Commentary

Are Your Emails Zero To Many?

by Ian McCollum , July 6, 2009

Social media is the next bandwagon every marketer is jumping on. All the ESPs and all the email marketing teams are creating "share your content" modules and integrating social into their strategy mix. And now Twitter is the latest social media star. Everywhere you turn there is Twitter -- CNN, NASA, operating rooms, corporate home pages, and even the toilet (twitter.com/shwittering). Twitter has been deemed the next revolution in one-to-one communication, giving the customer a voice and making the corporation "human," enabling real-time interaction.

Let's look at some numbers:

Twitter had 18.2 million unique visitors in May 2009. (http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/nielsen-news/twitter-grows-1444-over-last-year-time-on-site-up-175/ )

"5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity" and "85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day." (http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/ )

90% of Internet users between 18 and 72 use email daily. (Feb. 2009 Pew Internet and American life project)

87% of consumers' online time is spent reading their emails. (David Daniels, Vice President JupiterResearch, Dec. 2007).

60% admit to checking their personal email at work an average of three times a day. (AOL, 2007)

So the majority of Twitter activity is 5% of its users, that is 910,000 users, tweeting less than once a day. I don't think that constitutes a revolution in real-time dialogue. I don't think it even justifies more than a casual mention in social media strategy. Yet it is the basis of many marketers' social media conversation.

Twitter's usage numbers are not putting a dent in numbers like the usage statistics for email - 90% of Internet users spend 87% of their time online reading email! The interesting phenomenon is that billion-dollar corporations are jumping through hoops to respond to tweets -- yet they are still OK auto-responding to emails with, "we will get back to you in 48 hours," or not responding at all. Responding to email should be your first social media strategy.

What happens when customers respond to a commercial email?

I think email's most awesome capability is the reply button. This is what makes email a real-time communication tool that enables true 1 to 1 communication. Yet most companies are still conducting email as a "zero to many" communication.

In 2007 BrightWave conducted a study to see what happens when you reply to a commercial email message. Only six out of 41 replies were from actual customer service reps with helpful information (http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/16630.asp ). I decided to do a casual study on the messages in my inbox today, in 2009, to see if the results have improved in two years. Of the dozen messages I replied to with a simple question, three received a response, two were instant auto-responders followed up with a real email from a real person 24-48 hours later, one was an immediate reply from a human, and nine were just ignored, bounced or came back with "does not accept replies" auto-responders.

There is a lesson to be learned here. There is limitless opportunity for real interaction with your customers sitting right there in your email database. What strategy do you have in place to react to responses to your email campaigns? Is it the "noreply@bigcompany.com" reply-to address or the auto-responder stating "this address does not accept incoming messages?" Imagine seeing that reply coming back to every @bigcompany tweet!

If you have jumped on the bandwagon and developed a strategy to react to Twitter, you can take that strategy and apply it to email. You can route email campaign replies to a real inbox with a real person monitoring it and taking appropriate action. They can actually respond to the emails received. Granted, this won't be a public interaction, so no one but you and the customer will see it happening, but you can be sure that people will tweet about actually getting a human response to an email sent to your company.

10 comments about "Are Your Emails Zero To Many?".

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Tea Silvestre from Social Good Consulting, July 6, 2009 at 10:17 a.m.
Thank you for providing such clear and insightful evidence for returning to basics. This is something I "knew" intuitively, but now I have numbers to back me up.
Reply

Don Monell from Anchor Computer, July 6, 2009 at 10:32 a.m.

Great post!
I had read about the 'real' numbers on Twitter recently.
But they were not connected to the loss of focus on email and being diligent with a channel that is already working for us. Folks appreciate a real repsonse that can go into a lot more details than 140 characters will allow.

Kristen Gregory from Bronto Software, July 6, 2009 at 11:04 a.m.

Interesting read! Monitoring (and responding to!) email replies received is often at the bottom of a marketer's to-do list, if at all. I think your post reiterates the importance of building/maintaining a good marketing foundation versus concentrating on the hottest new way of interacting with customers. Email replies may not be as sexy as Twitter, but can have a major impact on customer relationships!

Philip Crawford from InboxFox, July 6, 2009 at 1:02 p.m.

Ian, I love this line

"I think email's most awesome capability is the reply button. "

Perfect.

The problem is most companies and marketers aren't really interested in dialogue. They are interested in telling.

Which is one of the reasons Twitter is full of so much noise. Free blasting causes the blasters to blast away. No dialogue there.

The good marketers will utilize the conversational capabilities of Twitter and FB in the same way they do email. The rest of the crowd will likely just view it as another place where they can abuse their customers by over-sending of low quality messages.

The no-reply email is a particularly horrible practice IMO.

http://emailmarketing101.blogspot.com/2008/09/dreaded-no-reply-email.html

Simms Jenkins from BrightWave Marketing, July 6, 2009 at 3:03 p.m.

Ian - i like this article and your thoughts. It is sad but not surprising that 2 years later companies have not picked up the element that email conversations matter, not just ones on Twitter and Facebook.

There are also CAN-SPAM issues that relate to the do not reply function and handling of unsubscribes which most companies seem to be unaware, or perhaps unconcerned of.

-Simms Jenkins
CEO, BrightWave Marketing

Kurt Johansen from Johansen International, July 6, 2009 at 7:43 p.m.

A great article and one which indicates why Email Marketing is still so important. Ensure you have a great message and build the relationship with your list. Then offer them a product and service. This is the POWER of email. Twitter is a useful tool but it is hard to build a relationship with your clients in 140 characters.

I find Twitter to be fabulous to let people know about a post on my blog site but I can't see it as the 'selling tool'.

Emails, when done correctly is THE selling tool.

Go and download my book "7 Killer Tips To Get Your Email Read' from http://www.kurtjohansen.com and discover how to send effective selling emails.

Cheers
Kurt - Australia's Email Marketing Guru

Vicki Monti from Kisseo.com, July 7, 2009 at 5:38 a.m.

I agree with your points and have always detested when companies use "do-not-reply" email addresses. Email is very powerful and companies should be using it more and better, not just jumping on to the next unproven trend o' the day. However, as a math nerd I have to point out that using the facts of "5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity" and "85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day" does not necessarily lead to the conclusion of "So the majority of Twitter activity is 5% of its users, that is 910,000 users, tweeting less than once a day." Those active 5% are most likely NOT the people that only tweet once per day; they are the heavy users that account for most of the communication that happens on Twitter, i.e. the 75% you mention. I still agree that there's not much "real" communication going on with Twitter - I think most people tweet a bunch of "noise" and the rest don't tweet much at all. There could be something there, but rather than focus on how "revolutionary" Twitter can be, companies should focus on how important email already is. Thanks for a great article!

Chad White from Email Marketing Rules, July 7, 2009 at 10:31 a.m.

I'm kind of getting concerned about people trying to dismiss Twitter. You can be an email zealot and still appreciate the power of Twitter. Let's not bash social media to make ourselves feel better about email. Both channels have their place.

Just because Twitter is driven by a small percentage of its users doesn't mean it's a broken channel. There are plenty of healthy businesses that derive the vast majority of their profits from a small percentage of their client base. The small percent of Twitter users that drive the conversation are mavens that you'd do well to try to connect with and influence.

Britta Meyer from Loomia, July 7, 2009 at 3:03 p.m.

Hi Ian, and thanks for sharing your perspective. Having been on the provider side of both email and social media services, i completely agree that email is still the most powerful 1:1 conversation tool, as well as a sales and conversion tool, provided marketers use it correctly.

i do believe, though, that social media has a right to co-exist, and may very well complement the "traditional" online marketing mix, simply because the social web is fundamentally changing how consumers behave and make purchase decisions. as a result, smart marketers will adjust over time and in an evolutionary manner, and embrace social media to remain relevant with their audiences going forward.

to Dotan's question, there are several approaches to integrating email and social media that usually attempt to 1) turn social media users into subscribers, 2) allow for the marketer to broadcast their messages via email and social media channels, or 3) have subscribers share email messages with their social networks which dramatically increases the marketer's reach. i recently explored (but have not used yet) a solution by Strongmail, but am sure other email providers are working on integrated solutions as well.

last but not least, don't confuse social media with Twitter. there are hundreds of channels out there that may one day reach your audience, even though they may never get the twitter buzz.

http://twitter.com/Britta_SF

Cynthia Edwards from Razorfish, July 14, 2009 at 1:46 p.m.

Reply to Dotan: I suggested some ways to integrate email and social in my June 15 Email Insider blog post, "140 Characters In Search Of Your Email Content":

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107905&passFuseAction=PublicationsSearch.showSearchReslts&art_searched=cynthia%20edwards&page_number=0

It isn't comprehensive but it's a start.