News

One too many

Know the difference between a good e-mail marketing campaign and spam.

May 13, 2008

This article originally published in Retail Customer Experience magazine, May-June 2008. Click here to download a free PDF version.

You've probably subscribed to e-newsletters or an e-mail alert system. If you have, there's a pretty good chance you were subsequently bombarded with annoyingly repetitive, shameless plugs (a.k.a. "valuable information"). Likely, it wasn't long before that subscription was relegated to the Internet equivalent of the rubbish heap.

E-mail has emerged as one of the most cost-effective advertising media available. Ironically, experts say, that might be its undoing.

"As people have started getting really used to online content, it has become a lot more popular and I think there's a hazard there, because it is so easy and so quick," said Christine Pietryla, president and chief executive officer of Pietryla Enterprises Inc., a Chicago-based marketing and public relations firm.

"There are so many programs now that can [distribute e-mails] very effortlessly that there could be an overload. People can get really tired of seeing it."

Shel Horowitz, author of "Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World" and owner of FrugalMarketing.com, says consumers' tolerance threshold is much lower for online spam than it is for unsolicited junk mail delivered by the post office.

"One theory I have is that it's more fatiguing to read on screen than it is on paper," Horowitz said. "Another is that it's more personal."

Good content

It's not difficult for a legitimate marketer to distinguish his product from spam. Ryan Allis, co-founder of iContact, a Durham, N.C.-based e-mail communications and marketing firm, says successful e-mail marketers need one key element: good content.

"You need to make sure that, No. 1, you're only sending e-mails to people who want to receive them and, No. 2, that there is a very clear disclosure of both what the e-mails will be about, as well as how often they will be sent," Allis said.

Such is the case with K&L Wine Merchants, a wine retailer with stores throughout California. K&L maintains klwines.com, which provides users with an option to subscribe to several e-mail alerts, including the monthly newsletter, a weekly e-mail alerting the user to new wine shipments, news related to certain wine categories and e-mails alerting preferred customers to special offers.

A similar technique is used by Fire Mountain Gems and Beads, a jewelry store based in Grants Pass, Ore. The store's Web site, firemountaingems.com, allows users to subscribe to e-mail alerts including new product announcements, special savings offers and news about the jewelry/beading industry.

Both sites require users to give permission before they begin sending the alerts, and both sites are forthcoming about the types of content users will receive with each subscription — something Allis says is crucial.

He emphasizes that good content consists of more than just ads. It includes editorial content such as news articles, op-ed pieces, feature stories and profiles of industry leaders.

"Some people want to receive promotional content because they like to get discounts and coupons," Allis said. "Some people like to receive editorial content. For example, if there were a nutraceuticals retailer that had an arthritis product and had someone sign up for their arthritis newsletter, they might want to put in a $10-off coupon for their Glucosamine product and they might want to include an article on how to reduce joint pain."

Pietryla says e-mail distributors may want to engage outside help to craft some of the editorial content.

"One of the things that I've done is take that and make the newsletters in e-mail marketing more 'magazineish,' where we have contributors that are outside of the company," she said.

Frequency is another e-mail marketing sticking point. Experts have varied opinions on how much is too much. Some say once a week is optimum, some say every other week or even monthly. Still others believe that — if the content is relevant and informative — a once-a-day distribution schedule is not out of the question.

Horowitz says frequency of the e-mail distribution should be directly proportional to the quality of the content. The better the content, the more frequently it's tolerated.

"I just yesterday signed off of the list of a very prominent e-mail marketer because the commercial-to-content ratio was getting way out of hand," he said. "It was no longer worth it to me. He was probably sending me four or five e-mails every week."

Evading the dreaded filter

Spam and junk filters can be a mixed blessing. They block worthless — and potentially harmful — e-mails from your Inbox, but they can be the final resting place for legitimate e-mails, too.

iContact's Allis says an e-mail distributor can do a couple of things to ensure its e-mails make it into the Inbox.

"First off, you want to use an e-mail service provider that has white-list relationships with the Internet service providers," he said. "If someone sends out messages on their own IP address, or through their own mail servers that aren't white listed and that don't have that relationship, then 15 percent to 20 percent of the time, they will not get into the Inbox."

Allis adds that the distributor should use special software, such as SpamCheck, to analyze the message and identify attributes that might be a problem. Certain words automatically trigger spam filters.

"You avoid all caps," Horowitz said. "You avoid using more than one exclamation point at a time. You avoid certain keywords like 'mortgage.' You use a real name and a legitimate-looking sender address."

Paying the piper

Horowitz warns that serious penalties can await those who take a generic "carpet bomb" approach to their e-mail campaigns, particularly those who distribute unsolicited e-mails.

"There's a real difference between permission marketing and random marketing," he said. "If you gain someone's consent to send them stuff and you send them good stuff, they will want to hear from you, even if they don't necessarily open every issue. If you simply say, 'E-mail is free and I can just send to 2 million people,' then ... you will not get significant business from it [and] you will probably get your account shut down and have to start over."

Even more significantly, Horowitz says spammers face severe legal penalties, such as heavy fines or even jail time. The 2003 Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, otherwise referred to as the CAN-SPAM Act, makes provision for jail sentences for e-mailers who use deceptive tactics to send spam.