![]() ![]() Bounces: The most common reasons emails fail to get through is that the email address is no longer in use, which is known as a ‘hard bounce’.You should always conceal recipients email addresses when doing bulk emails, which email broadcast systems do. It can be done manually, but the risks of not updating your data records are high, in which case you can easily send an email to someone who has ‘opted out’, breach the DPA and annoy a supporter. None of the PC and web based email tools offer this function. Data protection: The law says that we must offer an unsubscribe option on every email we send out to supporters.Allowing them to make changes to their email record via an automated address book saves time, effort and data entry errors. Supporter choice: We want to allow users to self manage their name, address and preferences.But to keep admin down we don’t want to be manually adding them to our contacts, we need an address book which captures them from our website automatically. So we need a tool which can easily capture emails and store them in an address book. As people move online and postage costs rise we all want to use email because it is what supporters are choosing and to save money. Subscriptions: Capturing people’s emails is becoming increasingly important.It is also good practice to offer a link to a web version of the email. We want to send HTML emails, so we should be sending both depending on what the user can (or wants) to receive. Accessibility: Approximately 20% of users get plain text emails, so it is important to send emails they can read.Emails need to come from a recognised email broadcaster or the ISP may blacklist you as a spammer and block all emails from your IP address. When you send an email from your PC it goes out across the Internet with the IP ( Internet Protocol) address of your office, similar to having an electronic postcode. Delivery: Sending bulk emails always runs the risk that they will be seen as spam by the recipient’s ISP ( Internet Service Provider).Sending links behind the HTML, as we do on the web, allows you to make the copy a link and ensures the link will work. But adding long links to emails is both unsightly, breaking up copy, and risky, because if the link breaks across a line it won’t work. So sending a link to a web page or web based document is far more likely to get it read. Links v attachments: Many ISP’s and office firewalls block attachments from unknown sources.All the PC and web based email tools send either plain text or rich text (with some formatting) and therefore limit your design and content. HTML: The advantages of HTML email are obvious as you can include all the pretty content and images.Personalization: Addressing the message to Dear *Firstname* has the same effect on emails as it does in print, it engages the user and makes them feel that you are writing to them not just a faceless ‘supporter’.Just like a web page it is best practice to make the layout of each email the same, and this is most easily done via an HTML template. Having a template for your email adds to is familiarity and increases our response to it. Layout of copy and inclusion of images helps people read copy on a screen so is crucial to emails. You want the layout of the email to work for you in getting your message across. Design: You need to represent your organisation professionally, with your logo and brand. ![]() These tools were not designed for sending bulk mailings and the result is poor email delivery, poor presentation, being blocked as spam and potentially breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA).īest practice for sending bulk emails requires a set of capabilities: Many charities are using standard office based emails such as Outlook and Lotus, or Internet based emails such as Hotmail and Gmail, to send their organisational emails. ![]() In many ways it is the direct marketing dream: personalised, cheap and trackable.īut sending bulk emails requires a different set of skills and a different tool than our standard day to day emails, even if the number sent is small, there are do’s and don’ts about ‘broadcasting’ emails. Email is cheap (1p/email), quick to create and instantaneous to deliver. Many charities are realising the benefit of emails, whether it be a newsletter to their supporters or a campaign. This article explains the tools we need to send good emails to our supporters and details the things we should look for in an ASP Email Broadcast system. These emails lack design, personalisation and are liable to get blocked as spam as well as potentially breaching the Data Protection Act. Email is a great way to communicate with our stakeholders but too many charities are sending emails from their PC software or Webmail such as outlook and hotmail. ![]()
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