Channel Talk - E-mail in the World of Integrated Marketing Today

Quick Overview

• What clients have been asking
• Is e-mail the answer?
• The “other” inbox(es)
• Social and Mobile - What do they have to do with it?
• Redirect to where?
• It’s business…and yes, it is too personal

With such a big shift in consumer behavior over the last two years, we have been researching new studies, reanalyzing past studies, attending conferences, and engaging with other industry experts to discuss the present and future state of communications.

We definitely expect this to be the year for establishing new metrics and creating new benchmarks for success across all channels.

As innovations in new technology and communication vehicles increase, there are so many more channels to choose from. This is a very exciting time for the consumer as well as for our industry. At the same time, it is requiring that we develop new and creative ways to market – not only to capture everyone’s attention and get heard above the roar, but also to also keep their attention and nurture the relationship.

What Clients Have Been Asking
Clients and prospects have been asking us about our multichannel efforts and what we have seen as possible trends over the past year, specifically for e-mail, as they are interested in leveraging more of this channel for cost-saving measures.

Here are some interesting statistics, observations, and thoughts based on what we have experienced and continue to observe in the world of e-mail today.

This information helps shape our planning process to ensure that we understand its strengths and can anticipate the challenges that marketers and consumers are faced with on a day-to-day basis.

With the information below, we hope to provide a framework for creative marketing professionals to approach this channel with an eye toward the future. This is a time when everyone is thinking about how to continually break through the clutter and develop one-to-one relationships with their target consumers.

And most important, they are making sure that their communications do not become the clutter or noise that people are trying to avoid.

Planning and Development Considerations
Marketing professionals are definitely experiencing more scrutiny being placed on what they are spending, and they are required to tighten their programs and operations wherever possible to prove a stronger ROI.

Past research and current-day observation feed our planning phases for content development and design to ensure we are able to capture interest, keep it, and nurture a relationship, which includes a two-way dialog.

Keeping the items outlined below in mind during strategic development can help to solve some of the overall challenges that marketers face with the competition not only by their direct competitors, but also by what they are experiencing within the inbox.

Competition Within the Inbox(es)
As more and more companies have realized major cost savings by shifting more of their efforts to e-mail, competition within the inbox is at an all-time high.

Consumers are having a harder time managing their inboxes and communications, which is requiring more data-driven, customized e-mails that have an increase in relevance.

Based on Forrester’s US Email Marketing Forecast, 2009 To 2014¹:

• Marketing messages to the primary inbox will swell to an average of more than 9,000 annually in 2014, with retention email making up the largest permission-based share.

According to a posting by the DEMC in October 2008, we learn the following information based on Jupiter Research²:

• Your email is competing for attention against the 274 personal email messages and 304 work emails that the average person receives each week. It is sitting in one of two email accounts that 74 percent of users have.
• The average reader takes two to five seconds to decide whether to read or delete an email.

With increased opt-in requests, consumers have made many choices over time to subscribe to multiple communications. Now this is catching up with them. For those who originally opted in to receive this material, they are now experiencing a sense of being overwhelmed and, at times, do not opt out. Instead, consumers are starting to delete or, worse yet, hit the spam button.

This is very similar to our experience when direct mail was the preferred channel of choice. People are quickly screening material and deciding what to toss and what to keep. It’s placed in the trash if it’s not relevant. Based on a recent article we read from destinationCRM.com, the following information speaks to this very point:

From an interview with a member of MAAWG³:

• Spam is in the eye of the beholder. Some experts define it as anything a recipient doesn’t want; if the request was for emails to be sent monthly and you send them daily—you’re spam.
• Most ISPs provide email recipients with a “Report Spam” button to flag an unwelcome email.
• Despite the aggressive measures to block “real” spam, users are conditioned to hit that button to get rid of any unwanted email.

As found in a Jupiter Research September 2008 report³:

• Approximately 25 percent of consumers hit “Report Spam” to opt out of e-mails they’d subscribed to.
• Complaint rates are driven by consumers using the spam button to unsubscribe—a habit they show no sign of stopping.
• To counter that, some experts advise marketers to have their opt-out link near the “Report Spam” button to encourage recipients to choose the less brutal option.

Deliverability
If making a move to e-mail, another area to focus your efforts on is deliverability. Based on research from Forrester¹:

• Spending will continue to be wasted on messages that never reach the inbox. Email marketers will continue to suffer from message delivery woes as $144 million dollars will be wasted by 2014 on messages that never reach their primary target.
• Marketers can slow the cash burn by adopting sender- and message-level authentication as well as reputation services to thwart the imperfect spam-protection heuristics that drive false positives.

Making sure that you have valid e-mail addresses and that people opt in is critical. But that’s just the beginning.

Social Networks
In addition, we are seeing that the social space has also created a new inbox that consumers use for more day-to-day e-mail interactions with personal relationships, friends, and family. Within certain segments, we expect to see the inbox attitude shift even further, leaving the “other” e-mail inboxes as a destination for more offer-driven, sales-related material or information regarding their accounts to “get to” later.

According to nielsenwire, a Nielsen Company⁴:

• Global consumers spent more than five and a half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009.
• This is an 82 percent increase from the same time last year when users were spending just over three hours on social networking sites.

Mobile
We have also experienced an increased interest to explore and implement strategies leveraging mobile. This channel is yet another device competing for your customers’ attention while you are trying to get your message seen, heard, and responded to. As you are working to develop your own relationship, many others are using this as a means to get their immediate attention, pulling them away from the inbox.

How does this fit into the overall plan? If you are not currently leveraging this channel, knowing that it is part of most consumers’ lives is extremely important, as it will not be going away anytime soon. Marketers are predicting major growth.

There are several numbers to support this, but rather than add another statistic here, let’s take a recent example of the power of the consumer.

Just look at how much mobile generated for Haiti. So far, it is being reported as one of the biggest days in the history of mobile.

In a report published on MSNBC on January 21st, 2010, within ten days Americans used their cell phones to send text messages pledging more than $30 million for Haitian relief efforts, according to figures released by the Mobile Giving Foundation. Fourteen percent of the donations were made by text, compared to twelve percent by telephone. Nearly twenty-three percent said they donated via the Web, and five percent did so by email⁵.

This comes only six months after the New York Times published an article stating that charitable giving fell the previous year by the largest percentage in five decades⁶.

Consumers and E-mail in General
You may chuckle when you read this next line, but all of this is not meant to discourage you from moving to the e-mail channel, by any means. This is a very effective channel when used right, and studies show that it is indeed growing.

Forrester states that e-mail adoption and use by consumers and businesses alike remain strong, with 153 million online adults regularly using email by 2014¹.

Based on some additional statistics we read on a Habeas study (2008)⁷:

• 67 percent of respondents prefer to use email to communicate with businesses.
• 65 percent believe this will continue to be the case in five years.
• More than 88 percent of respondents said they would like organizations to give them more choices over the content and frequency of the emails they receive, including options on advertisements, special offers, articles, newsletters, white papers, and other specific content options.

What we do like to share with our clients when people are pushing e-mail as the “channel of choice” is the increase in considerations during development phases to ensure that your message is read and gets the response you are looking for.

E-mail with Redirect-to-Direct Mail
This is not a brand-new idea, but one that is worth mentioning. Based on our experience, e-mail does best when integrated within a multichannel marketing campaign.

E-mail alone, however, has the potential for missing some key opportunities to recapture those who do not open their inboxes or receive the e-mail. As inboxes start to fill up due to the significant volumes, it is important to incorporate a solution to recapture that audience.

• We have found that e-mail with a redirect-to-direct mail has continued to be very successful for our clients.
• There are some programs that have recaptured a significant number of people who do not respond to their e-mail. Without the redirect option, using the e-mail channel alone could have lost key opportunities.
• One of our more recent ongoing retention programs was able to recoup the cost of the program within the first two weeks of launch. This was based on the use of strategic creative, targeted data, customized content, segmentation, and a multichannel effort.

Many of the studies and people that we speak with support the fact that e-mail is a viable channel, and the e-adoption trend is increasing and will continue to rise.

As it does with the increase in new channels, the consideration in the strategic development and planning phases will increase as well. As we learn more, we will share our findings with you.

What we believe will not change are the classic marketing principles when trying to get people to convert any behavior:

• Create awareness and provide education
• Communicate value to customers and deliver on that promise
• Consider incentives that are based on what customers want and have asked for
• Measure and tweak
• Test the timing, sequencing, messaging, and creative

What will continue to move the needle are data-driven communications, truly listening to what consumers want, and applying segmentation and behavioral targeting, no matter what the channel may be.

We know this sounds very simple, but what sometimes gets overlooked in the rush to get something out the door is design creative that has the end consumer (a human being) in mind. This is how you will be able to truly connect; make sure it resonates; and make them feel something. If you don’t, you will get ignored.

It’s not just about capturing some preference at a stage within the relationship. It is about understanding and responding to their changing preferences. We need to change with them—however and whenever they do. We, too, are consumers. We need what we should be providing—flexibility, responsiveness, and delivery on the promise someone has made. Because when we get that, we trust and allow people into a relationship with us.

Remember that saying, “It’s not personal, it’s business”? Well, guess what, it is too personal—more now than ever before.

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¹ Daniels, David. “US Email Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014,” Research Study, Forrester, June 16 2009.
 
² Drew, Abbie. “Your Email Has 5 Seconds,”  October 20, 2008.
http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_230.shtml

³ Tsai, Jessica. Email: What’s Inside?” CRM Magazine, January 2009.
http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Email-What%E2%80%99s-Inside-52156.aspx

⁴ nielsenwire. “Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year,” nielsenwire, January 22, 2010.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/led-by-facebook-twitter-global-time-spent-on-social-media-sites-up-82-year-over-year/print/

⁵ Choney, Suzanne. “Mobile giving to help Haiti exceeds $30 million,” MSNBC,  January 21, 2010.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34850532/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/

⁶ Strom, Stephanie. “Charitable Giving Declines, a New Report Finds,” The New York Times, June 9, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/us/10charity.html?_r=1

⁷ Business Wire, “Habeas Study Confirms Strong, Ongoing Demand for Email in Direct Marketing, Mobile and Web 2.0 Applications,” Business Wire, May 21, 2008.
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080521005393&newsLang=en