E Mail From Hell

With the proliferation of email, I find, and I am sure that you do as well, that our email mailboxes are stuffed every morning. In fact, even our spam boxes are filled with hundreds of unwanted emails that have to be cleared out. A bit of a pain, but we put up with it. Billions of emails are now floating out there in cyberspace, ready to hit your PC every micro-second.

So what's a government to do with all the complaints of "unwanted" or "spam" email. Easy, just a question of time before the government does what governments always do; they will tax email distribution or charge a fee for it. Think how that will help to DECREASE the deficit. Not! I guess there will soon be a US Department of Special Emailing Taxation that will be funded by the tax. The tax won't do anything, but it will make the lawyers happy because they will have another issue to litigate. No doubt, it will impact the big guys that send out 100,000 or more emails a day, but it will impact us too. Just a question of time, my friends, just a question of time.

But, and here is what mass email proliferation means for us; the honest email marketer, just trying to personally and economically communicate with people who gave us permission. It jades our customers. It makes them suspicious. It makes our business, the email provider, equally suspicious. Consumers will ask, "is it real or is it spam"? Consumers really don't remember who they gave permission to any more and as a result "open rates" on emails are less than 10%. LESS THAN 10%. (Some reports show email open rates at less than 5%) If you think this number is exaggerated, think about all the emails you deleter every day!

So, if you are counting on your email as a substitute for more traditional forms of advertising, you may be miscounting.

The fact is, a consistently layered approach that adds social networking, direct mail, postcards, letters, as well as radio and or cable TV (by the way because of the recession, media rates have gotten less expensive)to your marketing program is really the only way to go if you want the kinds of results you deserve!

If you want some creative solutions to these issues, give me a jingle at 212 867 2577 or my cell @ 516 359 4874 or comment or email me.

I won't hit the delete key.