Part 1: E-mail Marketing

By Malcolm Fraser

As Christians, it’s important that the way we advertise and market ourselves is not only smart and creative, but ethical.

Marketing your own book on the internet can be richly rewarding – but it is also very hard work. It’s natural to look for a few “shortcuts” or be tempted by a “too-good-to-be true” scheme that promises to help. In this two-part series, I’ll provide two examples, along with some helpful warnings and tips:

E-mail Marketing

Mass unsolicited e-mail – or “spam” is familiar to most people. It might be hard to believe, but “spam” works – albeit with only a 0.000008% success rate. That’s one positive response for every 12.5 million e-mails sent. Now you know why there’s so much of it!

However, for the more than 99.9% of people who are not interested in anything a “spam” e-mail has to offer, it is highly annoying and often offensive. It is also becoming illegal in more and more places.

But remember that there’s a big difference between “spam” and good e-mail marketing.

Building or utilizing a good e-mail list can be a great marketing tool, but you need to be careful. Many companies offer to sell huge lists or send e-mails advertising your product to thousands or millions of people – for a fee. Most of them are spammers, and working with them will do your reputation far more harm than good.

There are some legitimate companies who provide legal and useful e-mail list services, but there’s no substitute for building your own list. Positive responses for personally-compiled e-mail lists are much higher than for “spam.”

Here are some important rules that should always be followed:

• Recipients must specifically choose to “opt in” to an e-mail list. A good way to ensure this is to encourage Web site visitors to sign up for an e-zine or e-mail newsletter.
• If you’re buying a third-party list, or using a company’s list/database, the recipients should have been informed that their e-mail address could be sold or distributed. You should always verify this.
• There must be a genuine way for recipients to “opt out” – usually a simple link at the bottom of each e-mail. (Watch out! Spammers often use fake “opt out” links as a way to verify that your e-mail address is active.)
• Any e-mail list or service should be properly targeted to appropriate demographics. Recipients are less likely to be upset by “spam” if it contains something that they might actually be interested in.

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll discuss Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing.

Malcolm Fraser is the Executive Officer at WinePress Group, and serves as the assistant to the Executive Publisher. He helps to oversee and coordinate all of WinePress’ different departments, handles customer service issues, contract development, and also contributes to programming and designing our websites and author blogs.