Email is different

OMI responded to my post about data cleansing yesterday. She asked an interesting question:

Why do so many in this industry feel that the email channel should be somehow held to a higher standard than other direct marketing channels?

There are a lot of reasons why the email channel is held to a higher standard. The big one is actually that the consumers have a big enough stick (in the form of ISPs and filters) to wield against senders that annoy them. This actually boils down to who owns the channel.

In many cases of advertising, marketers own the channel. Direct postal mail, banner ads, radio and TV ads, those channels are all developed the use of marketers. Marketers can use the channel as long as they pay the owner: the TV station, the billboard company, the radio station, the website.

In all those marketing channels there is some monetary cost to increasing frequency and some non-marketer-controlled limit on how frequent you can touch the target. There are only so many minutes available for marketing in a TV or radio hour and they cost real dollars. There’s only so much page space available for press. Billboards cost real money and you can’t just put a billboard up anywhere.

But email is very different. First off, the channel wasn’t built with the idea that it would be funded by marketing. Secondly, the recipient (or their proxies in the form of the ISPs) own the email channel. This changes not only the economics, but also the constraints.

Because it costs so little for marketers to send more mail, there are no real constraints on the amount they can send. On the recipient end, though, there are major constraints on the amount of attention they can give to mail. The more marketing mail they get from any source, the less ability they have to focus on any one offer.

Email is different because it is not solely a marketing channel.

Email is different because the recipient has more control.

Email is different because marketers don’t pay the full cost of transmission.

Email is different because recipients pay for part of the marketing.

Marketers are held to a higher standard because email marketing is subsidized by recipients and recipient ISPs.

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The conversation was a good one, with a lot of different perspectives aired. I strongly recommend people who are interested in hearing multiple industry experts talking about email marketing and delivery listen to the podcast.
Once I get back from MAAWG I plan to talk a little more about delivery managers as fire fighters and why that is such a good metaphor for delivery.

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In addition to posting some of my thoughts about how delivery and marketing have different and possible contradictory constraints, I asked folks on the Only Influencers list what they thought. They had some different perspectives, primarily being marketers. One person even welcomed me to the dark side.
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George points out many marketers really do act as if delivery is separate and detrimental to good marketing.

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Dear Email Address Occupant

There’s a great post over on CircleID from John Levine and his experience with a marketer sending mail to a spam trap.
Apparently, some time back in 2002 someone opted in an address that didn’t belong to them to a marketing database. It may have been a hard to read scribble that was misread when the data was scanned (or typed) into the database. It could be that the person didn’t actually know their email address. There are a lot of ways spamtraps can end up on lists that don’t involve malice on the part of the sender.
But I can’t help thinking that mailing an address for 10 years, where the person has never ever responded might be a sign that the address isn’t valid. Or that the recipient might not want what you’re selling or, is not actually a potential customer.
I wrote a few weeks back about the difference between delivery and marketing. That has sparked conversations, including one where I discovered there are a lot of marketers out there that loathe and despise delivery people. But it’s delivery people who understand that not every email address is a potential purchaser. Our job is to make sure that mail to non-existent “customers” doesn’t stop mail from actually getting to actual potential customers.
Email doesn’t have an equivalent of “occupant” or “resident.” Email marketers need to pay attention to their data quality and hygiene. In the snail mail world, that isn’t true. My parents still get marketing mail addressed to me, and I’ve not lived in that house for 20+ years. Sure, it’s possible an 18 year old interested in virginia slims might move into that house at some point, and maybe that 20 years of marketing will pay off. It only costs a few cents to keep that address on their list and the potential return is there.
In email, though, sending mail to addresses that don’t have a real recipient there has the potential to hurt delivery to all other recipients on your list. Is one or two bad addresses going to be the difference between blocked and inbox? No, but the more abandoned addresses and non-existent recipients on a list there are on a list, the more likely filters will decide the mail isn’t really important or wanted.
The cost of keeping that address, one that will never, ever convert on a list may mean losing access to the inbox of actual, real, converting customers.
 

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