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S T R AT E G I C F O R C E S Using Email to Persuade M ore and more organizations are using email as a means to persuade existing and potential customers to buy their products. Since email marketing is a relatively new field, rules have not been written in stone. However, marketers are learning how to use email effectively with various audiences. To gain desired attention from customers, email messages must be carefully timed to arrive when they will gain the most attention. Overmessaging can be annoying, while under-messaging may cause the company to miss potential sales opportunities. The subject line is of utmost importance, as it must catch the attention of the reader and create a desire to learn more. Other guidelines for developing effective persuasive appeal include the following:1 쎲 Personalize the message by using the recipient’s name in the copy. Overuse of this strategy can be annoying, however. 쎲 Use a graphical design with careful use of color and images to add visual appeal. 쎲 Use targeted email as a twostep process; do not attempt to generate a sale directly from the message, but encourage the reader to go to the company website, call, or visit a store location. 쎲 Entice recipient to learn more about an offer; provide links to sites of possible interest. 쎲 Allow for easy sharing of information with others by providing for easy forwarding or sending of a link to the site to a friend. 쎲 Keep the message as short as possible, while adequately explaining the offer. 쎲 Include means to be removed from the distribution list, ensuring that only interested parties continue to receive emailings. E-commerce marketers such as Ticketmaster, eBags, and Victoria’s Secret use email communications to acquire new customers, increase sales, notify customers of promotions and services, and, most importantly, develop and nurture an ongoing dialogue and relationship with their customers. Many marketers provide an incentive such as premiums or award points to reward their target audience for reading the content of the email. The newest extension of email marketing—cell phone marketing— offers wide advertising possibilities in exchange for prizes, free ringtones, and other incentives. Marketers are challenged to overcome the resistance of 80 percent of mobile users who are adamant about not wanting to receive phone ads.2 1 Sweeney, T. (2000, May). Email marketing set to take off. Credit Union Management, 8. 2 Now playing on your cell phone; Advertisers are jumping on the mobile marketing bandwagon. Will subscribers join them? (2006, March 24). Business Week Online, p. NA. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2006/tc20060324_684493. htm?chanⴝsearch © 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. S T R AT E G I C F O R C E S Permission-Based Email Becoming Marketing Standard A nyone with an email address has been intruded upon by the junk email deluge known as spam. Companies that use this low-cost form of direct communication do so at the risk of damaging their reputation and incurring the wrath of consumers and the Internet community at large. Unsolicited email also yields very few results, since most Internet users don’t even read it. While public perception may still be that email marketing and spam are one and the same, times and practices are changing. Unsolicited commercial email may be taboo, but permission-based (opt-in) email has become popular. Increasingly, consumers are being asked directly for their permission by companies who want to market to them. Permission marketing places the power in the hands of the consumer, who can opt out of a campaign at any time with the click of a mouse or end the emails by clicking on the opt-out feature located in the message. Firing the popularity of permissionbased email marketing is the fact that it eliminates about 60 percent of the expenses of traditional direct mail. An additional benefit is a higher response rate from email as compared with traditional contact means. Contact is also much quicker, with 90 percent of email responses arriving within the first 48 hours of a communication versus the weeks that are typical before receiving traditional direct mail responses. Perhaps the greatest advantage, however, is the flexibility that email provides. Never before have markets had the ability to quickly, easily, and inexpensively tailor messages to individual customers or groups of customers— from special discounts for frequent buyers to birthday greetings and sales announcements for preferred items.1 Organizations that are successfully using opt-in email contacts recognize that an individual’s email box is very private space. Contacts are generally not asked for too much information at the sign-up point since they would likely be scared off. People are also more selfish than ever with their time, and with good reason. Companies attract their opt-in email subscribers in a variety of ways:2 쎲 Running contests or sweepstakes on the company website so that users must submit their email addresses to enter. The company asks permission to place them on the email list and the kind of information they would like to receive. 쎲 Developing special news alerts around subscribers’ areas of interest. 쎲 Offering those who sign up unique benefits they can’t receive elsewhere, such as special product discounts. 쎲 Encouraging recipients to pass along the usage to interested friends. From the consumers’ point of view, their ability to control what they want and don’t want is key to effective permission marketing. Customers choose which websites they want to visit and what messages they want to receive. The traditional approach—“interruption marketing”—relies on grabbing the attention of consumers while they are doing something else, such as watching television, reading a newspaper, or eating dinner. Permission marketing, on the other hand, delivers ads that can be read when the customer chooses. 1 Furger, R. (2000, April). E-mail’s second shot. Upside, 160–168. Patton, C., & London, D. (2000, May 8). How to create rent effective opt-in e-mail lists. B to B, 44. 2 © 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.