A few days ago, a leading software company sent me one of their regular
marketing emails. This missive is full of information about them: news
about their latest triumphs, a message from the company, new product
features, support information and so on, interspersed with a few
special discounts and items for sale. After a quick glance to look for
deals that interested me, I deleted the email and moved on. As I
surveyed my overflowing email Inbox, I briefly wondered whether to
unsubscribe from their mailing list; perhaps next time.
This
got me thinking. Like most other Americans, I now suffer from
"E-newsletter fatigue". Email marketing has come a long way since
Marketing guru Seth Godin first popularized it circa 1999 in a landmark
book, Permission Marketing , and is far from dead,
even in the face of competing new technologies like blogs and RSS
feeds. Today, the MarCom department of practically every
reasonable-sized business spends a significant amount of effort
churning out these electronic messages, most of which are virtually
indistinguishable from those of their competitors.
Perhaps the time has come to take Email Marketing to the next level!
Engaging the Reader
Ideally, a multi-email campaign is like a good blog; each communication
must engage the reader. There is no reason the reader has to read your
email, any more than there's a reason that the reader must read a blog
post; you must attract readers with interesting and valuable content.
A good example of engaging users, albeit in the offline world, is the Trader Joe's
newsletter that shows up regularly in mailboxes around the country. Although hardly cutting-edge technology, the printed version is quite
entertaining - it's full of fun facts, bits of history, useful recipes
and nutrition information, and of course, references to Trader Joe's
offerings. The online version is authored in the same vein: the example
below highlights a single product in a fun and interesting way, and
provides some additional tidbits that change the whole tone far away
from "hard sell".
...
Another example is the Hitwise Intelligence blog, which comments on interesting meta-trends observed in Hitwise data - such as whether the McCain web site appeals to Independents, or if Heely's are making a comeback. The media, industry observers and customers watch these reports closely and then
immediately start discussing them, in public forums, conferences, blogs and around the water cooler.
Of
course, trend data is Hitwise's business. But anyone can do the same
thing. You can highlight information and trends of customer interest,
from data that you already have. What are the latest trends in Spring
fashion? Is the rising price of gas going
to affect the cost of groceries? If you're a grocery chain, how do you
plan to react and help keep prices down?
Or
you can provide useful information that, even if it doesn't directly
sell your product, helps your customers and users. But it has to be
specialized information, that only you can provide;
for example, informing readers that daylight-savings time starts this
weekend is useful, but not particularly compelling.
If your Marketing emails are full of the cool new features you've
recently implemented in your product or awards won by your company,
then that's only mildly interesting to readers. For most products, only a small fraction
of customers care about all the bells and whistles anyway. Let's take Microsoft Office - assuming that you use it, do
you know all its features? Do you even care? What about the "advanced"
features of your TV?
Most progressive companies have recognized the significance of blog marketing,
which sets a new, higher standard for engaging customers in a two-way
conversation. This new standard applies equally well to Email Marketing
- only the transport mechanism is different. Similar to a blog, most
readers will tolerate some level of
self-promotion (yes, "special discounts" count as self-promotion) and
even some off-topic content; but overall, the signal-to-noise ratio
must be very high from the perspective of the
reader, not the email sender.
The reality is that most readers are perusing the email thinking - How
does this help me? What can I get out of this?
Compelling Content
So
imagine the mother of three, logging in for ten minutes early in the
morning, before the kids wake up; the hotshot lawyer checking her
emails between appointments; the harried Executive at his son's
baseball game; the teenager checking his mobile phone on-the-go; or
whatever your target demographic is. In the 5 seconds that it takes the
reader to scan your email: is your content compelling
enough to make them want to remember it, to go back and learn more when
they do have time, when they get back to the office or at home?
To take it one step further, is it an email that they're eagerly waiting for? Why not?
