Email Marketing: What You Should
Know
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Email marketing is an
important tool for small business owners,
enabling them to stay in contact with
their current or potential clients and
thereby increasing sales. Given
the variety of email marketing software
solutions on the market, however, one
could easily get lost among the choices
without some basic knowledge of a few key
concepts.
Following is a glossary of some essential
email marketing buzz words, aimed at
helping you make an informed choice
according to your business
needs.
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Email authentication allows an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to
identify the sender of an email and safeguards against
forgery. The latest technologies in this field include
Domain Keys, DKIM and SPF. Any reputable email marketing
provider will manage these technologies on behalf of your
business so as to take the weight off of your shoulders,
but be sure to verify this up front. You should also find
out which technologies the provider works
with.
Domain Keys (DK)
and Domain Keys Identified
Mail (DKIM) are signatures added to emails in order
to verify the sender (or domain) and message
content.
They help ensure that your messages will be received by
your subscriber, since they're identifiable by spam bots
and filters.
The best email marketing providers utilize this
technology in order to ensure that as many of your emails
can be received by your subscribers as
possible.
Spam
is the common term for unsolicited bulk
email.
Emails that are sent to an address whose owner did not
opt-in (or give direct permission) to receive them, as
well as emails sent multiple times to the same address,
are considered spam. Reputable email
marketing providers won't take on customers who are
planning on sending spam messages. In fact, top providers
will catch spam before it is sent and prevent its clients
from sending spam.
Tracking functionality is provided by most email
marketing companies and allows you to track opens,
clicks, forwards and bounces. In other words, you'll be
able to view which of your subscribers has opened your
email, clicked on a link inside it, forwarded it or did
not receive it in their inbox. Emails can bounce due to a
variety of reasons: the subscriber's mailbox could be
full, the address might no longer exist, the subscriber's
server may have timed out (in other words, the
destination computer failed to respond to the source
computer's message) or the subscriber's account security
settings could be extremely exclusive. This information
provides you with a better understanding of your
subscribers, enabling you to develop more focused
marketing strategies and tailor future campaigns
accordingly. Home
business ideas
So before you go searching for email
marketing software, be sure to define your specific
requirements. Choose a provider that will give you the
best chances of getting all your emails delivered and
your campaign is sure to be a success.
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