Editor’s Corner:
FOUR SUREFIRE WAYS TO KILL YOUR E-MAIL CAMPAIGN

I’m a great believer in the marriage of direct marketing science to e-mail marketing. There’s so much for one to learn from the other. But until that great knowledge transfer takes place here’s a list of some practices you should avoid:

1. Make a hard offer If you think one e-mail message will result in an order, you’re risking everything on one shot. The culture on the Net is definitely one of "try before you buy." The basic wisdom here is to use the e-mail message as the "envelope" with teaser copy and the web page you ask people to click through to as your "letter." Opt-in e-mail lists consist mostly of people who have agreed to accept offers in areas of interest to them. There’s no buying history to the names so how can you sock an offer to them? It’s something you do in stages.

2. Test lists from many sources at the same time E-mail list management today is in a grand state of paranoia. There are no third-party bonded mail shops to go to. Every time you go to a different list manager you will need to get a test message approved, make sure your links work, suppress your housefile, etc. It really isn’t fun and it can lead to many mistakes. If you’re new to e-mail marketing, try the "learn as you go" approach with one list manager at a time. With each mailing and each new list you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the medium and the marketplace.

3. Work with a non-communicative webmaster Recently a webmaster provided his client with an ordering page on a regular http:// link. After the client "pushed" (industry jargon for sent or dropped) his mail the webmaster realized he should have made a secure ordering page, which he did but didn’t tell anyone. That changed the link to https:// and made it unusable for those who had already received the mail that first went out.

4. Suppress a housefile Many times e-mail lists contain no address information. Zip codes, maybe. Some lists don’t always have first and last names. If you’re lucky enough to find lists that have both, then suppression might be a good idea. Otherwise you may end up suppressing names that are not on your housefile. If you have e-mail addresses in your file, suppressing those makes sense. But remember, many people have more than one e-mail address these days!

Have you any other pitfalls to add to the list??? E-mail them to me at sarah@e-tactics.com. We’ll publish them.