Posted by Gareth Cutter on 3rd April 2009 to
Marketplace and
Best Practice If there is one good thing to have come out of the recession, it's the fact marketers have had to re-evaluate how they communicate with their subscribers. Although this reflex action isn't exactly deserving of a pat on the back, or always implemented in the best way, it does at least show the ability of some marketers to adapt quickly.
The email marketing intelligence company, Intelemail Inc. has published some interesting data on how trends in campaign messaging have changed over the past year. Between early 2008 and 2009, value-centric words such as 'free', 'shipping' and 'save' became more frequent in email subject lines in favour of product-centric words like 'new'. But what’s more interesting is it took consumer spending to grind to a halt before marketers realised what matters to recipients isn’t the features of the product; it's how they expect to benefit from buying.
That's not to suggest swapping one set of words for another would have averted a global economic crisis (we know email marketing is influential, but not that much) - but it might have at least generated more income for businesses when consumers were in a position to spend.
The not-so-good thing to have come out of the recession is the desperation amongst marketers to generate sales by sending more email marketing messages per week. Since January, the number of marketers sending two or more rose by 9% to a total of 64%. And 17% are now sending four messages a week, an increase of 5% since Jan ‘08.
Perhaps these companies do genuinely produce enough content to merit four marketing emails a week - but we think it’s unlikely. The risk of trying to cram a sale down recipients’ throats with overly frequent messaging means they are more likely to decide ‘enough is enough’ and unsubscribe from your list, making the task of generating sales that much more difficult.
We hope when the recession starts to abate, marketers stick with the benefit-led mode of descriptive copy, continuing to appeal to consumers’ interests but amend the frequency of their messaging to an appropriate level. Turning this awareness of consumer benefits into targeted messaging sent on a regular (as opposed to overly frequent) basis is the surest way to get consumers spending and help the economy to mend.
