Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Email marketing has yet to achieve anything
British consumers would rather receive traditional direct mail than an email marketing campaign. That's the conclusion of new research conducted for the Institute of Direct Marketing. Less than one in five people surveyed wanted to receive marketing material via email - they preferred to get it in the post.
So why is this? Well, take a look at traditional, postal-based direct mail. Usually it is easily identifiable as such; it does not appear the same as a "normal" letter. Direct mail is often bright, colourful and in an unusual size. It catches our attention.
Because it stands out, it makes it easy for us to deal with traditional direct mail quickly. We can chuck it in the bin without much effort. Unless, of course, something really does make us stop for a second. Direct marketers know that much of their material is thrown away, but they use sophisticated targeting techniques and creative design to get past our human "junk mail filters".
With email marketing there's a problem. There's no easy way for us to identify the marketing from the ordinary messages. Everything that comes into our inbox looks the same. That means it takes us longer to sort it out - hence we don't like it. Also, there are few really creative email campaigns. Email marketers appear to spend much less time and effort on creativity than their colleagues who work on printed direct mail.
So what does this mean for businesses engaged in email marketing? It suggests that you cannot rely on it alone. Mix it with direct mail and you might achieve more. But being more creative is certainly necessary - particularly with subject lines. You need to get your message across in five words or less. And that takes effort and time - something which few email marketing campaigns appear rich in.
Labels: internet marketing
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Graham
I couldn't agree more about the dearth of quality subject lines. E-mail marketing is essentially very similar to Direct Mail, in that writing both of them is a very 'sequential' process.
Poor Direct Mail practitioners still read the whole of their mailing as one single piece, and if it reads OK to them, in its entirety, they run with it, but they miss a very important point. People hardly ever read it in its entirety, they will read it (and judge it) in stages, and only read on if they think it's worth their while to.
On the other hand, a good Direct Mail practitioner knows that the message on the envelope has one purpose - to get it opened. Then the headline has one purpose - to get you to read the next paragraph, and so on to the end, maybe even a 'PS' at the end. Good writers can link one paragraph to the next and keep more readers interested than a poor writer can.
For me, a key reason that e-mail marketing hasn't fulfilled its potential is that people have missed this important point. That, and poor/lack of personalisation seem to be the most common offences. I know that Direct Mail and e-mail are different beasts, but it's as if people have thrown away all that we've learnt from Direct Mail over the years, when a lot of it is still relevant. Granted, some of the universal truths about Direct Mail don't apply - it's a different medium - but good personalisation and good writing technique do.
This all sounds so obvious doesn't it? But I'm guessing that you've posted this blog entry because like me, you've seen loads of bad examples! People just need to ask themselves what the first thing is that most people do with an e-mail (probably view the subject line and sender), then the next thing (probably view it in a preview pane, so why not have a compelling relevant message high up the page?) and so on. They should write in such a way as to tackle each of these barriers in turn. Not easy, but very important.
I'm pleased to say that your daily updates are safe from my "human junk mail filter"!