Source: The Email Wars
By Dylan T. Boyd

After working in email marketing for 13 plus years I have over time developed some things that I feel strongly about. Love to hear if you agree or disagree with me on them. These are just a few of the top things that I believe in. There are a host of others I could list, but we should save those for another time. Now I am not going to back these with scientific evidence, reports, or a host of examples; only years of being in the trenches. Any of these “could” change int he future, as nothing is ever a set in stone best practice that stands the test of time, rather time bears out the test.

I hope you enjoy these and find them useful and encourage you to share any things you feel strongly about in regard to email marketing with me.

1. Email is a permission based marketing practice.

Sure many people seem to feel it is do it first and ask for permission later. While this might work for some shady practitioners it does not fly well for me. I believe that working with people that want your communications works multiples better than the gather, spray and pray method some marketers use. Think about this, billboards, TV, Radio, print and general advertising is about getting the largest awareness for the effort. Social might fall into this category as well today as much of it is about search and awareness. But the email inbox is still a sacred place that requires permission. This is not like your post pox that sits on the roadside that can be targeted by marketers with dead tree mail. That is awareness and funny enough spawned the term “junk mail”. When an email hits your inbox the perception is more personal and things that arrive there unsolicited end up in a complaint, junked, or deleted. At the same time there is a poor brand experience as consumers do not want any more mail that they have not agreed to in that inbox. It is hard enough for most people to keep that inbox controllable, so if you are one that feels it is opt in until it is opt out then you are responsible for much of this bad perception and most of the battle the good guys using permission based practices employ.