The role of trust

A common theme of late has been recognition, reputation, relationship. So much of email marketing practice seems to come down to establishing and building clear reputations and relationships with email address providers and email users.

One element of all this is trust, which I was reminded about today by a Habeas press release citing new research into email user habits and attitudes.

Essentially, the study claims that a majority of people still use email regularly and can't imagine doing without. But many are wary of various email threats (phishing, spam etc.).

All this leads to what Habeas calls an "Email Insecurity Factor". A factor that makes users wary of email relationships with people they don't know. Which is where the importance of trust comes in.

Building a reputation / relationship is also about creating enough trust to overcome the concerns and constraints that hinder people from engaging with commercial emails and those who send them.

And the idea of building trust needs to run through your entire email program. Since you need time to establish that trust, you have to begin the process as early as possible...at sign-up and in your welcome messages.

Take sweepstakes, which many use to grow their address lists fast. Mathew Patterson notes today that lists built this way tend to attract more spam complaints than average.

So he has four suggested tactics for your sign-up offer and initial emails with new subscribers. Tactics that can help ensure the email relationship gets the best possible start.

Here's another example today from Cam Beck, who introduces us to some slightly disingenuous opt-in (or is it opt-out?) language at the Bank of America. A lack of clarity does not build trust.

Consider, also, the sterling work on welcome mail strategies done by Chad White at the RetailEmail.Blogspot blog. A topic also taken up by others, such as Linda Bustos, Anna Billstrom, Whitney Hutchinson and myself.

These examples show that even before your new subscriber starts getting your normal emails, there's already so much you can do to build (or undermine) the trust necessary to overcome those email insecurities.

Tags: email marketing, welcome emails, sweepstakes, list building, list acquisition

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