At the height of his popularity, someone had the wisdom to say of the late, great Frank Sinatra, “It’s Frank’s World, we just live in it.”
My take on the entire email deliverability discussion today is that it comes down to a similar concept:
It’s the subscribers’ world, marketers just live in it.
Stated another way, our philosophy at ExactTarget is that SUBSCRIBERS RULE! They rule the inbox. They dictate the rules of one-to-one marketing channels. Their interests dictate what they subscribe to and what constitutes spam. Deny them control, and you’re likely to see your ROI wither, your unsubscribes skyrocket, and your deliverability rate tank.
So if you want to put yourself on a long-term path of email marketing success, it’s time to get subscriber-centric. You can do this by following SUBSCIBERS RULE! philosophy’s three simple tenets:
- Serve the individual
- Honor their unique preferences with regard to communication channels, content, and frequency
- Deliver them timely, relevant content that improves their lives
We’ll be digging into this philosophy a lot over the coming months in our blogs, whitepaper series, and over at http://www.subscribersrule.com/.
However, I will leave you with one, overriding belief that underlies our entire email marketing and deliverability philosophy.
The inbox does not belong to marketers. It belongs to individual people who correspond with friends, conduct business, and explore their unique interests. Increasingly, they do this not only through email in the inbox, but also through IM, RSS, and SMS. ISPs like Yahoo and Gmail are bringing all of these channels together to create a single location for all of the consumer’s one-to-one communication needs. To see “Inbox 2.0” in action, just check out the new Yahoo Mail where you can text message friends and family directly from the “mail” interface.
As the inbox consolidates more one-to-one communication channels, consumers’ expectations of privacy and control are only going to increase. This means that marketers who do not respect permission will get left in the vast, dark void of the junk mail folder if they do not respect the individual interests and needs of subscribers.
So, you want to improve email deliverability long-term? Start by asking yourself if you’re email marketing efforts are designed to meet your needs--or your subscribers’ needs. If the answer is your needs, then repeat after me:
It’s the subscribers’ world, marketers just live in it.
If it helps, throw on the Chairman of the Board singing “The Best Is Yet to Come”—because better deliverability and better email marketing results are just a subscriber-centric philosophy away.
