Are you looking at your email program as a long-term investor, or as a day-trader?
A lot of marketing tactics aren’t succeeding. It’s a combination of fundamental shifts in how audiences congregate and where they can be reached, and consumers that are too scared about an uncertain future to buy anything other than potatoes and ham.
But done right, email always works.
Email enables you to communicate with people that have some sort of prior relationship with your brand, and thus should be predisposed to wanting to buy more of what you offer.
Plus, you know something about them, and how to find them. You don’t have to wonder whether they are watching Grey’s Anatomy or reading the Indianapolis Star.
Everything is aligned for you to use the unique properties of email (existing relationship and knowledge about the audience) to create and nurture a powerful, persuasive, hyper-relevant dialog.
But you’re not doing that.
You’re panicking.
The email I’m receiving from the brands I support has devolved in the past 90 days to a dubious series of “best sale ever” and “60% off everything” missives that have exactly zero to do with my personal needs, wants, or desires.
All of a sudden we’re back in email, circa 2002. I’m getting offers from reputable, experienced companies that are just one giant graphic shouting “Everything is on Sale.”
Sometimes, Marketing Requires Courage
I know your boss or your client is starting to freak out, and is prodding you to hit the email list again and again in a withering attempt to generate some sort of revenue in an historically bleak period.
But email isn’t a short-term tactic. It’s a forever tactic. Like a butcher in a small town, you need to use your email program to create customers for life, not for this week. In combination with your customer experience, your email and social media programs can turn transactional customers into brand ambassadors. But too many companies are squandering years of email goodwill that they may never recapture.
I’ve heard the argument that many companies are fighting for their survival, so they have to think short-term and hit their email list with offers that are unprecedented in their aggression. I’m sympathetic, but also incredulous. Because the simple truth is this:
When people don’t want to spend money, you have to market to them with more personalization and relevancy, not less. If people are afraid to spend, no amount of percentage off is going to change that underlying psychology. Instead, you have to communicate to them individually.
How about an email from the CEO saying he knows you bought a sweater in September, and other colors of that same sweater you loved are now available for 60% off? You’re pushing the same discount message, but in a way that is personal, compelling, and effective.
Go Long or So Long
Now is the time to be a long horizon investor. In real estate. In equities. And in email, which you should be treating as one of your company’s most important ongoing assets, and not like an ATM.
Can you balance short-term needs with long-term brand-building via email?
(photo by tifotter)
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Couldn’t agree with you more. Had a very similar conversation with a new client who wanted to email the entire list every time they had something going on…some of them didn’t even have a clear call to action. We were able to show them that using segmentation based on the previous behaviors of their customers (which they were all ready tracking), would produce much better results, as well as keep subscribers happy! Their complaint rate has continued to decline, as well as the unsubscribe rate since we revamped their email program.
David H’s last blog post..DavidHibbs: Love Espresso’s auto-refresh for live preview, as I am putting the finishing touches on an email design. Still prefer Textmate as editor.
“But email isn’t a short-term tactic. It’s a forever tactic.” , agree with you.
Also we have a similar experience like @David H … after we changed the client tactics we received better results, a unsubscribe rate very low, a subscription rate with a hight frequency … and NO spam rate (0%).
Alex Volocaru’s last blog post..AlexVolocaru: "… email isn’t a short-term tactic. It’s a forever tactic." http://idek.net/1QU
Simply- a brilliantly convincing post that I will share with many clients, as my long winded version has not made an impact.
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Great post! I still have a hard time using email properly, but most of it is my own personal fear of sounding sleazy. I think I need to take a hard look at that – people are opting in for a reason.
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I just wrote something about this blog post. I totally agree that e-mail is long-term tactic!
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Great post on a theme I’m passionate about. I sent a link along to a client who, thankfully, is doing more right than wrong with their business and email. Your post is additional reinforcement that they should stay the course.
It is amazing that companies are abandoning the fundamentals with such enthusiasm. Get the right message, to the right person at the right time is a tried and true principle that, as you say, will be even more effective in these challenging times. Customer want to know that the companies they have put their faith in are strong and will be there for them in the future. A little confidence goes a long way.
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Jason — I agree with your overall principle about email. However, I have to disagree with you on two points.
“Email enables you to communicate with people that have some sort of prior relationship with your brand, and thus should be predisposed to wanting to buy more of what you offer.”
This statement makes a big assumption about your lead collection and data scrubbing practices. In an ideal world, you would be capture email addresses and other information from people that do want to opt-in and build a relationship with your company. And, by the same token, you’d have a process in place to separate out the people that have stopped engaging in the relationship (even without requiring them to opt-out).
But, in the real world, your statement over-values being in possession of an email address. Just having a list gives you little insight into the nature of the relationship or the disposition of the prospect. While the email address is an effective way to communicate with people, you’ll need a more robust set of data to determine if you should reach out to them.
“Plus, you know something about them, and how to find them. You don’t have to wonder whether they are watching Grey’s Anatomy or reading the Indianapolis Star.”
Again, I have to disagree with this statement unless you are tracking your source of collection. What you go on to talk about down in your post is personalizing the offers to the people in your database. I absolutely agree with you but you need to be tracking information to do that effectively, just capturing email doesn’t give you enough information.
Again, I don’t want to sound negative to the overall point that you are making. I think that effectively nurturing the people who are genuinely interested in your company with information and offers that are relevant to them will help companies weather the economic downturn much better. Being successful will require significantly more work on the back-end before you hit Send.
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HA! I totally look like that picture EVERY time I say we are emailing too much!
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@David – Way to go. You should write that up as a case study. Segmentation = Relevancy = Reduced Complaint Rate & Improved Results
@Alex – Awesome. You and David should work on that case study together!
@Amanda – Thanks so very much. That was very nice of you.
@Nathan – As long as it’s relevant, you should be good to go.
@Clinton – I really appreciate it. Thanks for the comment.
@James – Thank you for your continued support. Glad I could help add some fire to your client discussion
@John – Great comment. I really appreciate it. You are of course precisely right. It’s indeed easy for me to insist on relevant email, but that does require the client to commit to collecting data and using it wisely. In my experience, it’s not terribly difficult but it certainly does require a widespread belief in it as a meaningful improvement over the status quo.
@DM – Isn’t that picture the best? I really hope that guy won whatever costume contest he was entering.
Jason –
As an email marketing guy, of course I have to weigh in, right?
I love your quote, “…email, which you should be treating as one of your company’s most important ongoing assets.” Too often email is an afterthought. It is left to an intern or one person in a large organization to manage and design strategy around. Stephanie Miller’s conversation with a CMO summarizes this concept best (”Making the Case for Email” – http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2008/10/making-the-case-for-email-mark.php).
I also really like your quote, “…email isn’t a short-term tactic. It’s a forever tactic.” Email continues to survive even with other social media communication popping up (IM, blogs, facebook, twitter, etc). It is still the channel that ties all others together.
I’d like to counter a few comments by John Johansen above:
1. “In an ideal world, you would be capture email addresses and other information from people that do want to opt-in and build a relationship with your company. And, by the same token, you’d have a process in place to separate out the people that have stopped engaging in the relationship (even without requiring them to opt-out)”
If you work with any reputable Email Service Provider (ESP), they should have the tools in place and the email advisors available to suggest sound techniques to obtain opt-in. Additionally, all ESPs have the ability to track those that are not engaged (non-openers, no-clickers, non-purchasers). Going at it on your own certainly makes this one a challenge, but that is one of the reasons ESPs and folks like Jason Baer are in business.
2. “Again, I have to disagree with this statement unless you are tracking your source of collection.”
Why would you *not* be tracking the source of your data collection? The technology exists. I think that too often marketers don’t collect this data as it is easy to just “blast away.” Collecting email source data is really just the first step to proper segmentation. How about sending out a few email campaigns asking subscribers to provide some more data points – give the an incentive.
Just a few thoughts from a guy who thinks about email (probably too often).
dj
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DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability
Bronto Software, Inc
djwaldow: twitter, AIM, MSN, Gtalk…
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