My inbox has a lot going on at one time. Interspersed are marketing messages that I have dubbed “noise”. Has anyone noticed that as the economy starts to slow, the amount of advertising emails have steadily increased? I am not a Direct Marketer by training but have in some regards become fully versed in Direct Marketing over the last eight years throughout my career.
While it is typically a smart move for organizations to hit the send button immediately when they start to feel the wheels of economic growth slow down, they are missing the obvious. If you are sending a 20% offer or some other ridiculous marketing message, so are your competitors. There is nothing differentiated in coupons and discount offers; in fact they at some point they hit the peak of “noise” that I refer to above. When e-commerce sites that don’t typically send messages send me “reminders” I just bow and shake my head. Don’t they see the diminishing return from saturation they are facing?
What about a creative email that checks in with the last purchase I made? For example a good subject line would be “Hey Tim, How is that blender working out for you?” or “We wanted to give you a few recipes to try with that new toaster oven”. See that is an email I would open- that is an email that would make me go, wow rather than trying to sell me something or entice me to buy more crap than I need there is value in having this in my inbox.
It is not limited to just email marketing- I see it in product offering on the web as well. Marketers, Product Managers, Brand Managers, Direct Marketers, whoever are losing focus on this vital piece of the business. They are no longer asking how you can make the offering mutually beneficial for both the organization and the consumer. See it’s in the consumption that success is defined not in the pure berating of the message.
For your enjoyment a recent Amazon email that added to the noise:
