Most of us have been there. We’ve seen the email in our inbox from an unexpected party with a deal we might just love. We click the link, expecting perhaps a short video, an offer, or at least an update on where our friend is travelling. Instead, we get pitched commercial emails from brands we don’t remember registering with, and sometimes, these emails are so interminable, we give up and hit the delete button.
If your email client is anything like mine, you’ll know how frustrating it is when you’re trying to read an article or view a video online and suddenly, you’re interrupted by a pitch from a brand that you’ve previously had no association with. Your correspondent’s safety might even be at risk. You can imagine how dangerous it would be if a brand can gain your trust, entice you into an irrelevant conversation, and then, send you an email that appears to be from a friend, but is actually an ad or piece of malware.
What would happen, if you decided to ignore those annoying emails from your mail client? Well, you might find that some brands get less annoying. Some of them even stop sending unsolicited emails once you indicate that you’re not interested in their products.
I’ve been in that place. It’s called ‘bulk marketing’ and it’s a plague on our inboxes. We’re bombarded with offers, discounts, and special deals from our friends, family, and acquaintances, all trying to get us to buy their stuff. And it’s often so unsolicited, that it feels like a scam.
If you’re reading this, chances are, you’ve already experienced some of the downsides of bulk marketing emails. Maybe you’ve even resorted to using a tool like MailChimp to flag messages as’spam’ and hide them from view. Or you may have decided to just delete all those unwanted emails without even opening them.
But why bother? Why not just block out the email addresses of those brands when you create your contacts? You might get rid of a lot of unwanted emails, but you’ll also stop receiving any useful updates from friends and family. That’s why we keep coming back for more. Because sometimes, those useful updates are from brands we like. And when we do open them, it’s like reopening an old friend’s cardigan and finding a small family photo inside.
An Unwanted Christmas Present
One of the first major annoyances that come with bulk marketing emails is the content itself. When you get a deal from a brand you like, you’re happy to see them. But when you get an unwanted Christmas present from a brand you’ve never heard of, you might just curse the holiday season. This year, I received an email that was an attachment filled with malware, from a brand that I’d never even considered associating with before. Luckily, my email client is super-safe and I was able to delete the malware before it did any damage. But just the fact that I’d opened the attachment, worried me. I mean, who gets a random, unwanted attachment from a brand they’ve never heard of, that they’re not expecting?
Product Variety
When you get a deal from a brand you like, you’re usually presented with just one option, or at the very least, a small selection. When you get an email that’s full of offers from multiple brands, you’re in for a bit of a headache. First of all, you have to open each message and confirm that you want to purchase the product or service that it’s promoting. Then, you have to click through to the retailers’ sites, one by one, to make your purchase. It’s a pain.
Delivery Channels
If you receive an offer through your email, you’ll usually find that it comes with some conditions, such as ordering a certain number of units, or receiving free shipping. But when you get a deal that requires you to click through multiple websites to make your purchase, you have to consider how you’ll pay for your delivery. Most of us are all too aware of the pitfalls of online shopping and the security risks that come along with it. If you decide to go ahead with the purchase, you’ll have to find a way to make the payment. This part might feel a little daunting, especially if you’ve never made a purchase online, or if the deal is exceptionally good.
Overhead
When you’re in the business of selling something, you have to make sure that you cover your costs. In my situation, I have to pay for the storage of all those items that I purchase from brands that I dislike. In the future, I won’t feel bad about deleting those emails, because I know that they’re taking up valuable space and cluttering up my inbox. But until then, I have to make sure that I’m not sabotaging my own business by letting these costs get out of hand. So in order to combat spam, I have to pay for the storage of all those unwanted emails. It’s a vicious circle. But once again, why bother? Why not just block out those emails’ addresses when you create your contacts? You might get rid of a lot of unsolicited emails, but you’ll also stop receiving any useful information from your contacts, if you do decide to keep them. So it’s a lose-lose situation. Better to just block out the emails than risk your own personal data, or that of your subscribers.
If you’re a business owner, or the owner of a company that sends out commercial emails, you might be wondering how to stop the influx of spam into your inbox. There are a few things that you can do, beyond just blocking out the offending emails. You can work on tightening up your content, making it more relevant to your audience. You can also take advantage of the fact that many people avoid sending emails with certain words in the subject line, or those that come from unfamiliar brands. If you want to cut down on the amount of spam that you receive, consider doing some of the following things.
Create Relevant Content
Your customers will only spend as much time with your content as you allow them to. Meaning, if you want to increase the time that they spend engaged with your content, create relevant, valuable content that will keep them coming back for more. Email marketing is all about providing interesting, engaging content to attract and retain subscribers. So, to put it simply, create content that will make your subscribers come back for more.
Use Marketing Automation
Marketing automation, or software that does the marketing work for you, takes the drudgery out of repetitive tasks, so that you can focus on more important things. You can use a tool like MailChimp, which many businesses use, to create automated emails that will draw leads, engage customers, and drive growth.
Personalize Your Content
Your customers are humans, too. And just like us, they have different interests, needs, and desires. Which is why content that’s personalized, based on their past purchases, downloads, or website visits, will attract and engage them better than generic content ever could. To put it simply, don’t just send out mass emails – send out individualized emails, that will encourage your subscribers to engage with you.
Optimize For Mobile
Thanks to the evolution of the internet, and the mobile revolution, more and more people are accessing the web from their smartphones and tablets. This puts the onus on content creators, like us, to ensure that our content looks good, and functions well, on smaller screens.
Since much of the content that you receive through email will be dictated to you by marketing automation software, you have the opportunity to make sure that it looks good and functions well on any device. Review it for mobile usability, test it on different devices, and make sure that it looks good on as many as you can. Then, you’ll be able to maximize the reach of your content, across all platforms.
To help ensure that your content looks good and functions well on different devices, consider using tools like Google’s Material Design, which makes creating a responsive website or app much easier. As a content creator, this is a must. Your content might not look the same on a laptop, as it does on a smartphone. And to ensure that it looks good on whatever device that your audience is using, make sure that you test it, throughout the different stages of the copywriting process.