Shoestring Marketing: Despite spam problems, e-mail still effective marketing tool

Alf Nucifora is an Atlanta-based marketing consultant.

Not a day goes by that the press doesn't report staggering numbers on the volume increase in e-mail spam. My personal experience reveals that the spam count is doubling every 90 to 180 days. However, the good news is that regulatory and technical help are on the way.

The spam problem, which is now at its most acute, will lessen over time once effective safeguards are more firmly in place, most likely within the next 12 to 18 months. In the meantime, the advice to marketers is one of not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Permission-based e-mail marketing remains a highly effective tool. To believe that people are not reading e-mail anymore because of spam overload is both a false premise and a huge marketing mistake. Incidentally, the research clearly shows that e-mail is now the No. 1 business-to-business communication tool, surpassing phone and postal mail, and has been for the last three years.

Things to keep in mind

We will reserve a discussion of the technical issues surrounding spam control to a later column. For the time being, let's just deal with the strategic implications.

Don't panic! Spam is now a kitchen table issue, even to the extent, no doubt, of featuring prominently in forthcoming election platforms. Whenever politicians get involved, you know the issue is hot and some attempt will be made to address it.

In the meantime, as an online marketer, provide your recipients with a credible product and reassurance of your integrity and gird yourself for some volatility as consumers respond to the looming out-of-control situation.

Follow the leaders: Remember that the big companies and brand name leaders are still experiencing great success with their permission-based e-mail marketing programs. They're continuing to sell a lot of product. Rest assured that Amazon and Lands End have not been hurt. E-mail's intrinsic effectiveness, coupled with its enormous cost benefit in distribution, still makes it one of the most effective marketing communication tools on the planet.

It's retention, stupid! E-mail has migrated to being a retention tool and is no longer used by smart marketers solely for customer acquisition as in its formative days, e.g., buying lists. E-mail marketing's real role, nowadays, is in maintaining the communication and the relationship with the customer who opted in. The problem is that even opt-in recipients are hitting the delete button.

Michael Pridemore, CEO of Socketware Inc., a provider of e-mail software and services, said, "Spam has raised the consumer threshold. And it continues to get raised every day."

What works? E-mail marketing messages must be compelling, relevant and of value to the recipient. Pridemore, whose clients include Delta Airlines, Travelocity and Ace Hardware, recommends content that communicates real value, which can take any number of forms including valuable news, a financial benefit and/or domain knowledge in the form of product data and consolidated research information.

"In the case of e-mail newsletters, it also helps to have a cool message with a catchy title or theme and feature marquee names, authors and links," said Pridemore.

Do your homework: Remember to monitor your metrics. If you're getting more than a 20 percent bad address or bounce-back rate on your e-mail list over the course of a year, you may have a problem. If you're not getting at least 50 percent of recipients opening the e-mail instead of deleting it, you also have a problem. But you won't be aware of the problem unless you continually review the numbers. To that point, maintain clean mailing lists. It's a constant process akin to weekly laundry.

Support the cause: Legitimate marketers must band together to fight the renegades and dregs of marketing society who are currently polluting and jamming our e-mail boxes. Block their messages. Report them to your ISP. And join associations that are fighting the problem.

When it's all said and done, spam will not and cannot be the death of e-mail. Living without e-mail would incur the same pain as losing your copy machine or computer. The technology is firmly rooted in our daily experience. Spam, like annoying telephone solicitor calls during dinner, will eventually be blocked.

In the meantime, continue with your e-mail marketing efforts, but ask yourself what value are you delivering to the recipient? Be prepared to go back to the drawing board, if necessary, to ensure that your message has been fine-tuned and made relevant for an impatient and time-deprived consumer whom e-mail has made angrier by the minute.