I read a nineteen page report recently on the subject of “Consumer views of email marketing” (1).
To save you the bother I’ll summarise, as I don’t think its findings will come as a surprise to anyone:
- Consumers receive a lot of email. Most receiving several marketing emails a day.
- Relevance and timing is the key to getting read. The subject and the timing result in either interest or annoyance.
- Most users of email marketing don’t respect the receiver. Often making it difficult to unsubscribe, sending the same email repeatedly or sending emails too frequently.
‘Bacon’ is a fairly new term in online marketing jargon for describing badly written, badly targeted or simply irrelevant email from businesses who are abusing the permission we have given them to send us email.
Used correctly e-mail is still a very powerful, cost effective marketing tool to help Convert enquiries into Customers, for generating repeat business and for getting referral business.
(1) Whitepaper courtesy of Emailcenter UK.
My Top Tip has always been: Never send bacon, send the ‘full breakfast’; email that is targeted, relevant and interesting. And use a dedicated e-mail marketing service like Constant Contact to despatch it.