Email marketing is a cost-effective way of reaching your marketplace. It is by far the cheapest option for a targeted campaign, but before you email a thousand people, here is a quick guide:
Know the Legal Basics
The law permits you to send emails to business email addresses on business matters. But your email must have an 'unsubscribe' mechanism. This can be a link to an unsubscribe page or one line saying something like 'to unsubscribe, reply to this email with the word 'Remove' in the subject heading'. If you receive an unsubscribe notification you are not permitted to email that person again.
Your email must also have a link to your privacy policy and state that you are contacting the person as you believe you have a Legitimate Interest in doing so. Marketing by businesses to other businesses is accepted as a Legitimate Interest by the Information Commissioner at the ICO.
If you are compiling your own email lists, using online resources such as social media or business websites, you must be registered with the Information Commissioner's Office.
If you wish to avoid all of the rules surrounding GDPR, take note that you can compile your own lists of company email addresses and send emails to companies, providing that you are not using any personal information. So if you send an email to an all-access email address at a company such as sales@ or info@ , and IF your email does not include a person's name (no Hi There Joe or FAO Joe Smith in the header), you don't need to be registered with the ICO or put together a Legitimate Interest Assessment, you are good to go. But this approach only really works well if you are targeting micro-businesses. Send an email into sales@bt.com and your email will not reach a decision-maker.
You should consider sending marketing emails to over 500 contacts using email broadcasting software.
Email Deliverability - What is Normal?
19th century entrepreneur John Wanamaker, once famously said that one half of his advertising was wasted, the trouble was he didn't know which half. Emarketers know exactly which emails were wasted as every campaign will generate 'this inbox is full' messages and 'cannot deliver' notices. This is normal. Do not be upset if up to 10% of your emails fail to arrive. Your email may be picked up as spam, the server may be programmed to reject emails from your server, the target's server may be down, the person's inbox may be full or any number of technical issues could have affected the arrival of your email. We suggest that you read the message which returned the email and if it was a 'soft bounce' ie a server problem, send it again a few days later.
See our guide How to get your email delivered to your target's inbox Remember that if you receive an 'out of office' reply, your email did arrive, but your target has not seen it yet.
Refunds on Hard Bounces
If the email address your list company has supplied is incorrect (known as a 'hard bounce'), a reputable list company will offer a refund of per incorrect email, providing the email was sent within 14 days of purchase. This will not apply if your email has been rejected as spam, so do make sure that the content of your email is spam filter friendly. Emails should not contain trigger words such as 'Money Off', 'Save £££' or too many exclamation marks!!! See our guide How to get your email delivered to your target's inbox
Compliance with PECR
You are allowed to send emails offering business services to business people at their business email addresses, but if they ask you to stop emailing them, then you must remove them from your list and must not email them again. This is central part of the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations (2003) which govern email marketing.