There are few things more important than trust when trying to sell your product or service. Without trust, your audience will fade away, or worse, never show up at all. Your marketing is usually the first way you gain or lose an audience. The best way to lose an audience is if you settle on sending spam marketing messages.
What Are Spam Marketing Messages?
Spam messages are marketing messages sent through email, text messaging, physical mail, or ads that are unwanted and unprompted. This isn’t to say every time you market to a new person, you’re sending spam. There is a difference between introductory marketing and spam, but it’s a fine line. All spam is unprompted, but not all unprompted marketing is spam. It’s the unwanted part you need to focus on. This distinction will help you.
To avoid sending spam, gather data on who would use your products. That’s how you find people who want an unprompted marketing message from you. Sometimes this won’t work and you’ll message someone who’s not interested in your product or service, and that’s okay. As long as it’s not the majority of people you’re marketing to, and you’re not getting someone’s information illegally, you should be fine.
Spam Marketing Destroys Trust
A message that looks like spam will immediately turn people away. In the United States alone, the majority of people do not trust companies or advertisers. After years of spam emails, unwanted texts, annoying robocalls, and overstuffed mailboxes, the best marketing almost always wants to bill itself as different from everyone else. This is because being different means being trustworthy, and right now, every business needs to earn its audience’s trust to build up that audience and succeed. Spam will not do that.
When Are Spam Marketing Messages Illegal?
Another thing every business should know about spam is that more often than not, it’s illegal. If you’re sending email or text messages to someone who didn’t opt-in, it’s illegal. You can send physical mail and target people with ads unprompted, but you cannot legally send email or text messages without an opt-in.
Phone providers are much more strict than email. They will make sure you receive a fine and block you from sending more text messages, even if they’re not spam.
Email operators are not as strict, but they will flag and block your marketing accounts from sending emails even if you’re not sending spam after you’re caught, and it can be difficult to undo. Multiple offenses of email spam can also lead to fines.
What Looks Like a Spam Marketing Message?
Finally, let’s talk about what spam messages look like and what tactics or weaknesses they have that you need to avoid.
1. Pop-Up Images
When someone clicks on a page only to be interrupted by a pop-up, they may become infuriated. Many sites use this to block people from reading without paying, which rubs people the wrong way. Then the ones that do let you close it make you look at the pop-up for a certain amount of time before being able to click away.
This is usually considered spam because they’re unprompted and unwanted. It’s hard to think of an instance where someone wants to be interrupted as they’re doing an activity they clicked on the page to do.
2. Autoplaying Videos
This does not include GIFs. GIFs are spam if they are intrusive and/or a part of pop-ups. Autoplaying videos are different mainly because they come with sound. When someone clicks on a page, they may not even know the video is there. Having it autoplay unprompted will interrupt someone’s reading experience and play a sound they did not expect and likely did not want to hear.
There is nothing wrong with the videos themselves. Videos are a good marketing tool to invest in when used correctly. Just make sure they don’t start unless someone clicks on them.
3. Content That’s Not Optimized for Mobile
An easy rule to follow when it comes to spam is, “If it looks bad, it looks like spam.” Currently, when 46% of people read their email on mobile, you cannot have a poorly optimized marketing message. People will back out or close immediately if the mobile page is hard to read, navigate, or just unattractive.
Text messages are read exclusively on phones, so they should be well optimized by default. Don’t forget that any links you add to them should lead to a well-optimized mobile page as well, or your potential audience will call it spam and opt-out.
4. Missing Contact Information
There’s nothing sketchier than a web page or marketing message that gives the recipient no way to identify or contact you. Accusations of spam will rise exponentially if you don’t reveal your business’s contact information until after they sign-up.
5. Sketchy Sign-Up Process
If you have a landing page or contact form, there are several techniques you can use to drive someone away from your site. To start, it shouldn’t be difficult to do. If you have a contact form with several different instructions on what you have to put in, what is optional, and how you enter or select information, you’ve lost most of your potential contacts. Make it simple and easy to join your audience.
The next worst thing is to ask for registration immediately. No audience is going to give you their contact information before you’ve sold them the product. Your marketing content must go first, and if you ask for their contact information from the get-go, you will not get many contacts.
Another terrible mistake you can make is to offer free rewards in your marketing content and then not hold up your end of the bargain. Even if you’re not forcing them to pay, if you make someone give you their contact information for a free offer, that’s not free. Information, time, and surveys are not “free,” they are something they are giving you in return. Do not advertise something as free, then ask for something. They will leave your company behind.
Contact a Marketing Firm That Won’t Send Spam
When you’re figuring out your marketing campaigns, you need to avoid sending spam marketing messages. That’s an easy way to drive away any potential audience and traffic, and you will be spending money as you do this. If avoiding spam is complicated or difficult for you, contact a law marketing firm that knows how to build up an audience without damaging their trust in your brand. Contact ENX2 Marketing, a team with the skills and knowledge you need.