Everyone hates unsolicited commercial email, or ?spam? as it is more commonly known, writes Robin Houghton. And yet the reasons to use email as a marketing tool are compelling:
? response rates up to ten times higher than traditional direct mail
? easy to compile and send
? low cost
? measurable results
? immediate, personal and targeted
It is not surprising that more and more arts organisations are bringing email into the marketing mix. It is easy to manage in-house from a PC, but what many people neglect to consider is what their email communications really say about them. As a communication medium, email is still new, but it feels dangerously familiar. How risky can it be to send a few hundred emails to a targeted, reputably sourced list after all? We?re not sending a message to millions of people, we?re not peddling snake oil and we?re not passing on a virus. So the worst that can happen is that the recipient will simply delete it. Right? Wrong.
The sending of commercial email, even if undertaken by a non-profit organisation, is fraught with legal, ethical and best practice issues. An ill-judged emailing impacts not just that campaign, but the reputation of the sender. Later this year in October, many current best practices in email and SMS marketing will be crystallised under UK law as the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Commerce (DPEC). The objective is to penalise the serious spammers ? although it will have little effect on the mountain of spam received from outside the EU. Many legitimate UK marketers, however, will have to clean up their act.
The growth of spam has hit crisis proportions ? soon the UK will catch up with the US, where spam is now estimated to account for more than 50% of all emails sent. Contrary to gloomy predictions, this junk explosion doesn?t signal the death of email. Rather, it offers an opportunity for ethical email marketers to set themselves apart from the dross, earn the trust of their audiences and benefit from the long-term loyalty this builds.
Guidelines for ethical email marketing include:
? Send email only to home-grown, opt-in lists.
? Use email primarily as a relationship management tool, not a customer acquisition tool.
? Make the most of email?s unique qualities ? its immediacy, its intimacy, the opportunity to solicit feedback, the ability to precisely target recipients and customise content, the ability to measure click-throughs and subsequent actions, the ability to manage delivery times and formats, the opportunity to reach a wider audience through word-of-mouth.
? Be scrupulously compliant with forthcoming DPEC legislation.
The mantra of ethical email is ?permission, trust and respect? ? all difficult to obtain but very easy to lose. There is a high degree of intolerance when it comes to junk email. It is a very personal medium, and it is not free ? there is a cost to the ISP delivering the email, which is ultimately passed on to recipients. There is also a global cost of choked-up bandwidth, paid for by all Internet users.
Most importantly, the definition of spam lies purely with the recipient ? if they haven?t asked you to email them, then you may well be viewed in the same light as the snake oil salesmen.
Robin Houghton is a marketing consultant to small business and non-profit organisations, specialising in the Internet. t: 01273 472489; e: robin@robinhoughton.com; w: http://www.robinhoughton.com
The EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Commerce (DPEC) was adopted on July 12 2002 and requires implementation in member states by October 31 2003. Full details are at the DTI w: http://www.dti.gov.uk/industries/ecommunications/
Another useful address is for the European Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email: w: http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/index.html