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Kai MacMahon is an online media consultant specializing in the practical application of social media and Web analytics in modern business. Kai has worked with some of the biggest brands around, including EMI, Disney, The BBC, QUALCOMM, Taylor-Made adidas Golf and Comcast Interactive Media. His online career spans a decade: starting with AOL UK, he then made the transition to Head of Content for Netscape UK where he was in charge of all content, production and community for Netscape Online, the award winning ISP & Portal, and the UK Netcenter. Most recently he ran the Online Marketing & Analytics group for an award-winning west coast agency.

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Escaping Email Doldrums: Why the Old-Hat Marketing Technique Doesn’t Have to Equal Boring

Written on
Jan 30, 2007 
Author
Kai MacMahon  |
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Escaping Email Doldrums: Why the Old-Hat Marketing Technique Doesn’t Have to Equal Boring

Recently, I received an excellent piece of email marketing from the Oakland Raiders. Admittedly the only good thing the team has done all year, but a good thing nevertheless. It was a very simple email announcing the appointment of Lane Kiffin as their head coach. Nothing too extraordinary there, you might think, until you realize that they didn’t announce the appointment to the public until the day after the email went out. It signed off with: ‘Thank you for supporting the Raiders’, oh, and here’s a link to buy a season ticket for next year.

A really good piece of email marketing, providing me with exclusive content, reinforcing how special I am and also reminding me that 2007 season tickets were going on sale. The team might suck, but at least they’re on top of their email marketing efforts.

On the surface email marketing certainly doesn’t have the excitement or buzz of a good viral campaign. It’s not as cutting edge as mobile or as grass roots feeing as word of mouth. It’s not exactly sexy, but when done right email marketing can be exceptionally effective. Think about it: a direct connection to a group of people who have already expressed an interest in your brand or product by opting-in to receive communication from you… thinking rationally you’d be a fool to not pay them special attention. Normally you’re spending time and money trying to convert folks, not talking to folks who’ve already converted. All too often email gets relegated to the bottom of the class, when the reality is email marketing should be a top priority for almost all businesses. This is an opportunity to talk to your core audience: why be slapdash about it?

One of the most important factors consumers cite in deciding whether do business online (or at all, in fact), is trust. Do they trust your brand? Do they trust your site? Essentially do they believe what you’re telling them? Simply put, email is one of the most effective ways of helping to build that all important trust. Inform your users & keep your brand at the forefront without pushing it down their throats. Provide them with useful and interesting information when you’re not trying to sell to them and you’ll have an easier time of it when you are.

Giving users who have already expressed an interest in your relevant content or information is only going to benefit you in the long run. Much more effective than simply mailing them product or special offer information, still a depressingly common approach to email marketing. Some brands continue to flog the same dead horse week after week, without pausing to consider whether they could be targeting their base in a more effective way.

Respect the user by putting yourself in their shoes for a second: provide them something they can’t get elsewhere and you give them a reason to stick around. Bombard them with messages about how there’s a $5 discount on a certain product and you risk alienation. There are exceptions to the rule of course (if you’ve segmented your users and you know for certain that a particular product applies directly to a particular segment, for instance), but it’s a good rule of thumb to follow.

One of the main reasons that people so often overlook email marketing is the sheer number of emails in their own inbox. I’ve received hundreds of mails today, they think, therefore the channel is devalued. A better way to look at that is to turn it on its head and think about the effective mails you’ve received, and how clearly they stood out from the crowd.

Most people can recall one or two really interesting pieces of communication they’ve received over the last couple of weeks: your objective should be to produce one of those interesting pieces. Put the brakes on the acquisition train for just a second, and apply a little thought to how you communicate to those you’ve already converted. Email might never be all that sexy, but done right it really can be extraordinarily successful.





Reader Comments.

Kai MacMahon makes some excellent points here especially when he says, “Think about it: a direct connection to a group of people who have already expressed an interest in your brand or product by opting-in to receive communication from you… thinking rationally you’d be a fool to not pay them special attention.”

I would like to take this one step further by saying that email is one thing, podcasting is one thing times a thousand.

Sports fans are inundated by dozens, scores, (hundreds?) of emails a day about their passion. Of the fans who received the subject email, how many were deleted on the spot? Of those that were read, how many were read to the juicy and sweet end?

A podcast, especially a video podcast, from the Raider’s organization would have hit their target market, again, those “people who have already expressed an interest” like a bullet rather than like a vague breeze. Email is good but a video podcast? Now that would be great.

Surely, someone in the Raider organization should be looking at podcasting to target their market.

Dave Burckhard
National Podcasting System

Posted by Dave | 3:13 pm on January 30, 2007.

Hi Dave – I agree with you about podcasting, however the point I was making with this piece is that brand marketers need to be more imaginative with their email marketing efforts. Simply sending the same tired old special offers again and again gets old pretty quick, but is sadly all too common. Plus I love what the Raiders did: so simple, but brilliantly effective.

Posted by kai | 4:12 pm on January 30, 2007.

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