Forum Moderators: skibum
But Forrester found in August 2000 that 50% that email was a good way to find out about products. This year 38%.
They also found that the consumer is only half as likely to buy from email as they were last year.
Here's the url of the article:
[medialifemagazine.com...]
Webmasters can't bury their heads in the sand. EMail is coming and we need to plan how we are going to handle it.
Expect 1400 SPAM EMails a year by 2006
i already get way more than that -its only 4 a day- and i expect most people here do too!!!
The average user wants product information and offers mailed to them.
The article says that: "Marketers need to keep three caveats in mind in order for an email campaign to be effective. Emails should not go out too often, they should be relevant, and consumers should have opted to receive them."
How often do users want to get product information? 9% said daily, 34% said weekly, 10% said less than monthly and 21% said monthly. That's 74% saying they WANT advertising emails.
If this is what your users are saying then you should be preparing to handle this growth in volumn.
I also think (and I have no statistics to back this up) that email advertising can be made more effective and less intrusive if it is more than just product announcements and coupons. At least in a niche market, brief articles and helpful tips concerning elements of the product line (focusing on benefits) are very powerful.
my feeling is that a big obsticle as the amount of mail rises is getting legitimate or wanted commercial emails read/seen rather than deleted or filtered.
As a well informed private user of the web you opt in selectively and get stuff you need - no problem.
As Joe Public, an "innocent" ISP subscriber, a "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" client who bought a CD/book/cinema ticket/whatever without a choice of opt in or out, he'll take exception to unsolicited advertising emails - guaranteed.
Mail campaigns have a fully legitimate slot when it comes to online marketing but spam is spam whatever the colour, flavour or appearance...
The problem with email now is that i get 200 spams i didnt ask for a day. (out of around 260-70 altogether) I dont have time to scan them properly, so most (almost all) legitimate offers get deleted.. just so i have time left in the day toa ctually work.
Thats the problem, the rubbish to legitimate quotient is far too high to make email marketing sensible.. Unless better anti spam procedures are developed, this article is far too optimistic.
> I'm lucky if I notice all the messages from people I know that come in and take action on those let alone any opt-in lists.
Mostly because of the above, but also because the novelty has long been lost, I believe email marketing has already peaked in effectiveness. A lot of the discussion about email marketing really feels like banner deja vu.
The trendline in cost/action will now start heading towards the $-levels of offline direct marketing techniques, which (I assume) have proven themselves capable of sustaining effective ROI.
