Losing friends and influencing people

I download a lot of ESP white papers. Not because I’m looking for an ESP, but because I think it’s important to know what’s happening in the industry and what topics people think are important. I understand fully that white papers are a lead generation tool and I can expect followup from sales people at the places I download papers from. This is all well and good.
Generally the emails I get are polite, introduce the company to me, and ask if I have any questions or would like to talk. I tend to respond that I’m not looking for an ESP, and that I appreciate their contact. If I’ve blogged about said white paper, I will mention that and give a link to the post. I don’t want to waste a sales person’s time when said person can be working with potential customers.
Overall, these interactions have been pleasant and cordial. That makes the unpleasant few stand out even more.
There’s one memorable case where the first email from the sales rep had the subject line, “Meeting Time Tomorrow at 10am.” Wait. What? As I was checking email from bed before getting up, that subject line had me dashing out of bed to figure out what I had forgotten and work out how badly my schedule was messed up. Thankfully, my schedule wasn’t messed up, this was just an aggressive sales person optimistically claiming we had a meeting set. The email assured me that said sales person would continue to follow up with me until “we were able to connect.”
There is a place for aggressive selling techniques. This is the kind of sales drive that will work in certain situations. But I’m not sure it’s the appropriate opening when nothing is known about the target. In this case it certainly wasn’t a good opening. A number of companies ask me for ESP recommendations, and I tend to recommend those I know. I don’t think I’ll be recommending the above ESP to any customer. Their sales process was just that off putting.
Not quite the result Mr. Over Eager Sales Person expected.

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Inbox challenges and dull email in the tabbed inbox

Getting to the inbox is becoming a greater and greater challenge for many marketers. According to Return Path, 22% of opt in mail doesn’t make it to the inbox.
The challenge to marketers is that a lot of opt in mail isn’t important to the recipient. Sure, they’re happy enough to get it if they notice it, but if it’s not there then they don’t care. They’ll buy from an email ad, but it might not be something they’ll seek out. Recipient behaviour tells the ISPs that the mail isn’t all that important, and a lot of it is just background noise so the ISP not delivering it to the inbox doesn’t matter.
Email marketing is like the Girl Scout of the Internet. If the Girl Scout shows up at your doorstep, you’re probably going to buy those 3 boxes of thin mints. But if she doesn’t, that’s OK. If you really want the cookies, you’ll find the co-worker who is taking orders for his daughter. Or you’ll find the table outside the local coffee shop. The Girl Scout showing up on your doorstep makes it more convenient, but she’s not critical to get your fix. Of course, the bonus of the Girl Scout on the doorstep is that a lot of people who won’t go find the cookies will buy when she’s on the doorstep.
A lot of email marketing triggers purchases that recipients would make anyway. They think they might want a particular product, and when they get that coupon or discount or even just a reminder they make the purchase. The email triggers the purchase of a product the buyer intends to purchase anyway. Some email marketing trigger purchases of things the recipient didn’t know existed, but is so enticing after one email they can’t live without. Some email marketing triggers an impulse purchase. In most of these categories, if mail doesn’t show up in the inbox, the recipient really doesn’t miss it.
Many marketers, despite loud protests that all their mail is important and wanted, know this. That’s why so many marketers are having conniptions about the new Gmail tabbed inbox. They’re losing access to the impulse.
From the data I’ve seen, tabs are effecting email marketing programs. Some programs are seeing more revenue, some are seeing less. I think it really remains to be seen what the long term effects are. For many recipients the new tabbed inbox is a new way to interact with their email. Change is hard, and there is a period of adaptation whenever an interface changes. We really don’t know what the long term effect of tabs on sales will be. Sales may go back to previous levels, sales may increase over previous levels, sales may decrease from current levels or sales may stay at their current levels. The full effect isn’t going to be obvious for a while.
It does mean, though, that email marketers need to step up their game. Email marketing in the age of a tabbed inbox might be less about the impulse purchase and more about cultivation and long term branding.
 
 
 

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Just stop spamming!

Al posted a clip from the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar on SpamResource (slightly NSFW) that resonated with me this week.
If you meet me on the street and ask me what my job is I’ll tell you that I work with companies who send bulk email to make sure that they’re not sending spam. I do this by educating clients into good practices and teaching them how to send mail people want to receive. What this statement doesn’t tell people is that usually clients find me because they have been suspended by their ISP for spamming or blocked by some receiver.
Clients who find me because they can’t send mail usually hire me to solve their immediate problem. And I do give the the best advice I can to resolve their problem. But fixing today’s problem isn’t enough, you also need to fix the processes that caused the problem. To me, a critical part of my job is to set clients up for long term success by creating procedures that will get them delisted and keep them from being relisted in the future.
Sometimes, though, I have those moments Al is talking about. When clients don’t actually want to fix their problems, they just want to argue. They want to argue about the definition of spam. They want to argue about permission. They want to argue about how awful their ISPs are for suspending their account. They want to argue about CAN SPAM. They want to argue about free speech. They are angry and they want to fight.
My role is to listen to them, then guide them down a constructive path. I do turn out to be the sounding board for a lot of customers, sometimes they just need to know someone is listening to them. Once they get it all out we can move on into solving the problem.
But, boy, are there the occasional conversations where I just want to scream, “JUST STOP SPAMMING!”

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Insights on how to improve email marketing

I can’t do anything except say +1 to this list of ineffective habits of email marketers from Loren McDonald.

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