E-Marketing in the world of Spam

The spammers have almost ruined e-mail as a marketing technique. Some estimates say that 60% of all e-mail on the Internet is unsolicited commercial e-mail. In response, our clients have set up overly-aggressive spam filters that delete our marketing messages and even stop newsletters that clients have requested.

The trick to maximizing deliverability is to know what the spam filters look for and avoid the voodoo words.

E-newsletters a best practice

It's too bad, because research shows that sending an e-newsletter is a highly effective marketing technique, and is among the top 10 things that clients want from their law firms. E-mail newsletters are considered a best marketing practice for law firms, according to the report “Best Practices in Legal Marketing: Effective Use of Web Sites” by Touchpoint Metrics, www.tpmetrics.com. E-newsletters let you offer updates, build relationships with current clients, enhance the firm’s image as experts, and reduce your printing and mailing expenses.

E-mail newsletters help law firms collect demographic information and make the Web site interactive. Clients can typically sign up for e-newsletters on a law firm Web site. This is the only way to tell exactly who is visiting your Web site (log files capture only the IP address), and permits a firm to collect all kinds of demographic information.

Anti-spam law a failure

The CAN-SPAM law was supposed to remedy unsolicited commercial e-mail, but the evil spammers ignore it. Nevertheless, the law applies to law firm e-newsletters! To comply, you must:

1. Include your business address in the message.
2. Provide header information that is accurate and not deceptive.
3. Provide a working unsubscribe link and process requests immediately.
4. Clearly indicate if you are sending an advertisement.

To maximize deliverability, avoid voodoo words, ALL CAPS or punctuation in subject line, send simple messages – short messages with URLs for detail; avoid hyperbole – “biggest” “fastest” or “most popular”; and consider using a service to send your e-newsletter. I recommend eLawMarketing.com, which has a feature called ”Content Detective,” that scores your e-mail the way spam filters do.

E-mailLabs.com is also good. I publish the free Professional Marketing Newsletter (sign up at http://www.pmforumna.org/pages/newsletter.asp) to 4,500 recipients. It’s got pictures, graphics, short text and color graphics. I ran it through the E-mailLabs' spam-checker and got a low score (whew!). But I was surprised at which elements gave it a score at all: I had specified the background color to be white; the HTML message contained quotation marks; and the message body contained the word “click,” “Dear” and 877 -- a toll-free prefix.

What the spam filters look for

• Here are other things SpamAssassin, Postini and other filters look for in your e-mail newsletters:
• Use of graphic images with little or no text
• A very long recipient list (this triggers volume filters)
• A large or very long message that exceeds the recipient’s limit
• The message has an attachment (.pdf, .zip)
• The background is in color
• FrontPage used to create the message (the favorite choice of spammers).This Microsoft program lards in all kinds of proprietary HTML code that the filters spot immediately.
• The Subject line contains punctuation ( $ ! ? * / + )
• The Body or Subject uses voodoo words.

Every spam filters has a list of Voodoo Words -- like Viagra, mortgage or enlargement -- that automatically score an e-mail as spam. Here are voodoo words that law firms often use:

1. Click
2. Trial (our trial lawyers…)
3. Dear ….
4. Not intended for residents of… (this could be in the disclaimer)
5. Bankruptcy (discussing your workout practice)
6. Call now (to register for your seminar)
7. Toll-free prefixes
8. Limited-time offer
9. Full refund
10. Save up to…
11. Guaranteed
12. Cash (as in “the acquiring company agreed to a deal composed of cash and stock…”)
13. Millions of dollars (in the verdict or transaction…)
14. Income
15. Urgent matter
16. Potential earnings
17. Breakthrough
18. Free offer, free quote

Larry Bodine is the Regional Director for North America of the PM Forum, a global organization of 3,000 marketers and professionals in the law, accounting and consulting fields. He can be reached at 630.942.0977 and Lbodine@PMForumNA.org.