Reclaiming the Inbox: How Email Marketers Can Alleviate Consumers’ Opt-in Woes
Getting People to Opt In
Thoughtfully planned and well executed email programs can drive significant traffic to websites or stores, boost sales, increase brand affinity, and ultimately result in long-term customer loyalty. Email is a high-touch channel capable of delivering a combination of graphics and copy more cost-effectively than any other medium.
But the battle over permission-based email names has never been more intense. As businesses seek to substantially increase the quantity of email addresses in their databases, they’d be better served first focusing on the quality of their email offerings. Once they’ve improved the overall value proposition of their email, then they should leverage every possible customer interaction to clearly communicate that value.
Why Don’t Consumers Opt-in to Email?
The vast majority of online users say they do enjoy some commercial e-mail messages. A poll conducted by Forrester indicates that 80 percent of consumers subscribe to commercial emails and, on average, consumers receive 24 permission-based commercial messages per week. But there are several factors contributing to the difficultly marketers face as they seek to substantially grow the size of their email house files:
Spam
Consumers have reached inbox overload. Respondents report that two-thirds of the messages they receive are unwanted. Legislation, certified sender programs, high profile PR and legal action, and technology tools like spam filters are not eliminating spam effectively enough for the average consumer. As a result, consumers are more hesitant to provide their address for fear it will be shared with unwanted third parties.
Unclear Value Proposition
Consumers simply have too many choices—and technology across all media is empowering them to pick and choose which commercial messages they want to receive. Unless companies are clear and compelling in their value proposition, consumers will simply ignore, block, bypass or disengage with your messages.
The average email user is now familiar with the multiple ploys to get them to opt in and they’ve become very discerning about which emails they choose to receive. Therefore, businesses must not only improve the quality of their email offerings but also improve the way they communicate that value to customers prior to opting-in.
Lastly, a study by Quris found that consumers have a natural threshold for the number of business relationships they can maintain via email. Regardless of industry, all companies must compete with each other for real estate in the Inbox. Since consumers feel their Inboxes are maxed out, companies must displace existing email relationships by convincing consumers their offerings provide greater value than email they are already getting from someone else.
Inconvenience
Many customers are interested in learning more about a company’s offerings, but find it difficult to obtain the desired information. Either requests for information go unanswered, or it’s not easy to know how to opt-in, or it’s not worth the price (price refers to monetary cost, investment of time or the requirement to provide personal information). Remove all obstacles impeding email subscription. Signing up for email offerings should be quick, intuitive, and available whenever the customer is motivated to provide it. Email collection should be available at every interaction the customer has with the company.
Compiling An Effective Email List
Because of those factors, there is not one solution to growing a quality email house file. Rather, marketers should engage in most, if not all, of the following recommendations in order to accomplish the optimal result.
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How do I get in touch with Chris Kneeland? He is clearly a genius among us
I think I’ve heard some of this before from someone wiser but balder
Shouldn’t you know how to get in touch with him, since you work at Rapp?
I’ve worked with Chris in the past and consider him a rising star in the direct and interactive marketing industry
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