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Current Trends In Email Marketing - Page 3 of 6
A Hunter and Associates Review -
November 2002
1-SUMMARY
| 2-SPAM | 3-COMMERCE
| 4-PERMISSION EMAIL
5-WHAT PEOPLE THINK | 6-HOW
TO DO IT
COMMERCE
Unsolicited email - and its volume - is now the greatest
problem for consumers and marketers. DoubleClick says consumers average 254 emails
per week, compared with 159 last year. Almost two-thirds of Internet users say
they now get "too much" email - in large part, due to spam. A sizable
portion of email users now delete permission email without reading it. This concerns
legitimate marketers. The increasing volume of email consumers receive is the
biggest impediment to its effectiveness as a marketing vehicle.
Why? Because people want to buy certain things and they
want to use the Internet and email as enabling tools to get what they want. People
are impatient with everything that gets in their way. Those individuals most against
spam are those who as consumers of goods, services, and information most want
email to work.
GartnerG2 finds that, since the Web, less letters are mailed,
fewer long distance phone calls are made, some Internet users are watching less
television, and reading less newspapers. Advertisers are now seriously studying
how their current customers use the Internet and email.
People want email sent to them
The conventional wisdom has been that consumers would be
willing to accept email marketing if delivered according to their privacy preferences.
The marketing profession on the Internet has now shown that if individuals can
control the number of emails they are getting, there are many that they will voluntarily
elect to receive.
NFO WorldGroup says almost one third of all email addresses
in the US are changing annually. Consumers on average now own 3 email addresses
each. Half of all people changing email lose contacts, but personal contacts are
generally salvaged, and the majority of loss comprises websites and newsletters.
Collateral damage as consumers fight back
What concerns legitimate marketers most is that as consumers
themselves fight unwelcome email using throwaway email addresses to cleanse their
entanglements periodically, legitimate email marketing is at risk of getting purged.
And the more aggressive spam gets, the more ruthlessly will software and systems
have to filter dubious email, again taking some of the good with the bad.
The concept of permission email is based on the lodestone
of acquiring a customer and keeping that customer for life, increasing the value
of the relationship evermore over time. Marketers worry about the cost to re-acquire
customers alienated by spam.
Legitimate senders of organized email will have to write
well, and stay awake. DoubleClick's survey of permission email lists shows that
so-called "list hygiene" is declining lately, with opt-in emails bouncing
back [i.e. not a valid address] at the rate of 12.6% compared with 7.7% last year.
List owners are not keeping pace with their (former) users.
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