Maya Angelou wrote “The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.” Do you know your e-mail history so you are free to make e-mail marketing work for you?
1971 Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail message as a test message to himself. He also chose to use the @ symbol in the address field, a practice that continues to this day.
Make it work for you: Double-check e-mail addresses for misspellings and changes over long periods of time—only that @ remains constant
1978 Gary Thuerk invented electronic mail spam by sending the first unsolicited email message. His mass mailing succeeded in generating sales worth 13 million dollars for Digital Equipment Corporation.
Make it work for you: You can’t be this guy but you can send timely, valuable, branded marketing communications to those who have opted in to your list
1992 Frank Canova demonstrated an early smartphone prototype called Angler. Two years later, this was marketed as Simon Personal Communicator and the term “smartphone” was born the next year.
Make it work for you: Use e-mail marketing to keep your subscribers informed about your company’s innovations and industry breakthroughs and reach out to smart phone users
1993 AOL began offering e-mail services.
Make it work for you: If you want to market to baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) then concentrate on those with an AOL e-mail address
1996 Hotmail, later acquired by Microsoft, was the first provider to offer free e-mail accounts.
Make it work for you: Be respectful of your audience—you haven’t earned the trust of someone who gives you a free e-mail address
1998 Spam officially entered the lexicon, nine short years after electronic mail was officially shortened to e-mail in the Oxford Dictionary.
Make it work for you: Use a dictionary or a proofreader to make sure your e-mail marketing messages are free from errors
2003 The CAN-SPAM Act in the United States established regulations for e-mail marketing. Like the United Kingdom’s earlier Data Protection Act (1998), it included the right for recipients to opt-out.
Make it work for you: Show your professionalism by including an Unsubscribe button, a physical address for your business, and a real “from” e-mail address in every e-mail marketing message you send
2004 Google introduced Gmail. Some estimates indicate there are now over 1 billion active users.
Make it work for you: Give your Gmail audience a more interactive e-mail with AMP, allowing them to pin and post without ever leaving your messaging
2007 Apple brought the iPhone to market
Make it work for you: Gear your e-mail marketing campaigns to the ever-increasing mobile phone audience
2018 After several years where massive data breaches were discovered around the globe, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation.
Make it work for you: Read Tate Design’s previous post “GDPR Compliance And Your Business”
E-mail marketing is a fast, efficient means of communicating on a consistent basis with your loyal customers and future clients. Here at Tate Design, we help you identify best practices in digital marketing and deliver effective, trackable e-mail campaigns. Call us at 610.725.0702 or e-mail [email protected] to get started.
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