Permission Email Success: Creating a Digital Conversation

The interactive nature of permission email allows a digital conversation with customers unlike anything else in the direct marketing world. Email tracking allows marketers to determine what customers value based on how they vote with their mouse clicks. The insight gained from these clicks allows marketers to continuously enhance future emails with ever-more relevant information, creating a digital conversation. Most of us are getting numerous email newsletters, some we read and some we routinely delete. Recent research has shown that most business people will maintain about a dozen “relationships” with e-newsletter providers, that is, they may receive twenty newsletters, but they will only open and read about a dozen or less. Just like other media advertising, there is definitely competition for customer attention in the inbox. Marketers must create relationships based on a valuable conversation if they are to be successful.

As we look forward to the year 2005, it’s good to know that permission email is alive and well. Companies are finally “getting it” with regard to the long-term potential of email communications for customer acquisition and retention. SPAM is still growing in volume, however less of it is making it to inboxes, as new legislation takes hold and new filtering technologies gain popularity. While spammers are forced to get more creative to get through spam filters, true permission email marketers are evolving from simple, one-way direct marketing to bi-directional, digital conversations of value.

The digital conversation starts with the permission to send someone emails with the promise of valuable information. There is no other reason to “opt-in”. In the “information age” we now live in, the true value a company provides may be the information or knowledge surrounding the product and its use as much or more than the product itself. So this begs the question: What information do your customers value? Could it be information on new products or knowledge on getting more from existing products? What problems are solved by your product or service? How are other customers using your product to achieve favorable experiences and outcomes? This is the type of information that might get your customers and prospects to open and read your email newsletters and other email communications. As customers open and read your email content, they will be open to product offers. However, the promotional offers should make up no more than 30% of a newsletter’s content.

It’s now possible to have a “digital conversation” with thousands of customers and prospects at a time. Finding out what customers want to converse about and then facilitating digital conversations is not half the battle, it’s the whole battle. Develop a relationship online, develop a client for life.

For more articles by Steve Herring, visit onealstrategy.com.