Subscription transparency

I regularly tell clients to be transparent with their sends. With email, permission is better than forgiveness. A surprise change in mail frequency or type leads to complaints. Complaints lead to bulk foldering. Once mail is in the bulk folder, it’s hard to get out of there, particularly at some webmail providers.
The permission is better than forgiveness is hard for a lot of senders to understand. Much of marketing is about assuming the yes in the absence of a no. Sure, they’ll back off when there’s a no, in DMA terms it’s the “one bite at the apple rule.” Unfortunately for senders the one bite rule doesn’t work in the email space.
There are a couple reasons that permission is better than forgiveness in the email space. The biggest is that the ISPs own the mailbox and as the owners they make decisions about who gets access. They prioritize the wants and needs of their customers / users over the wants and needs of advertisers. It’s easy for users to give feedback; in many cases they just have to hit a button. But that’s another whole blog post.
Today I get an email from The Guardian. They’re modifying and expanding their newsletter program, so they sent subscribers an update about it.

 

Hello,

This is a quick email to let you know we are making some changes to how we communicate our events to you.

Up until now we have sent information regarding events for members in your weekly newsletter. We will continue to send you information on events we think may be of interest, but will also send more in-depth coverage of our full Guardian Live programme such as topical panel debates, special guest interviews and Guardian Masterclasses.

In future these emails will come from Guardian Live rather than Guardian Members. If you would prefer not to receive these emails please opt-out here. Though you will no longer hear about our full events programme you will continue to receive the weekly members newsletter if you opt-out of Guardian Live.

If you chose to receive these emails and change your mind later on, you can opt-out at any time using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email.

For further information please visit our FAQs page.

This is the kind of thing that I regularly recommend to clients. I’m so pleased to have an example from an international publication.
 

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Content marketing

beddingpic There are a lot of mailing lists I’m on simply because I can’t be bothered to unsubscribe. Every week or every few days mail shows up in my inbox. I may look at the subject line, I may even open the message. But most of it is not interesting. It’s yet another sale at Sur La Table. It’s another promo from Macheist. Virgin America wants me to book a flight. All of these messages are useful and all, particularly if I’m trying to book a flight or looking to replace the dish I broke last week. But many of these companies send content that’s so close to the same, it’s not worth a whole lot of my attention.
I don’t think I’m that unusual in this respect. People are used to getting offers and so they know they can sit back and wait until they’re ready to shop and they’re ready to buy.
This is why content marketing can be such a win. It’s different, it’s new. It’s worth my time to dig into the email and read it. We recently bought some sheets from a company and they added me to their mailing list. Every week now, I get an email with lovely pictures of relaxing bedrooms and articles on how best to sleep and wash my sheets and replace my pillow cases.
From a consumer perspective, it makes me want to have a showroom bedroom with lots of comfy linens. From a marketing perspective I appreciate the hard work and dedication that goes into generating both the lovely pictures and the useful content. But I wonder if the effort put into the content generation provides a decent return on investment.
 

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Spam is about invading other people's space

At the recent Sendgrid Emailmatter’s conference Sally Lehman advised attendees to “Treat someone’s inbox like it was their home.” This is advice I’ve been giving clients for a long time. I think it’s even more relevant now as so many people have data enabled phones and are checking email so frequently. It’s not just their home, it’s their personal space they can take with them.
Seanan McGuire, a friend and NY Times bestselling author, wrote a blog post today about how she views promotion and marketing as an artist and someone who is expected to promote her work. She also talks about what it feels like to be a target of promotion and offers some advice about how to promote your products online.  She talks about how she, as an author and creative type, is expected to do some level of self promotion and how that promotion is done in her space – whether that space be on twitter or her blog.

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The truth matters.

bullhornCall within the next 10 minutes…
Consumers with last names starting with O – Z can call tomorrow…
Only 5 seats left at this price!
 
All of these are common marketing techniques designed to prompt consumers to buy. It’s not a new idea, create a sense of urgency and people are more likely to buy.
I think some marketers are so used to making outrageous claims to support their marketing goals, that it doesn’t occur to them that the truth matters to some people.
There’s almost no better way to get me to send in a spam complaint than to send me an email with a claim about how I opted in.
Example:

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