What Is The Difference Between Direct Emailing and Spam?
Direct email is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending promotional offers to subscribers. On the other hand, spam emails are those unwanted messages clogging up your inbox with offers or links you never asked for.
Have you ever hit “send” on a promotional email and then paused, wondering if your audience welcomed your message or if it just landed in the spam folder? It’s a common concern.
Understanding the fine line between direct emailing and email spam is important for anyone eager to make their mark in email marketing. So, let’s explore what makes your promotional emails legit and makes you look like a spam email sender.
Direct Email vs. Spam: Are They Equal?
Spam and direct email are separate things. They have different features and serve different purposes.
Direct email is a legitimate email marketing strategy. With direct email, you send promotional messages to people who are more likely to benefit from your offer.
Your objective is to convince them that your product or service suits their needs. You can also use a variety of techniques to earn their trust and make your messages more convincing.
For example, you can:
- Personalize your emails using the recipient’s name or preferences.
- Offer exclusive deals and email coupons.
- Use psychology techniques in your subject lines and email copy.
But spam doesn’t discriminate. Spam messages are unsolicited. They aren’t personalized or targeted; they’re sent to thousands, even millions, of people without a second thought about who they are or what they might like.
Spam emails can range from promotional emails from businesses you don’t know to fishy messages that try to lure you into doing a potentially harmful activity.
Let’s go over the key differences between direct email and spam:
| Trait | Direct Email | Spam Email |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | ‣ Connect with customers ‣ Deliver value ‣ Make legitimate sales | ‣ Promote shady products ‣ Fraud ‣ Phishing ‣ Malware distribution |
| Content | Carefully crafted while being compelling | Salesy and deceptive |
| Audience | Segmented and targeted | Mass and random |
| Contact list | With permission | Without consent, purchased lists |
| Focus | Customers | Products |
A Closer Look at Direct Emails
If implemented properly, direct email marketing can deliver value to customers while improving key performance metrics, including open rates and conversion.
Your direct email messages can serve these purposes:
- Attract new customers.
- Build trust and brand loyalty.
- Increase sales.
- Generate website traffic.
- Boost brand awareness.
- Create opportunities for cross-selling and upselling.
To unlock these benefits, you need a good grasp of what your customers like and a solid plan to reach those who are most interested. Your job is to use email marketing psychology to get into the mindset of your customers.
Taking your direct email marketing to the next level involves a smart segmentation strategy and personalization through dynamic email content. This means dividing your email list into smaller groups based on what your customers buy, how they interact with your emails, or where they live. Then, you tailor your messages to meet the unique needs and interests of each group.
Calm’s Direct Email Campaign
Let’s take a look at how Calm, the meditation app, nailed their direct email marketing campaign.
The direct email below offers a blend of thoughtful advice, a soothing design, and a tempting discount to entice the reader. It provides three practical tips for managing stress — i.e., delivering immediate value. The design and setup of the email also contribute to a peaceful vibe.
The email then gently shifts to highlight how subscribing to Calm Premium can help with stress management and offers a discount to increase the chances of a purchase.
A Closer Look at Spam Emails
Let’s recall that spam refers to unsolicited messages. So, you might wonder, why would anyone send messages no one wants? Well, the reasons aren’t usually kind-hearted.
Spam emails come in many forms, each with a different aim.
Let’s break down the most common types:
- Phishing emails: Phishing emails pretend to be trustworthy and trick you into giving away personal details, like your password or financial information.
- Malware emails: Clicking on a link or downloading an attachment from these emails could release harmful software into your devices.
- Scams: These range from too-good-to-be-true money-making schemes to fake lottery wins or inheritance tricks, all designed to swindle you out of your cash.
- Ads: These emails blast out product promotions or services. They’re not always scams, but they’re still a nuisance because no one asked for them.
For example, this email below tells the recipient that they only have 24 hours to buy an Oral B Series 9 at a discount — and the ad is in German for some reason!
Cold Email vs. Spam
Cold emailing is a method where you send messages to new prospects or people who have never heard from you before., hoping to turn them into customers.
It’s often mixed up with spam, which is a big reason why it’s not a great way to market your products or services. In fact, cold emailing can backfire and possibly hurt your brand more than helping.
The goal of cold emailing is to win over new customers from a pool of complete strangers. You might try to personalize your emails or throw in perks like free trials to grab their attention.
However, even with these efforts, cold emails have low open rates. That’s because they still feel like spam to the recipients and their email providers. Although you’re tailoring the content, you’re reaching out to people who don’t know you, which can make your messages unwelcome.
This approach is riskier than direct email, where messages go to people who already have some connection with your brand.
Check out the table below for a comparison of cold email and spam:
| Feature | Cold Email | Spam |
|---|---|---|
| Targeting | Personalized to the recipient. | One-size-fits-all approach. |
| Permission | May not have explicit permission, but aims to be relevant. | Unsolicited and often irrelevant. |
| Objective | Turn strangers into customers through relevant offers. | Broadly cast a net with little consideration for relevance. |
| Reputation | Can be risky, potentially hurting your brand. | Generally harms the sender’s reputation and is likely to be blocked. |
How to Keep Your Direct Emails Out of the Spam Folder
Seeing your carefully crafted marketing emails land in the spam folder can be frustrating. You’re using direct email to promote your offers legitimately. So you want to make sure they actually reach your audience.
Consider these essential tips to boost your deliverability and help your emails get the attention they deserve.
Sender Reputation
You can think of sender reputation as a trust score that email providers use to decide if your emails are welcome.
Following these tips will boost your sender reputation:
- Authenticate your domain: ISPs and ESPs check sender domains to ensure the messages come from safe sources. Authentication protocols like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM are essential in giving you a reliable appearance.
- Get whitelisted: If you have a loyal customer base, they can help you steer clear of spam folders. Ask them to add you to their contact list and whitelist you.
- Maintain your IP reputation: Avoid sending out a large number of emails all at once. This can come off as spam-like activity and might harm your IP reputation. Gradually warm up your IP address to build its reputation.
Sending Behavior
As a sender, you need to be strategic and considerate. Follow these tips:
- Get permission first: Make sure the people you’re emailing have agreed to receive messages from you. Use double opt-in to only onboard subscribers who are genuinely interested in hearing from you and avoid legal trouble with spam.
- Use a recognizable sender name: Whether it’s your name or your company’s, make sure it’s something your recipients will recognize immediately.
- Keep your list clean: Keep your list free from invalid addresses and spam traps. Regularly remove inactive subscribers or those who haven’t engaged with your emails for a long time. This way, you won’t bother uninterested subscribers with emails they don’t want to see.
- Use unsubscribe headers: Make sure it’s easy for people to opt out of your emails if they want to. An unsubscribe option is required by law in many places.
- Follow a schedule: Send your emails at regular times. If you send too many messages in a short time, your audience may experience email fatigue and mark you as spam.
Message Content
In addition to delivering valuable content, follow these tips to make sure your emails steer clear of the spam folder:
- Avoid spam words: Watch out for words that trigger spam filters. Don’t use deceptive headers and subject lines since they can annoy readers and come off as clickbait.
- Use links wisely: Make sure your links are relevant to the content and lead to reputable, secure websites. Too many links can appear spammy and increase the risk of triggering spam filters.
- Keep your HTML code clean and simple: Using overly complex HTML instead of plain text or using outdated tags can trigger spam filters and also cause rendering issues across different email clients.
- Limit attachments and images: Attachments and images can raise red flags with spam filters. Instead, use hosted images and provide links to downloadable content when necessary.
Spam-Free Zone: Enhance Your Direct Email Impact with Campaign Refinery
At Campaign Refinery, we’re passionate about making email marketing better and spam-free. We take pride in helping our clients secure outstanding deliverability rates.
How do we do it?
- Robust domain authentication: We require all our clients to activate SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for their domains right from the start. This step makes sure your emails are seen as legitimate and trustworthy.
- Selective application process: We’re committed to maintaining a high-quality user base. That’s why we have an application process in place. This ensures that our community is made up of dedicated email marketing professionals.
- Straightforward email editor: Craft your messages with ease using our simple email editor. Create emails with clean layouts and standard HTML.
- Cutting-edge list cleaning: Our platform includes a powerful tool that automatically cleans out any invalid emails from your lists. A squeaky-clean list lifts your engagement rates and keeps you clear of spam-related pitfalls.
Eager to leave spam in the dust?
Apply now to become a Campaign Refinery customer and start your journey to unmatched email deliverability.
