Kim Ellis of KE Consulting [also at MySpace] shares what she’s learned in her business dealings with the email blasters we’ve all come to know whether we want to or not:

Email Blasting Chaos! by Kim Ellis

To give you a little history for those that may not know, KE has been putting out "KEeping You In The Know" for 2 and 1/2 years, back when email marketing/promotions in our field of music wasn’t as heightened as it is today.   My newsletter was created to provide an additional resource to my clients who I handled PR for as well as an avenue to provide information on events, conferences, etc. that may be beneficial to you, the reader, for your networking needs.  This email blast is not my primary source of income or my primary source of conducting business.  With that said, I have reached out to the many e-blast/marketing companies that have developed over the past years to determine if there is an opportunity for me to do business with them relative to my PR clients.  The responses have been anywhere from reasonable and reliable to unreasonable and questionable on its reliability.

I’d like to list a few things to consider when you are gearing up for your marketing & promotions game with those that do email marketing.  As a consumer myself, it is important to ask questions.

1. Get references.  If they’ve done business with others, surely they can give you references from companies that have done business with them.

2. Ask for a print out or email on proof that your promotional email was sent to the number of people they have advised are in their database.  For example, with KE’s list, there is an email that is sent at the end of my email campaign that is run confirming how many emails have been sent.

3. Do your homework and due diligence on how they send their email campaigns out.  If they are sending their emails out under a gmail account (as an example) and there isn’t any indication at the bottom of their blast on which provider they are using (i.e. Constant Contact, My Newsletter Builder, Mailer Mailer, etc.), question which program they use.  This is extremely important because most email providers only allow a certain number of emails to be sent out daily before your email account is suspended or locked out.

4. Ask yourself, does this email marketing company invest in themselves by using a program for a fee that would constitute them charging you the fee they are asking?

Number 3 holds meaning close to me as I type this to you today.  I am presently locked out of my gmail account, (which is VERY unproductive I might add) because I tried to "protect" my contact information in a response to someone blasting to a group of email addresses which they didn’t use the BCC option.  The number of bounces and emails caused Gmail to shut me down for 24 hours all because of this REPLY ALL to NOT add my two email addresses that were exposed but to use an alternate email of mine instead.   Which leads me to my next and very valuable point.

If you are going to send an email out to your contact lists, PLEASE BCC your contacts.  It’s not hard to do, and in fact, if you need my help call me.  It seems that either lists are being sold or contacts are being jeopardized these days which KE doesn’t practice either.  We all have to have more business sense and do better.  Last, if someone asks to be REMOVED from your list, just do it without catching an attitude or taking anything personal.  Just because they aren’t interested in what you are sending, doesn’t take away your self worth. 

Sounds like great advice for everyone involved.

Big thanks to Kim Ellis for letting me reprint this mini-essay.