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Ask HN: Email Marketing – Doing It the Right Way

3 points by tzury 8y ago

Hi all, Can you describe the do's and don'ts regarding this? We want to start using this method, based on legit lists such as acquired from Dun & Bradstreet and the likes. What measures should we take at our end to protect domain from being blacklisted? Assuming we plan to act by the book by all means and fairness.

zzo38computer 8y ago
You should need the user to opt in (although if they opted in to third-party marketing from Dun & Bradstreet then presumably that is legitimate too), and then send them the messages, that do not contain any lies, and do not send third-party marketing from your domain (unless they opted in to third-party marketing too), and then hopefully will not be black listed. Even if they are, some users will black list stuff they do not want using various methods (I set up a different email alias for each thing and delete the aliases that start receiving messages that I do not want).
legitster 8y ago
Email Marketer here: I really wouldn't use acquired lists, even "legitimate" ones. Assuming they are not full of spam traps or bad data, email is the worst medium to come in cold on. Once someone unsubscribes or blacklists, they are gone forever. Also, the way email clients work now is much more robust. Even if your emails are not marked as 'spam', the big players (Outlook, Gmail, etc) use machine learning to determine if people are actually reading your emails. Badly performing senders are relegated to a Clutter or Promo folder, which can be just as bad as Spam. So coming in strong with good performing emails is very important to establishing a reputation. (Double opt-in is your friend here, that opt-in email gets a lot of inbox activity for you.) If you have a list, use that to manually call down or email people individually. If you are going to intrude on them cold, at least do them the honor of being personal with it. Plus, you can really hone down on the messaging and finding what people respond to. This is very much a case where premature optimization is your enemy. Start looking for an automation platform once you have more transactional emails established. Have all the opt-ins and follow best-practices, yadda yadda.
- tzury 8y ago
  Thank you very much for this informative answer.
  - legitster 8y ago
    As an idea, if you have an existing list of emails from former customers or lost opportunities, those are a good candidate for a long term nurture campaign. If there were reasons they looked at your product in the past, there are good odds they may look at it in the future again. Keep them on a quarterly or monthly drip and remind them of new features or platform updates.

3 points by tzury 8y ago

zzo38computer 8y ago

You should need the user to opt in (although if they opted in to third-party marketing from Dun & Bradstreet then presumably that is legitimate too), and then send them the messages, that do not contain any lies, and do not send third-party marketing from your domain (unless they opted in to third-party marketing too), and then hopefully will not be black listed. Even if they are, some users will black list stuff they do not want using various methods (I set up a different email alias for each thing and delete the aliases that start receiving messages that I do not want).

legitster 8y ago

Email Marketer here: I really wouldn't use acquired lists, even "legitimate" ones. Assuming they are not full of spam traps or bad data, email is the worst medium to come in cold on. Once someone unsubscribes or blacklists, they are gone forever. Also, the way email clients work now is much more robust. Even if your emails are not marked as 'spam', the big players (Outlook, Gmail, etc) use machine learning to determine if people are actually reading your emails. Badly performing senders are relegated to a Clutter or Promo folder, which can be just as bad as Spam. So coming in strong with good performing emails is very important to establishing a reputation. (Double opt-in is your friend here, that opt-in email gets a lot of inbox activity for you.) If you have a list, use that to manually call down or email people individually. If you are going to intrude on them cold, at least do them the honor of being personal with it. Plus, you can really hone down on the messaging and finding what people respond to. This is very much a case where premature optimization is your enemy. Start looking for an automation platform once you have more transactional emails established. Have all the opt-ins and follow best-practices, yadda yadda.

tzury 8y ago
Thank you very much for this informative answer.
- legitster 8y ago
  As an idea, if you have an existing list of emails from former customers or lost opportunities, those are a good candidate for a long term nurture campaign. If there were reasons they looked at your product in the past, there are good odds they may look at it in the future again. Keep them on a quarterly or monthly drip and remind them of new features or platform updates.