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.
Reader Comments.
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
Leave a Comment
Pages: 1 2 next page »
Article Sponsor
More Features
Latest News
- Readers weigh in on ATT, ad networks and the iPhone July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — In our weekly poll, readers overwhelmingly said that [...] more »
- Hiring, promotions, location, partnerships and product news July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — Internet Oldtimers Foundation, Jumptap, eXelate, Kampyle, The Digital [...] more »
- OPA large ad units unfurl across the web July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The Online Publishers Association said a group of [...] more »
- Email spam in June worst since 2007 July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — MessageLabs Intelligence released its numbers for June, and [...] more »
- Joost becomes YouTube roadkill, starts layoffs July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — Despite reworking its technology to work in a [...] more »
- Ad networks, not websites, choked on Michael Jackson news July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The news of the pop star’s death saw [...] more »
- StrongMail doubling down on social media, buys PopularMedia July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — StrongMail has announced that it acquired PopularMedia, a [...] more »
Features
- Automakers Need to Become Better Conversationalists July 2nd 2009
- Affiliates can win in the media buy game July 2nd 2009
- Crowd-Sourced Ads: A Measured Response June 28th 2009
- Is the government coming for you? June 28th 2009
- Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It June 25th 2009
Spotlight
Trust Me – I’m a Professional … SEOADOTAS — At WebMetro we typically provide SEO Action Plans as part of campaigns. As the name implies, an SEO [...] more...
-
Loading ...
Reader Favorites
Layoff Tracker
- AOL - 700
- Apple - 50
- Clear Channel - 2,800 total (1,000 currently)
- Google - 340
- IBM - more than 7,800
- Joost - about 90
- MySpace - in June, about 720
- World Avenue - 30 percent of workforce
- Yahoo - 2,220 total, about 700 currently
- Zango - closes, about 90, in addition to earlier layoffs
Classifieds
Recent Comments
- minnickup: Hello, I found your forum is www.adotas.com after I have been surfing the internet to be
- Josette Davids: Great article and an amazing time was had by all at this event. I'm an
- Mike Poserina: There is also a tragic flaw rumored in Bing's ad placement engine. When resolved,
- Andy: Erin, Never mind the commenters who can only see the negative side of things. I thank you
