One of my clients is focused heavily on e-mailing his customers.  However, it is only part of the equation.  Consumers are increasingly online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Yes, they are still checking e-mails but they are also on Facebook, Twitter and blogs. 

It used to be that the question was direct mail or e-mail?  Now the question is not what channel to use but rather which channels to leverage.  The direct marketing strategy needs to consider traditional direct channels, such as e-mail and direct mail, as well as social networking sites.  The need for integration of branding and messaging has become even more important as consumers have a multitude of ways to learn about your company and its products and services. 

The other challenge with the plethora of channels that have evolved is that consumers are bombarded with information.  Some are abandoning their e-mail accounts because they are overwhelmed by their inboxes.  Others ignore their inboxes in favor of communication channels they control.  I don’t bother sending my sister e-mails anymore because they disappear into the black hole that is her inbox.  However, she will respond instantaneously to a text message and will e-mail me on occasion, when it is the best channel for her to communicate with me.   

As marketers, we need to go where our customers are and offer them relevant and honest information.

Let’s face it. It takes time and patience to develop a good e-mail subscriber list. First, you have to make it easy for individuals to add and update their e-mail addresses. Second, every time you e-mail them, you run the risk that they might unsubscribe. Third, maintaining the e-mail list requires that you clean the file (e.g., remove hard bounces), e-mail frequently to keep subscribers engaged and send targeted, timely and relevant e-mails.

 It is not surprising then that I am routinely asked about purchasing e-mail addresses. My standard answer is to be prepared to pay a lot and to get few responses relative to your investment. A recent Limeduck post illustrates what can happen when you purchase e-mail addresses.

Direct mail marketers face several challenges. First and foremost, they get no respect. Almost everyone refers to direct mail as junk mail and many think it is bad for the environment. Second, their business has been negatively affected by the current economic conditions. The credit card companies who were responsible for mountains of solicitations have fallen on hard times and reduced their mail volume. Third, e-mail is replacing some direct mail as it is cheaper and offers the same measurability as direct mail. And now there is news of Postal Service carriers who did not deliver the mail entrusted to them.

According to a recent Associated Press article, one Postal Service carrier stored third class mail in his garage for six years. He was placed on probation and fined $3,000 but an e-mail marketing firm, MailChimp, paid the penalty. AP reported that Ben Chestnut of MailChimp said, “We’re doing everything we can to stop junk mail.”

If you have been reading Limeduck like I have, you might have read about a Rockport print ad showing shoes that are not available for purchase.  As I noted on that website, this has happened before.  In a Marketing class several years ago, my professor showed a television ad featuring a car that could not be purchased.  As you can imagine, consumers saw the car and went to their local dealerships looking for that car only to learn that it wasn’t available.  Given that high profile mistake, I am surprised that Rockport made the same gaffe.

And yet, just today I received an e-mail that I wanted to share.  In an earlier post, I talked about how some e-mail programs do not load images.  This was in the context of measuring the open rate of an e-mail.  However, the fact that some e-mail software turns images off by default also affects the look and feel of an e-mail.  Here’s what the e-mail looked like:

In the image above, pictures have been replaced by boxes featuring red squares, blue triangles and green circles.  All of the time spent crafting a beautifully designed e-mail is lost if recipients cannot quickly read about the offer(s) and easily engage with the e-mail. I certainly did not bother to display the images in this e-mail.