From CBIA News, April 2001

E-mail marketing basics

There are good reasons to make e-mail a part of your marketing effort, but beware of the pitfalls

By Chris Amorosino

Free-lance writer in Unionville

Companies large and small now use electronic mail to market their products and services. While there are compelling reasons to make e-mail a part of your marketing effort, you should be wary of the pitfalls.

A huge opportunity

“E-mail marketing is a huge opportunity for small and midsize businesses,” says Terri C. Albert, Ph.D., a marketing professor at the University of Hartford’s Barney School of Business. “It really does level the playing field between large and small companies.”

E-Mail Vision, a company that specializes in e-mail marketing, says the average response rate from opt-in e-mail is 18%, compared with 1% for Web-site banner ads and 2% for direct mail. Opt-in, or permission, e-mail is e-mail the receiver has signed up for and can easily choose to stop receiving at any time.

Faster, more targeted, cheaper

Compared with direct mail and other types of marketing, e-mail allows your business to better target and track marketing campaign results. The speed at which you can send out a message and get a response is another advantage. “You can reach 5,000 people in 10 minutes with e-mail,” says Erik Blazynski, owner of Sherpa Technologies, a West Hartford company dedicated to maximizing its clients’ profitability on the Internet. And, if you’re communicating with your own customers or with your own targeted list, e-mail is usually less costly than regular mail. 

E-mail also makes it easy to change or adjust your message in midstream to improve effectiveness. Perhaps e-mail’s greatest power is its ability to allow you to have a personal, meaningful conversation with individual customers. But, that leads into what may be e-mail marketing’s biggest pitfall: privacy concerns.

Some pitfalls 

Albert cites privacy as the biggest negative, particularly in business-to-consumer marketing. She points out that consumers have said contradictory things. They’ve told marketers not to send messages that don’t apply to them. But consumers have also said they don’t want marketers to know too much about them. Highly personalized e-mail can cross the privacy line and turn consumers off. 

“E-mail has incredible potential,” says Lisa Zaccheo, senior vice president and managing director of Cronin & Company, an advertising agency in Glastonbury. “I just don’t think all the bumps in the road have been worked out. It still needs refinement. It can arouse suspicion and annoyance in consumers,” she says, “due to the fear of viruses as well as concerns about privacy and security. E-mails are often deleted unread as a result.” 

Another disadvantage of e-mail that Zaccheo cites is the lack of a visual element. Marketing without pictures and graphic design heightens the need for a compelling word message.

Check your list

Blazynski and Albert both caution against using a poor e-mail list. Some lists may not be targeted to your audience, or the people on the list may not have granted permission for their e-mail address to be sold to marketers. Albert advises that before you buy a list, check the privacy statement the company gave to its customers. A list from a company that has specifically informed people and gotten them to approve the distribution of their names and e-mail addresses is much stronger than one that requires people to check a box if they don’t want their name used. 

Using such a permission-based, or opt-in, list assures that your e-mail won’t be considered “spam” or UCE (unsolicited commercial e-mail). You don’t want to flood prospects with unwanted messages. You do want to reach a targeted list of customers who’ve already expressed an interest in your type of product or service. Zaccheo, Blazynski and Albert all recommend that you provide an easy way for people to choose to stop receiving any future e-mails. 

But the Achilles’ heel of e-mail marketing, according to Albert, is fulfillment. Don’t jump into the fray unless you have the systems and procedures for effectively handling all e-mail responses. Internet users expect quick responses. Also remember that the Internet is worldwide, and even if you take precautions, you’re likely to end up with some requests from people outside the United States — which presents another whole set of issues to consider, such as the potential for taxation and legal jurisdiction disputes. (For more on these issues, see the December 2000 CBIA News article “World of e-business: Whose rules rule in this uncharted territory?” at www.cbia.com/NewsCovers/cov1200.htm. “The big winners in e-mail marketing will be those companies that build superior online customer service operations,” says Albert. 

Related article:

E-mail marketing checklist

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