For some the question ‘Are you spamming people?’ might seem odd, but there’s still a lot more spam out there than opt-in commercial email marketing. Even the marketers who believe they are doing the right thing are doing it wrong.
This is either because they haven’t gotten an opt-in from the people receiving their email marketing campaigns, or because they are not sending out a campaign to customers.
Those are two of the main reasons you might be spamming people without actually knowing it. Here’s a flowchart describing certain situations, and questions to guide you to the right decision.
A while ago we posted ‘should I send this email?‘ which posed a similar situation. The situation with this flowchart and the question ‘Are you spamming people?’ is a bit more serious though.
Here’s the flowchart:
Click the image for the full version.
The three main questions asked after the primary question ‘Why are you sending this email?’ are:
- Is it interesting and/or relevant?
- Did the recipient ask for it? (hello opt-in)
- Is it important information?
Also, there’s a remark rather than a question: I bought a list. In that case you can take the shortest route to the negative answer. You as a marketer are better than that, and should put effort into building an opt-in list and providing the people who opted in with relevant content.
Be sure to ask yourself the question: ‘Are you spamming people?’ and with help of this flowchart you should be able to come up with the right answer – even if it means not sending out your latest email campaign.