Everyone seems to be very bullish about the future of email and have correctly identified that willing recipients i.e. those who have opted-in are likely to be highly responsive. Indeed the recent study by E marketer, found that 48% of those who receive permission-based e-mails are curious to read them while and 13% are eager to do so. While this appears to be extremely good news for the industry, I would like to sound a note of caution, we should not allow ourselves to become complacent.

Not too long ago click rates on banners were measured in whole % points! Indeed in November 1997, Excite, where I was Director of European sales had an average click rate across its European network of around 4%. Today even in Europe, average banner click rates are generally accepted as being well under half a percent. Perhaps click rates have fallen to current levels because we as an industry failed to live up to consumer expectations? They may have come to realise that unless the banner happens to be for a product they want badly, or is seen at a time when they have at least 15 minutes to spare (the average time it takes to complete a 1st time purchase on a website) there is no point clicking on the banner. Rather worryingly, I fear something similar may occur with e-mail, which is why Alchemy Worx our company is so keen to promote and support best practice everywhere.
How long can we expect recipients of our mailings to eagerly open them if all they consist of is highly uncritical and dare I say boring product/company “news” and pile ‘em high sell ‘em cheap “special offers” often bettered by your electrical discount retailer downtown?

Email is a 1 to 1 medium that has the potential, with the help of CRM tools and strategies to revolutionise marketing and yet most marketers tend to focus on tried and tested broadcast and direct marketing (dm) techniques. Even the most successful online marketers utilising state of the art CRM technology are really only cross selling products with emails of the “people who bought this product also bought that product” variety. Indeed personalisation to date has rarely meant more than knowing and using the customer’s sex, age and very occasionally transaction history.
Sadly one is reminded of the story of the Native American Chief who threw away a captured consignment of rifles because the butts tended to shatter when used as clubs.

As you have already identified, successful exploitation of opt-in databases requires marketers to plan and act long term. Current thinking is extremely short term and tends to treat each mailing as a one-off, which is why response rates of between 2% and 10% are deemed acceptable. This may well be the case for traditional dm where it is much harder for customers to opt-out, as there is no doorstep equivalent of the right to privacy online.
What is often overlooked is that an offer that achieves a 10% “success” rate actually failed 90% of the people it was sent to! Put another way, 9 out of 10 offers that come into a given users mailbox will not be relevant. How long will it take for them to reach for the unsubscribe link?
Any company that has a fully opted-in e-mail database is in a position to build and maintain regular high quality communications channels with their customers that is exclusive to them. Keeping this exclusive channel open requires mailings to contain valuable content and relevant offers.
How many of our fellow marketers are aware that backed by data protection legislation (particularly in Europe) the owner of that mailing list is prevented from ever approaching that customer electronically again? Such companies may become uncompetitive, as they will have to resort to more expensive and less targeted offline methods of reaching people who they once had cheap yet highly effective direct access to.

One has to wonder why there is so little emphasis on non-commercial content? Providing subscribers with relevant content helps to keep them opted-in and open rates high. After all would the New York Times have the same readership if all it contained were ads and corporate press releases? Would anyone read United’s in-flight magazine if it had no articles?

Perhaps more importantly content can provide the behavioural data streams essential to successful CRM. Recording and tracking the way users interact with carefully selected content should be an essential part of any successful CRM program. This approach makes it possible to learn from your customers all the time and not just when or if they make a purchase. It also makes it easier to segment the database without resorting to a questionnaire and improves the relevance to customers of all subsequent newsletters and offers through better targeting and personalisation.

Customers who opt in to our databases or subscribe to our newsletters are doing so in the hope that their interest will be rewarded with valuable information and relevant offers. We all have a responsibility to deliver this time round. If we fail how long will it be before the current limited approach to marketing online begins to turn off consumers? If that happens then I believe e-mail marketing could go the way of banner advertising, as opt-in and open rates plummet, and worst of all, consumers opt out for good.

Kind Regards
Dela Quist
CEO Alchemy Worx
+44 207 405 7868
dela@alchemyworx.com
http://www.alchemyworx.com
Alchemyworx is a UK company that contract publishes customer newsletters