I was in a meeting the other day and someone said that email marketing doesn’t work. I responded quickly that I disagreed and that if his personal experience wasn’t good it was because he was not doing it correctly. I regretted being so cocky in my response, but consider some of the information I had read earlier:
87% of consumers prefer email to communicate with companies, according to Merkle’s next yet-to-be-released “View from the Inbox” consumer survey. 66% spend 20 minutes each week with permission email. 20% say they’ve used SWYN to share an email with their friends and family on social networks. People who are active on social networks check their email more often. 44% check their email on their smart phone.
My experience is that most people treat email marketing like a printed newsletter at best and an advertisement at worst. Customers and prospects don’t mind at first, actually the first time or two you’ll get a great response. Quickly though, they get sent to the junk folder.
Email has to be approached and executed differently than every other form of marketing. It has to provide value and, the core of this value should be relational– they are getting to know you and your business in a more personal way.
Read through your last couple of email campaigns. Ask yourself a tough question: Would you really read it if you were on the receiving end? Then ask yourself this: What would my target audience want to read that would create a more personal relationship?
And if you are still skeptical of email please read the following snail mail horror story. A friend in the printing industry shared that a client had mailed 80,000 pieces and didn’t get a single response! It was obvious that the mailing got lost in mail (of course the post office won’t admit it) – $24,000 in postage, not to mention the printing and creative. A scary reminder – just because you send it in the mail is not any guarantee that it will end up in the hands of the addressee.
I got another one today – It was a hard copy newsletter from a local nonprofit. Eight pages filled with clip art, stretched type, lots of boxes and a whole wagon full of words. Straight from the desktop revolution of the 1980s. “We don’t need a designer; we can do it ourselves. We just bought a shiny new computer for the office.”
It was painful to flip through, but not for the reasons you are expecting me to spill forth. It was painful because the message was wrong for the medium.
Announcements, event reminders, and general updates are better suited for email where one can scan through and click to read more. Am I suggesting that mailing is a waste of time? No, I am suggesting that all communication needs to be periodically examined to determine what resources to use, and where. Electronic communication costs are so low that you can increase frequency (the magic in marketing). Print resources can be combined to deliver more impact and inspiration and, since frequency is accomplished through electronic communication, you can mail to a smaller, more engaged audience.
What if the nonprofit stopped sending four newsletters and used the pooled resources to create one excellent piece that inspired me to get involved? Something that would make the nonprofit’s mission so real that I’d share it with others and tell them to visit their website. Then when my friends visit the website, they would likely sign up for the nonprofit’s email newsletter because a generous donor is making a donation for every email subscriber. The site would even offer to send them a copy of the excellent piece if they would make a small donation to cover the production costs and help the cause. You’ll notice that your prospecting list just got a whole lot bigger, your new donors list had a huge spike, and the nonprofit got a lot more buzz and attention.
Of course you could just keep sending me the paper newsletter, but I am not going to open it anymore. It is just too painful to see you waste your resources.
I often talk to clients about making their marketing more personal. Below is an excellent example of great email marketing. This is the email I received after subscribing to a newsletter:
“Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. I hope it works out well for you. Every newsletter contains instructions on how to unsubscribe, so if it becomes too much, feel free to cut back.
If you find something you like, feel free to forward to your friends and colleagues.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
Thanks!
Are you also subscribed to my blog? Get it sent to your feed reader of choice, or your inbox by clicking here.”
Notice the friendly and simple tone, the way it communicates that I am not being sold (I can cut back if it gets too much.) Marketing became cold and neutral in the mass marketing era when one incurred big costs to print and distribute a message. Marketing also needed to appeal to the largest possible audience and it needed to last until the 5,000 brochures were used up. A lot of people still make the mistake in thinking they have to sound neutral for it to be “marketing”. This is simply not the case.
With digital printing and electronic marketing, hard costs (printing and distribution) are dropping to zero. If you change your mind or want to correct a typo (my achilles heal… umm I mean heel) there are almost no hard costs. Don’t miss this opportunity; be real and sound real in all your marketing. “People do business with people they know, like, and trust.” Forget most of what you learned about marketing and let your personality shine through. Hey, if you know who I need to give credit to for that quote, let me know.
If someone offered your business a free billboard on a major highway would you say, “no thanks?”
I have been pondering the changing landscape of marketing a lot in the last few months. The bad news: popularity is a key metric of success. The more popular your business or organization is the more successful it will be (of course this really isn’t new.) The good news: the physical cost of becoming popular is going way down — like FREE. You can thank the Internet.
For years now I have been evangelizing the need for organizations to build a house list and start an e-mail marketing program. I have also been preaching the value of making your electronic marketing more personal. Social networking is putting relationship and list building into warp speed, and the cost doesn’t hurt the marketing budget at all.
So, what should you do about this phenomenon? I just finished listening to Chris Anderson’s book, Free: the Future of a Radical Price. I would recommend it to anyone who is responsible for marketing (hey, it is free, and you can download it from iTunes). It will help you get your mind around how the Internet is changing the game of marketing. Second, if you have been neglecting your e-mail marketing, I would get back on track. What can you do, provide, or offer that would entice people to join your list?
So what should you do about social networks? I would start exploring. Keep this in mind– social networking is not advertising, and it is not a passive activity. You don’t just have a Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook account; you need to use it. What kind of information would interest your target market? Start sharing it through a social networking site.
In a recent WSJ Small Business Report podcast, a company ran a promotion where they advertised with billboards and Twitter. They used a different promo code to measure the response. The Twitter promo code blew away the billboard and the cost of Twitter… FREE. Careful now, don’t jump to the conclusion that a Twitter account will be the answer to your marketing woes. There is more to the story, but the potential of social networking exists. The Internet is offering you a billboard for free or almost free. How are you using it?