2010: The Year We Make (Relevant) Contact
Posted by Dave McCue on January 1st, 2010
The film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2010 came with the sub-title “The Year We Make Contact.” Human space travel may not have advanced to the extent Clarke imagined when he published the novel in 1982, but the way humans make contact in the real 2010 certainly would have seemed like science fiction all the same.
Remember the home telephone? Remember writing letters, or simply paying bills through the mail? Remember having to actually speak to someone if you wanted to order a pizza? Technological advancements have replaced these things for a large number of people.
To say communication has changed over the first decade of this new millennium would be an enormous understatement and the speed at which it continues to develop is incredible, to say nothing of how widespread that adoption has been. At no time in history has the gap between the tech-savvy and the rest of the population changed so rapidly.
For email marketers, this represents a tremendous challenge. 10 years ago, the general public was not nearly as well-versed in the ways of online communication as they are today. This comfort level has definitely changed the email marketing game—which, depending on your point of view, might not be such a bad thing.
In honor of the New Year, here are ‘10 characteristics of email recipients in 2010. If you’re an email marketer, it’s time to realize that you’re not sending to a bunch of web newbies anymore.
1) Cautious
As more and more inexperienced users gravitated toward the web in the last 10 years, more and more people found themselves at the wrong end of a variety of scams and other nasty business. This has caused many web users to take a very cautious approach to any unsolicited communication. If you just acquired a list of email addresses, stop and think about how many cautious recipients might be on that list—recipients who have conditioned themselves to Junk messages from unfamiliar senders. They aren’t trying to hurt you, they’re just trying to protect themselves.
2) Impatient
Gone are the days when it was a treat to have a new message waiting in your email inbox. Email users acquired more and more contacts as the years went by, leading many to a point where it was becoming nearly unmanageable. In situations like this, unsubscribing from irrelevant marketing messages is an easy way for recipients to shed some of the inbox baggage. This is why it’s important to treat every mailing as though it could make or break a subscriber relationship.
3) Social
Social media has changed the web from a collection of isolated user actions to an ongoing shared dialogue about anything and everything under the sun. Today’s email recipient is likely connected through a variety of outlets to individuals with similar backgrounds and interests. The type of targeted content that is likely to spark a recipient’s interest is the type of content they would be willing to share with their connections. Those connections could turn into future subscribers as a result.
4) Self-assured
Remember, you’re emailing to a collection of web users who took the question “What are you doing?” and turned it into a phenomenon. Today’s email recipient considers themself a valued individual—embrace this desire by letting subscribers define what type of content they would like to receive through a preference center. Giving recipients this level of control makes your segmentation efforts much more effective.
5) Willing
The web isn’t just a fun distraction anymore; for many, a large chunk of their day is spent online. There is a great willingness to engage with web content today, as it makes for a better experience than aimlessly surfing. Asking recipients to watch a 5-minute video or read a 10-page white paper isn’t too much of a commitment if the content is valuable. If the value isn’t there, recipients will quickly move onto something else.
6) On-the-go
Among the most important advancements of the past decade was the evolution of mobile phones with web access. Many email recipients are now getting their messages whether they’re out of the office or out of the country. Have you seen what your messages look like on a mobile device? Have you taken steps to optimize for these recipients, and/or offered an option to subscribe to a mobile version of your messages? Not all of your subscribers are viewing on a mobile device—yet. If you haven’t been thinking “on-the-go” with regards to your emails, start today.
7) Appreciative
With all of the annoying and/or dangerous email being sent over the years, subscribers appreciate when they’ve been sent a legitimate message that holds value for them. They’ll remain loyal as long as that same type of value holds true. Recipients see email as a WIIFM (*what’s in it for me?) relationship—too often marketers focus on the “what” (content) and forget about the “me” (recipient). Not every recipient appreciates the same things.
8) Organized
Email clients have come a long way in helping recipients manage their email messages. Some recipients already have your messages pre-filtered to be placed in a special folder upon receipt, which may or may not be a good thing. Reading emails has become a streamlined process as well, with preview panes and image suppression making it easy to quickly skim through messages. Grabbing these recipients’ attention is more difficult than ever.
9) Casual
Today’s email recipient is perfectly comfortable with an informal style, and in some cases will be turned off by a buttoned-up approach. A more engaging style of writing can add a human element to your messages that subscribers relate to.
10) Private
Email users are more concerned than ever with handing out personal information such as their email address. Subscribing to a mailing list is a display of trust on their part, which is why receiving an unexpected third-party mailing or seeing a substantial volume increase can be so disheartening. Earning subscribers trust is the hard part—losing that trust is easier than you might think. The security of your subscriber data, and using it wisely, is of paramount importance.
It’s a safe bet that your email recipients share at least some of these characteristics, and isn’t that a good thing? The best thing that can happen to email is for marketers to realize that the “batch and blast” approach of years ago simply isn’t going to fly anymore. Today’s recipient is a seasoned veteran of the online world, one who demands a higher standard of email communication. Your recipients simply don’t have the time or the patience for irrelevant, illegible, boring, suspicious, sneaky, lazy, one-size-fits-all email communications.
It’s a new decade, but people still want to be treated like people. Let that be your email rallying cry this year, and make relevant contact in 2010.
