Email marketing is the golden goose

Everyone knows Aesop's fable about a farmer and his wife who had a goose that laid one golden egg a day. They kill the goose in hopes of recovering the gold mother lode from inside the goose. Of course, they could not discover gold, but in the process they would definitely end the daily stream of golden eggs.

If you're an email marketer, your subscriber list is like the goose that lays your own golden eggs, generating sales on a regular and somewhat predictable basis.

But today, many marketers seem to be trying to bear-hug the goose and squeeze out more eggs as quickly as possible. Like Aesop's Fables, things may not end well for marketers and their geese.

The reality of email today

Has your inbox been unusually full lately? It's mine. It seems like everyone is ramping up their email marketing in response to the pandemic crisis. Brick-and-mortar stores are driving e-commerce options. Restaurants are promoting delivery and pickup. Speakers and trainers like myself promote online courses and workshops. Companies that previously contacted me weekly or monthly now send me daily emails.

Digital agency officials say most of their clients have been sending far more emails since the pandemic disrupted traditional business.

This is a natural response to decreased revenue from direct contact. Personally, I think it makes perfect sense for companies to step up support efforts when their normal revenue streams are under pressure.But when everyone Doing so can be a nuisance.

5 hours a day?

in my recent book friction, I recognize that email is a major source of wasted effort in business. But even in your personal life, it's a wasted effort.

This is nothing new. Long before the current crisis, I wrote about how careless email senders were creating “marketing friction” and hurting brand loyalty.

And in a pre-pandemic study by Adobe, respondents said they were spending more than three hours per day on work email and two hours per day on personal email, much more than that. Total 5 hours!

New data over the past two months will almost certainly increase that number significantly.

There is one caveat. This data is self-reported and is not the result of independent measurement. Nevertheless, it's clear that people think they spend a lot of time on email. It takes too much time.

Here are the problems I see with the current mass of emails:

inappropriate frequency

Companies that used to email me once a month now email me every day. This gives me a sense of despair. Your inbox becomes even more cluttered, you spend more time deleting unwanted emails, and you end up unsubscribing and disconnecting completely.I do not want to do it I never have We hear from these companies, but deregistering them is the easiest way to turn off the hydrant.

Lack of personalization

Personalizing your marketing emails means making sure the subject line isIt doesn't mean adding >. You need to send offers that are relevant to the customer's past actions. Have you seen What Did the Customer Purchase? where are they?

Sadly, most of the marketing emails I receive are about things I have never purchased and probably never will. The more off-topic these emails are, the more likely they are to unsubscribe.

In contrast, Amazon sends me more emails than any other brand. But virtually all of them are related to my interests and actions. The few things that miss the mark aren't frequent enough for me to stop everything.

Offer not available

One of the worst sins in email is pestering the recipient with an offer that's not available to them. I love Panera Bread's food and am a member of their rewards program. When dine-in was no longer available, we increased the frequency of our emails and offered free delivery for a limited time.

After weeks of being bombarded with these offers, I decided to give it a try. Imagine my surprise when I found out that delivery was not possible.

It seems that the store that was located a few minutes from my home closed without notice. To be fair, if they knew my exact address, these offers might not have been sent. When I checked my benefits account, my “home” was a strange address in Pennsylvania. It was a state I hadn't lived in since graduating from undergrad in Pittsburgh. Puzzling, but maybe that's why I kept getting delivery promotions.

Pizza Hut has no such excuse. My correct home address is on file. Similar to Panera, he increased the frequency of emails to almost one email per day.

Imagine what I thought when I decided to order it and saw this.

The end result of all these emails was a frustrating customer experience and a loss of email subscribers who had opted in.

Unsubscribe friction

If you make something difficult, people are less likely to do it. Legally, companies must include an opt-out option in their emails. While the majority do this, many find it wise to make the “unsubscribe” almost invisible. I like the smaller light gray type. At least this mailer didn't hide links in the middle of text blocks.

And even if your customers see and click the “unsubscribe” link, they may be able to avoid opting out with a little more effort. You must carefully consider this complex opt-out landing page from Dell to successfully unsubscribe.

With a sign-in button, two action buttons, four tabs, and two checkboxes, this user interface is more complicated than it needs to be.

How to create a better email customer experience

If these examples reflect your own email practices, consider making some changes.

Don't treat email as “free”

Granted, it's very low cost to send a separate email to your opt-in list. In times like these, it seems like a low-cost way to drive sales. But every email you send imposes a cost on the recipient that must be dealt with in some way. Even if you delete them without opening them, the effort increases and becomes a nuisance over time.

Monitor email performance

When I was in the direct marketing business, it was noted that the cost of shipping catalogs to customers' mailboxes was high. If the customer hasn't placed an order, try to reactivate the customer by saying, “This is the last catalog!” message. If that fails, they are taken off the list. It was too expensive to send mail to unresponsive customers.

The low cost of email imposes no such discipline. But while it's cheap to keep emailing uninterested customers, there are hidden dangers. Email providers can see open and click rates. If too many recipients don't open your email, your deliverability and reputation as a mailer will suffer.

So use tools in your email process to identify customers you're not interacting with. Don't keep sending emails blindly. Instead, try one of the following approaches:

1. Try to reactivate these customers by sending them a special message.
2. Send emails less frequently.
3. Please remove them from the list.

Reducing the number of emails that don't get any interaction will help your customers and increase email delivery.

Personalize your offers the right way

You need to personalize your emails, but this doesn't mean using your customer's name in the email subject line. (For me, when I see the letters “Roger” in the subject line, I know this is an automated commercial pitch. I know real humans would never do that.) Rather, it's about the customer. You should use what you know to segment or even personalize your emails.

One restaurant chain I visit from time to time has dozens of entrees on the menu. But the emails they send me often feature images of the specific entrees I order most often. It's subtle but effective. Use CRM data.

Amazon does a great job of making smart suggestions. They know I read books about business and marketing, so my emails include:

More than anything, Do not promote offers that are not available To that customer. Imagine their anger when they try to take advantage of your special deal and are denied. They'll get frustrated in the moment, and more importantly, they'll realize that you don't really know them as individuals.

Allow customers to control email frequency

Don't make opt-in or opt-out the only two options. Some mailers make it easy to choose how often you want to send emails. Medium's controls are commendable for their clarity and simplicity.

This is in contrast to Dell's more obscure options.

Unsubscribe easily

Why would marketers hide the “unsubscribe” button? My first guess is that one of the KPIs is number of subscribers. Keeping disengaged customers on your list is better than having the total number go down. A sudden drop in list size can raise questions about the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and your personal performance.

Don't hide unsubscribe links or direct users to confusing “Settings” pages. Instead, make it easy to unsubscribe from your list. If your customers want to stop receiving emails, don't go through any hoops to accomplish that.

Here's what data-driven marketing expert Chris Penn includes in every newsletter:

It's probably going to make some marketers' heads explode…especially those who think it's “best practice” to hide unsubscribe links in tiny light gray text. But Penn is a savvy marketer. He knows that keeping uninterested subscribers on his newsletter list creates friction with them and reduces open and click rates. He maximizes reach by keeping the list up-to-date and interactive.

Use clear opt-in

In an effort to reduce my large inbox, I unsubscribed from dozens of lists last week. Many of them I had no recollection of subscribing to. Did I just forget? Did I miss that little opt-in box I pre-checked when ordering? Or does the brand just want me to start contacting them every day because I bought one of their products?

A sneaky opt-in is a lot like a hidden opt-out link. Your list will eventually grow, but it will include many people who didn't want to hear from you or who don't respond to your emails.

Email is not free

Email may seem like the perfect marketing medium. It's inexpensive and will reach people who want to hear from you. But if you bombard your customers with messages they don't want, you risk losing their loyalty and even your ability to stay in touch.

Instead, use all the data and tools you have to make each email feel relevant to your subscribers. Also, if someone on your list shows your email is irrelevant by not interacting with them, provide an easy exit. Your list will get smaller and you'll send fewer emails, but in the end you'll build loyalty and drive more sales.