Marketing

By Bruce Murdy

One of the basic marketing rules I learned long ago was that we are not just marketers, we are consumers, too.

If your work encompasses mass-market communications, the acid test is often whether you would respond to the message you are about to send out. This has never been more true than with e-mail advertising.

E-mail advertising is a potentially powerful tool. But abused, it is a potentially powerful way to damage the value of your brand.

The reason marketers are so enamored with e-mail is cost. Traditional “snail mail” direct mail offers are expensive—the costs of developing, printing and mailing offers can be prohibitive. Traditional mass phone solicitation is also costly. Even with outbound call centers increasingly based overseas, the cost of phone time and personnel adds up. So, we turn to what seems to be so cost effective—e-mail.

Many of us welcome e-mail offers. Millions opt-in for e-mail messages. I have recently become fascinated by the interest in opt-in offers being downloaded to PDAs. (The last thing I want on my cell phone is an advertising offer, but millions are opting in for this service.)

But are we killing the goose that laid the golden egg?

While many states have adopted tough e-mail laws, for the most part, they are ineffectual. Spam e-mail is being sent at an alarmingly high rate. I asked the IT guru at our 38-person firm how well our spam blocker has been doing.

Amazingly, 87% of all inbound e-mail to our office server was classified as spam. We are averaging 1,400,000 spam e-mails per month blocked by our server. While we do a fair amount of work over the web, I’m sure our statistics are not all that unusual.

And the line between desired opt-in e-mail and spam has never been more blurred.

As marketers, our challenge is to ensure our message is welcomed and effectively delivered. E-mail is an essential tool in many marketers’ tool-box and can be effective and cost efficient when used in the right way. We have many clients for whom we develop responsible, ongoing e-mail communications. It is within this context that you can make the relationship between your product or service, and your customer or product, more seamless than ever before.

How can you more effectively use e-mail communication to build your business?

Start with the basic building blocks. Those include:

• Make sure the recipient has asked (“opted in”) for information from you.

• Make sure your message gets through spam blockers by avoiding any offer-related subject lines like “free,” “special offer,” “new,” etc.

• Use e-mail lists from legitimate sources only, including your customer list.

• Make sure there is a simple and easy way to “opt out,” if future e-mails are not desired by the recipient; don’t overuse your e-mail privileges with customers or prospects; etc.

• Use common sense, as you would in any marketing program, and make sure that your e-mail message is one part of a multi-media approach so you don’t miss those who “opt-out” of your e-mail campaign.

If you think about your e-mail as being a guest in someone’s house, you may e-mail more effectively. Obnoxious or overly boisterous guests are unwelcome. Guests who come too often or don’t tell the truth aren’t asked back.

However, guests who are well-mannered, entertaining, enlightening and stop by only occasionally are much more welcome.

It was a generation ago that the term spam was brought into the popular vernacular with a humorous Monty Python sketch—when spam (SPiced hAM) was the only entrée on a restaurant’s menu. It was the constantly repeated item that drove the Monty Python troops’ customers over the edge. Thus the term “SPAM” was used to describe unwanted and over-sent offers via the Web.

Our job as marketers is to make sure we don’t fall into the Monty Python trap. We must vary the menu we offer up within our e-mail, and make sure it is tasty enough to those who have “opted in” to eat at our restaurant. The result is what we all want—happy, satisfied customers who want to come back for more.

Bruce D. Murdy is president of Rawle-Murdy Associates Inc., a Charleston-based marketing, advertising and public relations firm. E-mail him at bmurdy@rawlemurdy.com.

SUBSCRIBE | REPRINTS | CONTACT US

Phone: 843-849-3100    Fax: 843-849-3122