In case you haven’t already seen it, news was announced late last week that Gmail will start adding an unsubscribe link to marketing communications – whether they are legitimate or not. Email marketers will have to make a concerted effort to deliver relevant communications.
Starting from this week, a new, clearly marked “unsubscribe” link will appear at the top of the header field in marketers’ emails. Previously only appearing for a small percentage of users, the feature will now be made available for most promotional messages with unsubscribe options, Google said on Thursday. Email recipients do not need to take action for the links to appear.
The change simply makes it easier to find the “unsubscribe” link. With the new setup, the link appears prominently at the top of the message, alongside the name and email address of the person or company sending it. So what used to be like searching for a needle in a haystack will, for some, become more like an open invitation to say good-bye. By clicking the link, users can opt out of a company’s emails without leaving Gmail.
Whilst this may be seen as great news for those of us on the receiving end of these types of e-missives, the announcement is just one of an ever-growing amount of pressures on email marketers who are already dealing with dwindling engagement rates and increased churn from the 425 million+ Gmail users (last count, June 2012).
Changes like this are a good thing
As marketers, changes like this should be seen as a good thing. It forces us to up our game and, fundamentally, it helps and rewards good marketers and rightly penalizes the bad ones.
Good marketers realize that in this hyperactive world of ‘marketing noise’ they cannot just repeatedly send product messages (“New launch!”) or sales offers (“20% off NOW!”) that are inappropriate to our unique contexts and somehow expect to keep their mailing list engaged.
All of us are far too familiar with email newsletters that waste our time, pitches that annoy us, and downright spam. Those don’t work.
The ‘unsubscribe’ button appears directly beside the sender’s email address.
What works is a value exchange — your valuable information for your prospect’s valued time. Your subscribers need to know they can trust you and that you’re not a soulless self-promoting spam-bot. Good email content deepens your relationship with your audience through effective subject line writing (getting your messages opened), your distinctive voice (getting those messages read), and delivering quality, niche specific content your prospect needs and shares with others (inspiring referrals and word-of-mouth).
How to send an email that people want to receive
Fundamentally, email communications need to be customer-centric and not product-centric. This sounds simple but what does it actually mean?
- Understand your customers
Email marketers tend to work from customer databases that record a standardized set of data: names, email addresses, purchase history and, perhaps, particular behaviours in response to previous emails (e.g. did open last newsletter / did not open last newsletter).
All of these go some way to identify customers, but they’re not enough to give the whole picture. You may know that my full-name is “Jonathan”, but that’s not enough to understand my hopes, dreams, aspirations or purchase intent.
At idio, we’re big fans of the interest data that can be derived from the content people consume. Rather than relying on past purchase history (is it really relevant to send me tennis ball offers in Winter, six months after I bought my racquet?), if you can learn what I’ve been reading and what sort of topics I’m interested in, then you can start an engaging and relevant dialogue on the customer’s terms, as well as your own.
- Use content instead of offers
Email marketers that continually bombard their mailing list with news of new product are going to quickly alienate fans and subscribers that are no longer in the market to purchase.
By contrast, content marketing is a great way to maintain a relevant conversation with recipients; delivering useful, interesting and entertaining content that adds value and empowers recipients, rather than browbeating them.
There are many standout examples of content marketing. These include, L’Oreal which has Makeup.com – a site that talks about style and beauty issues without overtly pushing L’Oreal’s own product line; General Mills offers dieting advice and tips at Tablespoon.com; Red Bull has created Red Bulletin – a high-octane magazine for thrill-seekers and sports fanatics; American Express have created Open Forum – a portal of helpful articles which cover issues faced by small business owners.
In none of these examples are the brands explicitly saying buy this, buy that, buy now. Rather, they are publishing and distributing content that engages and attracts customers and prospects and enables their lifestyles. It is lifestyle-centric rather than product-centric.
- Personalize your email communications
It’s very easy – whether in a B2B or B2C context – to view your customers as individuals that share similar traits or factors (for example, demographic or purchase history) and can therefore be easily fitted into broad customer segments to receive optimized variants of the same communication.
A deeply relevant communication can only be personal if you accept that you need to treat recipients as individuals, rather than subsets of a larger customer segment. Delivering relevant emails starts with the understanding that treating your subscribers as individuals is imperative.
Of course this is easier said than done. Even if you apply all the analytics in the world to understand each of your subscribers, you are still stuck with the problem of having not enough content to mete out to them individually. One way around this is curating content - thereby improving the volume (and breadth) of content that can be used in email communications. Whilst you will most likely not have an infinite amount of content; curation allows you to maintain an inventory of content that covers a range of lifestyle subjects and interests, which will likely resonate with individuals in some way.
- Re-evaluate your email or campaign management platform.
As we’ve talked about before, many marketing technologies profess to deliver ‘relevance’ or ’1-2-1 personalization’, but are really only adept at sending limited amounts of content to larger segments of recipients.
Whilst the hassle and cost of auditing your currently marketing technology may seem prohibitive now, if the efficacy of your email strategy starts to diminish as rapidly as expected, you are in for a whole world of pain. Better to think long and hard about if you want to proceed as before, or if, in light of Gmail’s announcement – which other email providers are sure to follow – it’s time to change.
via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1hO34qg
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire