How to Market to Contacts You Shouldn't Email

Overview

AVADA's integration with your website and E-commerce platform means that you will have a vast amount of data at your disposal, especially for building segments and workflows. AVADA pulls in information about subscribers, customers, and even web browsers. This also means you may have a number of contacts who have not opted in for your email marketing.

Emailing contacts who haven't opted in can cause your emails to be marked as spam and negatively affect your deliverability. It is essential to understand who you should and should not email, as well as alternative ways to market to those contacts.

NOTE: One of the fastest ways to ensure that you don't email anyone you shouldn't is by cleaning your email list and building an engaged segment.

Best practices

- Don't send emails to broad segments of people. Some people just visited your website at some point but never opted in. If you send emails to these segments, this can seriously damage your deliverability and sender reputation. Instead, make sure that all of your segments have a condition that restricts them to your main list. This will ensure that you are only emailing people who have opted in.

- Don't resend the same campaign to those who didn't open it the first time. If they didn't open your message the first time and you didn't change anything about the email, chances are they won't open it the second time. Repeatedly sending to people who won't open your messages will lead to low open rates and, consequently, harm your deliverability. Consider sending a completely different campaign (with different subject line and content) as a follow-up to the first if it is a particularly important email, like a product release. For subscribers that remain unengaged, retarget them in a different channel, such as with forms or on social media.

- Don't send to lists you purchased. This violates the CAN-SPAM Act as well as AVADA's Terms of Service. Instead, grow your list organically using signup forms.

- Don't automatically add people who sign up to your main list when running a contest or giveaway. Generally, these are not very engaged leads, and sending to them can later hurt your open rates and deliverability. Rather, funnel contests or giveaway sign-ups into a welcome series, where they can choose to opt in to receive your newsletter emails.

Alternatives to email

- SMS. SMS is another key, owned channel that AVADA offers. To learn more and get started sending text message marketing to subscribers, navigate to Getting Started with SMS/MMS in AVADA.

- Signup forms. Signup forms help you grow your list and collect more information about your subscribers. Furthermore, you can use forms as a way to target individuals in segments with content that directly pertains to them. A timely form on your website may be just the thing to re-engage your audience outside of email. For getting started information, read our Guide to Creating a Signup Form.

- Social media. Another way to target people outside of email is via social media pages, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. You can share your content on social media pages and reach them in a way that resonates better with them if email has yet to engage them with your brand.

Updated on: 06/09/2021