more links to landing pages on the senders website. And these landing pages were often several-thousand-word sales letters.
Although there were still some purely text based emails, there was also no shortage of elaborate graphics. Many of the emails look like web pages these days, especially newsletters.
The point I took away from the exercise is a simple one. These days there no longer exist any practical constraints on length or graphic content of emails. Weve reached the point where the technology supports whatever it takes to get our message across.
And like Martha says, thats a good thing. Were free to do the best possible job of communicating without having to worry about fitting the message to a certain predetermined length or format.
All we really need to do now is just make sure what we write is worth reading
Ronald A Murphy is a Copywriter and Graphic Designer specializing in Direct Response, Internet and Multichannel Marketing. Murphy writes and designs sales letters, direct mail packages, inserts, web sales pages, direct email, newsletters for marketing, Internet articles, white papers, and other sales focused materials. He provides expertise to clients serving financial, business, technology, health, opportunity and fundraising markets.
For more information on copywriting and marketing, visit his site at . There you can subscribe to his newsletter, R A Murphys Copywriting and Design Tips. You can also read Murphys Blog on Copywriting and Design for Internet and Direct marketing at .