Sending out your own bulk email without following permission based marketing policies? Don’t.

WHAT IS PERMISSION BASED MARKETING?

We often see this…individual estate agents or real estate offices sending out bulk emails to their contacts list without using permission based marketing policies. This is a big no-no. Even worse, is to include all those recipients in the email ‘TO’ address field. This allows the recipients to see each other and in many cases will backfire with nasty ‘reply to all’ emails from individuals that will reach all recipients..as can be seen here:

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Here lies a big risk for you or your individual or estate agency brand, in that most people will get a negative view of your company if they haven’t signed up for your email in the first place, or are not provided with the option to stop the emails. Then there is the danger of having your domain blacklisted, as people can mark this as spam, and in most cases email servers can also automatically pick this up ‘spam’. It does more harm than good – as blacklisted domains will prevent standard email send/receive functions.

1) Opt-in: Let customers self-select which direct email marketing services they want to subscribe to. You should also indicate how any information they provide will be used. You get their permission, usually from a web page.

2) Opt-out: Give existing customers the option to opt-out of further direct marketing emails from you. Usually from a link in the email they can click on. The ‘reply with unsubscribe’ in the email method is not very smooth or advised, people want an easy way to unsubscribe, don’t waste their time.

For your own good, follow these opt-in and opt-out permission based marketing policies.

 

PERMISSION BASED MARKETING SOFTWARE FOR YOUR AGENCY

Rather than using Outlook and sending bulk email to everyone, use proper permission based marketing software that follows the rules:

 

Flex newsletters and property alerts follow permission based marketing rules. Users can signup and have to click on a confirmation link in an email to opt-in. They can also opt-out at any time by clicking on a link in one of the subscription emails.

http://www.entegral.net/content/p479_flex-real-estate-websites.aspx

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You can also explore the following email marketing software if you want more customized email newsletters:

http://mailchimp.com/

http://www.verticalresponse.com/

http://www.constantcontact.com/

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