Bizstartup.ie - NewsPermission and email marketing

She sums up the importance of permission in the context of email marketing as follows: “It’s not the end, it’s the beginning. Having someone’s permission to send them emails doesn’t mean you can open the floodgates and let it rip. It’s a fragile channel and individual e-mails will be judged each time they’re sent.”

This is particularly true when you consider how people’s impression of spam has changed. “If you talked about spam five years ago it would have meant illicit or unsavoury material. Nowadays consumers call something spam that they have signed up for and no longer want because it’s not what they thought it would be, for example. The new definition of spam is an email that someone doesn’t want to receive for a variety of reasons. You need to understand that this could happen to you with your legitimate and good quality product or service,” notes Cox.

The problem with just doing a ‘send’ and not worrying about permission is that a lot happens behind the scenes that you might not be aware of.

Risk of being blacklisted

As Cox points out, emails can get blocked and reported as junk; then get blacklisted with internet service providers and stop being delivered. “You don’t know if this happens; it’s silent. Email marketing is easy and can work very well, but equally it can mean someone deciding to never deal with a particular brand again. If you send a blanket email you might see a very small percentage of conversion from it, but I still contend that if bad results continue, it isn’t worth that tiny rate.”

Once you have someone’s permission to send them email updates, Cox advises taking great care in how the communication is set up – it must be relevant and respect that person, their time and intelligence, as well as the existing relationship you have with them.

“I know of one instance where a person who received email regularly from a travel website got one eventually saying ‘Congratulations, you have qualified for receiving extra bonus points for your activity on the website’, which would go towards future purchases. Then another one was sent saying, ‘We apologise, you shouldn’t have received that email’.”

Frequency of emails is also very important and one of the top reasons why people unsubscribe or describe emails as spam, Cox says.

Understanding your product lifecycle

“I would say email marketing can work for anyone but you have to understand the lifecycle of products and services: how long is your sales warming process? How long is the process before renewal? Where is the opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell [this is more applicable to the business-to-business than business-to-consumer market]?

“You need to craft your email marketing around that cycle, so a short sales cycle will warrant more frequency. Business owners often make the mistake of thinking that because email is immediate it will act differently in the sales cycle. It can help to nurture the relationship and bring it to fruition but it’s not going to make the sale happen any faster.”

The flip side of permission is what Cox calls ‘un-permission’, in other words, every single time you send an email you must give the receiver the ability to unsubscribe. “The ultimate best practice and what you should be striving for is recipients having the option to select what they’d like to get from you.”

Every single email address you have is gold dust, Cox continues. “The more time and energy you spend learning about the addresses you have from the database and from mailings, the better you will get at communicating, cross-selling and up-selling in the long term. That’s where I see the return on investment – not in the size of your database but the quality of the addresses. If you know who’s clicked on what in a mailing, for example, you can use this in a follow-up phone call. This type of information informs you on how to better start or continue that relationship.”

Photo: Denise Cox, email marketing expert and newsletter specialist with Newsweaver .

This is an edited version of an article which appeared in Owner Manager magazine.