Why Customers Are Declaring “E-Mail Bankruptcy” — and Why Engagement is One Answer
By Tom Chandler on Jun 15, 2007 in Engagement Marketing, e-Mail
Everyone knows that sinking feeling; you return from a vacation only to find several bazillion e-mails clogging your inbox, or an RRS reader so jammed it would take a dozen of you to clear it before your next vacation.
As related by Debbie Weil in the Guardian, Fred Wilson handled the situation the same way many of us do — by declaring “bankruptcy.”
After earlier proclaiming that he had over 2,000 unread emails, he wrote: “I am so far behind on email that I am declaring bankruptcy.
“If you’ve sent me an email (and you aren’t my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again.
“I am starting over.”
Like any participant in the Age of Overload, I understand the urge. As a marketer, I find it worrying.
Are the e-mail lists and RSS feeds we worked so hard to build simply disappearing into the aether? Are our readers “declaring bankruptcy?”
Engage, Don’t Interrupt.
Constantly vyying for the attention of customers is an uphill battle. That’s why loyalty is fast becoming the focus of so much activity in marketing departments — and why engagement marketing is coming to the fore.
Engaged readers don’t delete your e-mails and RSS feeds — they seek them out.
That’s because Engagement Marketing isn’t about “cutting through the clutter.” It’s about creating an affinity for your brand based on your customer’s values and passions. Appeal to those, and your e-mails and RSS feeds are fare more likely to get special treatment next time bankruptcy is declared.
(This also highlights the need to implement RSS feeds, which are less likely to be “deleted” en masse.)
The constant warfare between “Spam” and a user’s Inbox also adds to your burden. A poorly defended address can consume many hundreds of unwanted emails in a very short time.
If the recipint is a conspicious overconsumer of RSS feeds, the result will be unwanted and unmanagable.
From the technical perspective, Spam filtration devices are used on almost every enterprise firewall. Both valid and unwanted email can be “bounced” due to the spam engine used; keyword based, hueristics, etc.
RSS is an electronic feed, and is subject to the same filtration.
Human-based mail can be resent if a filter rejects the prior post, RSS will not be resent, as there is no human monitoring the “send” to see it bounce back from the destination.
Mail administrators cannot even scratch the surface of the activity a small enterprise generates. In my case, 4000 permanent employees generate (both send/recieve) one million messages a week.
In short, RSS marketers may need to consider that an aggressive message may vanish at the firewall, with no one to mourn its passing.
kbarton10 | Jun 17, 2007 | Reply
Kbarton: Thanks for the comment, and the perspective.
From the marketing end of things, RSS feeds still represent an as-yet unspammed channel to customers, though admittedly it’s a one-way trip.
Deliverability is quite high, especially if the target is using an online feed aggregator (like Google Reader or Bloglines).
Still, with spam filters becoming ever-more-aggressive to deal with a tidal wave of spam, I’m wondering if I won’t be using GoogleTalk to communicate more in the future.
Tom Chandler | Jun 18, 2007 | Reply