DE-HORNING EMAIL'S DEVIL CHILD

DE-HORNING EMAIL'S DEVIL CHILD

James R. Rosenfield

March 2003

Imagine 19th Century London, eternally shrouded in smog. Soot covers everything. It hurts your eyes and gets in your nose, but you can't get away from it.

Spam is the soot of the information age.

And the U.S. is its London.

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, 36% of all American email in August 2002 consisted of unsolicited messages, up 8% from a year ago.

The Federal Trade Commission recently reported that two-thirds of all "unsubscribe" links in spam email fail. The worst thing to do, in fact, is click on one of these, because it indicates you're alive and sentient, resulting in even more junk emails.

You can go to a junk peddler called MonsterHut.com, and get 25 million emails delivered to consumers for $7,999. That's a cost of 0.00032 cents for one email address! At that cost per entry, microscopic response rates can turn a profit. No wonder eMarketer estimates there will be 76 billion spam emails in 2003, which seems grossly conservative. (eMarketer estimates there were between 500 and 600 billion total emails in 2000, just to give you an idea of how email and its devil child have scaled up!)

Cheap cost of entry historically produces a Gresham's Law effect, with the bad driving out the good. Witness: I had one email address that was sold by the Internet provider, who of course had promised not to do that. I was getting as many as 30 spams a day, all unsavory: Get rich quick schemes, weight loss products, penile and breast enlargement opportunities, porno, credit repair…a virtual festival of sleaze!

I got rid of that address, but now I'm starting to get junk again. Just today I was promised a glimpse at hot young Japanese vixens. Last Friday, I was offered a look at things unspeakable in a family publication.

This doesn't last forever. In the early days of home VCRs there was much more demand for pornography than there is now. But it can last a while, long enough to give a medium a bad name.

And that's the real shame of spam. Email is the best thing that's happened to direct marketing since the invention of postal codes. It's cheap, quick, and flexible. It can do much of what direct mail can do at a fraction of the cost.

It may take a while before this happens, though. Spam is teaching us to delete emails immediately if there's the slightest doubt about whom a message is from, and what it's about. Lacking the tactile physicality that makes direct mail unique, email is easier to get rid of, and has less opportunity to attract attention. You're limited to sender and header lines, whereas direct mail gives you the entire canvas of the envelope or self-mailer.

Apropos the virtues of direct mail, it's good to point out that new media don't make old media obsolete. They change their roles. Television changed the roles of movies (no more newsreels) and radio (no more dramas), but hardly pushed them out of the landscape. Email should ultimately cause a reinvention of direct mail, making it more selective, probably more creative, with better production values.

I also foresee the spam problem solving itself, in a sense. It's gotten so bad that 26 states have banned the messages, in one way or another. Spammers are ignoring these strictures, but will eventually be litigated out of existence. That's much the same as what's happening with outbound telemarketing in the U.S., another out-of-control marketing phenomenon. But in the true spirit of Internet time, it has taken spam a mere four years to reach the same level of universal hatred outbound telemarketing needed twenty- five years to slither into.

EMAIL GUIDELINES I: PERMISSION MARKETING PRACTICES

I suspect you already know all this, but good practices always bear repeating…

1) Get permission.

Don't send email without permission. Ever. But…

2) Remind consumers that they gave you permission.

Spam's unceasing onslaught casts every email in an unflattering light, guilty until proven innocent. Customers may not remember they granted permission. Remind them in every email.

3) Offer opt-out in each communication.

This is mandatory. But do it with some marketing panache. Most opt-outs are at best bland: "If you would prefer not to receive these messages, click here." Don't do it like that! Instead, remind people one more time that they opted-in, and re-state the benefits of getting emails from you: "You have kindly given us permission to send you occasional messages highlighting special sales and other great benefits. However, if you no longer wish to receive this valuable information, please click here.

You should also re-state this when you send confirmation of the opt-out: "As you requested, we have removed your address from our email list. We are pleased that in the past you gave us permission to send you email messages highlighting special sales and other great benefits. If you would like to continue receiving these, please click here."

4) In general, be responsive.

Customers will like you more, and be more willing to give you permission, if you respond quickly to their requests and their needs.

I have just had an amusing experience, in preparing for a speech on Customer Relationship Marketing in Toronto. I contacted the Customer Relationship Marketing Association; the Customer Relationship Marketing Association of Canada: the International Customer Service Association; and the International Customer Service Association, Toronto branch.

In each case, I sent emails stressing my immediate need to become a member - that is, a dues paying customer! - as soon as possible. One week passed, and I sent follow-up emails. Two weeks passed, and nary a word. How terribly sad that those who preach the gospel of responsiveness don't practice it at all!

EMAIL GUIDELINES II: COMMUNICATIONS FUNDAMENTALS

1) Basic marketing communications principles work

Email marketing thus far has suffered from the dot-com bubble, spam, and a lack of marketing professionalism. Case in point: Most email marketers in the U.S. don't track and measure results, which defeats much of the purpose of the whole enterprise. (They will deny this, by the way. There are lots of dirty secrets that become exposed once you get underneath the public façade of so many companies.)

People respond to benefits, whether your medium is matchbook covers, TV, smoke signals, or email. Get that benefit right into the header.

Sender and header are the two most important elements. Make sure you don't look like spam, and make extra sure you don't look like a virus. As in all direct marketing media, the closer the relationship you have with customers, the more likely they'll be to pay attention to you. Someone who has five accounts with Bank XYZ will almost certainly open a well-constructed email from them.

2) In most cases use text rather than HTML.

Evidence thus far is that text emails work as well as HTML. They're cheaper and quicker to do, and create fewer downloading problems for people who have lousy computers. Use text for most purposes. Links leading to your web site can provide the fancy stuff.

3) Use the classic direct mail package as a model.

The Internet, the least physical of media, closely resembles direct mail, the most physical. (There's much to be said about this from a media theory standpoint, but that's for another article.) The header and sender lines are like the outer envelope; the letter is, indeed, the letter; the appropriate part of your web site, accessed via link, is the brochure; the "click to order" is the headline to the response device.

4) Keep the copy short.

This is the 21st Century version of the eternal direct mail question, "How long should the letter be?" In direct mail, the answer is as long as it needs to be. With email, though, the answer is much easier: Short, no longer than one page when it's printed out. Remember, you have links when you use the Internet. Also remember, the medium is the message, and one of the messages of the Internet is to jump around.

5) Look at what the best do, and imitate them.

If you're not a customer of Amazon, become one, and then pay careful attention to how they communicate with you. They've been at it the longest, and they're the best.

Also, take a look at what banks are doing. Banks have taken well to the Internet, to such an extent that some of them are no longer floating in their traditional marketing backwaters. It's the age of the Internet, and though the bubble has burst, certain wonders are not ceasing at all!