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STILL SEARCHING FOR THE INBOX
By Don Peppers and Martha Roger, Ph.D.
For years marketers have treated email as a cheap mass marketing tool, rather than as a weapon to be wielded judiciously. And even as consumers have demanded more relevant communications, many companies are still addicted to their bad email habits, says
Forrester Research.
In the report Break Free From Bad Email, Forrester analyst Julie Katz proposes that organizations adopt what she dubs "intentional email," an approach through which companies can grow long-term returns from email subscribers.
"Most of the companies we looked at are still at a pretty basic level," she says, pointing to their failure to use segmentation and integrate email data with information in other databases. "They don't pay any attention to the cost of bad email, to the cost of sending out way too many messages."
All that annoyance, Katz adds, has an appreciable impact on the bottom line. Reasons she cites for companies increasing their email frequency range from "just because they can" to "because their competitors are doing it." Worse, the calls to action within those messages tend to get lost down at the bottom or amid the images and text.
Chris Baggott, cofounder of email specialists Exact Target and current CEO and cofounder of Compendium Blogware, can relate. Despite his platinum flier status with
American Airlines, Baggott receives an email every Wednesday featuring "a laundry list of flights that originate from nowhere near me."
Not surprisingly, Baggott agrees wholeheartedly with Forrester's dire assessment of the state of email marketing communications. "[Companies] have used email like cheap paper. They haven't tried to have a one-to-one conversation. They haven't tried to treat customers like actual human beings."
Along those lines, he wishes that American Airlines would avail itself of the reams of data it has about him. "They can so easily rig things so that fliers automatically get an email whenever a flight was late, with an apology and maybe a coupon for a free drink on the next flight," Baggott says. "Give me stuff like that. Don't give me credit card offers."
Steps to relevanceForrester's Katz believes that marketers are starting to come around, addressing the problems that have plagued their barrage-style email campaigns over the past decade. She believes companies that are serious about getting on board with "intentional email" need to take four steps.
First, they must make a conscious effort to shift their email mind-set, from one that emphasizes quick-hit returns to one that strives to forge longer-term bonds. "Rather than asking, 'If I send this out today, how much revenue will I make tomorrow?' they should be thinking, 'How much more revenue can I make down the road if I manage this smartly now?'" Katz says.
After that, marketers must start to think about metrics. Open rates and click-through rates, while instructive for short-term assessments, don't say much about a strengthening bond. Katz suggests that companies might attempt to attach a monetary value to every customer (and how this sum decreases as a result of too-often emails), if only for facilitating internal conversations with dollar-minded higher-ups who might be inclined to blast away.
The third step is to integrate email with data from other channels, a task that tends to present a technological challenge. Katz points to a previous Forrester study noting that only one third of marketers are integrating their email database with other information. "This is how you show customers that you know who they are and are trying to address their needs," she notes.
Finally, companies should map out a long-term strategy for reaching certain customer segments, so that they can get a clearer picture as to how they'll respond over time to email pitches. "Think about whether you're overtargeting or whether there's overlap with messages from other parts of the company at the same time," Katz advises.
While she believes that the growing importance of individual relationships is affecting email, Katz also notes that most organizations don't have the resources to be truly one to one in their email pitches. Still, she says, careful timing and message-tweaking can make email feel extremely personalized.
Compendium Blogware's Baggott points to
Miracle-Gro as one of the few brands that gets it right. "They use a Weather Channel feed that triggers emails based on when it's spring in your town. If the temperature hits 50 degrees five out of seven days, hey, it's spring -- and then the email automatically goes out," he says. "Then they'll ask you how big your yard is. If you have a big yard, the emails will be for bushel-sized bags of the product. If you have a small one or live in the city, you'll get a cereal-box-sized bag. It's amazing that more people aren't doing stuff like this."
