Email Marketing For Florists: How To Stay Out Of Trouble At Valentines

Email is a great marketing tool. It's fast. It's cheap. And it's a great way for florists to reach out to customers and secure Valentine's Day orders.

But it can also be dangerous. If done too aggressively or recklessly marketing emails can be flagged as spam – never reaching the intended audience. Even worse they can get you blacklisted.

Be Careful With Your List

It can be tempting to buy email lists but it's also very dangerous. Such lists, despite the claims of the people selling them, are usually riddled with "spam trap" addresses. Sending to these can result in heavy penalties that severely impact deliverability – you may end up not getting through to the people that were on your own list!

And even if there are no spam trap addresses remember that the people on that list have no relationship with you or your brand, and are much more likely to report you for spamming. The end result is the same – you will have less success in getting email to the people you really want to reach. Your sacrificing your ability to reach the people who are likely to buy to reach people much less likely to buy.

What Is a Spam Trap?

Let's say you have an email account through your internet provider, something like [email protected]. At some point you switch providers and abandon that address.

After an extended period the ISP may start using that address as a spam trap. After a couple of years they can assume that any people or businesses you actually care about have your new address, and that anybody sending to the old address is likely an aggressive marketer using an old list. Those senders are then penalized.

Engage

Don't use a "do-not-reply" address when sending. It seems disingenuous to send a marketing email that talks about how you want to hear from and work with a customer, but send an email that they can't reply to!

Don't Be Too Aggressive

Sending emails too often is a red flag for email providers that can get you penalized, and a nuisance for recipients that may decide to report you for spamming. Instead of sending emails every single day during Valentine's Day week (which will only upset everybody) plan ahead and start sending emails well ahead of February 14.

Content

Be careful with your content, which is analyzed to determine the likelihood of spam. Avoid spelling mistakes, multiple exclamation marks and all-caps text, and don't try and hide behind a single big image. You can also use free tools like Mail Tester to check the "spammyness" of your email. You just send an email to the address they provide and they send back a spam report, showing how you can improve your email to make sure it reaches more in boxes and helps you sell more flowers.