As the newest member of the Right Place Media team, part of my transition to a new job involves informing friends and acquaintances of my new position and what it is exactly that I do. Saying “Email Marketing Specialist” isn’t sufficient for most people, so usually I then explain in a few sentences what it is an Email Marketing Specialist does.  I have found that no matter the audience (self proclaimed “techies” and late adopters alike), the question I usually get in return is “Oh, so you are a spammer?”

I read an article lately that postured that the general public isn’t necessarily wrong to have this perception as long as WE as email marketers continue to use pejorative language to describe what we do.  Words that may seem harmless like “blast” to describe a large list send actually sounds to the general public (aka email recipients) like spam. An “email blast” throws a message in the subscribers’ faces haphazardly and hopes to resonate with a few of them, while an “email campaign” has thought, segmentation and strategy. Even though email marketers who use the term “blast” may know the difference between an email campaign and spam, just using such terms causes email marketing to lose credibility.

Email marketing may not seem difficult because almost everyone has sent an email at some point in their life.  However, much like people who think of themselves as “social media marketers” because they have a Facebook page and use Twitter to tweet about what they had for lunch, just because you use it doesn’t mean you use it correctly (for business purposes at least).  Email marketing is considered one of the hardest “easy” marketing tools out there. Without any knowledge of best practices or forming a relationship with your list, your “blasting” hurts not only your customers, but ours as well by reinforcing negative perceptions.

What do you think? Does using words such as “email blast” hurt email marketing’s reputation?

Read more here: Mediapost