Five years ago:
If you were anything like me, I would have classed any email that had any inkling of commercial content “spam”. I was strict with my spam filters, and rarely signed up to newsletters, preferring to get my news direct from the source website, rather than have it delivered to me. I had hundreds of important emails to go through a day/week/month and really didn’t want to waste time opening emails about special offers that didn’t really apply to me anyway.
Fast forward to 2011:
Email marketing has come full circle. With progressions in technology and basic email management systems, we consume commercial messaging in a whole different way. Now we want immediate news updates, that is personalised based on our specific likes and dislikes. we embrace targeted messaging, and appreciate when organisations make the effort to analyse their audience in order to deliver the right news to the right people.
Now, I actively sign up to email newsletters, and am a little more open to receiving commercial messaging. I’d blame this on two major factors:
An improvement in email management systems
Email as a technology has been improving slowly through the years. I personally use Google Apps Mail for my personal and work email, and Outlook or Mac Mail as a back-up. Today, I am able to set filters on all incoming mail, and put labels on them. My basic labels are “News” (HuffPost, NYT, TechCrunch), “MarComms” (B&T, CampaignBrief, NorthSocial), and “Shopping” (eBay, Etsy, ASOS). These filtered messages are automatically marked as “read” as they come through my inbox, as they are not priority mail. I can easily check these labels for news updates when I get a spare moment. Unlike five years ago, I am able to customise how I manage my inbox, a far cry from having to delete 30/40/50 unwanted emails a day.
Better segmenting and targeting
Email marketing has had an overhaul in the last few years, with marketers finding new and exciting ways to deliver a message to an audience. The “generic” message doesn’t work any more. Not everyone likes the same things, and not everyone wants to read the same news. I am a 24 year old digital strategist, interested about new media, marketing, food, fashion, music and film, and I receive news that a 24 year old digital strategist, interested about new media, marketing, food, fashion, music and film would be interested to read about.
Especially given the rise of group buying and daily offer type websites (Catchoftheday, GroupOn, Spreets), consumers are wanting latest news and offers delivered to them instantaneously, so that they can check them on their smart phones and purchase on the go. Email marketing does exactly this, with these retailers taking care to segment their user databases based on buying trends and preferences, in order to deliver useful and quality content for each individual.
Do you have an email marketing plan you’d like to share?
