January 2004

Email marketing: have we killed the golden goose?

Market Leader arrived in the post last week and within it an article entitled The advertising invasion: drawing the line in a new media age. Its author, veteran ad professional Paul Feldwick, worries that marketers are going too far.

Rather than developing good judgement and the ability to self-regulate, he argues, instead we are locked into a culture of increasingly 'loutish' behaviour where breaking the rules is not only good, it's a prerequisite of the job. Feldwick blames this situation on the general attitude that 'someone else' is responsible for advertising standards, while the marketer’s job is to push the boundaries.

Anything goes - especially online

The most obvious example is electronic communications, and the recent so-called anti-spam legislation (although let's not forget it covers more than just email) is an attempt to stop that particular madness. If there's one thing that the new laws should be nudging us towards, it's the realisation that email is made for customer retention, not customer acquisition. We've all been told that acquisition starts with getting the prospect's attention: but that’s where email now stumbles.

Plenty of legitimate marketers (as well as the spam merchants) are determined to prove otherwise of course. Many can come up with case studies to illustrate how this viral campaign produced x number of registrations, or how that emailout generated £x thousands of sales. But the truth is, email isn't the easy quick fix it used to be.

The golden goose may not be dead yet, but it's not feeling too good.

Pay attention everyone - OI, THAT MEANS YOU TOO

Most of us can probably remember at least one teacher at school who thought he/she needed to shout louder than the class in order to get the kids' attention. Did it work? Did we notice? Did they get our respect? Too much online advertising seems to have been conceived along the same lines: shout louder, shout more frequently, shout about things we think (or hope) someone will be interested in.

Interrupt, intrude, distract, shock, annoy - it’s all in the interest of cutting through the clutter and grabbing people’s attention. Which as we all know is sound marketing practice. Or is it? Feldwick suggests this: we need to think again about what advertising is about. Grabbing attention, or beginning relationships?

The spammers learned their strategy from us

OK, so you and I are the good guys - we're not the ones spamming millions every day, happy if garbled subject lines like Re: GNO, encore!" the guest crabld will get their sales messages through the filters and entice 0.2% of people to part with their money.

But is the thinking behind this strategy really so different from the mainstream? Spam gangs are only following the same advertising formulae that have worked for others, such as exposure to conversion ratios. It's this same 'thinking' that drives the desperate search results hijacking, now insinuated into the online marketing plans of too many companies.

As Feldwick says, 'the 50-year hegemony of network television has lulled us into a cosy sense that all advertising is somehow under someone else's control, and we are therefore free to push at the boundaries as much as we like.' Which is probably one reason why we've read so much negative comment about the EC Directive.

Email legislation: unfair, unenforceable, unworkable?

Just about all the champions of small business, from the chambers of commerce to start-up support organisations, have expressed doubt about the electronic communications legislation.

And the problem is ... ? That it won't have any effect on the offshore spam issue? That it's difficult to interpret? That the £5,000 fine isn't high enough? No, they are moaning that companies will lose out on new business. Small firms won't be able to use email for customer acquisition and they'll be all tied up in yet more regulations and red tape. Some have even predicted that email will die out. (Never mind that the majority of small businesses haven't yet discovered email marketing, so what they didn't do before they won't miss.)

It used to be so easy, didn't it? Virtually free and unregulated, email was wonderful - no-one ever complained, you could do what you like and you could get away with anything. And now 'they' are clamping down and everyone's going to have to start finding yet more creative ways of getting around the rules. Boo!

What email is good for, and what it isn’t

Surely we should be approaching the new electronic communications legislation not with a negative, defensive attitude but a welcoming one. Just because the rights of the recipient are being protected and championed, that doesn't mean that it's going to be bad for business. We just have to start understanding what email is actually good for.

For example, the law stipulates that a valid unsubscribe address should appear on each email. How is this bad? Are investors or CFOs impressed with a very low unsubscribe rate? Is it useful to have 10,000 names on an email database when at least half of them don't want to be there? How does it make you feel about a company when they make it difficult for you to unsubscribe?

Again, another stipulation is that the identity of the sender is not disguised or concealed. But why would a legitimate marketer do that anyway? How can a profitable, long term relationship begin with a subterfuge?

It's no surprise that responsible email advertisers have been erring on the side of caution for some time, and for good reason. It's not just that they want to stay the right side of the law. It's because they see the business sense in it. And those who nurture email relationships over time, using it for retention rather than milking it for short-term attention-grabs, receive the highest rewards.

As Feldwick says, 'Why should brands make friends, if they behave like louts? It would be in all our interests to consider whether a bit of charm, courtesy or respect might be more effective.'

Thanks for reading. If you have any comments about what you read in Marketing Karma, please let us know.

robin@marketingkarma.co.uk

Useful reference:
Guidance to the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 - Part 1: Marketing by Electronic Means - (PDF file)