Time for effective Opt-in e-marketing has come!

E-mail is a very popular marketing communications support. Because of the low costs per contact and direct measurable results, this medium is nowadays more frequently used. But do consumers want to receive all those e-mails? As analysed and concluded in Merkle’s new rapport ‘View from the inbox’, it is clear that their behaviour and attitude towards this e-support keeps changing.

These days, mailboxes are becoming overloaded with marketing messages. If companies want to be effective, they should choose for a permission based or ‘opt-in’ approach, where receivers subscribe themselves on e-mail messages.

After a gain in 2007, time spend on permissive mails stabilised in 2008. 59% of all e-mail users spends at least 20 minutes on permission e-mails each week, and even over one-quarter more than an hour. This makes that opt-in e-mails take a quarter of all time spend on e-mails, after communicating with friends and family.

This research also reported an inverse relationship between the most valued e-mail types and the amount of e-mails which consumers receive. The most interesting e-mail subjects are transaction related confirmations and account summaries. The quantity in which they are received is low, in contrary to the amount of less interesting permission e-mails like news alerts and offers.


The biggest reasons to choose opt-out of e-mail messages is the lack of relevance (cited by 75%) and too frequent sending (73%). These problems are mostly associated with promotional e-mails because of being too intrusive. 55% of these e-mails are even deleted without opening!

Although there was just a small increase of respondents checking their e-mails on mobile phones (11%), the percentage of checking permissive e-mails mobile increased with 5% compared to 2007.

With these research conclusions, companies have to stay alert when using opt-in e-mails. Customers are becoming more aware of this marketing technique. Slightly over half of the respondents are less willing to subscribed themselves for e-mail communications now then a few years ago. But like the report shows, when using opt-in messages well, this can be a great communications and marketing support.


References

6Minutes (n. d.) 'Opt-in' best choice for e-mail marketing [online] available from [18 March 2009]

Loechner J. (n. d.) Opt-In Email next best after family and friends [online] available from [13 March 2009]