Sometimes I feel like we work in the emergency room. We get the call to come in and fix things when they are broken and having a critical impact on the business, as opposed to focusing on preventative care and healthy eating. Unfortunately, we get the call when an organization has received a final warning or simply been shut down by their email provider for sending unsolicited emails—at that point it takes a while to fix and recover.

You can stay out of the ER by addressing this up front and creating a fully opted-in database.

Think about it. Is your list messy—filled with inaccurate data so your prospects see that you don’t really know or care about them? Do you buy “opted-in” lists from third parties and send unsolicited commercial email? Do you mail so frequently that your prospects are annoyed with you? Did you gloss over getting express consent? If so, it’s time to face facts. You’re a spammer.

If you can’t verify that your audiences have opted in, you’ll be shut down. And once you have a reputation as a spammer, it can be a very long road back to rebuilding your IP reputation.

Marketing to people who have given you consent has always been important—in spite of what in-app ads would suggest, you can’t annoy people into buying. But now that so many organizations use Salesforce and other CRM platforms, it’s critical. Spamming is illegal. If you can’t verify that your audiences have opted in, you’ll be shut down. And once you have a reputation as a spammer, it can be a very long road back to rebuilding your IP reputation.

I’ve worked with several clients who have been in denial about spamming. Often it’s because they really don’t know when or where they got the addresses they’re hitting. Of course, it’s possible to purchase quality data, but the best way to come by a high-performing list is to build relationships through incentives and content that prospects find useful.

So how do you start amassing that list? I often recommend a conquest campaign—one email asking prospects if they’d like to be added to your list, often complemented by direct mail and USPS Informed Delivery with embedded digital ads to boost visibility. This can start with a purchased list of opted-in recipients that has gone through email validation, augmented by names that come from gated content, past sales and hand-raisers, and your sales team. Reps can send these messages from their own Outlook accounts (just don’t let them copy 1,000 names into the To line). After all, their lists may be real connections, but that doesn’t mean they’ve agreed to receive email until they’ve actively opted in.

Of course, you’ll also need a dedicated landing page that reiterates your value and collects the opt-ins. This can contribute to a great user experience by asking for preferences—whether recipients want direct mail, email, texts or nothing at all. Keep this page simple. You can always use progressive profiling to collect more information over time.

When you only have one shot, it’s important that you offer prospects something worthwhile. This isn’t a time to sell—you’re creating goodwill and giving targets a reason to say yes to further information. You may want to consider testing approaches to smaller audience segments to see what will get you the best response before unleashing your message on your whole database.

Knowing where you got your data—and owning it outright—isn’t just a way to ensure compliance. It’s key to valuable, mutually beneficial relationships. And when it comes to moving leads through the funnel or keeping customers close, isn’t that the whole point?

Build stronger bonds with prospects and customers through smarter data and messaging strategies. Connect with FATFREE to get good things in motion.