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If you are a marketer of products sold directly to consumers and have numerous promotions, coupons, or giveaways, the very idea of e-mail marketing seems very enticing – With a few keystrokes and a small budget, you can blast your message out to the masses and hope for the revenue generated in return to meet or exceed your costs.
The traditional impact of e-mail marketing still far outweighs the cost of doing business, at least financially. Of the thousands of e-mail sent, only a few need to be read and turn into sales for the whole project to be profitable. More often than not, an upper level manager will look at the data and want to replicate the success, and why not. To them it seems an easy way to jack up the revenue for the month.
The problems with e-mail marketing stem from the lack of continuity, attention, and content volume. It is this very signal-to-noise ratio that the marketing department must pay attention to. When one of these aspects of your message gets diluted or applied incorrectly, it can affect the whole campaign, as reflected in your opt-in/opt out rations. So how does e-mail marketing stay consistent with the changing landscape of consumer appeal while maintaining high visibility and low opt-out rates? Let’s take a look at the details…
Lack of continuity
With about 10 different browsers and countless versions thereof, it’s almost to impossible to segment your marketing campaign to cater to each segment, and your best bet is to maintain a standards and compliance checklist for the overall campaign. Your e-mail is displayed in html format, but must also be displayed in text, and a copy created on your actual webpage. The continuity issue arises as each browser and each version treats the HTML code differently. Modern uses of style sheets have helped solve this problem, but your message must be delivered clearly, quickly and efficiently, or else it’ll end up in the spam bin almost every time. These e-mails are basically wasted time and need to be addressed as a strategic threat against your message. Continuity of message is the consistency with which it is received.
Attention
We’ve all received the dull, uninspiring spam that comes to our inboxes once we order a product or service online. The never-ending struggle to delete these and get to the real e-mails is the struggle for the consumer to adjust the amount of noise he or she receives versus the actual signal. What people are looking for is things that can help them or improve their lives. They don’t care if you have the genetically modified blue flowers in stock that you think are so cool. The question is: How does my product help my customer and what can I do to facilitate that message. This is true e-mail marketing. By focusing on the actual signal, we can train ourselves to be aware of what goes in one ear and out the other versus being caught in between. The rest is just noise and the average consumer is conditioned to ignore the noise.
Content volume
Any good e-mail marketer does it even once in a while. The success of one project leads to the creation of a new campaign. After all, it worked once right?
The problem comes with the actual ISP’s and their bandwidth load as well as the customer who has a very specific need for your products. The consumers must have the ability to opt-out of your subscription services in accordance with the national CAN-SPAM act. Once they do, that information gets sent to the ISP companies such as Comcast and Time Warner. These providers have the ability to restrict your bandwidth based on usage and consumer complaints. If you are dumping content on them that doesn’t have a purpose, you’ll get penalized. It’s the rule of diminishing returns.
Once you structure your e-mails towards specific audiences, consider having the customer opt in further and subscribe to an RSS link that feeds content directly to their Outlook or other e-mail box. RSS, being a syndication tool, can be used to bypass spam filters as it’s an opt-in service. Also, consider the shift to social media as an e-mail marketing alternative. These social networks have a captive and opted-in network of users. They will teach you quickly how to not spam by their collective actions and feedback. Use this criticism as a teaching tool, and refine your message to its sharpest point. Once this message is crystal clear, the social networks will facilitate the amplification of the message, and your conversion ratios will not only be profitable, but sustainable.
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Every e-mail communication you send to a preferred group of your shoppers, subscribers, or content readers is an outreach by your organization to take an action that should result in more awareness of a campaign or a specific task your customers will be rewarded for.
