The email marketing onion

Ogres, according to the film, are like onions. They have layers. Like email marketing.

Simple on the surface, peel off the skin of many email marketing issues and you'll find increasing layers of complexity beneath.

And the need to understand and adapt to the nuances and complexities of email grows with each passing day. Or as HP's Daryl Nielsen puts it:

I think the job gets harder as the space gets more
and more crowded and there is more communication,
there is more information...If we just keep status quo,
then we are going to fall behind.

Consumer email surveys serve as a useful reminder of this pressure to keep moving forward. We get so wrapped up in the technical marketing perspective, we forget that we're sending email to sentient beings and not email addresses or spreadsheet cells.

According to Return Path's insightful Holiday Email Survey, for example...

"more than half of respondents say they receive high volumes
of 'junk' from marketers - defined as "email from companies
I know but that is just not interesting to me."

And...

One-third say that marketers email them more frequently
than promised. Most of this email is simply deleted unread,
but subscribers do not hesitate to complain about unwanted messages.

Clearly we need to make more effort. And in the past couple of days, I've been reminded that not all email issues are as cut and dried as they used to be. Here are some examples:

1. Sending speeds

Previously, you wanted to get your emails out in as short a time as possible. Now we have speed restrictions imposed by the ISPs (and Steve at Word to the Wise has an excellent explanation of why this is a good thing.)

But it's not just about ISPs and deliverability. Henry Hyder-Smith reminds us of different scenarios where you actually don't want all your emails to go out at once.

2. Dropping unresponsive names

We'd all agree that sending email to people who aren't responding to your emails is a bad thing. Hence the interest in reactivation campaigns.

But consider the difficulties of defining a "non-responding" email address.

In a recent article on integrating email marketing with other channels, Stephanie Miller notes, "don't drop non-Web buyers from your email program if they are buying in the store."

Oops, some of those dead addresses may be reacting to your messages after all, just not in a way captured by traditional measures of email success (opens, clicks, online conversions.)

And David Baker's new article on customer lifecycles suggests you shouldn't necessarily give up on people who apparently lose interest in your emails. Instead, you should understand why their relationship to you has changed and then adapt your communications accordingly.

3. The top line

Finally, even some of the standard elements in email content offer more opportunity than you might think.

If you're like me, you put a line at the top of each email that says something like "Click here to view this email online."

That approach has almost become an email marketing standard. Then Stefan Pollard pops up with an article that explains why this is a cruel misuse of vital space. And he has many suggestions on how to get much more marketing mileage out of that top line.

Layers indeed. Oh yes, and another thing email marketing often has in common with onions; it can make you cry.

Tags: email marketing, email reactivation campaigns, consumer email habits, lifecycle emails, email deliverability

Permalink | January 17, 2008 | 0 comment(s)
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