Commentary

Who Is In Control?

Recently on the road, I've been struck by how many email marketers lament their challenges, as if they have no say in how their programs turn out.

Certainly declining response rates, rising revenue goals and lack of resources and respect are real issues, and lots of marketers share the same pain. Yet, why do we feel our programs (and our success) are so out of our control?

There seem to be three forces converging to make us feel this way:

1. Subscribers are fickle and unpredictable. They change their minds immediately after subscribing, they complain when they mean to unsubscribe, they even complain when we just send messages during their busiest days, and they often ignore our best sales messages.

2. At the same time, ISPs and Receivers lump our carefully produced marketing messages in with all bulk mailers and apply the same level of mistrust and cynicism to our mail streams as they do the non-permissioned mail streams of mortgage ads and get-rich-quick schemes.

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3. Still further, others in the interactive marketing team and executive management are just as likely to view the email channel as "free" and dismiss requests for resources for data integration or analytics.

While it certainly feels as if we're helpless against these forces, I still believe that email marketers have under our control the keys to earning higher response and revenue from the channel. We absolutely control permission, utility of data, frequency and cadence, content and list management. Consider even these baby steps.

Instead of only batch and blast, insert two to three more relevant messages into your promotions stream. Include a few tips to help readers make their living room more comfortable, get a jump on spring cleaning, or be more productive at work. When readers find value in your messages, they are more likely to open the next message, and so on..

If you don't have triggered message technology (although every MTA/ESP worth their salt can provide this), batch up everyone who is new in the past week, purchased in the past month or hasn't opened or clicked in the past three months. Sending a relevant follow-up message after these behaviors has boosted campaign response by up to 600% for many marketers. Of course, it's on a small base, so the trick is to cover as much of your file as possible.

Use the data you have. One of our retailer clients recently started using ZIP codes to do geographic targeting. The data wasn't perfect, so only about 65% of the file was matched -- but the improvement in response was 12% overall. Think about the one to two pieces of data that you can really use. Would knowing birthdays let you celebrate with your readers and forge a deeper bond? Would job title help you provide richer content? Would favorite vacation destination tell you quite a bit about lifestyle?

The general mantra is that if we use these ideas to create more relevance for subscribers, then they will reward us with higher response and attention. Actually, that does happen pretty consistently! Further, as soon as you can start to show some results from these small tests, you will be in a much better position to make the case for more resources so you can continue to improve the subscriber experience. That puts us marketers firmly back in control.

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