Email is the only channel that belongs to you

Do me a favour and picture an unpleasant scenario.

Tomorrow morning your Instagram page is locked. Not because you did anything, these things happen without a reason too. How many of the people who followed you can you tell that you have moved elsewhere?

The same question in another form: if from tomorrow Google dropped you ten places, how many of your customers would still find you?

We have written that Google is not the only engine and that visibility is spread across more places than it used to be. True, and it does not change the basic point: in every one of those places you are a guest. Your contact list is the only thing in this story that you own.

Why we always remember it last

Email has a bad reputation and partly deserves it. Every one of us signed up somewhere once and regrets it every Tuesday morning.

Except the problem is not the medium, it is the use of it. A message from a business that solved a problem for you, telling you something you did not know, is not the same object as the fourth «last chance» of the week.

And it has one property social networks cannot have, however hard they try: the message arrives. No algorithm decides whether it deserves to be seen. It may land in spam, and that is what the technical side exists for, but nobody decides on your behalf that your content lacks «engagement».

What the law says, and it is less frightening than you think

Let us settle this early, because it is the reason many people never start.

The rule sits in article 11(1) of Greek law 3471/2006: unsolicited email for the purposes of direct marketing is permitted only where the subscriber has given prior express consent. In plain words: you do not send to people who did not ask.

But there is also paragraph 3, which most people ignore, depriving themselves of half their audience. Email contact details obtained lawfully in the context of selling products or services, or another transaction, may be used to promote similar products or services of yours, even where the recipient gave no prior consent. The law attaches a condition, and attaches it clearly: the recipient must be given, in a clear and distinguishable manner, the opportunity to object, easily and free of charge, and that in every message.

Read it again, because three words carry all the work. Lawfully: the address came from a real transaction, not from a list you bought and not from somebody else’s «Contact» page. Similar: you sold accounting services, you write about accounting services, not about your new gift shop. In every message: the unsubscribe is not placed once in the welcome email, it is everywhere and it works.

And one more thing, which almost everybody with a form on their site gets wrong: a pre-ticked box is not consent. Recital 32 of the GDPR says it in those words, that silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity do not constitute consent, and that consent is given by a clear affirmative act. If the visitor did nothing, they did not say yes to you.

We learned this in practice, not from reading. When we built our own checkout, the consent box went in separate and empty, and the moment it was ticked is recorded along with the order. Not because we like tick boxes. Because if we ever have to show that the customer saw it, a paragraph in the terms shows nothing.

How to collect addresses that will actually open the message

«Sign up to our newsletter» is among the least persuasive things a page can say. It tells the visitor what they will do, not what they will get.

The difference is entirely in the exchange. «Once a month, what is changing in tax rules for small businesses» is a promise with content and with a frequency. I know what I am getting and I know how often you will bother me.

Where does it go? Where your value has just become visible, not in the footer next to the company registration number. At the end of an article the reader read to the end. On the «thank you» page after an order. At the property, at checkout, when the guest says «we had a wonderful time», because there it is not a form, it is a conversation.

And two things we do not do. We do not buy lists, ever, for any reason, however cheap. And we do not add addresses found in business registries or directories. An address being public does not mean somebody gave you permission to use it for marketing.

What goes inside, when you have no discounts

This is where most people get stuck, and I understand why: not everybody is a retailer with monthly offers.

If you are an accountant, you know fourteen things that worry your clients and all have the same answer. That is fourteen newsletters.

If you run a garage, you know what fails on which model, at what mileage, and what it costs if you leave it. Nobody writes that down, because everybody assumes it is obvious. It is not.

If you run a property, you know when it is quiet, when the local festival is on, when the weather still holds and nobody imagines it. The guest who came in August does not know October is better.

The pattern is one: what you consider obvious, the other person considers valuable. And the more specific, the better. A real incident with numbers gets read. Five tips that could apply to anybody do not.

The ratio that works is simple, and I did not invent it: most messages give, a few ask. If every newsletter of yours ends with «book an appointment», within three messages nobody will be opening them.

The frequency you can sustain, not the one you read about

You will find articles saying weekly, others twice a month, others every Tuesday at ten. Ignore all of them and answer one question: what can you keep to in December, when you are run off your feet?

Consistency beats frequency. Twelve newsletters a year, one a month, build a habit. Eight in two months and then silence until April build three seconds of thought: «who are these people?», followed by an unsubscribe.

And one practical thing that costs nothing: state the frequency on the sign-up form and keep to it. It is the first promise you make to that person. Break it and they will not wait for the second.

What you actually hold

We started with the locked page. Let us close it properly, because it was not scaremongering.

Followers are borrowed. Rankings are borrowed. The visibility you paid for ends the day you stop paying. The list of people who gave you their address themselves, because you were useful to them, is not borrowed. It comes with you when you change platform, when you change site, when the algorithm nobody consulted changes again.

Two hundred such addresses are worth more than five thousand followers. And you do not have to believe that. Just consider which of the two you can contact tomorrow morning.

One clarification, because I like readers to know where they stand: this article describes what the provisions I cited say, it does not replace legal advice for your own case.

If you want to start collecting addresses through your own site instead of relying only on borrowed channels, that is something we set up: the sign-up form in the right places on the site and its connection to the tool that sends your newsletters. What you get is a form that works on your own site and writes straight into your own list. Send us through the form your site address, what you do and what your customers ask most often. This work is part of our web development service.