How to Do Email Marketing: Basic Terminology Guide.

The fourth annual Adobe Consumer Email Survey has revealed consumer use is up 17% year over year.

If you are not using email to attract and engage your prospective and existing customers, then I am afraid you are missing out on the advantages of using one of the most effective and cost-effective marketing tools out there. Email, despite what many small business owners and entrepreneurs believe, is still a major way in which consumers and businesses communicate.

Consumers for the most part, overwhelmingly find out about commercial offers through email. The fourth annual Adobe Consumer Email Survey has revealed consumer use is up 17% year over year. This is despite the fact there are now more channels available for consumers to interact and engage with their favorite brands. The survey points out consumers are checking their personal email an average of 2.5 hours on any given weekday.

This is in addition to spending an average of 3.1 hours checking their work email. So you see, email is still very much alive. But if you are going to dive, head first into the world of mail marketing, it helps to become familiar with the most common email marketing terminology.

Bounce Rate: Your Bounce Rate is the percentage of emails sent that cannot ( for one reason or another ) be delivered. It is important that you keep your bounce rate under 5% to avoid being labeled as a spammer, and or being Blacklisted.

Blacklist: Being blacklisted means you have spammed one too many people and thus most ISP's will deliver your messages into the SPAM folders of their customers. You can use MXToolbox to check if you have been blacklisted.

Bulk Mail: Most Email providers will max out at about 100 emails per day. Since you are going to be sending out your Campaign(s) to more people than that you will need to get a tool like Dashingmail or Mailchimp to facilitate sending mass emails.

CAN-SPAM: These are a set of rules and regulations that govern the use of commercial email applications. CAN-SPAM sets out the Do's and Don'ts of email marketing.

CTR (Click-Through-Rate): The Percentage of email recipients who clicked on your email vs the number that opened.

Conversion Rate: The percentage of email recipients who took action on your call-to-action ( CTA). For example, you could attempt to get people to request a buyer/seller presentation. Then your conversion rate would be the number of presentation requests divided by the number of people on your list.

Double Opt-In: In real estate email marketing, you can either have people confirm their email or just assume they provided a correct one. The double opt-in process is where people have to click the confirmation link in the first email you send them. Otherwise, they won’t make the list.

Open Rate: This refers to the percentage of subscribers who opened your email message.

Opt-In: This refers to when an individual enters their contact information and joins your real estate email marketing list.

Plain Text or HTML emails: Most Email Marketing software applications will have options to send two types of email messages, one with Graphics and Videos which are HTML messages and one in plain text.

Whitelist: The antithesis of the previously-discussed Blacklist. You want your email address to be on the whitelist so your emails don’t end up in the SPAM folder.

Visit https://bit.ly/2mQEos6 for a full list of Email Marketing terms