The new email marketing: the new subscriber

Part 11 of an ongoing series...

(We're looking at the strategies and tactics that distinguish a smart email marketer from a bulk email marketer. See the New Email Marketing index page to access the rest of the series.)

Have you ever wondered about the people on your list? Not the addresses in the database, but the people. They are...


It's tempting to end here and simply invite us all to reflect on how "subscriber as human being" affects the way we should do email marketing.

Be wary of considering that concept either pretentious or obvious. Just think how glibly and easily we talk of "non-responsive email addresses" or ask "which addresses are clicking?"

An email address is just a sequence of numbers and letters. It can't read or click anything: people read emails and click on links.

As Spencer Kollas writes:


This perspective goes further than just thinking in terms of keeping subscribers happy in an email relationship (see Part 2). Because not only are there people on the end of those emails, but they are a new generation of empowered (email) consumers.

They are not passive receptacles of one-way offers and information.

They want choice and control.

The wider Internet has shifted the balance of power further away from the marketers and back to the people. No more so than with email.

Not only can subscribers choose to get their marketing messages from another medium or email source at a drop of a mouse, but they can use "report spam" buttons to actively hurt your ability to get emails delivered to others.

Which is why it's so important to see permission (to email someone) as a temporary loan and privilege that needs to be nurtured and justified on an ongoing basis. That initial opt-in just isn't enough.

As David Baker so eloquently puts it...


Giving control and choice to the subscriber is a hot theme among experts right now and has implications beyond how you think about permission.

The future, according to Larry Chase and Janet Roberts, is:


(We'll examine concrete examples of this later in this series.)

Stefan Pollard agrees, writing:


Choice and control also imply support for interaction and dialog.

Email marketers are already exploring ways of applying Web 2.0 concepts of user interaction to email.

And improved dialog can be as easy as doing something about that do-not-reply@ email address you use.

As Seth Godin recently posted:


Denise Cox adds:


Once you accept this "vision" of the empowered individual viewing his or her inbox, forward-thinking strategies and tactics pop out naturally.

Consider, for example, this article from Karen Gedney. Herself an email marketing expert, she writes from the perspective of the would-be email recipient returning from a two-week trip to Iceland.

Her article is full of all the related consumer needs and marketing opportunities that travel organizations could have addressed through email...if they'd thought about things from the subscriber perspective.

Food for thought (Thorramatur presumably).

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