As a publisher or list owner, when you’re looking into monetizing your email list through acquisition campaigns, there are two core principles to follow. These are the two elements that complement each other and build the foundation of a successful strategy: Permission and Control.

Permission

Despite the adage, with email, it’s always better to ask permission than forgiveness. Permission, handled properly, is at the heart of a campaign’s performance and the effectiveness of your strategy.

For retention email, your list should include only records who opted in to your list. For more info, check out ExactTarget’s brief post on how to avoid permission issues for retention lists.

To send acquisition email ads to your list, you need additional permission: third-party permission. Your subscriber has given permission, either explicitly or implicitly through agreement with your terms and conditions, for you to send information from other companies to them. These are the only records for which you have permission to send acquisition email ads.

It’s important to note that although the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t explicitly require marketers to use permission-based email lists, consumers don’t much care about legal definitions of spam. If they didn’t sign up for it, they consider it spam and may report it that way. That can harm your credibility and your deliverability.

In real life, when you call or meet someone who isn’t a close friend, you always remind him when you last met or the reason for your call. Do the same in each email: add an explicit, visible header that reminds your end users that they opted in to this list and agreed to receive commercial emails.

You should also make it clear that they can unsubscribe from your list in one click. It’s always better to let uninterested prospects go rather than trying to keep them by making it difficult to find an unsubscribe link. Otherwise, they click on the spam button or speak badly of your company in online forums. (Andrew Kordek also had a great post on Deliverability.com about how important a visible unsubscribe link is.) A commercial relationship is all about trust and respect.

Control

Don’t sell your email list. Never. You worked hard to build it, and you should maintain the ability to supervise each and every email sent. Control rounds out the foundation to your program by keeping a focus on the trust that your subscribers placed in you when they gave you permission to email them.

To maintain control, publishers traditionally send email ads on behalf of advertisers. However, this also makes you responsible for reporting on results and for the content of the message. Spammy language or bad coding here can have a long-term impact on whether your own emails hit the inbox or the spam folder.

ividence reforms traditional market practices by offering an automated solution to these issues. Through its standalone email ad exchange, ividence allows publishers to approve or reject each email campaign. Advertisers’ email creatives are optimized for deliverability, and ividence handles sending, targeting, and reporting.  And ividence ensures that all headers and footers are clean, clear, and don’t fool the end-user.

Are there other elements that have been critical to your acquisition emailing strategy as a publisher?

Kevin Deseuste

Kevin Deseuste joined the ividence team at the beginning of 2011 and directs the implementation and evaluation of advertiser campaigns and publisher lists for the U.S. market. He brings to the team an expertise in monitoring and enhancing deliverability and response rates from both the publisher and advertiser perspective. Prior to joining ividence, Kevin worked in Business Development at technology solutions provider SCC.

He can be reached at kd@ividence.com.
C9TF9F95SD56