By Tom Polanski, Mojo Marketing Maestro, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive

Remarketing to in-house lists 4 times a month is a bad idea. I have said it over and over again and I’ll probably have to say it until I’m blue in the face but I’m seldom really heard because once an advertiser analyzes the returns on that first drop, the numbers are so compelling, it’s hard to resist dropping again as soon as possible. That’s short term thinking that is inappropriate for a business that plans to be around for the long-haul. That type of frequency will eventually burn out a list. I strongly encourage companies to resist the seduction and to treat those names and e-mail addresses as if they are representative of people.

In addition, in the interest to clarity and transparency, it should be made clear to the buyer that they are opt-ing in for future e-mail specials. It’s all about the relationship….unless your selling downloads loaded with evil java script and your intention is to burn and churn until you’ve made a ton of money. But if you are running a legitimate business then you’ll want to keep and monetize that customer as carefully and for as long as you can.  

In the tax business there is a saying that applies here; pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. What the difference between a hog and a pig? About 1lb. A pig is a pig until it hits 180 lbs. Any thing above 180 Ibs. and it’s then classified as a hog. And we know what happens to hogs. In other words, don’t get greedy. 

Recently a company came to me for help fix a problem it was having with its remarketing campaigns. Senior management at the company didn’t listen to me. It didn’t take long for it to catch up with them before they were black-listed by Google’s g-mail. Once we looked over their historical data it was clear they were on the black-list threshold with MSN, Yahoo and AOL.    

Not only did they e-mail too often with misleading subject lines, they used an extremely flawed opt-in process….they hid it in the “Terms and Conditions” when the original sale was made. This is bad business that is bad for business. Not only is the company black-listed, its brand is degraded and it now is regarded as a company of questionable character with the publishers and the companies that track spam complaints across all of the publishers. 

It will take a bit of work and some time to restore their white listing. The irony is that Google with their industry low tolerance rate of .05% did this company a favor.  If Google was in line with the tolerance rates of MSN, Yahoo and AOL at .1%, it would have been black-listed by all four simultaneously. 

Here are a few suggestions:

• Make sure that user has an opt-in choice that is easy to find.
• Don’t pre-populate the check box
• Put your “unsubscribe” message and URL at the top of the e-mail near where the “if you can’t see this e-mail” message is
• And finally e-mail only two times a month.  

Following my suggestions won’t build up your e-mail lists as quickly but it’ll be better quality data. Nor will you monetize those lists as quickly but think about it….how much money and time will it cost that company to become white-listed with Google again. Was it worth it? Maybe so, g-mail is smaller than Hotmail, Yahoo mail and AOL mail. But what if you don’t catch it in time and you end up blowing past the .1% tolerance rates are black-listed across the board? What will be the costs then? How much will it cost to restore your company’s white-listing?