Orases

Posted in: Marketing, Measurement, Planning

Budget constraints will always form a barrier between what marketing professional’s want, and what they can do. Web strategies can often counteract these situations with cost-effective and efficient applications, and for that reason, most marketing professionals find good reason for recourse to e-mail marketing promotions. But there is no occasion more irksome than when marketing professionals fail to design for their consumer, and unfortunately, these patterns persist in copious amounts when it comes to the development and design of e-marketing messages.

In some circles, these incidences are known as “solar oven fallacies.” Solar ovens, which convert sunlight into heat and energy for cooking, were distributed throughout developing countries in the 1960’s. At the time, solar ovens were hailed as a panacea for all of the developing world’s social quandaries; recipients wouldn’t need to chop wood or carry wood, they’d be provided with free heat, and indirectly the status of women would rise, and major environmental detriments would be avoided. The idea seemed infallible, except for those that designed solar ovens had little conception of how residents would respond to this product. In this case, because solar ovens take a long time to cook food, don’t work during the rainy season or when it’s not light out, the ovens had little if any value. Evaluations of the solar oven distribution program noted that residents would often turn their dissemble the ovens and use the parts as wood for traditional cookers.  

We know that good ideas are rendered useless if it provides no utility for consumers, solar ovens also showed us that the way people interact with new technologies and innovations will determine its utility.

E-mail messages yield the same recidivistic failures for marketing professionals.  Evidence of this is lies beyond your junk folder. In 2006 and in 2010, Forrester Research evaluated 63 and 70, respectively, e-mail marketing programs based on four characteristics: subscription, value, presentation, and trust. In 2006, only one message was determined to be satisfactory - that is, this message engaged readers in a way that increased the likelihood of a click-to-pay transaction. Four years later, Forrester’s subsequent evaluation found that the number of satisfactory messages doubled. Yes, in 2010, Forrester found that two out of 70 e-mail marketing messages had designed for the consumer - and keep in mind that slightly more campaigns were evaluated.

Bad e-mail messages can compromise one’s e-profile with potential consumers, and as a result block off future opportunities for engagement. This can occur through poor execution and design, banal or repetitive content, or antiquated formats that fail to keep readers interested. To avoid these consequences, Forrester’s evaluation provides strategic insight that all marketing professionals need to consider prior to pushing the send button:

Presentation and Optimization: E-mail messages give us an opportunity to engage or re-engage consumers by showing them how we can contribute to their quality of life. Successful sites like Groupon, Gilt Group, etc., present direct, scanable copy and a simple layout, and importantly, the come is usable HTML versions without graphics or images immediately load. E-mail messages are meant to link consumers to a microsite, not suffice as the end point of our interaction. E-mail marketing messages should connect us to our consumers, not frustrate them with banal content or idle graphics. 

Importantly, goods sites are also adaptable for cell phones. When given the opportunity, I’ll usually view these types of messages while in transit; e-mails that don’t adapt to my smart phone are rarely viewed and never responded to.

SPAM Detection/ Deliverability: Make sure your message doesn’t resemble a Craigslist.com posting. You may think having FREE in the headline will entice readers, but unfortunately, this is more likely to yield being marked as SPAM than click-to-pay transactions.  SPAM detectors sort mail based on the probability that the words or sentences in your message are more likely to occur in SPAM than in a legitimate e-mail. If avoidable, don’t include privacy policies or beacons of unsound offers. By being more cognizant of the factors that influence how likely consumers are to see our e-mail, we can better safeguard our efforts to avoid wasting our time and resources. 

While this summation of Forrester’s most salient recommendations can help determine value of a potential campaign, in actuality, most of us began sending e-mail marketing messages long ago. If you look at your recipient database, question the proportion of active users. E-mail accounts are often changed or abandoned, user’s interest often change (perhaps because the above criteria wasn’t considered), and as a result, our assessments of marketing departments get muddy, and increase our risk of being reflexively deleted before opened. Use your inclinations and knowledge about your consumer base to determine who should count as active versus inactive  - account for natural ebb and flows, but not blatant disregard.

If your findings show that most of your recipients are inactive, it’s time to revisit the conceptual underpinnings or your message. Assess the design, format, content, and the odds that the message will foster interaction and/or interest. Create individualized messages for recipients based on whether or not they are active, are on the threshold between active and inactive and re-establish your brand identity with special offers or interesting information. For those that are clearly long gone - don’t be hesitant to take them off your send list so that your address isn’t marked as SPAM (if it’s not already). Overall, don’t design or send out information that you want your consumers to have, send out information that they want.