Broadcast Email Dying.

Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by Simon Chen

The tone of the conversation with a few of our TaguchiMail clients is changing rapidly.

Let me point out that these folks are not new to email marketing. They’ve all got significant sized lists, they broadcast often and they understand email marketing well.

I think new words like “trigger-based email” and “push email” will start to become common-place with serious marketers. Maybe not new words as such, but a much higher level of importance.

The challenge with broadcast emails (where you simply send the same message to your whole database) is that conversion rates are slowly but surely on the decline. Assume that a marketer has a “call to action” offer within the email - then he/she will be happy with a conversion metric of anything north of 2%. And thats being generous.

We were recently in a conversation with a company who said that database growth wasn’t the priority - but database interactivity and engagement was. Which was interesting. It’s the first time I’ve actually heard someone want a higher focus on interactivity than raw database growth.

Being in the music industry, their database is fickle. Young. And changes tastes and their mood often. They want to be able to have the user decide what content they want. And when the want it. (Trigger based email, where based on certain “trigger-points”, content is pushed to them).

It makes perfect sense. But it is extremly difficult to pull off. Most companies either don’t have the technology or the resources to make it happen.

A lot of people we talk to simply roll their eyes when the conversation moves to “list segmentation” But this is where all the gold is.

If you have a large list - you simply have no choice but to break it down. Pull it apart. Analyse the hell out if it. I would also stop this nonsense of referring to your list by total size.

The only important metric is the active portion of your list.

For example, we have another client who has a list of around 70,000. But the active number is more like 10,000. The other 60,000 don’t count. They don’t respond. They don’t interract. In fact, what I’d do is simply write to them and let them know that their name is being removed unless they choose to stay. The inactive people on your list simply cloud the numbers too much and make it harder for segmentation to occur.

I’ve only seen one marketer do this - and do it well.

I’m convined “trigger based” email and “push email” is the way of the future. Broadcast email will become too ineffective. The spam filters are getting smarter, corporate firewalls are wound up tighter than a fishes bum and there’s a lot happening in the sender reputation and delivery efficiency areas. Email is far from dead - especially in the business market. But it is far from good. And change needs to happen.

Segmentation, throttle rate, and dynamic optimisation are some of the key reasons we went out and built TaguchiMail. It handles push based and trigger email easily.

My question is this though - if you have a list, are you courageous enough to remove the 90% who don’t do anything? Or do you still believe that there’s value in getting the “brand” out there with mass email marketing? (that noise in the background is me vomiting…)

Over to you.

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