Opt-in permission is the holy grail for e-mail marketers. Once you have it, it becomes easier to connect with a prospect who has, in theory, raised his or her hand and asked to hear more. Doing anything else, according to conventional wisdom, would be foolhardy, if not dangerous. But at a growing number of companies, e-mail marketing executives are being pushed to try different tactics, which is resulting in some prospects receiving unsolicited e-mails.

Doing the Right Thing

Those marketers that decide to go the non-opt-in way should be very careful about their approach said Karen Trivonovic, senior director of strategic services for e-mail service provider StrongMail Systems. Don’t e-mail everyone at a particular company, and never send to general e-mail boxes, such as sales@companyname.com or info@companyname.com. You should also consider putting frequency and duration best practices into place, she said.

“Send an e-mail for four weeks, but if there’s no open or click behavior, you should supress them,” she said. “The preferred best practice is sending a single e-mail expressing what your value proposition is, why [the prospect] should want to receive e-mails and a link asking them to opt-in.”

From July 12, 2010 BtoB Magazine, written by Karen J. Bannan

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