Just Say No to Spam

 

Spam. We all hate it. It comes into our inbox with great subject lines like “Brittany Spears Weight Loss Program” and one of my personal favorites (and a recent visitor to my inbox) “Open Me.”

Emails like this are what first come to mind when you think of spam. But recently, with the advancement of marketing tools and social media, consumers are thinking of spam as more than just emails for diet pills and virus links. Consumers are starting to think of all of the marketing messages they are receiving as spam too.  

When people are receiving emails from your business every day or in some cases more than one email a day, they start to think of your emails as spam. Spam has spread and isn’t just for email anymore. Businesses are finding other ways to “spam” their followers on social media. Excessive direct messaging, unnecessarily repeated tweets, and begging consumers for likes and shares are annoying to consumers too. While self-promotion like this may seem like a good idea at the time, you don’t want to be that business. Sending out endless promotional emails and messages just makes consumers want to unsubscribe from your email list, un-follow you on Twitter, or un-like you on Facebook, probably the opposite of your goal. Remember that you want to position yourself as an expert to consumers and a business that is beneficial to them, a business they can learn from. Don’t make them think of you as spam.

So before you set up an email promoting your current sale to send to your entire email list for every day next week, think about how your customers will perceive you.  Take a moment to think about your next marketing move not as a marketer or business, but as a consumer. Would you be annoyed if a company sent this much information to you? Of course it’s okay to send out some promotional information, but make sure you don’t cross into spammer territory. In the long run, all it will do is hurt you.