Here’s Part IV of this 5-part series covering the 5 most common consumer spam-complaint-triggers and how to avoid accidentally pulling them. To see all the articles in the series to date, go to the archive page.
Trigger #4: Excessive Promotion
Selling more than enough of your products or services to stay in business is an important part of your email marketing strategy, but according to a Jupiter Research survey, 40% of consumers said they stopped subscribing to opt-in emails because they were getting too many offers. Too many offers might lead to spam complaints if you don’t strike a balance between the preferences of your audience and your promotional frequency.
- Keep your promotional frequency in line with your average sales cycle and business model. If your business is known as the discount choice among the competition, your audience is probably more promotion-tolerant than if your business is positioned as delivering higher quality and service. If you sell items that are consumed quickly, your audience probably expects more frequent promotions than if you sell items that are normally purchased every few months, years, or once in a lifetime.
- Place promotions on your website and use informative email content to drive clicks. For example, instead of putting an entire article and a promotion in your email newsletter, use only the first two or three sentences in your email, and post the rest of the article, and a related promotion, on your website. That way, your audience isn’t exposed to your promotional content until they are interested enough in a specific topic to click for more information.
- Know your audience’s promotional preferences. Some consumers love coupons, sales, and discounts. Others believe that sales items are defective or inferior. If your audience is made up of the latter, they won’t tolerate as many promotions as audiences made up of so-called “discount shoppers.” If you’re not sure of your audience’s promotional preferences, use a survey, a poll, or a choice of interest lists to sort your subscribers into groups.
John Arnold is the author of Email Marketing for Dummies and the Director of Constant Contact’s Local Expert Program.
