Your call: why reject certain email addresses?
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on June 10, 2008
Forcing a subscriber to do things against their wishes is rarely conducive to a great email relationship. But I can understand it if there are good reasons to do so.
So what are the good reasons for not accepting a Gmail address?
I'm not convinced there are enough to warrant these kinds of error messages, but maybe...
- A corporate email address is likely to be checked more often during working hours, ensuring your B2B messages get read in a more timely fashion
- Lead follow-up emails look more credible when sent to the "work" address
Arguments I won't accept:
- Gmail is harder to deliver to (corporate anti-spam technologies are far less transparent)
- Gmail is harder to design for (harder than Outlook 2007 or Lotus Notes?)
- Gmail addresses are only temporary (webmail addresses used to be throwaway addresses. But since the advent of unlimited storage space and other features they are now frequently used as the main, long-term account.)
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9 Comments:
I agree Mark. The very nature of email is that it's all in the hands of the recipient, and to me that means success comes by making things as useful and convenient for that person as possible. So while I may prefer the email go to a work address -- just as I'd prefer to know the full name, address, title, etc. of each person who requests the report -- the most effective way to start the relationship is to let the recipient call the shots.
By 
Michael Katz | Blue Penguin, on
10 June, 2008
Hi Mark!
I'm laughing cuz I recognize that sign-up form and I got the same message. I have a Yahoo! address that I use for all bulk or commercial sign-ups, one that I check equally as often as I do my "corporate" one. Frankly, I think I'd experience better delivery to a Yahoo address than one that's sequestered behind a morass of inbound mail filters. And of course Michael is right (as he always is -- hi Michael!) that you let the recipient call the shots. If you really want that corp. addy, ask for it in in a follow-up invitation to fill out a profile and provide it as a secondary contact. You'd think *these people* would know that!
By Janet, on
10 June, 2008
Actually, another reason not to require a corporate address is that some employers have policies against it. I have actually encountered a few postmasters at .mil/.gov domains in particular that informed me that their server's users weren't supposed to be signing up for bulk mail with those accounts.
By Tim England, on
10 June, 2008
Michael, thanks, yep, agree that the power is shifting to the subscriber and we should respect that.
Janet - hi! Long-time no hear. Yes, there is an irony in there, but I'm not naming names. Besides, I'm kind of interested if someone can come up with a good argument for the practice. Is there data suggesting people respond less to emails to their webmail address than to their work one?
Tim - thanks - that's interesting to know. In such cases you really do lose the prospect entirely as they have no alternative but to go away without signing up.
The key problem I think here is making it obligatory. Encouraging a "work" address in the sign-up language is different to making it a requirement.
By 
, on
10 June, 2008
does anyone know anything about Viralytics Media (http://www.ViralyticsMedia.com)?
We are about to start a direct response email campaign with them, but are unsure as to how well the campaign will work. Any insight into past performance metrics with Viralytics would be a huge help.
By , on
10 June, 2008
Hmm...
Maybe the reasoning at play here (and I'm not saying I agree with it) is that someone with a corporate email address is more likely to be a "bonafide" sales lead, rather than a tire-kicker or freebie-seeker.
I suppose if you were doing a lot of manual follow up, cutting out the leads you felt were low-quality could potentially cut down the time your sales team spent following up on poor-quality leads.
Of course, to take such a measure, you'd better be darn sure - i.e. have done some serious analysis to make sure there's a strong correlation between type of address given and conversion rate - and be so swamped with inquiries (or so short on salespeople) that it's worth the time you save in "wasted" follow up to cut out those who don't have or aren't willing to supply a corporate address.
That's my devil's advocate, Mark - but I'm with the rest of you. This is just bad practice.
PS - Internet Explorer? C'mon Mark, all the cool kids are using Firefox ;)
By Justin Premick, on
11 June, 2008
Well advocated Justin. There is a difference between email acquisition for lists and acquisition for lead generation. So some slack to cut there (perhaps).
As for IE. Well, the official answer is I prefer to experience my website and the wider Internet through the same mechanical eyes used by the majority of my visitors. The unofficial (and correct) answer is that I'm just not cool :-)
By , on
11 June, 2008
This is a rather foolish policy. There's no way for you to keep an up-to-date list of all of the free clients.
For instance, I'm using Google Apps for my domain. It's powered by Gmail, but it doesn't end in @gmail.com.
All you've done is annoy the potential customer right away. If they're going to be bullheaded about what they'll allow you (as the potential customer) to do, how will they be as a service provider?
The terms "responsive" and "flexible" and "customer-oriented" don't spring to mind.
By James, on
13 June, 2008
Thanks James. Just to add another layer of irony to the story...the lead follow-up email the company sent me was tagged and filtered by SpamAssasin as spam.
By , on
16 June, 2008
