SolveYourProblem
Article Series: Opt In Email
The Most Common Email Audit Problems
If you decide to put your e-mail program
through an e-mail audit or self-assessment, such as third-party
certification you will probably turn up problems with your
list acquisition, disclosure policies, bounce management,
or subscriber consent. One or all of these problems can affect
delivery. When you have an email audit, the common problems
occur within the opt-in procedures, delivery management,
and privacy polices.
With list acquisitions, the primary problem is with how
you are acquiring your email addresses. It is very important
to confirm the opt-in. Use the double opt-in methods. Every
email message includes an unsubscribe link as required by
CAN-SPAM, but if the link fails to remove the subscriber
from the list because it was scripted incorrectly or it does
not coordinate unsubscribes with the database. The way to
fix this if it has been going on for a while is that you
must reacquire permission through a confirmation message
or other opt-in mechanism. These confirmation messages do
not necessarily need to be sent to your whole list if you
can isolate the users who were presented with the malfunctioning
unsubscribe links. To prevent this in the future, use an
email service provider (ESP) for database management. Email
Service Providers have extensive tools and options for subscription,
suppression, and bounce handling.
Be
careful that your email policies are consistent. Many
times a business will say one thing regarding how they will
use the email address when the recipient opts-in but they
state something different in their privacy policy or terms
of service, that will give them more leeway with the addresses.
The registration page says the company will use email addresses
only to send the messages the subscriber wants, but service
terms allow the company to send general messages or third-party
ads at will. The way to fix this is to update customer-facing
policies to be consistent with your marketing practices and
provide notice to existing users. Managing consumer expectations
poorly results in spam complaints, which jeopardize your
mailings. For privacy and sensitive issues, such as sharing
your list members' information with third parties, distribute
a confirmation e-mail to gather permission from your users
to share their information.
Another
problem that email audits uncover is the transferring
of email lists to other partners or subdivisions within the
company. The majority of Internet Marketing businesses have
a form or process for recipients to unsubscribe from their
services and while this is great, it is important to have
a way to handle the process of removing bounces. Simply having
a link that allows the recipient to unsubscribe is not enough;
you also need a way to make sure the addresses are removed
from your subscriber database. To fix this problem you can
update your existing policies to reflect your practices and
set expectations upfront. If email policies change after
you have already acquired a sizeable list, provide users
with notice and choice. Send a campaign to the affected recipients
notifying them of the policy changes and the additional messages
they might receive. Use this as an opportunity to highlight
the benefits of your other newsletters and offers. Ideally,
you will drive readers to a preference page that lets them
update preferred subscription options.
Another form of auditing is to email newsletter audits.
This can be an effective method to uncover areas affecting
the lack of response to your marketing campaign. You can
look for five areas to evaluate when you audit such as, value,
copy deliverability, CAN-SPAM compliance, and metrics.
