Jesse Willms: A Code Of Email Ethics

I promised you when I started this blog that I would use it to share with you my code of ethics. Today, I decided it was time to start making good on my promise. After all, that’s part of being an ethical person. Overall business ethics is a complex business, so I want to break it down into several different blog posts.

To start, I’d like to discuss basic email ethics. Email promotions are an area where many companies fail in their ethical efforts. While one of the most effective marketing tools ever invented, it’s also the one that people trust the least due to spam, phishing scams and the threat of viruses. That’s why email ethics are a critical part of any company.

Here are the email guidelines I’ve created for my company.

• Transparent copy. You can score a quick buck with a misleading email, but that won’t help you or your customers. And, it will destroy long-term profits. You are much better off making your emails as easy to understand and honest as possible. They should never, ever be misleading.
• Don’t spam people. Unless someone has said they want to get email ads from your company, don’t send them.
• Make it easy to opt out. If people decide they don’t want your email, it should be simple for them to stop receiving them.
• Protect privacy. Selling a customer’s email addresses to a third party is bad news.
• Allow them to respond. Have customer service staff dedicated to reading responses to your emails. This will tell you if your emails are actually helping your customers or putting them off.
• Useful information. Only send out an email when you have something important to communicate or a really special offer. Bombarding people with the same type of “sale” over and over again will make them dread your emails.
• No email masking. Some companies try to hide where the emails come from with email masking software. Always allow customers to be able to easily see you have sent the email.
• Honest headlines. Your headline should have something to do with the email itself. It may seem “easy” to put out a dramatic subject headline to encourage people to open your email. But, this won’t help you if the headline ends up having nothing to do with your offer at all.

That’s it for now. I’m trying to work with other organizations to get them to agree with a common code of ethics. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your suggestions about what we can do to make our company live up to an even higher ethical standard.

Thanks,
Jesse Willms