The new email marketing: 22 ways to build trust

Part 16 of an ongoing series...

[We're looking at the strategies and tactics that distinguish a smart email marketer from a bulk email marketer. See the New Email Marketing index page to access the rest of the series.]

We all intuitively know that trust is important. It doesn't need explanation. We want and need recipients to trust us and our messages.

It's true of all marketing, but especially so for email marketing: spammers and other denizens of the dark side of online life have taught people to be circumspect about commercial messages that arrive by email.

So just how do you build trust through an email program?

Fortunately, many of the elements that make up the new email marketing also enhance trust. Think of the relationship focus, ethics or subscriber empowerment.

But what else can you do?

Um, you have to be trustworthy

Not to get all preachy on you, but you can't establish trust by saying you are trustworthy. Not in today's cynical world with its empowered consumers.

You have to live it and you have to prove it through your actions.

1. You have to be trustworthy

This concept is a precondition for all the following suggestions. Trying to maintain an illusion of trustworthiness without following through on the promise backfires. You raise expectations only to shatter them.

Appearance

The appearance of your email builds trust where it helps with recognition (of the sender) and projects quality (through the design).

Spam is spam partly because it, well, looks like spam: rough and ready with little care and attention paid to design details.

There is much you can do to help with recognition and you'll find many suggestions in this post. But some basics are...

2. Ensure a recognizable sender appears in the from and/or subject line

The sender is usually a person, organization, brand or product line and is normally chosen according to what recipients are most likely to recognize and respond to. See this article for more detail.

3. Brand the preview pane

Aside from the subject / sender headers, many people's first encounter with your email is what they see in the preview pane. So that needs to support recognition, too, by including identifiers such as a masthead or logo.

4. Put full contact details in the email's footer

Include your organization's name, postal address and a contact email address. The reply-to address should also be a working address that is monitored. Consider putting the name of an actual contact person in the email, too.

Tips 2, 3 and 4 are not about complying with email disclosure laws.

They're about the willingness to stand up and be counted. To clearly state who you are and accept accountability for your emails.

5. Encourage and respond to feedback and contact

Encourage recipients to contact you with suggestions and queries. Respond quickly, meaningfully and personally to incoming email. Human interaction breeds trust.

6. Show a sample at sign up

Give people access to a sample email when they sign-up to your list. This lets them know what to expect so they recognize it when it does arrive.

(Incidentally, Chad White reports that offering a sample like this can increase subsequent open rates.)

7. Use a failsafe design

Obviously there's a lot to email design. But in terms of trust, you want a design that works. In the sense that it never appears broken. It may not always be pretty, but it's at least functional.

This means designing your emails so they render acceptably across all the major webmail interfaces and email clients. Use a design testing tool.

It's especially important to minimize the impact of blocked images, with judicious use of alt attributes.

What about mobile email design?

There are no hard and fast rules yet for "safe" design for mobile email users. There may not even be a safe design for such devices.

But you have a little leeway here, as expectations are low based on the myriad of HTML design disasters everyone sees on their Blackberry. See these articles for tips on designing for mobile email.

8. Match design to brand expectations

If you're Apple, your email design needs to be slim, sleek and cutting edge. People trust what they know and don't like disconnects between what they expect and what they get.

Your design also needs to reflect your website. Not necessarily by cloning the look of the site, but by using shared elements (logos, colors, imagery etc.) that project a common "experience" and allow your emails to exploit the trust you create with your other online activities.

Recommendations

People are more likely to trust your emails if they come recommended by independent third parties. So...

9. Put in testimonials on your sign-up pages

You don't hesitate to post testimonials for your products, services or other offerings. So don't be shy about putting up testimonials for your emails, either. I do it.

10. Encourage readers to share your emails

The easier you make it for people to refer your emails to others, the more likely they are to do so.

These days, links or tools allowing subscribers to post content to social network and media sites are replacing the traditional forward-to-a-friend link, as this post explains.

Don't just put in links to sites like Facebook: actively encourage people to spread the word with appropriate calls to action. You'll find some advice and examples here.

Respect

The importance of respect materializes when you think of an email address as a physical object entrusted to your care. Note the word "entrusted." So your trustworthiness depends greatly on what you do with that address.

It helps to see the email address (and the permission to send emails to it) not as a gift, but as a loan.

Permission is given on a rolling contractual basis. The contract renews only for as long as you continue to deliver relevant, valuable content at acceptable intervals. And only for as long as you take care of that permission by not abusing it.

11. Apply the highest permission standards

You can argue all you like about which form of permission is best for your program. But people trust those who respect their privacy most. Which means obtaining clear and explicit permission. For example:

• No misleading text (e.g. "do not check this box if you do not want...") or pre-checked please-opt-me-in boxes
• Requiring a second action to confirm the opt-in (like clicking on a link in a confirmation email)
• Clear information on what people are signing up for (email type and frequency)

12. Be open about privacy policies

Don't hide behind legal speak, small print and hard-to-find terms and conditions. Make it easy for people to find out and understand what you intend to do with their data.

13. Respect permission even more than you have to

You may have good reasons for renting your list to third parties. You may have good reasons for using your list to promote other parts of the business, sister brands etc.

You may even have got a check mark in the right place "allowing" you to do all these things.

But fact is, people have their own expectations. And that usually means they don't expect ads from a new sender or promoting a new business initiative or company acquisition or partner brand.

If you want to do this, tread carefully. Linda Bustos, for example, has some advice on how to introduce a sister brand without suffering the pitfalls of implied permission.

Technical factors

Anything that helps your emails get delivered to inboxes helps build trust. It doesn't look good when your emails don't arrive or land in junk folders. And building trust across a series of relevant, decent-looking emails only happens if people see the actual messages.

More specifically...

14. Authenticate your emails

Apart from the deliverability benefits, authentication stops certain email clients and webmail services from adding "we're not sure the sender is who they say they are" alerts to your messages.

15. Consider certifying your emails

Again, there are indirect benefits through potential deliverability improvements. Beyond that, certification may also mean images work, links work and trust seals are displayed with your emails.

Certification also forces you to implement other trust-building practices in order to qualify for accreditation.

16. Ensure the technology is responsive

All the technology behind your email system should - doh! - be in good working order.

Two points as far as trust goes: systems should work quickly (send welcome messages immediately, process unsubscribes immediately) and the language used in technical messages to subscribers should be clear. Uncertainty breeds distrust.

17. Give control to the subscriber

Trust comes through openness and what could be more open than letting people control what they receive?

For those who can afford the functionality, build a preference center that lets subscribers go to your website and manage their subscriptions, update email addresses, modify content interests and other preferences etc.

Content

18. Deliver more than just "value"

While trust is certainly improved by delivering valuable, engaging content, have you ever considered delivering value without expecting any in return?

A main premise of email marketing is a value exchange with subscribers. You give them valuable information or offers and they give you money, clicks, attention, pageviews, etc. Everyone's a winner.

But there is always the potential for the nagging doubt that the only reason you're being nice is because you want something in return. "You can't trust them, they're only after your money."

How about doing something for subscribers that has no direct benefit to you? A free gift just for being subscribed? Timely information without any obvious call to action? For example, a bank might reassure subscribers about the current financial turmoil.

Of course it's not really altruistic because it helps trust, loyalty etc. etc. Hence a definition of altruism as enlightened self-interest.

19. Don't break your promises

There are two aspects to this. First, you have a promise built up as a result of who you are. A promise based on what people expect of your organization or brand. Which goes back to the Apple email design example above. If you're a fun-lovin', zany, edgy business, your emails should reflect that.

Second, during the sign-up process and in your welcome email(s) you set expectations for the future: the type, content and frequency of the emails you send. Stay true to that.

20. Avoid grammar and spelling errors

No comment necessary.

21. Check email functionality

Again, part and parcel of email marketing. Do the links work? Do they even exist? A reader just sent me a newsletter from an ESP announcing a new white paper on subject lines, but which had no link to the white paper in it.

22. Use a human voice

As I said earlier, (positive) human interaction breeds trust. Temper your use of jargon, corporate speak, marketing speak, IT department speak and consider adding a human voice where appropriate.

Replace the ESP's template welcome message with one of your own. Replace IT's "Your email has been received" customer service autoresponse with one of your own. Etc. etc.

These suggestions and links will get you started. For more ideas, try this detailed 2004 article from EmailLabs which is as relevant now as it was then.

And if that's not enough, use your comments to share some more ideas. Trust me, all feedback is welcome.

Part 17 coming soon...

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