So let's talk about some email traps and pitfalls that we need to avoid. We're gonna look at can spam, we're going to look at avoiding spam filters, we're also going to look at the size of our list. So I can spam. This is an American law on what you need to communicate or what you should be doing when you send emails as an entity, a business entity. Now, the reason we're using the American ones because pretty much every other country in the world has adopted that but if you're marketing to a specific country, you might want to check their spam laws, but we're going to use the American one as the default the UK ones pretty similar to be honest, but don't base your email on this course. Go and read the can spam act yourself.

Go to your own country, your own ISP, and find out what the spam laws aren't. You must spend five or 10 minutes at least just familiarizing yourself with The do's and don'ts. What this is is a quick guide through the key points of cams, which are going to cover you but this is not legal advice, please don't take it as such. Number one, don't hide your email address. So what that means is, is when you send it from it should show the email address it actually comes from it shouldn't show a mass email address or different email address. The other thing is you're not allowed to deceive with your subject lines, you're not allowed to say, hey, you've won the lottery.

And then underneath say, No, you haven't buy my product, you're not allowed to do that. You can't deceive you can't make false claims in the subject line. Now if your message is an ad, you should identify as such. Now what we've been teaching you here is not an ad type newsletter. These are often content created or educational marketing style emails. But if you was going to use a discount promotion, and you're offering a discount, you just need to mention that this is an ad, somewhere in the email probably at the footer, not start this message is an advertisement.

Now one of the things you are required to do, which I see a lot of people don't do is you are required to give your address, the physical location of where you run the business from is required. You must always allow them to unsubscribe to the must always be an unsubscribe option in the email itself, they must be able to click on that all of the good quality third party email marketing providers or include that default and you're required to make sure that unsubscribe so if you use third parties, you're not going to have a problem here but if you're creating your own email marketing list and you want to you must make sure that unsubscribed if they've clicked unsubscribed and then you send them you're in trouble. There are some massive fines not heard of people actually being charged. So you want to make sure that you are actually complying The other thing is managing third party support.

So if someone else is doing your marketing on your behalf, and they make a mistake, get in trouble can spam, you are still responsible. So if you're going to use someone's email marketing, make sure they're fully trained, fully aware, and fully concordant with can spam. So what we want to look at now is avoiding spam filters. Now, number one on this number one, it really is that simple. Use an email marketing supplier vendor. If you're doing it yourself, there's so many technical things you have to do.

Really that recommend a notice can be a cost every month, but make sure that you invest in this because they will check your email for you and if they think there's anything spammy, they will flag it and refuse to send it be a big safety net for you. So make sure you do use a reputable email supplier. Now One of the really good ways is double opt in what a double opt in is they sign up to email, and then they're sent an email where they have to click a link to confirm that they signed in. I can be very valuable, you're not required to do it. I personally don't like it that much, because it's asking for an action from the person and I don't attract people that are going to send me false email or false email addresses. But if you think your email list is gonna be targeted in that way that is going to help you avoid spam filters is a big No, no, don't buy lists.

A few years ago, there was a big thing everyone was selling email lists, don't buy them. Because what will happen is your email providers or the people's email providers on those lists, will identify that that email is being targeted by spam and then you'll get marked as a spammer. Never ever buy a list from somewhere else. Always build your own list. I can't stress that enough. Now don't just ask From a list.

So you might have an address book of people you know from college, they did not subscribe to your email marketing list just because they know you just because they know you on Facebook. So you don't add from other lists. Always build that virgin list, always build a brand new list. Now, you might change the focus of your newsletter a bit, if you've already signed up for your newsletter, we're not talking about that. What we're talking about is accessing your, your inbox or I've seen people do local businesses, small businesses go to a network meet Indian, they take your card, they say hi, in the next week, they're sending you spammy emails, you know, offering you printer toner cartridges. They didn't get that permission that spam.

And people were marketers. And once you get marked as a spammer, you can get your ISP shut down. Lots of horrible things can happen. Don't do it. Don't neglect your list. We touched on this earlier.

They forget they're on your list. If you don't send them an email for three months or six months, and all of a sudden you get Oh, I'm gonna send an Email only product they'll do, they won't remember you and they'll assume it's spam. So, if you're gonna do email marketing, do it consistently at your website brand. Again, we've talked about that. by matching the brand, you really communicate your identity so they know who you are. Avoid hard selling language, the algorithms now that they use, they're looking for, buy it now.

55% Off, they're looking at trying to avoid hostile language. Sometimes you have to communicate the offer. We're trying to avoid, you know, last minute chance to change your life. They're actually looking for those phrases. So on top little tips about actually the content, avoid lots of exclamation marks. I don't have like lines with five exclamation marks and another line with free, that sort of thing.

And here's a top tip. Avoid green red text. spammers often use green and red text a lot of the spam filters now we'll see green and red text in Your email, and they will lock you out. Because of that you'll get marked as spam. And we don't want to train firewalls and spam traps. If we get marked in spam in one inbox, ISP will then mark as a spammer.

And they will communicate the fact that this is a spammy email address. Now, sometimes, people are going to mark your stuff as spam because they're going to forget they signed up, or they're too lazy to press Delete, or they think that's how you get rid of emails. And you're going to have spam reports in your email software so you can see what sort of levels you get. And if you look, MailChimp, ecovillage is going to shut you down pretty quick. So don't train them be really, really wide snow when it comes to these things. Now, top tip, get your email whitelisted.

When you send the first email, it's always a good idea to say in there, appreciate you signing up, please add this email address to your address book so that it doesn't get confused as spam. And what that does, that's whitelisting your email. So they'll receive that. And if they add it will won't get marked as spam, it won't get come in and automatically filtered out. As you go. Remember, there's two ways you're going to get marked as spam.

There's the automatic filters. And that's where we're really careful about how we language and, you know, machine based learning, they're looking all the time at the way your written text is communicated. And as also, the person actually physically pressing the spam button, there's two things we've got to deal with. If we get your email whitelisted we're actually going to then avoid all those automated things because they've just told their ISP or their email provider, I trust this source, don't market. top tip there. Now, here's something that comes up quite often.

And size of list. Targeted is better than big, what is the what is a good size for lists, you can get to 500 people on a newsletter list and they're targeting you got targeted product. That's a good list. You see people talking about I've got hundred thousand over 50,000 you got 500 good quality leads on your newsletter list, someone can have 5000 low quality leads, your 500 member size list will do better in terms of marketing. So what is a good size? Well, a good starting size is 500.

Get up to the 500 for 500. You know, there's quite a few people have actually decided, sign up and get on your email list. So I just want to encourage you not to think that you need this massive huge list and get discouraged when you know you pick up maybe 30 or 40 new subscribers every month with your marketing. And it doesn't seem like you're getting anywhere. Remember, it's iterative. As your email list grows, and we're using it in all these different ways.

One we can increase our sales revenue, but we can increase engagement on our content. We can create SEO on our website. A good list is it's a utilitarian list. There's so many different ways you can use it. It's so useful that, you know, we want to make sure that we're getting the best out of it. So the better quality subscribers you have.

That's where the real value is. So don't focus on the size of the list. Focus more on the quality of the list and just be encouraged. That list will grow exponentially over time, as long as you keep the work going.