• by May 16, 2002

Email solutions agency Quris yesterday released Permission Email Marketing: The View from the Inbox, a 25-page report based on survey responses from 1,256 email users in the United States. The report is a comprehensive analysis of consumer attitudes regarding permission, personalization and privacy in email marketing programs.

The study reveals that marketers using permission email programs face significant challenges in preserving email as a viable customer communications channel. In particular, the increasing volume of unsolicited commercial email (spam) will make it much harder for marketers to differentiate, gain and maintain relationships of trust with customers.

However, the data also make clear that, if done right, permission email can be an effective channel for marketers to build valuable, long-term relationships with their customers. The data show that respondents who had the longest permission email relationships with companies buy more online, respond more frequently to email offers, and value permission relationships significantly more than the average user.

According to the report, permission email does impact brand perceptions. The majority of respondents (56%) say they feel that the quality of permission email relationships was important, positively or negatively, to their overall impressions about companies and their products.

Quris also says that permission email subscribers with the highest standard of privacy are among the best customers. The 30% of all respondents that demanded the highest level of privacy (according to four privacy questions) are more inclined to think that permission emails sometimes affect their purchase decisions, are more inclined to open permission messages, and are much more likely to value customizable email.

Also, email saturation is growing. 70% of respondents say they are receiving more email this year than last year; spam was cited as a cause by 74% of those who said their email volume grew. Permission email was cited by only 28% of respondents as a cause of email volume growth. Two-thirds of respondents feel they get "too much" email.

Quris found that respondents highly value predictability in messaging. In questions throughout the survey, users consistently gave high marks to features of permission programs that established routines and long- term relationship building. The most popular types of permission communications were those programmatic in nature, including "scheduled corporate newsletters," "account status alerts" and "transaction confirmations," whereas unpredictable types of marketing programs, such as "unscheduled company announcements" and other one-off campaigns, were distinctly unpopular with respondents. "Clear expectation setting" was also a highly valued attribute for sites aiming to establish trust.

"Keeping customers engaged and growing the relationship over the long term is the highest priority for marketers," states John Funk, CEO of Quris. "This study demonstrates that email can do that, when it's done right. The combination of consumers' high expectations and the growing problem of email glut is a big challenge to overcome."