This is the third article in my email marketing guide article series. Before getting into advanced topics, you need to understand the laws and basic terms about email marketing.
Understanding The CAN-SPAM Act & Obeying the Laws
Email marketing is a serious business, and the government also takes it serious. Without getting into any details, if you want to create a long term and successful email marketing business, you need to read and understand The CAN-SPAM Act and obey every single law. Otherwise, you will get into trouble.
If you are new to email marketing, it’s a good idea to take a look at basic email marketing terms before launching your first campaign.
Email Marketing Terms
- Single Opt-in (or a single opt-in subscription): Visitors and/or customers are invited to subscribe to your email list. When they enter their information and signup, no further step is needed. They start receiving emails automatically.
- Double Opt-in (or a confirmed opt-in subscription): Similar to single opt-in, your visitors/customers need to subscribe to your email list. After the subscription, they receive a confirmation email for this subscription. They need to click the link in this email and confirm their subscription. This prevents mistakes, and unwanted subscriptions and increases the conversion rate and quality of your email list.
- Opt-out (or unsubscribe): To opt-out or unsubscribe from an email list is to choose not to receive communications from the sender by requesting the removal of your email address from their list. By law, you are required to add an unsubscribe link in every email you send to your list.
- Spam or UCE (or Unsolicited Commercial Email): Email sent to a recipient who has not opted-in or given permission to the sender. Spam is unwanted and unexpected email from an unknown third party.
- Open Rate: Percentage of total opened/viewed email to the total sent email in a given campaign. 78 out of 100 people opened/viewed the email during the campaign, it means the campaign has 78% open rate.
- CTR (Click Through Rate): The percentage of recipients who have clicked on a link within the sent email.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who have responded to the call-to-action in a given email marketing campaign or promotion. Higher the conversion rate, more successful the email campaign. Conversion might be sales, leads, registrations, phone calls, appointments, etc.
Even though there are many other terms used in email marketing, these are the basics you need to be comfortable with. So, make sure you understand these terms clearly before getting into more advanced topics in email marketing.
We have understood the importance of The CAN-SPAM Act, and the basic terms of email marketing. Now, we are ready to setup our email marketing strategy.
*This article is a part of my Email Marketing Guide Article Series.
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