Be Engaging… and Compelling!

Over on the Media Post blog, David Baker has written an excellent piece encouraging marketers to make sure that they keep their email recipients engaged. He writes:

Look closely at the core reason customers entered your email program
and gave you permission to send them email in the first place, and
expect that opt in connection to last only so long before you have to
re-engage them or expand your email portfolio for this changing need.

Whenever I’ve investigated situations in which opt-in marketers have had their permission-based emails flagged with the "This is Spam" button, there are two main reasons: sending too much email, and not sending enough.

Second only to sending too much email ("email fatigue"), customers who haven’t heard from you in a long time are more likely to have forgotten that they gave you permission and to punish you for their forgetfulness! Building on this, I believe that making them remember you is good, but making them look forward to your messages is better.

Luckily, marketers have a secret weapon:
they are creative and resourceful.

In the privacy world, we’ve always known that consumers will give up a great deal of personal information for very little in return. Just recently, I watched an entire family write their names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses on slips of paper and slide them into the cracked-open window of a 2008 Jaguar XF parked near the food court of a shopping mall.

While the ultimate marketing value of that data is dubious, the lesson is clear: people will give valuable information in exchange for something as simple as a few moments to dream about winning a new car.

Making a compelling offer that keeps consumers compelled to receive and read your messages can be as simple as a discount code or as elaborate as a snazzy new ride. Regardless of what your creative vision comes up with, it should be something relevant to their relationship with you and enhances their impression of your brand.

For me the best examples come from the resorts in Las Vegas. Even if I’m not able to take advantage of their special offers, discounts, and event promotions, they are regularly compelling enough that I wouldn’t think of unsubscribing — much less clicking the "spam" button.

It’s difficult to know where to draw the line between keeping customers
engaged versus annoying them. Keeping consumers engaged is
important, but they’ll remember
you more fondly if you’re delivering something really compelling. Compelling email can be as much about improving and maintaining deliverability as it can be about making the sale.

So, to add to Dave’s message, and to mangle the great line from Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross: Always Be Compelling!

Last 5 posts by Ray Everett-Church

• On Deliverability and Censorship - December 9th, 2008