SUBSCRIBERS RULE!

A Day of Email Marketing Rants

Rant All You Want, Just Please Leave the Hubcaps

There must be something in the water today because some bright email marketing folks are dabbling in some good, ol’ fashioned rants against worst-practice emailers.

First up, the cuddly curmudgeon of email marketing himself, the Honorable Ken Magill.  In his article for DIRECT Magazine today, he declares that “Opt-In Is Dead,” and then proceeds to unleash a tsunami of wisdom on those who proclaim to honor permission when they do anything but. According to Ken:

The term opt-in has become utterly meaningless. And marketers made it that way. Everyone who’s got an e-mail list says it’s opted-in no matter how their file was built. These days, the term rolls off marketers’ tongues like “best-of-breed,” “core competency” and “paradigm shift.”

But Ken doesn’t stop there:

What’s more, “opt-in e-mail list” should be redundant. A company shouldn’t have to claim its list is permission based. It simply should be.

Amen, brother!  Your SUBSCRIBERS RULE! foam hand is in the mail.

The other rant that caught my attention today came from long-time FoET (Friend of ExactTarget), Jason Baer, the CEO of Convince & Convert out in Phoenix.  In his post, “Is Email Killing Your Company,” Jason rails against marketers who view email as a short-term rather than long-term investment.

I know your boss or your client is starting to freak out, and is prodding you to hit the email list again and again in a withering attempt to generate some sort of revenue in an historically bleak period.

But email isn’t a short-term tactic. It’s a forever tactic. Like a butcher in a small town, you need to use your email program to create customers for life, not for this week. In combination with your customer experience, your email and social media programs can turn transactional customers into brand ambassadors. But too many companies are squandering years of email goodwill that they may never recapture.

Double amen!  Don’t use the current economic climate as an excuse to squander subscriber relations.  Now’s the time to become more subscriber-centric, not less.  After all, those subscribers are the ones who will likely help your company weather the storm.

For more from Ken Magill, be sure to subscribe to his Magilla Marketing column.  For more from Jason Baer, be sure to follow him on Twitter (@jaybaer) and subscribe to the Convince & Convert blog.  I’m sure there are more insightful and inspirational rants to come from both.

Attention Kmart Subscribers…

While I’m usually more of a Tarjay guy when it comes to big box shopping, I found myself dropping into my local Kmart this past week to pick up a few items and peruse their vast assortment of post-Halloween discount candies.  Normally, this experience wouldn’t be blog worthy; however, this visit was different.  THIS visit, upon reaching the cashier with my items, I was hit with the following wall of sound:

HelloandwelcometoKmartwouldyouliketoreceive$10incouponstodayallyou
havetodoissignuptoreceiveouremailupdatesmayIsignyouuprightnow?

Kmart's email opt-in C.T.A. at P.O.P., FYI.

Unable to decipher what I had just been asked (but clearly aware that it was a question), I stood dumbfounded for a moment until my eye caught the bright red sign next to me.  Ah-ha!  She was asking if I wanted to opt-in to their email program in exchange for $10 in coupons.

“No, thank you,” I replied, and the cashier immediately when to task two on her mental checklist — scanning my items for purchase.

Of course, a normal person would have gone on their merry way, forgetting all about this exchange.  Not me.  I’ve been mulling that transaction over and over again because it highlights one of the most critical components of any point-of-sale email acquisition program — YOUR PEOPLE.

You see, Kmart did most everything right here:

1. They posted a sign at check-out touting the benefits of email opt-in.
2. They included a strong incentive ($10 in coupons) for the opt-in.
3. They added the email opt-in call-to-action to the cashier’s checkout script.

Ultimately, what Kmart could not control was the delivery of that script.  Instead of a warm, engaging, “Wow, you really should sign up for this — it’s a great deal” conversation, I received a monotone, run-on question that left me struggling to understand what I was even being asked to do.  The net impression is that this question was clearly something that the cashier was required to ask but not something that she cared about or even remotely understood.

As previously discussed, had this been one of Gary Vaynerchuk’s employees, they would have likely found themselves on the unemployment line.  Each employee at Wine Library is trained not only on how to ask for the customer’s email address but also on WHY THAT EMAIL ADDRESS IS IMPORTANT TO THE COMPANY.  Forget to ask once or twice with the right enthusiasm, Gary may give you call — but that third time, you’ll be looking for a new gig.

Could Kmart do this?  Should they do this?  Feel free to share your thoughts.

One thing is for sure.  Kmart’s investment in point-of-sale signage and opt-in incentives indicates that they place at least a $10 value on each subscribers email address.  If my cashier generated fewer opt-ins because of her poor delivery, she could be costing the company hundreds of dollars each and every shift.

Yes, Kmart may have 1,500 stores while Wine Library has one.  That fact is exactly why it is even more imperative that Kmart and other big box retailers verify that their opt-in message is getting delivered effectively at point-of-sale — they stand to gain (or lose) far more due to the volume of their business.

Think of it this way, if Kmart would fire an employee for outright theft, shouldn’t they at least consider doing the same for an employee who consistently underperforms his or her peers at capturing opt-ins?

I’m just sayin’.

Despair Not, Email Copywriters

God love Despair.com.  Dr. E.L. Kersten’s crew comes up with some of the funniest t-shirts & lithographs in the world, and today is no exception.  Their new Points of View t-shirt is a classic, and, of course, I learned about it from one of their opt-in emails.

If your eyes are going, you can check out the larger image here.

And for all you email copywriters out there who are looking for ways to connect with your subscribers, be sure to look at what Despair.com is doing.  Each email builds upon their humorous, snarky persona in such a way that it demands to be read–if for nothing else than a laugh.

Granted, it’s not an approach that will work for everyone, but when you feel like a real person is behind the message, you tend to respond in ways far beyond what dry sales copy can deliver.

And yes, I am one of those who sees the glass as half full.