Email Marketing: the good, the bad and the indifferent

It’s now two years since the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications was adopted in the UK. Although some would say it has had little effect on the mountains of spam clogging up our inboxes, it has helped establish a baseline standard for legitimate email marketers interested in good practice.

So what exactly is good practice? The first essential is familiarity with the EU Directive. Although there are some grey areas, the two key issues are to obtain permission before emailing and to provide a valid way of opting out on every email sent. It sounds simple enough, but these basic premises are still regularly abused, often out of ignorance – ignorance of the law, and ignorance of the negative effects that often result.

For example, earlier this year I received an email from a PR agency promoting two dates by a band I had never heard of and had no interest in. Unfortunately, not only was the emailshot poorly executed and targeted, but it appeared to be sent from the actual venues. This contravened current legislation on at least three counts:
1. Disguising the identity of the sender
2. Failing to obtain permission before sending
3. Failing to provide an unsubscribe method
Although both were local authority run, only one of the venues responded to my complaint, and clearly did not take the issue seriously.

Sadly, this is not an isolated episode. Although organisations face a possible £5,000 fine, too many are reluctant to comply until forced to do so. Perhaps in this instance I was the only one to complain. But for every complaint research tells us there are 24 others who are just as annoyed but say nothing. Worse still, those 24 people will typically tell over 300 others. That’s the kind of viral marketing you can probably can do without!

The good news is that best practice email marketing is within the reach of all arts organisations. Just as with web design, prices more competitive than ever and there is a wide choice of email service providers (ESPs) offering everything from the full service to a DIY web-based solution requiring no technical expertise. This means that even the most cash-strapped arts organisation can afford to be email marketing. More to the point, it can’t afford not to be.

Organisations getting the most from email marketing are those with clear business objectives and who integrate their use of email with the rest of their marketing, online and offline. Undoubtedly the best results are achieved when there’s an overarching strategy, rather than when email is seen as an add-on. Will email be used to attract new audience members, or to retain existing ones? Will it be deployed mainly as a direct marketing tool with the goal of generating a response, or as a relationship-building tool to build brand loyalty and long-term custom? Just as with websites, these are functions which need to be driven by marketing, not IT.

After the strategy come the practicalities. How will permission be obtained and how will the list grow? The most obvious way of building a permission-based houselist is via an website sign-up form. If your organisation already uses other online marketing techniques such as search optimisation and pay-per-click advertising, then bringing email into the mix makes good business sense. Why pay to get qualified leads to your website if you are not capturing them once they arrive? They may not come to see your current production, but if they join your email list you can woo them over time. Brainstorm all the possible opportunities to ask permission in your organisation or at your facility and make sure all staff know to ask.

Surprisingly, the area where email campaigns often fall short is in the content. Rather than just sending out the equivalent of a printed flyer, or a monthly listings broadcast, more can be done to exploit the full potential of the medium. Email’s intimacy means you can talk to people on a more personal level. Its reciprocity means you can open up a dialogue and invite feedback. Its speed and immediacy means you can deploy it quickly in response to changing circumstances. Its measurability means you can use it to gauge interest and propensity to buy, to tailor your messages and increase their relevance to the recipient.

Email is a superb tool for building brand loyalty and developing customer relationships, but steer clear of any press release speak. Newsletters from an actual person, using their name and or photo and written in their own style create subjective or emotional ties with audience members in a way that an anonymous, ‘corporate’ sounding bulletin cannot. Great email communications are not only relevant and targeted but infused with vibrancy and personality.

When choosing an email service provider or delivery system, it makes sense to look ahead. A budget ESP may well have all the functionality you are looking for now – bounce management, link tracking, customisable HTML templates, mail merge personalisation – but your email database remains separate from your other customer records. This may become an issue in the future. For example, Compton Verney, an art gallery in Warwickshire, sends out a regular email newsletter which has worked well for them. But, as Marketing Manager Sam Skillings explains, “We now want to be able to email people on the basis of the customer data we hold in our box office system, but to integrate the two systems is apparently going to be expensive. If we were starting again this would probably have influenced our choice of delivery system.”

The number one issue facing email marketers now is deliverability. Internet service providers have stringent and ever-changing rules in place about what constitutes spam, and organisations are becoming much more vigilant when it comes to screening out possible threats in inbound email. Consequently, emails consisting mainly of images, or where the images are attachments, may be blocked, as may email from an unknown sender address. Broadband users (75% of UK households are now on broadband) are highly likely to have a personal firewall and may have set their own spam filters – two more barriers to overcome.

So what can be done? Watch out for indications of problems, such as all AOL addresses bouncing. Make it clear from the subject line and ‘from’ address that this is from a trusted sender. Avoid relying heavily on images - for an arts organisation this may seem counter-intuitive, but it is still possible to send an informative, visually appealing email without filling it with a huge graphic. Stay compliant and don’t resort to the spammers’ tactics. Last but not least, monitor delivery rates and practice good list management.

As email becomes more and more a communications method of choice for arts organisations and their audiences, the bigger its role in how people view their relationship with those organisations. It’s worth getting right.

This article first appeared in Arts Professional magazine, December 2005

Robin Houghton is the director of enewsworks, a managed email newsletter service for small businesses. She also produces eNewsTips, a free fortnightly email for enewsletter managers. Sign up at www.enewsworks.co.uk/form_signup.html.