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 Minnesota Technology
Fall / Winter 2003
Here’s a new twist on an old joke: What’s black, white, and read all over?
No, it’s not a newspaper. In this era, the better answer is e-mail. The ubiquitous form of communication has increasingly become one of the most common means of reaching the masses. Statistics, however fleeting, suggest that at least 31 billion e-mails are sent each day. A huge number of those are of the marketing variety, many sent in earnest by legitimate companies hoping to reach legitimate customers.
Unfortunately, e-mail marketing often gets a bad name because of spam, the profile electronic form of junk mail that clutters every inbox on the Internet. Indeed, an estimated 40 percent of all e-mails sent daily is considered to be spam: unsolicited advertisements for mortgage loans, office supplies, and any number of other products or services. But despite the often questionable offers their messages sometimes get lumped with, many companies still choose to use e-mail to communicate with their customers.
“It’s sort of the lowest common denominator,” says Jan Hepola, an Internet/e-business specialist with Minnesota Technology, Inc. “We all, in our personal lives and in our business lives, have a general understanding of e-mail and how to use it. It seems logical that we might be able to use it in other ways.”
The logic extends beyond just a general knowledge. E-mail marketing is appealing to companies for several other reasons: It’s cheap, it’s fast, and it’s easy to implement. When done right, it can be an exceptional tool for reaching customer, sharing information, and establishing brand recognition. When done wrong, however, it can be relegated to the ranks of spam.
The challenge, then, is to do it right.
Doing it right
It isn’t hard to isolate why e-mail marketing campaigns are attractive. First and formost, they’re extremely inexpensive compared to other marketing avenues. They’re relatively easy to implement, either on your own or with the help of an Internet marketing firm. They come with built-in mechanisms for measuring success. And they reach an audience that businesses are increasingly trying to target – young people who may not necessarily be affluent but who are technically savvy enough to appreciate online offers.
Reaching the right audience is the first key to success in an e-mail marketing effort. Buying an e-mail list may be the easiest route, but it is far less effective than building your own. “Responsible companies send e-mails based on the premise that they have established a valid reason to communicate with those recipients,” says Mike Anders, president of Systems Consulting Group, a St. Paul-based IT consulting that specializes in e-mail and Web-based marketing. “It’s called opt-in marketing: Those people who have opted to receive some type of communication from that company.”
Of course, building an opt-in list isn’t easy. Companies need to not only ask for a customer’s e-mail address, but also for their permission to send regular e-mails. Taking the time to do that can seem slow and laborious, but it can also stave off a spamming reputation in the long run.
“Start asking for e-mail addresses from your customers,” Hepola advises. “Talk to your sales people about trying to gather the information. But you have to be clear about what you are going to do with that address. Clearly state how you’re going to use it, how often you’re going to use it, and the content of what you’ll be sending. And then follow it and make sure your entire staff follows it.”
Even the most faithful adherents to that doctrine won’t see results unless the recipients actually open the e-mails. Getting them to do so requires a big-picture mentality that encompasses everything from the subject line to the format of the e-mail itself.
“There are lots of tricks,” says John Harnett, CEO of Blue Missile, an Edina-based Web design and development firm that helps its clients construct digital marketing campaigns. “Some of them are the same tricks copywriters have known for years. You have to make every piece of the e-mail work – from the return address to the subject line to the firs sentence of the e-mail.”
Specifics, Hartnett says, are better than generalizations. Not only will “Great Offer For You” in the subject line set off a recipient’s spam sensors, but it will also do little to capture his or her attention. A subject line that says “Half Off on Microsoft Word,” however, might earn the click of a mouse. “We try to be very specific, which really runs contrary to what the spam blasters do, “ Hartnett says. “We try to be concrete and specific in every piece of the e-mail.”
Setting concrete objectives helps too. “If you’re going to do an e-mail campaign, you have the know what your goal is first. That will determine everything you do from there on out,” Hepola says, adding that specificity is once again the key. “Be as specific as you can about what customer you’re trying to reach and about what action you want the customer to take.”
“Success depends on what you’re trying to accomplish,” adds Jeff Hahn, CEO of Internet Exposure, a Minneapolis-based Web development firm. “If you’re going to a base you’re already familiar with, the goal might not be sales but branding. For some companies, it’s a goodwill attempt, a chance to say, ‘We’re still here, this is a service we offer, and we’re here if you need us.’ It can be a very good branding tool.”
Although actual sales may be easier to track than brand loyalty, Hahn suggests other ways to gauge success. “You can measure it by the number of subscribers you’re able to maintain, or by the number of recipients who didn’t immediately move [the e-mai] to the delete box,” he says. The system his company offers, known as GoPromote, as well as most other system, can tell how many e-mails were opened, how many bounce back, and how many were blocked by spam filters.
“If you sent 10,000 messages, you can know that 1,000 people have opened them so far, that 300 have been bounced back, and that another 200 have been blocked” he says. “The next time you use that list, you know which 9,500 were good addresses and which 500 were bad.”
Beating the blockers
Losing a percentage of your messages to spam filters comes with the e-mail-marketing terrain. Anything that looks, acts, or reads like spam is a threat to Internet security, and most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have built filters into their systems to keep it out of mailboxes. They have to do that; spam, which is randomly sent to millions of addresses at once, can shut down servers, infuriate users and adversely affect an ISP’s business.
“You have to protect your users, but you also have to protect yourself,” says Luke Lucas, manager for Syntegra U.S. Messaging and Directory Software Development, which has developed anti-spam solution for such carriers as AT&T Wireless. “Those mail floods will clog up the service and have the potential to take the servers down. AT&T has to protect its own business, and its ability to deliver the service.”
But even Lucas admits that identifying spam is an inexact science. “When we look at the question of what is spam, we consider it to be any message that is considered destructive to the delivery of the messaging system, or any message that is undesirable form the point of view of the recipient,” he says. “It’s hard to look at any given message and say definitively, “This is spam.’”
Spam filters use different clues to weed out offensive messages from legitimate mail, but some characteristics almost always raise red flags:
- Subjects in all caps
- The word “free” in the subject
- Unknown return addresses
Many servers block certain “undesirable” sources in general because the reputation they’ve earned as spammers.
“There are trick we use to get around being seen as spam,” Hartnett says. “We make it as personal as possible. We avoid using the keywords, like ‘special free diet pill for you.’ We make each one from a specific person.”
Still, it’s not a perfect science. “The same tricks I have to use to separate myself from spammers are the tricks spammers are using to get around the blockers,” he admits. “I don’t know what the solution is.”
Kris Carvey, a sales manager with Minneapolis-based ISP Visi.com, can’t offer much help. Visi.com is compelled to block spam not only by its customers but also by the mainframe providers it works through. “There is no good way to do an e-mail marketing campaign,” she says. “Especially if you’re going to a new customer base. No matter what you do, it will be perceived as spam. It’s like telemarketing, when you call new customers. Most people hate it.”
It’s easier, she concedes, if you’re targeting a group that has opted in to your campaign. “Going to an existing base is easier,” she says. “We do that ourselves – we have opt-in e-mail lists that customers have requested to be on so we can send out announcements and outage information. But even with that, you’re going to have people who get mad.
“I totally understand why people want to do it,” she adds. “It’s quick, easy, and inexpensive. But a few bad apples ruin it for everyone. The legitimate businesses, the ones trying to get leads and make new customers, get screwed. But we have to stop serving e-mails that might be considered spam. We can’t be part of that.”
Certain businesses obviously have on desire to be part of it either. Established brands sometimes have more to lose that gain with an e-mail campaign. “Companies that do have a tremendous brand value – known organizations, and you know who they are – will not risk their brand value, which is critically important to them, by executing a drummed-up spam campaign to the public,” says Systems Consulting Group’s Anders. “Those companies do not use e-mail.”
Still others do get a lot of mileage out of e-mail campaigns. Hartnett says that many of Blue Missile’s clients are smaller businesses. “These are companies that don’t have big advertising budgets to begin with,” he says. “For many of our clients, this is a first run at marketing. Many haven’t run a campaign at all before. So this is an inexpensive way for them to start doing some advertising.”
Hahn likewise says that his clients are often smaller companies or organizations with specific goals in mind: a local bad that uses e-mail to announce upcoming gigs, for example, and ad agencies that send tips of the month to clients via e-mail. “Our clients usually come to us inquiring about doing an e-mail campaign,” he says, “and the first thing they want to know is, ‘How do I use e-mail without being seen as a spammer?’”
Fine Tuning
The challenges of mounting e-mail marketing campaigns will likely only grow as the distaste for spam also grows. But no one sees it going away as a viable avenue for legitimate businesses. Instead, both providers and marketers see it becoming a more perfected craft. “I’m not worried about it going away,” Hartnett says. “If you’re doing it right, it’s only one piece of your overall marketing campaign. A good business should have a comprehensive plan; an e-mail campaign is only part of that.”
And although the costs of e-mail campaigns may start going up slightly as spam filters become more troublesome, Hahn doesn’t see that as a barrier. “I don’t think it will be a significant difference,” he says. “This is just a changing business environment, and that is something we all need to face. We all need to realize that we have to be more careful about how we do thing.”
“It’s an art, not a science.” Anders adds. “Of course you can overdo it, but that’s not the way people who are successful at using e-mail look at it. They see it as a long-term process of building and nurturing a relationship – and then not abusing that relationship. That’s the golden rule.
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