When Email Communication Moves Out of the Box
Posted by Dave McCue on October 13th, 2009
Does your email marketing program operate inside a vacuum? Sure, you might give recipients the option to reply directly to your messages or provide a reason when they choose to unsubscribe, but more and more online communication is taking place outside of standard email. Are you turning a deaf ear?
While email remains an immensely popular communication tool, many users prefer to communicate using a combination of tools; social media and instant messaging among them (the interest surrounding Google Wave is largely due to its ability to consolidate these different communication tools into a single interface). Email marketers often talk about the importance of “engagement,” but their recipients’ definition of the term will keep changing along with their preferences.
For example, I get frustrated when I reply directly to a marketing message with a question and receive nothing in the way of a response—or worse, an automated message telling me my message would not be read. So, to avoid that headache, I’ve recently tried using Twitter to respond back to senders instead.
The first sender was Wrigleyville.com, a website that promotes happenings around the Wrigleyville neighborhood in Chicago near Wrigley Field. I received an email announcing a new partnership between the site and a new coupon website called the Daily Dinger. Apparently, some kinks were still being worked out, because I received the same message three times over the course of a few hours. There was a link on the email to the MyWrigleyville Twitter page, so I decided to send them a message on Twitter mentioning a possible issue. I received no response at all.
I tried the same approach shortly after in response to a message I received from Eventful.com. I had registered on the site the previous weekend, but did not expressly opt-in to any mailing lists. When I received a marketing message, I checked out my preferences and noticed that the opt-in boxes for quite a few mailing lists had been pre-checked. A little miffed, I posted an update on Twitter directed at the Eventful account. Shortly after, I received a reply on Twitter, complete with the email address of an Eventful representative who said he would unsubscribe me if I contacted him. I was able to contact him directly and offer some opt-in tips that might help reduce complaints, which he seemed thankful for.
In each of these cases, I operated under the assumption that an organization communicating with me through one medium would be just as likely to communicate with me through a different medium. As social media use continues to rise, and tools such as Wave begin to spring up, marketers will have less and less ability to dictate the realm in which these conversations take place as email recipients may choose to communicate with senders in other ways.
These days, what begins as an email could take the sender-recipient conversation down any number of paths—and isn’t that a good thing? After all, it’s the engagement you’re looking for, how you get there is less important. Lose the tunnel vision, and get ready to communicate outside the (in)box.
