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Number
55: June 2, 2004
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This week in Katydid:
Are
We Killing E-mail?
In March, the Pew
Internet & American Life Project published a Data
Memo on unsolicited e-mail (PDF). Among other things, the memo
states that 29 percent of the people polled are using e-mail less
because of unsolicited e-mail, which is an increase of 5 percent since
last June.
Despite legislation to prevent it, the problem has become worse. A
May 20 article
from eWeek quotes Shinya Akamine, President and CEO of Postini,
Inc. that the volume of unsolicited e-mail has risen from 78 percent
to to 83 percent of e-mail since congress enacted legislation banning it
in January.
Some companies have cut back on direct marketing through e-mail and
returned to snail mail. Mike Gilbert, President of Three
a.m. Advertising, declared in an
article in the Puget Sound Business Journal that they
recommend their clients switch to direct mail:
"You can have the best brand in the world and if you send out
a mass e-mail, the best thing that can happen is it's deleted,"
Gilbert said. "The worst thing is that the brand is denigrated
because it's associated with spam."
I don't agree with the conclusion that e-mail is dead and it should
be abandoned but certainly, it is applied improperly. Direct response
marketing through e-mail is cheap and much of the abuse stems from that
fact. Most methods proposed to solve the problem add some element of
cost into the equation. Ideas range from postage at fractions of a penny
to bonded systems costing thousands of dollars.
The abusers have given us high hopes for sales through e-mail and too
many marketers adopted their content and art direction. However, the
secret to their success is essentially extended reach. They didn't have
to do market research to find their target; they just had to contact
everybody. It's as if they could fish by casting their nets over the
entire Pacific Ocean, catch only whales, and merely annoy all the other
fish.
Responsible marketers have struggled to find reliable, targeted
lists. The data tends to be old and the turnover high. But tracking is
good and we can develop our own house lists, which are superior. E-mail
is still effective if you can get someone to open it and that's where
the volume of unsolicited e-mail has created the greatest obstacle.
Our behavior has changed. Sure, we have many filters – our ISP, our
mail server, our mail clients, and a wide range of third-party products
– but we have trained ourselves to be masterful filters. We delete large
blocks of e-mail in just seconds because we fail to recognize the name
or because the subject line looks suspicious. We also have turned off
our preview windows.
The e-mail abusers make it easy by using our names in unusual ways
and by including strange symbols or obscure words in the subject line.
Frankly, it's easy to identify the junk because it looks untrustworthy.
Trust is the central concern. According to the Pew Memo, "63% of
email users said that the influx of spam made them less trusting of
email in general." Your competitive advantage over unsolicited
e-mail is that you can appear trustworthy. You can use a recognizable
name. You can create a meaningful subject line. Moreover, you can get
your recipient to look for your e-mail.
E-mail is a very poor awareness tool. It still has limited reach and
the container has very low creative potential. The subject line is the
only place for messaging. You can't count on anyone looking inside, so
the subject line has to sell the entire deal. Even there you have to
limit yourself to thirty or forty characters. Take it from me, if you
could boil the entire campaign down to a few words (and you should try),
you wouldn't need any content or creative at all – just the URL.
The best use of e-mail is to extend or transform an existing
relationship. That is the most cost-effective use of your budget.
Though, it has to be part of a coordinated strategy. Use traditional
campaigns to create awareness and drive people to your web site. Use the
web site to develop the relationship and then offer e-mail as a means of
continuing the relationship.
Better still, use e-mail to turn your existing relationships into
recruiters of new relationships. Using the permission-based marketing
approach, give your established relationships reasons to recommend you
and the tools to do so.
Additionally, one of the reasons that direct mail is making a
comeback of sorts is that it shows your level of commitment to earning
their business. I like to say that every customer touchpoint should be a
gift. You can do this in many creative ways. Even the act of turning
over a postcard can be a gift if there's a pleasant surprise on the
other side.
Great design and engaging content also show your willingness to
invest in their relationship. (It's a courtship after all.) Potential
customers want to know you're willing to invest a little to gain their
business. They also want to know you're a business stable enough to
invest a little. That doesn't mean you should pander or bribe them
because people take pleasure in getting something for nothing. However,
your creative can look like more of an investment than it really is.
So, are we killing e-mail? Well, if e-mail were a plant, we've been
mistreating it by placing it in the wrong light, not feeding it enough,
and expecting a bountiful harvest of fruit. And it's not even a
fruit-bearing plant. It's more of a flower. Something you give to
someone as a symbol of your
relationship, hoping to take things just a
bit further.
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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