The hidden costs of "lazy" email practices

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on May 28, 2008

An unfortunate misconception in email marketing is that there is no downside to bad email practices. Other than the loss of a bit of time and "a few dollars" to send out the email.

Not so. There are a number of hidden costs, many of which fail to get even a whiff of attention when contemplating email marketing design and strategy.

When you prepare an email marketing task, you probably ask "how will this help drive a positive response from subscribers?"

A good question. But...

Do you ever ask, "how will this help drive a negative response from subscribers?"

The positive responses are often easily seen. The negative responses are often hidden.

Example: sending a copy of a campaign to all those who didn't "open" the first email. You can easily see the additional clicks and sales the resend produces.

But do you understand the consequences of sending yet another email to those who didn't "open" the first because they're already tired of the number of commercial emails they get?

You probably already know about the most obvious "hidden cost" of email marketing.

If your subscribers don't like what you send, they can use the "report spam" button to "vote" you on to blacklists that affect your future ability to get emails through to inboxes.

But there are more.

For example, buried in the recent Habeas consumer email survey is this little tidbit...

"As many as one in four respondents lose some
degree of faith in an organization that is
unable to deliver email reliably"

We tend to think of poor deliverability simply in terms of fewer opens, clicks, sales etc. But since we see a steady stream of emails go out the door, we fail to recognize that recipients see a different picture.

Emails that go missing for a week or three, then turn up again. Or emails that never arrive, no matter how many times you sign-up.

That's a black mark against your business or brand. Getting emails delivered isn't just about driving positive responses. It's also about avoiding negative ones.

The same damage to your image occurs if emails arrive, but aren't recognized. They might as well not exist. Which is why it's important to focus on ensuring recognition and accountability in your email program.

Then even if you do get through and get recognized, you take an image hit if your email looks lame in the preview pane, webmail interface or email client.

Not lame in terms of the basic design, but lame in terms of accounting for image blocking and rendering issues.

Again, it's not an issue of missing clicks (which all email marketers understand and often accept as a cost of email business). It's the damage done to your business image and reputation (which few email marketers take into account).

If your image-only email shows up as a hollow rectangle with a safety warning attached, few recipients will think, "ah, an understandable result of overzealous image blocking on the part of my email client. I shall download images instantly in order to enjoy the full glory of this commercial message."

(Some might.)

Many will think, "lame email" (lame brand, lame business).

Which is another reason why experts continue to write about important design elements like:

alt tags for images (see this Blue Sky Factory piece)
image blocking and the preview pane (see Loren McDonald's latest article)
testing for when images fail (José Manuel Alarcón Aguín discovered some great tools to make this easy)

So when you weigh up the pros and cons of email marketing tasks, don't forget to account for the hidden costs of not doing something...

More on email and branding | Tags: email marketing, branding, email design, email deliverability

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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