By Jonathan Baker The strongest factor that connects a brand to a customer is communication. In the digital world, email is a very powerful form of communication. If you own a brand or business, please be sure to follow best practices when sending emails to your customers. The positive power of email As stated, email is a very powerful way to communicate, especially between brands and consumers. And that power can either make or break a customer relationship. On the positive side, studies show that email ranks in first place as the marketing tool to attracting and keeping customers. If deployed carelessly or without consideration of what customers want, that positive power will shift to… The negative power of email At the other end of the spectrum, email also ranks first—at 35 percent—as the “most irritating channel” of marketing materials, that too many users receive too often, according to studies reported this past April in Media Post. (And that percentage is likely increasing.) Customers and prospects have the power Disgruntled customers and prospects will choose to unsubscribe or opt out from receiving unwanted emails. Too many businesses, however, don’t properly oversee their email databases and still send deployments that wind up undelivered. These businesses pay the price for not paying attention to their databases. (Be prepared.) Undelivered emails equal unbelievable costs Recent studies concluded that undelivered emails tallied to a cost of $59.5 billion per year for brands operating in the United States. A checklist that includes factors such as poor or damaged sender reputation, email security, spam, inconsistent deployments, and—as listed above—overall poorly managed email services—combine to this beyond costly price. How to fight this? Know your customers and the emails they want—and don’t want—to receive People are barraged with emails daily, and very likely check the sender before clicking on the content. The importance of understanding if someone genuinely wants to check an email from your business cannot be overemphasized. If you send every promotion about every product or to every customer in your database, there is every possibility you will be unsubscribed. Marketing fatigue Are you familiar with the term, “marketing fatigue”? As its name suggests, this happens to customers who become overwhelmed by receiving way too many marketing messages—including emails. The Media Post article mentioned above references a report titled “2024 Optimove Report on Marketing Fatigue, Customer Perspectives.” This report presented some interesting findings… Further proof in percentages When it comes to receiving and clicking on marketing emails, 12 percent of customers are influenced by brand identity. After this, 19 percent are attracted by personalized content. The top motivator for opening an email, at 54 percent, is relevance. These customers want to click on an email because it offers a product or service that is relevant to them. Oh, and if customers get bombarded by emails… Unsubscribes are on the upswing Brands and businesses must know the specific email content their customers wish to receive. A general email blast is beyond harmful. Further statistics from Media Post reveal that 81 percent of customers will completely unsubscribe if they are inundated with unwanted marketing emails, and 54 percent have done so within a three-month period. And then there is the cost factor. New innovations in AI that are exclusively geared toward email, however, can change the above percentages. Now, AI can help with email AudiencePoint, a database company based in Tennessee, has released two artificial intelligence (AI) tools to maximize efficient email organization and delivery: Forest AI Engine helps engagement optimization. ListFit delivers customer inbox behaviors. As noted in another Media Post article, proper application of these new tools will improve predictive analysis, campaign performance, and personalized engagement, among other benefits. What to know To sum everything up, a brand’s email marketing practice can either attract and appeal to customers—or make them quit out and unsubscribe for good and never purchase from that brand again. The two best practices to apply when sending emails are: Be economical: Don’t wear out your brand’s welcome by deploying too many emails. Stay relevant: Know the different needs and tastes of the members of your email database and send content they will want to read. The EGC Group can help guide you in analyzing and segmenting your email database so that the right message is delivered to the right customers at the right time. Why not contact us to learn more?
