The issue of permission presents one of the greatest threats to the future of email marketing. According to data shared by Julie Katz at Connections ’09, consumers want greater control over email. They want control over SPAM, they want to be able to unsubscribe from email more easily, and they want greater control over the frequency of commercial email coming to their inboxes.
In both 2008 and 2009 we asked consumers to indicate how acceptable it was for them to be contacted via email for “
Promotional messages (i.e., sale, special offers) from companies whom you regularly conduct business, but have not specifically asked for ongoing information.” As we outlined in the
2009 Channel Preference Study, consumers’ attitude toward non-permission communications from known companies is souring quickly. In 2009, 50% of consumers considered these messages with unacceptable, nearly doubled from 26% in 2008. The belief that marketers can send email to their customers based on a ‘prior existing relationship’—the premise for email appends—is dead. Customers don’t want the practice to continue.
Nevertheless, the industry continues to allow embarrassing practices like email appending and list rental. Not surprisingly, the only people that fully endorse these practices are those that profit directly from them. The rest of us squirm and manage to squeak out the words, “It can work,
if you do it right.” However, few believe that it ever will be done right on a consistent basis. After all,
we've been writing about this for quite a while.
There are three interrelated reasons for this. First, as I mentioned in my first post in this series,
email is too easy and too cheap. It’s simply easier to do email appends and list rental incorrectly, using an opt-out model that has no regard for permission. The numbers are more impressive--and let's face it, big lists still sound better than little ones. Second, pricing models are still based on match rates and list sizes. These models favor sending to the masses, which in turn favor the opt-out model. Third, since there are still enough suckers out there who will pay to do it incorrectly, email append and list rental vendors have no incentive to change their revenue model. Given that opt-in revenue models are likely to be less lucrative, it won't change until the issue is forced.
But it may already be too late for email append and list rental companies.
While the industry has failed to police itself, two entities with the ability to make real changes have lined up with consumers. First, ISPs continue to serve the best interests of their customers by increasingly relying on reputation systems that include engagement measures such as opens and clicks to determine if messages should be routed to the spam folder (see
What’s in store at the ISPs 2009-2010 from Pivotal Veracity). Second, Canadian Parliament continues to push forward
Canadian Electronic Commerce Protection Bill C-27 which mandates an opt-in standard.
Comparatively, US CAN-SPAM laws are notoriously weak, making the joke that US CAN-SPAM laws say, “yes, you can spam consumers so long as they can opt-out.” Unfortunately, Unfortunately, many companies use this law to condone their continued distribution of non-permission email. In short, the US Law falls short of meeting customer expectations—again more than half of consumers believe non-permission email is unacceptable, even when it's from a known company. This doesn’t support an opt-out standard. I interpret this as, “there is no excuse for sending email without the express consent of consumers. Period.”
Interestingly, in the same comparison of opt-in promotions from 2008 to 2009, there was no change. Consumers believe permission-based email is highly acceptable. In fact, given the choice, 75% of US consumers (see the
2009 Channel Preferences Study) and 74% of UK consumers (see
Strategy Meets Customer Expectations) prefer to receive permission based promotional messages through email.
It’s simply that we need to draw a hard and fast line. Opt-in permission should be the only standard by which we live. Not supporting efforts to eliminate questionable practices in our industry reflects poorly on the industry as a whole. After all, as
Matt Blumberg, CEO of ReturnPath, recently wrote, “
What's good for consumers is great for direct marketers. Marketing is not what it used to be, the lines between good and bad actors have been blurred, and the consumer is now in charge.” Amen!
It's time we completely honor consumers' preference for an opt-in standard. We can no longer afford to lend any support, even passively through silence, those who don't.
As outlined in our recent whitepaper, Is Email Marketing Endangered?, Smartphones are a major force behind consumers increasing consumption of email. As such, the importance of mobile email for email marketers will continue to increase. While the solutions remain less than ideal, Mark Brownlow has done a wonderful job of summarizing the challenges of mobile email and linking to useful resources on the topic.
"As social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook assimilate into our lexicon as verbs, companies faced with reduced communication budgets are realizing the value of engaging their employees and customers through Web-based interactive media. 
According to Teresa Becker, “we had several women mention that they learned about Skype and other technology from Oprah. If Oprah knows about it, then women will too!” But again, Oprah is not ‘marketing’ anything! She is merely sharing information with people who trust her. She provides a highly valued service.
Either way, “how much email is too much?” is entirely in the mind of the recipient. What is too much for one subscriber is not enough for another.
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