Email Address Usage

I flew back to my native state of Michigan this past summer to attend the wedding of my best friend from high school. In planning, I called the hotel where the reception was going to be held in order to book a hotel room for the evening.

After taking my usual billing information and booking a room for me, the hotel operator asked me for my email address so she could "send me an email confirmation of my room reservation".

I don't know about you, but whenever the proprietor of any business asks me for my phone number or email address, I tend to clench up. A bunch of questions run through my brain, all wondering why the person needs my information. The basis of these questions is usually a matter of trust...that is, do I trust this person to use the information in ways I would approve of?

I gave the hotel operator my email address and, sure as sugar, the email confirmation came through almost immediately. I have to admit, it helped to have it in writing, sitting there in my inbox, so I could review and look for any mistakes. Did they get the correct date? Correct room size? And so on.

I went to the wedding, my friend got married, and then I returned to Santa Barbara. As you might have guessed, this story doesn't have a happy ending. (Not about my friend, he's still happily married.) A couple months later, I got an email from the hotel. Not a satisfaction survey or any kind of follow-up to my stay.

Marketing.

A friendly email reminder about the hotel, telling me to consider the hotel for my next corporate retreat. I stayed in their hotel for a single night, and, as flattered as I am by their presumption, I don't own a business or manage a team. The reality of this past transaction as a one-time deal, as evidenced by my billing zip code I provided when I called. Never mind that I live in California, 2500 miles away, and that I just booked a room to stay for one night.

Nope...once your email address finds it way into the system, you get tossed onto the massive pile of everyone else who's ever stayed for one night, and they email market to everyone as a homogeneous mass of prospects. This isn't a marketing strategy...this is at best a wasted opportunity, but at worst, it's burning through any goodwill they earned in my mind during my stay with them.

Every business can do better than this. Big or small, I don't think any organization can afford not to pay attention to how their emails are being received by prospects.

Comedy in the Spam Box

Email marketing spammers have given us a few things. They taught us how to quickly locate and hit the "Delete" key, and they've made it so that most of know what a Bayesian filter is, and how to configure it to route the rubbish to our spam email boxes.

There are slow workdays, however, when all of this spam email can be good for something: entertainment. Next time you need a brain break, pull open your spam box and browse through the subject lines. I'd discourage you from opening any of them, just because of computer viruses and worms, but just reading through the subject lines can be good for a laugh (albeit a very cheap one).

It's immature, but it's also a good way to get a sense of how the other half markets using email. Personally, I think it's far less than half of the marketers out there. That's just a hunch, but it's certainly something to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Bridging the Gap

It's interesting how big of a disconnect there is between those who send email marketing emails, and those who receive them.

Direct mail marketers are particularly bad at recognizing this gap. It seems like businesses spend a fortune sending out direct mailings to customers' homes. Most of these mailings, I suspect, end up going right in the trash or the shredder.

Then, after a hard day's work, these same marketers go home, open their mailboxes, and proceed to throw away all of the junk mail with their name on it.

Email marketing seems to work the same way. I've never met anyone who's delighted to read their spam email...everybody seems to treat it like a nuisance. It begs the question: do enough recipients read it and convert that it becomes a profitable campaign?

My take is trite, but: money isn't everything. Email marketing is next to free, but for every one person that converts, these marketers are likely infuriating another 100 or 1000 who have to hit the "Delete" button. From a branding perspective, it's an egregious violation of trust, so it's really no way to build a business.

If you happen to be starting a business venture, and you think you need to buy a spam email list to get it off the ground, please, go back to the drawing board and try to devise a business strategy that doesn't require you annoy millions of anonymous people.

You work too hard to spend your day being hated.