The permission gamble: can you send more email safely?

Spam is now simply email people don’t find relevant.

Customers are clearly interested in you.

So as long as you send them relevant messages, you can ignore whether or not you have an actual opt-in from these people.

Their interest (as expressed through a prior purchase) + relevancy = wanted email = not spam = “permission” marketing.

Nobody is going to complain about relevant email, regardless of whether they asked for it or not.

The above argument excites interest because it promises much greater returns for your email marketing, without the downside of being called out for spamming.

But does the argument hold up in theory and practice?

There are three questions to cover:

1. Is relevancy/value the only issue at stake for subscribers?
2. Can you be relevant without an opt-in?
3. How can you send more email safely? (which is really what this marketing debate is all about)

Is it all about relevancy/value?

The definition of spam has shifted broadly from “email not asked for” to “email that is not wanted”, implying that relevant/valuable email will not be considered spam.

This shift is reflected in statements made by the big webmail services in their bulk sender guidelines. For example, Gmail says:

“To increase the inbox delivery rate of your messages, make sure that all recipients on your distribution lists actually want to receive the mail”

Though this is a trend, it’s only true of a portion of any customer email list. There are still plenty of people who see email they didn’t explicitly sign up for as spam, regardless of any pre-existing business relationship:

• A May 2010 survey of 1860 UK consumers asked “What is most likely to prompt you to mark email as spam?” 18% said “Don’t remember signing up”.
• An April 2009 study of 4000+ global consumers found 34% agreed spam was “emails from companies I have a relationship with offline, but to whom I never gave permission to contact me via email.”
• A 2009 channel preference study asked people to rate the acceptability of promotional messages on a scale of 1 (worst) to 5 (best). Permission-based email scored an average 4.1, email with no permission but a prior business relationship scored a 2.5.

It’s important here not to think in absolutes: do not assume all subscribers think alike. Any collection of customers covers a spectrum of attitudes to commercial email.

At one end are those who see any marketing email as spam.

At the other end are those who never see marketing email as spam (there aren’t many of those).

Most people are somewhere in between.

The more you move away from the permission optimum (explicit opt-in), the greater the proportion of your list who will see your emails as spam.

Improving the relevancy/value of those emails will compensate in part for permission sacrifices, but it clearly won’t eliminate all “this is spam” reactions.

Permission still matters when it comes to customer perceptions of your emails. Chad White, for example, describes permission as an ethical imperative:

“…the vital element that separates us from spammers.”

Dylan Boyd also sees permission as recognizing that the inbox is a private place, unsuited to email blasts designed to gain attention and reach in the way that a TV campaign might be carried out:

“I believe that working with people that want your communications works multiples better than the gather, spray and pray method some marketers use.”

So you can move away from the permission ideal, but it’s a gamble.

As Ken Magill notes:

“No, explicit permission is not necessary. Marketers who don’t get explicit permission are playing a dangerous game, but, no, it’s simply not required.”

The “dangerous game” is hoping that the value you deliver compensates for the lack of permission (though the above statistics suggest it can’t ever compensate enough for at least some of your list).

Now two more points.

First, although the definition of spam has shifted to mean “unwanted email”, no ISP or blacklist looks favorably on bulk email that isn’t opt in.

Google, for example, says:

“Each user on your distribution list should opt to receive messages from you” (and says pre-checked boxes don’t count)

Yahoo! says:

“To avoid being perceived as a spammer, use an opt-in method of subscription for your mailing list”

…and…

“If a customer entrusts an email address to you during a transaction or for a particular newsletter, they do not expect to receive unrelated messages, such as extraneous marketing emails, in the process.”

Second, local privacy and/or anti-spam legislation also controls the kind of permission needed to send emails to customers, prospects and others. It’s not just a marketing decision.

Is permission needed to be relevant?

We know that relevancy/value affects how recipients perceive your email. If your email is really valuable, many (perhaps even most) recipients will forgive the lack of an explicit opt-in.

That’s a great theory that commonly falls down in practice.

Why?

Relevancy/value is actually quite hard to achieve, even when you’re not trying to compensate for a lack of permission. It’s often a guessing game using cues, clues and assumptions that can never hold up across a list. Even when you have a lot of data at your disposal.

The UK DMA’s digital tracking study revealed that almost two-thirds of consumers consider no more than 10% of the promotional emails they receive to be interesting or relevant.

Just look at benchmark open and click rates for opt-in email to see how interesting most email is.

Some senders accept that argument but, of course, their emails are different: we are an above-average sender that really does send highly relevant email all the time. This is usually self-delusional.

We are all very bad at distinguishing between what we think is relevant/valuable and what recipients think is relevant/valuable. Here’s a made-up graph to illustrate the point:

Of course, one route to more relevancy is simply to get the customer to say if they want the kind of emails we’d like to send them.

Oh.

Um…that’s permission marketing.

An opt-in allows recipients to self-select for relevant/valuable email. In the words of Loren McDonald, permission…

“…lays the groundwork to create engaged and empowered users”

And as Al Iverson writes:

“…the only people that can get into the inbox are the ones that get invited there. Without that, the inbox dies, becomes useful for no one, marketer or consumer.”

Relying on relevancy/value to “trump permission” is a touch utopian.

How do you send more email safely?

So, softening permission requirements so we can send more email is an option, but one fraught with risk. Permission is tied up closely with both spam and relevancy issues. And being relevant/valuable enough to trump permission is a tough, tough job.

So why don’t we look elsewhere for ways to “send more email” without taking gambles on permission? Ways that benefit the recipient, too.

Here are some examples and references worthy of exploration…

1. Send more email to people who have opted-in

We worry – rightly – about the negative consequences of overmailing recipients: higher unsubscribes, spam reports, recipient fatigue, potential blacklisting etc.

But overmailing does not mean “sending more emails than you do now”. Overmailing means overmailing.

You may also be sending too few emails. For more on that concept see here and listen to Dela Quist here.

2. Increase frequency to an opt-in list to match seasonal subscriber expectations

Seasonal emails are timely and thus more valuable. If your emails are more valuable then all things being equal you can send more of them (as many retailers do with their holiday email marketing).

3. Invite existing subscribers to opt-in to higher-frequency messages

If you’re worried about increasing frequency across the board, then consider standalone emails, sidebars and/or secondary calls to action that invite existing subscribers to sign-up for more mail.

You might, for example, solicit opt-ins to a new newsletter, a sister newsletter or a closed-end series (like “12 days of Christmas” specials). Chad White has a report explaining how retailers can cross-promote sister brands ethically in their emails.

4. Send more email to your “best” subscribers

Again, if you’re worried about sending more email to everyone on your list, consider segmenting out your most engaged subscribers and increasing frequency to that segment.

How do you identify those subscribers? Find advice in these articles:

Find your best subscribers: why and how
Identifying engaged subscribers: repeat opens
Identifying engaged subscribers: unique opens, clicks, lateral thinking

5. Think in terms of transactional and service messages

As marketers we think all-too-often in terms of marketing emails as opportunities to get something from recipients (sales, downloads, registrations, etc.).

Transactional and service emails typically resonate better with recipients, because they provide a benefit, often with no strings attached. Examples include order confirmations, shipping notices, thank you and welcome messages, subscription reminders, account updates, etc.

These emails are also inherently more relevant than traditional marketing mails, since they are triggered by a well-defined recipient action or characteristic.

For marketers, such messages provide indirect benefits (by delivering value) and can provide a vehicle for secondary marketing messages. Permission issues also play a lesser role than with marketing emails: how many people mark an order confirmation as “spam” (some, believe me, but not many).

For more on transactional and service messages:

Marketing through admin and transactional emails
Post-Purchase Emails That Drive Higher Revenue, Engagement

6. Optimize address acquisition

Before gambling with marketing emails to people who didn’t explicitly ask for them, it’s worth exploring whether customers have enough opportunity to join your opt-in list.

Essentially, does the customer have enough obvious opportunities to opt-in to your marketing emails before and during any transaction and in post-purchase transactional messages? And do these opportunities present the benefits of opting in clearly?

If the answer to both those questions is yes, then you might also argue that customers that do not opt-in have “implicitly opted out” of marketing messages…making it even more of a permission gamble should you ignore that implicit wish.

(Not to mention the enormous no-no of sending to those who explicitly opted-out, for example by unchecking a pre-checked opt-in).

In summary

Can you send bulk marketing emails to customers who didn’t explicitly opt-in to your marketing messages? Yes.

Should you? Probably not.

Why would you want to when there are other less-risky options available? Exactly.

Find related articles:

• Channel: Permission issues | Email frequency

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