While publishers and the rest of the direct marketing community were quick to embrace email marketing for all of the advantages it offers - primarily reach, measurement and effectiveness - that same community is also grappling with roadblocks that have cropped up since deceptive vendors have begun blanketing the Internet with their unsolicited messages, largely known as spam.
With fly-by-night businesses marketing everything from Viagra to miracle weight-loss drugs souring the public's impression of email marketing, is email really worth the trouble for legitimate marketers? Is it the killer app we've all been led to believe it is?
The short answer is yes, of course it is. For all of the obstacles it presents, email marketing saves on printing and postage; distribution is instant and click-through rates are quantifiable; it's a great way to test an offer; and it's capable of delivering a dynamic message if designed properly. And there are ways to legitimately market your products via email that won't anger your customers and prospects or cause them to opt-out of your future email campaigns. In fact, they may be impressed and appreciative of the time you saved them in making a purchase decision, authorizing a subscription renewal, or even including them on a complimentary newsletter mailing list.
TARGET YOUR MESSAGE TO PEOPLE WHO WANT IT.
An essential first step in executing an email marketing campaign is to be selective in choosing who will receive it. Nielsen data indicates that approximately 60 percent of the U.S. population is online every single day, says Janet Libert, editor and publisher of American Express' SkyGuide. That's a huge audience, so to build and retain credibility, it's important to limit distribution of email marketing messages to true prospective customers.
Marketing professionals and industry consultants have mixed reactions to compiling opt-in, or permission-based, email marketing lists as opposed to opt-out. But either way, marketers have to ensure that messages are being sent only to people who are interested in their products and services.
"One big thing that differentiates legitimate marketers from spam marketers is the fact that the number of people they send to actually have some propensity to buy what they are offering, or to enjoy their newsletter, or to register at their site," says CRM Direct senior VP of marketing Steve McKenzie. "Direct mail has a lot more parameters in terms of expense in choosing who to send to. Just because email is cheaper and allows a broader reach doesn't mean it's a good idea" to broadcast your message more widely, he adds. "Truly, what's the value of marketing to someone who has no desire to continue communications?"
Libert echoed that point. SkyGuide is bound by American Express' stringent customer privacy rules even when communicating to its existing customer base, says Libert. "American Express is very concerned about the quality of everything that goes out talking about our brand, so everything we send out, whether it's in print or email, we have it approved by the advertising review board and legal, but these are things that are sometimes overlooked."
LEVERAGE YOUR BRAND IN YOUR MESSAGE.
One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in email marketing is getting the recipient to open your message before he deletes it. With the volume of email growing at an exponential rate - and spam having grown 8 percent in the last year to account for more than 40 percent of all email, according to McKenzie - it's more important than ever to identify the sender of the message as a legitimate individual or organization, and tailor the subject line to contain information that will distinguish the message from the so-called junk that clutters people's inboxes on a daily basis.
A great way to accomplish this is to play up a well-respected brand name in either the sender or subject line. "When we first sent out our email newsletter, we had an address from our tech guy; now we're actually sending it from a real person at SkyGuide," says Libert. "If you don't have an established brand, use a strong subject line like, 'The newsletter you requested' (if consumers opted-in to your messages). Don't tease too much in the subject line - be factual and straightforward."
KNOW HOW TO CIRCUMVENT SPAM FILTERS.
Getting people to open messages before deleting them is only one obstacle - in many cases, messages don't even make it to a marketer's intended list of recipients. So even legitimate marketers must educate themselves about how to circumvent spam filters, which block messages from being delivered by looking for certain words or characters in the subject lines and body text of emails. In addition to ISP filters, as the amount of spam grows, companies wishing to shield their employees from distracting, unsolicited emails are investing in spam filters for their own corporate email servers.
"Using the word 'free' gets caught all the time," says Libert. "Using all caps or question marks in the subject line can cause some hesitation. Excessive punctuation, multiple fonts and colors, the use of a 'click here' link in your email - those will be suspect."
Unfortunately, almost as quickly as it is released, spammers adapt to new filter software and develop loopholes to circumvent the system and get their messages delivered, so legitimate marketers must keep on top of the growing list of characters and formats of email design that can trigger spam filters.
In addition, marketers have to be aware of their bounce-back rates, McKenzie adds. "The number of bounces is one of the things that a filter looks for. So if you get a huge bounce-back, that will be a flag to them that you could be a spammer - whether you are or not."
It's also important to personalize your message as much as possible in the subject line and the body of the message to ensure it gets through the different screening systems.
File size also counts. Blasting out a large number of emails at once functions as a red flag for some screening software. Many professional marketers and industry consultants advocate sending out smaller batches of messages over a longer period of time.
BEWARE OF RENTED LISTS.
Being as stringent as possible with your own in-house lists is only part of the solution if you rent outside lists to which to market. The last thing you want to do is blast an email promotion to a corrupt list. "It's one of the areas where one has to do a little bit more due diligence than you would in the offline world," says McKenzie. "Certainly, use a trusted list broker. Check for how frequently the people on the list have received emails and how recently - something you'd consider in the offline world, but it's even more central in the online world. You have to really dig deep on how the list was designed, because brokers will say it is an opt-in list. But how did the opt-in work? And what did the people on the list opt-in to? You need to make sure that the permission they gave was for what you're marketing," McKenzie cautions.
DON'T OVERUSE EMAIL.
Finally, even if your messages are legitimate, you can annoy recipients by sending them too frequently. For the user who spends the first 10 to 15 minutes of every morning deleting unwanted email, seeing messages from the same sender too often could prompt an opt-out, even if he is interested in your products and services.
Libert says American Express' corporate policy is to limit its communication to each card member to one email per week from any division in the company. "It's a tough call. You have to constantly check. It actually comes down to return on investment on that email - which email program will generate the most money for the company."
"One of the answers to this problem might be to think about how to consolidate different campaigns if they are coming from the same company," says McKenzie.
This article is based on presentations given at the Direct Marketing Association's 2003 DMD Days, held June 2-4 in New York City.
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