In December we conducted our Annual E-Mail Attitudes Research to establish how general consumer attitudes to email have changed in the last year. We expected to see change in email perception, especially given the growing feeling that control of content is the entitlement of the masses, however, what we received back from the research was a resounding confirmation that consumers expect a lot more from e-mail as a marketing channel.
The research made it apparent that the momentum which had been building for several years with the advent of sites like Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, finally reached a critical mass of enthusiasm for the power of the individual over content.
At e-Dialog we have been consistently advocating the importance of preference when it comes to sharing relevant content with your customer base, and engaging with them on as many touch points on the customer life cycle as possible. To the extent we’ve begun to feel like a broken record.
As one of my colleagues, Luke Griffiths, discussed in an article on the results, our E-Mail Attitudes Survey confirmed that those brands that continue to send generic communications risk alienating consumers. 53 per cent of consumers would opt-in to a service which allows them to select the type of e-mail messages received from their preferred brands. This reveals that brands could be limiting the marketing potential of tactics such as “share-with-a-friend” (SWAF), by not giving them a choice over content.
This research also showed that not only has perceived relevance of marketing e-mails decreased over the past year, but consumers are actively removing themselves from mailing lists.
With a prediction of further sizeable increases in the volume of e-mails consumers receive, brands are going to have to work harder not just to gain the attention of the consumer, but even simply to ensure their marketing messages do not end up being discarded in the inbox.
17 per cent of those who feel that e-mail has become more relevant in the past year claim this is as a result of opting out of e-mails which are not of interest or that they no longer wish to receive. The implication of this is that where consumers have control over the frequency and type of e-mail they receive, engagement and interest increases. Clearly more research is needed to verify these results, but all indications are that the trend we are seeing in other channels applies to e-mail. Give consumers power over the content they receive and engagement will increase.

However, this in itself poses a challenge, as consumers are much less likely to give brands a chance to get it right if they are able to unsubscribe or alter their preferences after one or two inappropriate messages.

Something which all of us have really taken away from the results of this research has been that overlooking your customer’s right to chose will have a detrimental effect on the email marketing campaign. However, it needn’t be a time-consuming process to establish this. Customer preference can be easily collected through an online preference centre or customer outreach. If registration is required to access a service, then it is a simple process to collect a little more data at this stage. Giving the consumer control of e-mail frequency and content guarantees that they are receiving something they genuinely need and want.

This year’s research has clearly demonstrated that managing consumer preferences will provide the greatest challenges for marketers over the next year. However marketers have a huge opportunity to engage with consumers through an increased desire and propensity to share content and use different channels to interact with a brand.