Opt-In or Not, Half of Your Customers May Think You’re Spamming Them
August 6th, 2008 by Doug BrightThese days even the most technophobic consumers have inboxes full of marketing from companies they have interacted with. As responsible marketers, we have ensured that these customers have opted in to our communications and we know that we must promptly remove them from our house file when they no longer want to hear from us. However, according to Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008 (summary here), ensuring opt-in may no longer be enough to keep our company’s image clean.
In a survey of over 4000 consumers, half consider email to be spam if it arrives too frequently, even if it comes from a known sender. This has serious consequences for email marketers using “carpet-bombing” strategies to spur customers to purchase. Even if consumers have opted in and know a company well, they may come to think it as a spammer if they are receiving marketing emails every day or every week.
The sentiment that, regardless of permission, frequent email marketing is spam will only grow as inboxes become even more flooded. Marketers will be forced to migrate to a “surgical-strike” strategy where customers are targeted with highly personalized messages only at the most likely time to buy, and probably no more than once a month.
In an environment where consumer trust is hard to gain and can vanish with one misstep, nobody wants to be seen as a spammer. Unfortunately, the risk of marketing too frequently is now beginning to outweigh the benefit. If email marketers do not adapt through better targeting, they may find themselves relegated to the junk folder for good.
Tags: email, Email Timing, Personalized Marketing, spam
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