Are the experts holding back email marketing?
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow
We've all read expert articles bemoaning the fact that so many marketers are doing something wrong with their email marketing. Or highlighting the common lack of appropriate resources and support for email efforts. (Heck, I've written some.)Most recently, Alterian released research results showing that most of those surveyed were "intermediate" email marketers at best and none could be considered pacesetters.
Instead of galvanizing us all to improve our strategies and tactics or capture more resources for our efforts, are these admonishments having precisely the opposite effect?
Here's a quote from Robert Cialdini, writing in Current Directions in Psychological Science...
"There is an understandable, but misguided, tendency to try to mobilize action against a problem by depicting it as regrettably frequent"
Why misguided?
"Within the statement 'Many people are doing this undesirable thing' lurks the powerful and undercutting normative message 'Many people are doing this.'"
In other words, the message people get is that the "bad" behavior is normal and thus they are more likely to do it.
Cialdini, for example, showed that putting up notices about the regrettably large amount of petrified wood stolen from an Arizona national park actually led to more theft.
(You can read all about this in "Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion")
Perhaps we who write about email marketing need to focus even more on the benefits of doing better email marketing, the spread of good practices and the penalties for poor practices.
(I wonder if the same phenomenon applies to spam. The vast majority of articles on spam simply highlight how prevalent it is. Does this then establish "sending spam" as a social norm, thus subliminally encouraging people to do it?)
Tags: email marketing, spam, social norms, email marketing industry
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2 Comments:
Mark - Great post as always! As one of the voices in the industry - I'm clearly guilty of pointing out the negative, and the things that email marketers are doing poorly or wrong. Fact is, it is so much easier to find the mediocre or poorly executed email programs than the great ones.
Part of it is also a fact of headlineitis. It is catchier or more interesting to say that 85% of email marketers DON'T do something (fill in best practice here) than saying 15% do do it. But either way, it points out that we aren't where we want to be as an industry.
I like the sentiment however, and will certainly try to focus more on the positive - and have marketers identify with good practices and not settle for being comfortable in mediocrity.
Loren McDonald
Silverpop
By 
Loren McDonald, on
07 May, 2008
Thanks Loren. I'm certainly guilty as charged. I think what we can definitely do more of is ensure that when a "bad" practice is highlighted as common that we make the opportunity costs of that practice clear.
The "traditional" media in particular tend to report survey results without comment. So all people read is that "most marketers don't use a preference center."
It would at least be better if journalists could say "most marketers don't use a preference center and are losing subscribers as a result."
Or perhaps even better..."a growing number of marketers are gaining a competitive edge by using subscriber preference centers in their email marketing."
I'm still learning...
By 
Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
07 May, 2008
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