But it’s not just the legal ramifications of peoples data that should concern. When we look at the emailing to prospects or clients. It’s the impact on our companies brand of unsolicited email or Spamming (as its more commonly known) whether individually or as part of a list buying strategies.

One of the reasons I think people are so loath to hand out their business cards at networking events these days is that we often end up on someone’s sales newsletter. They seem to think that because you gave them a business card, they have the permission to sell and market to you and even worse- repeatedly every month.

Over the last few years Marketing has changed it’s had to, some articles claim we are bombarded by 4000 marketing messages a day others argue it’s less some more, but it is still significant. The result is we are becoming oblivious to “interrupt marketing” the kind of marketing that stops us doing something by interrupting us to make us look. Instead, we are in the age of “Permission Marketing” as championed by Gurus such as Seth Godin

People should be asked if they want to receive our marketing “Permission” and then we need to add value to them not sell to them (until they specifically ask us to). We are in the age of free tips and giving not imposing and interrupting.

Think about it for a minute; what do you do when you receive a SPAM? You probably press delete, especially if you do not know the company or person.

If you know the company, you may open the mail, but if every email you are sent is selling you new products, then it isn’t long before we stop opening them.

SPAM damages our brand because we become an annoyance. It can show a conversion rate of approximately 1.5% which can still be tempting if the list is big enough but then we do not consider the negative impact of all those people who were annoyed by the SPAM. Now, of course, there is an added worry with GDPR but let’s stick with our Brand implications for the moment.

So to make sure we stay on the positive side of our brand here are a few tips that will also help you stay GDPR compliant and it really shouldn’t matter if you are in a part of the world where GDPR is less likely to matter because our Brand matters where ever we are.

One problem is that when we become an annoyance there is every chance any goodwill can vanish and we will just be marked as SPAM to stop the emails.

1 Only add people to your newsletters who ask to be added. Many of the better CRM systems have a double opt-in which means that the customer needs to confirm twice that they want to receive your information
2 Make sure to send value and not just sell. Of course, you will want to let them know what’s new keep a balance. There will be less chance they later mark you as SPAM. And yes people will do this even if they asked to be on your list.

3 Don’t buy lists. You are pretty much guaranteed to get a lot of SPAM reports.

4 We can be pleasant to people. We can choose to unsubscribe rather than put them as SPAM. There’s no point being nasty especially if we have or had some relationship with them.

 
Upcoming Events from Phillip Bedford:

 Networking Under the stars – 13^th June

https://uae.asentiv.com/events/networking-under-the-stars-n-u-t-s-2/

 Get More Clients NOW   28^th June

https://uae.asentiv.com/events/get-more-clients-now-3/