I’ve got to admit, I don’t like spam. Not just professionally, it really gets my goat personally as well. It’s not that I’m a particularly sensitive soul when it comes to email communications, but I just don’t like being sent stuff I haven’t asked for. Ok, I acknowledge that most of the downright illegal and virus laden traffic is now being successfully filtered by the great work of the spam filtering businesses and ISP’s, so what’s left to Grinch about?

Email is a powerful marketing channel, and its superb revenue driving potential is now becoming widely acknowledged. Email hasn’t got to this position by itself, it has needed to be understood and strategies carefully put together by some pretty clever people to bring it to where it is today. Some recent DMA reports show that the public now acknowledge email as a marketing channel that provides value. In anyone’s book that’s an achievement, and it isn’t as if everyone is using the same strategies. However the similar thing about all the successful strategies is they are done well, with considerable thought and great execution. So in a channel that is going from strength to strength, why am I throwing my presents out of the sleigh about spammers?

The most fundamental practice and legal obligation regarding sending someone a marketing email, is that you need to have the person’s permission to do so. I’m not going to start splitting hairs about the pros and cons of opt in opt out etc, but it is pretty widely acknowledged that the person should know what they are signing up for. But that’s right isn’t it, you don’t want anyone on your list who doesn’t want to be there, right?

And if they unsubscribe, it means they want you to stop sending them emails; so you stop, because it would be crazy to carry on, wouldn’t it?

So… why have I been sent marketing emails from a company I’ve previously unsubscribed from, with text saying “we’d like you to subscribe to our newsletter”. No thank you. I’ve unsubscribed once – isn’t that enough? Someone even sent me an email Christmas card that automatically signed me up to marketing emails!

Those are two examples from a very limited sample size. It is possible I have been very unlucky, but it does demonstrate this issue exists. It wouldn’t take long for the trust that has been built up with the public over the last few years to be eroded. At a time when we should be encouraging as many subscribers to sign up to our email communications, playing fast and loose with email permission is not the way forward. New European legislation threatens to make permission and data use more of an issue for the online marketer, we need to develop the public’s trust, not damage it.

With the revenue driving potential of the channel, it is easy to see how some could be tempted to go against the express wishes of their customers, in an attempt to drive a few extra sales. But in doing so marketers must consider the cost to their reputation.

Okay, that might be a bit harsh. Perhaps the resolution should be: “I resolve to stop and take a breath before hitting the ‘Send’ button.” Maybe it is because we all spent a bit too much time in that strange place called Christmasland during December but there were some very high (and a lot of very low) profile errors during December that could have been easily avoided.

Starting with the high profile, the New York Times accidentally offered more than 8.6 million people a half-price subscription in an email meant for a few hundred, because they sent it to the wrong list (http://bit.ly/uHerov). It is one thing to send an email to the wrong list when it is about the same size as the one intended, but to be off by a factor of 10,000…!

Another much lower profile (in the sense that The Guardian did not write an article about it) but potentially just as damaging case occurred to a client who sent an email with some broken links and images. After the obligatory call to both Support and his account manager, we discovered that the client had sent a test message. Now you are probably asking yourself what we asked the client: “If you noticed that the links and images were broken in the test message, why did you send the email to your customers?” The answer was delivered without embarrassment or acknowledgement of the obvious: “We were under time pressure to get it out.”

So, for 2012 I ask all email marketers to do the following before each email Send:

1. Ask a colleague who did not help you write the email to proofread it. If a colleague is not available, use spouses, partners, the postman, or even English-speaking baristas.
2. Send a test message to a number of accounts on a number of platforms.
3. Go into each test message and make sure it looks as you intended.
4. On one of the test messages click on all of the links and make sure they go to the page you intended.
5. Think about the list you are going to use for the campaign and without looking at it write down the number of people you expect to receive the email on a piece of paper. This part is important because by writing it down, you will be less tempted to look at the number and convince yourself that it is right and you are wrong.
6. Now look at the stats for the list; are the numbers similar?
7. If you really want to be sure, pull a couple of random recipients out of the list to see if based on your segmentation you would expect them to receive the email.
8. Go make a cup of tea to give your brain a few minutes to catch your pending mistake.
9. Send your email.

I should also add that you should make sure you monitor the stats for your campaign while it runs its natural course but that is probably a separate resolution.

Early this year the DMA’s Legal and Best Practice hub and I published a whitepaper on Email Creative. It was never meant as a definitive guide to creating great email campaigns but more a collection of ideas to consider during the design process. The world of email is constantly changing both from the sender and the recipient’s perspective and as such we always need to be adapting how we design our emails for the best results. A template that worked well last Christmas may not achieve the same results this year, although that may not all be down to the creative.

The way in which people read their emails has evolved. New browsers, desktop clients and mobile devices are always being released along with upgrades to existing readers. Subtle changes can make a big difference in way your email is received by your audience. Since Apple launched the iPad the tablet market has rocketed and more people than ever are reading their email on a tablet. Why carry your laptop when you are travelling when a lightweight tablet will do the trick ?

We are seeing more evidence that the first open for many emails is on a mobile device. This may not be the only device they view the email on but could be the most important. Whether they can delete your email from their mobile device and never see it again or whether it will still be in their inbox on their desktop really depends on their email setup. In the B2C marketplace many users will only ever read their email on a mobile device and might never access their email from a desktop.

It’s also worth remembering that the timing of your emails can greatly affect the device used to read it as well as the length of time you have to grab the recipients attention. An email sent early in the morning might catch people on the way to work. They could be on a bus/tram/train and reading their emails on a mobile device. The chances are they have more time to read emails that might normally just get deleted if it were to arrive in their inbox on their desktop.

You can use historical data to get a good overview of how your recipients are reading your emails and what tools they are using. This will give you a better idea on which areas to focus your attention when designing your email.

In the past ISP’s have been keen to limit what you can do within the content of an email in an attempt to give the user increased confidence about their inbox security. Now users are demanding more functionality in their emails and ISP’s such as Hotmail and Yahoo are expanding what you can do. Hotmail has Active Views and dynamic content is the next step. Embedded video in email is now also a real possibility. This new functionality can really enhance your email but to use it you need to have a clear understand of who your audience are.

Having said all this, some of the principle of good email creative will always be the same.

1.  Test ! Test ! and Test again

Decide on what you want to achieve from the campaign and using these metrics to create a testing plan to get the best from your campaign. Use split testing to compare different options.

2.  Design and Content

Think about the images you use and keep your calls to action clear even when images aren’t displayed. Validate your html to make sure there are no mistakes.

3.  Rendering

Preview your email in as many different clients as possible focusing on the clients you expect your clients to be using.  You want to give the recipient the best possible experience whether on desktop or mobile.

4.  Personalisation

The aim of personalising a message is to demonstrate you know and understand enough about the recipient and their interests to have deduced that your email is relevant to them.

5.  Relevance

Segment your data to make the content more relevant to the indiviual. Take a look at the DMA whitepaper The Guide to Segmenting your Emails.

A couple of weeks ago, before I flew to the States and entered into a turkey-induced coma, I shared with you some thoughts on five ways email marketing is thriving in a “mocial” world.  Well, as we all well know “thriving” doesn’t come without its fair share of challenges or effort. So, in that vein, here’s a look at five key challenges email marketing faces to stay relevant in a world intertwined with mobile, social and local marketing.

1. Focus on Deepening Relationships. The most savvy email marketers are adopting the long-held belief that email marketing is best suited as a relationship medium. Email programmes today are about adding more depth to customer relationships and expanding connections that already exist with the brand.  Use social media to create buzz and expand brand awareness. Use email to carry that first interest through the customer life cycle.

2. Design and Test for Multiple Devices. Email marketers face a design and testing conundrum with a myriad of new devices on the market. In fact, by the close of 2011, more than forty new tablet devices will have been introduced to the global market.  Email marketers need to make sure their messages are not only readable across of these different platforms and devices, but optimised for that experience.

3. Trigger Messages Based on Behaviour. Focusing on triggered and transactional communications allows email marketing to deliver an experience that can never be replicated in social media.  Real-time, behaviour-based communications triggered by a purchase, product shipment, event registration, etc. allow email marketers to connect with consumers with relevant information times precisely to the consumers interests.

4. Integrate Well with Mobile and Social. In order for email to thrive in this new world, it cannot live in isolation. Integration with social media for opt-ins is a must. And, design and optimisation for mobile devices is also critical.

5. Concise Messages and Focused Design is Key. Each month it becomes less likely that your email message is being read on a PC with a large, bright 19” display. Not only because Apple’s market share is growing along with monitor sizes – but because consumers and prospects are increasingly using mobile devices to triage and manage their inbox on the move.  The content, layout, and design of email messages needs to adapt to be more scannable, actionable, and designed for a touch experience.

The beauty of email marketing is that it never stagnates. Ever. The technology, practices and content strategy behind winning email marketing programmes is continuously evolving, and so long as it does, I believe email marketing has a bright and productive place in the marketing mix.  For now, we have a lot of work ahead of us to adapt our programmes to thrive in this new, Mocial world.  Let’s get started.

I’ve been hearing the phrase email cadence a lot lately and its sometimes been confused with frequency. So let’s look at how frequency and cadence differ and how to set them.

Ring-ring

If you’ve not heard a traditional UK phone ring it sounds like this

That’s a rhythmic pattern of 0.4s ring, 0.2s silence, 0.4s ring, 2s silence, which then repeats.

The cadence is the rhythmic repeating pattern and the frequency is how often it repeats. In this case the frequency is once every 3 seconds.

What does this mean in terms of email marketing?

Often there are several independent streams of email activity running concurrently and these different streams beat together to form the cadence.

Take a scenario of an offers email being sent every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, a newsletter email on the second Thursday in the month and a tips email every Tuesday, then the individual frequencies are monthly for the newsletter and weekly for the tips. The timeline for all activity is shown below (offers in blue, tips in red and newsletter green bars).

The same pattern of emails or cadence is repeated every four weeks, so the overall frequency is every four weeks.

If you have automated sequences of triggered emails for welcome, post purchase, abandoned basket and so on then these are overlaid too.

Setting a contact policy

When setting your contact policy for cadence and frequency think about:

• Setting a minimum time between emails.
• Setting a maximum time between emails.
• Prioritisation or suppressing scheduled sends during triggered sequences.
• Set many emails on average per month are received per customer.

Having a contact policy like this also means that you can set a clear expectation at time of signup, which will reduce spam complaints and improve deliverability. Daily emails need not be an issue, if that is the expectation.

Make it a user preference?

Should you offer individualised contact policies as a user preference? I don’t believe it always makes sense and this will be the topic of my next post.

Acknowledgements: My thanks to @jvanrijn as it was my recent conversation with Jordie that persuaded me there was value in writing this article.

One of the contentions that surround email marketing at the moment is the issue of when you retire an email address. Leading up to Christmas, when the heat is on, ambitious sales targets tempt even cautious marketers to push out the boat and send to everyone. If an email list is causing deliverability issues, it is quite common for a bit of a clean up to be suggested. It’s not a “stab in the dark” strategy, because when used correctly it can lead to a net increase in response and revenue.

However, you cannot ignore, when retired email addresses are mailed, they often produce some revenue. This almost flies in the face of the no response/retirement strategy, but in reality, some fine tuning is in order to squeeze all the value from your list.

To deal with this issue properly, you will certainly need response (sales) data for your customers, and need to know which email addresses the data relates too. In most instances the full picture of your list can only be achieved through wider knowledge of the customer.

All too often, the most responsive customers are the ones who have been opening and clicking your emails recently. But it’s also important to segment those who are no longer interested, from those that have disengaged from your emails due to a higher contact frequency than their needs require.

The first stage of the solution should be test the differing frequency of those people who haven’t opened or clicked for a while. Although a 6 month open/click window might be fine for some businesses, it might not suit those businesses with a longer sales cycle or a wider range of buying frequency. In these instances, sending mailings for twelve months or even longer might be better, but proper testing should help you decide when a customer is signalling defection.

If you have transactional data, you can use the principles of RFM (Recency, Frequency and Monetary value) to build up a model which predicts your most responsive customers. In an ideal world you could marry up the purchase RFM data alongside the online engagement data, to see the point where Recency for online engagement (opens/clicks/visits) signals a lapsed customer.

Using email response data, we create two segments, those that are recently engaged, and those that are not (don’t throw any away yet!). The engaged segment can carry on receiving the main campaign emails at the normal frequency. The less engaged segment now gets a rest (for about three to four times the normal frequency of you campaign emails). So if you generally send weekly, rest this segment for a month.

What we are trying to do is identify a segment within the email database that has stopped responding to emails due to a mailing frequency that is too high for them. By responding to the users behaviour, you are able to make changes to the email frequency of this group.

If people from this lower frequency segment, respond, it is important that they don’t go straight back into the main campaign mailing frequency, but give them more of a rest between mailings.

What we are trying to do is to start down the road of mailing people at a frequency that suits them, keeping them engaged and encouraging them to buy more. Managing frequency is the easiest way to respond to behaviour (or lack of it) but if you have more resource, you could try content too. One of the other top reasons why people stop opening emails, is that the emails are no longer relevant to them. The difficultly with content relevance, is that it relies on a deeper customer knowledge, or web behaviour data.

Unfortunately there will be those email addresses in the list that despite your best efforts will never be responsive again. So, at some point you will have to bite the bullet and let these addressees go. It is important to accept that the damage that is done to the whole email programme (in the shape of poor inbox deliverability and reduction in response) will outweigh any extra revenue gained by mailing these inactive email addresses.

The four key eCommerce marketing trigger emails are; welcome, transaction confirmation, basket abandoned and ratings/review request. Of course there are other opportunities for trigger emails such as Birthday, back in stock emails, win-back and more, however those first four emails are the key emails to put in place before any others.

Here I’m looking at the ratings and review request email. Social proof ratings and reviews have become essential in eCommerce, Reevoo benchmark the average sales uplift due to reviews at 18%. The natural human instinct is to value the opinion of others. My six year old daughter demonstrated this to me. I’d pulled up a page of Nintendo games for her to look at. A few seconds later she exclaimed how one had four stars and another 284 comments. I hadn’t explained social proof or reviews to her and I’m sure its not something taught at school. She seemed to naturally ‘get it’.

A very effective way to build the necessary ratings and reviews is to send a post purchase request email. When Argos implemented such a practice they found 10% of their customers provided a review. If you consider how many purchases you have then 10% is quickly going to add up to a lot of reviews.

The following charts show two ratings examples are from Reevoo:

Which review would you find more persuasive? If you are like most people it will be the one on the right.

The most interesting point about these two bar charts is that they are for the same product. The only difference was reviews for the chart on the right were proactively requested by means of a post purchase email. By asking there is a difference in not only quantity of reviews but the number of positive reviews.

This difference is easily explained. If not asked for feedback, only the less satisfied customers are likely to make the effort to find out how to make a rating and provide it.

Here are some tips for a good review request email.

• The reivew request email should be sent a few days after the customer has experienced the product or service. This should be enough time that they have developed their opinion and not so long that the enjoyment of the new purchase has passed.

• The email subject line and body should reference the item purchased.

• The copy should be short and clear with a well positioned call to action button.

• The process to provide review should be quick and easy. A simple star rating could be collected right from within the email using images for each of one to five stars. That’s easy.

• Avoid clutter that could distract from the review request.

• Remind the customer of your normal support and service channels. If they are not happy, you will want to know directly rather than have a poor review.

ClickZ recently posted this model for ROI calculation of reviews and user generated content and in the last dotMailer ‘Hitting the Mark’ report only 48% of companies studied sent any sort of post purchase email. There is clearly opportunity for many to improve their bottom line.

Oh, and yes I did end up buying the Nintendo games for my daugther that she picked out from the ratings.

There’s no doubt there is a change afoot in the email marketing industry. Despite  all the best practice mantras (“must segment more”, “this year we won’t look like spammers”)  it is becoming plainly clear there is a divide growing between those who have stuck to their New Year resolutions and those who have not. Email is becoming the strongest digital media channel deployed by the modern marketer, but to make the most of it, you need to know more than how to push the “spam now” button.

The email channel has arrived with many businesses now acknowledging the importance of the channel to their business model. But despite the importance of the media, there has not been uniform treatment when allocating budgets..

This has been borne out in the recent DMA email benchmark report, that concluded there are “two classes of email marketer; those sending simple campaigns and those splitting lists into multiple segments” concluding ”A major divide has opened”.

The “haves” and the “have nots”

The latest Marketing Sherpa email benchmark report backed up this class system, but seemed to suggested the reason for lack of budget was due to some marketers not being able to justify (or measure) overall ROI. It also suggested that the segment of marketers who were investing liberally were in a “strategic phase of maturity” where they could measure ROI and segment effectively.  Unfortunately the research also revealed only 36% of the companies surveyed measure response by list segment and just33% measure revenue per email .

So it would seem that those organisations investing heavily in email marketing, are those that are best able to measure its ROI and effectiveness, and are best placed to know is value. So, how do you get your email marketing to the strategic phase? And what moves can be made to pitch for extra budget to drive the revenue the email channel can really generate?

Measure email’s influence across multiple channels

Trying to convince the board to allocate more budget to a media that is cheap, that you don’t need to invest much money in to get a return, is tough.

As email marketers, we’ve probably all sat round tables where we have discussed spikes in call centre activity and website traffic following an email campaign. The problem is proving these increases in activity come from email. If these revenue streams are not attributed to email (at least in some part), the budget for developing the media further will never be available.

So, mirroring the findings of the Marketing Sherpa report, if you want achieve more budget for your email campaigns, you need to make sure you are measuring its true value.

The value of Influence

I know it’s a bit of a contentious subject in some circles, but the value of email communication moves far beyond the last bit of revenue that was attributed to the last email sent (and last click). it’s the measurement of that value that provides the greatest challenge for the modern marketer. Over the last couple of years I have noticed that when you directly relate a person’s revenue value, against their open and click behaviour, they relate very closely. So closely in fact, that in some instances 80% of online and offline sales will come from the customers who are regularly and recently opening and clicking your emails. An interesting thought; this means someone who opens and clicks an email, is worth more than one who doesn’t. Factor that one into the equation when working out the value of your email list, and you soon see the people who open and click emails are worth far more than those that don’t (10+ times the value is not uncommon).

Segmenting for Influence

If the recipient is reading your emails, they can be influenced. If they can be influenced, you can encourage them to buy more. And that’s the important difference; if you are only attributing last click revenue to the email channel, it will be reflected in a restricted budget. If you can attribute email’s influence on overall sales, you are more likely to get the money to achieve the greatest returns from email.

Why is this important now?

Thanks to the global economic slowdown, there will be less money in the customer’s pockets and the fight for conversion will be a tough one. Thanks to channel migration, (offline to online) online sales have been growing for several years, sometimes in the face of reducing overall sales.  This growth cannot continue and soon it will be back to the slog of battle for market share. Email will be a key weapon in the marketer’s armoury and your strategy and tactics will either be pulling customers from your competitors or they will be pushing them the other way.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Karin Von Abrams’s* perspective of the DMA benchmark report;

“Time, effort and insight can partially compensate for lack of financial resources. But companies that don’t find either time or money to devote to their email campaigns may soon face the consequences. It probably won’t be too pleasant at the bottom of a two-tier email marketplace.”

*Karin Von Abrams, Senior Analyst, eMarketer

As a consultant on the vendor side of the email marketing industry, I spend a considerable amount of time working with clients to create strategies for solving their email challenges. Whether those challenges are related to attribution, creative templates, acquisition, deliverability or any of the other numerous practices and processes the client is looking to optimise, they almost always impact the client where it hurts the most: revenue and return on investment.

More often than not, the solution for solving the client’s pain – barring any serious sender reputation issues – involves creating a strategy for relevancy. In other words: how to send the right message to the right subscriber at the right time. This includes demonstrating value through the email channel and sending messages that subscribers anticipate and appreciate. Sound like a big ask? It certainly can be, and that’s why it’s especially pleasing to see marketers getting it right. Sephora, the international cosmetics and beauty retailer, does just that with their email program.

Here are some of the best practices they have implemented:

• Showing value with a loyalty program. Sephora offers subscribers access to their “Beauty Insider” program. The incentive to sign-up is to collect points through the purchase process and redeem them for perks, including free samples and a free birthday gift. Their best customers are considered “V.I.B.s” or “Very Important Beauty Insiders.” The email program helps to promote and support the rewards of being a Beauty Insider by using special creative to recognize V.I.B. email subscribers and offering access to exclusive online content, free gifts, invitations to special events and the ability to preview new products before they are launched.
• Sending triggered messages. Sephora sends one of the best post-purchase triggered messages I’ve seen. Two weeks after I visited one of their New York City stores I received an email asking me to rate my purchases. It included images of the actual products I bought and a call-to-action to write a review or rank the product with a star rating. The customised landing page also allows subscribers to enter their comments and upload a photo or a video of themselves using the product. A form at the bottom of the page collects additional data points about the subscriber, including eye colour and skin tone.
• Incorporating useful content. While Sephora’s email program is primarily promotional in nature, their messages still include a lot of useful and relevant content for subscribers. Emails often feature products that are grouped into relevant categories, like beauty problem areas (dry skin, bad hair days, etc.), or include content about new beauty trends, makeover advice or how-to videos for perfecting various looks or techniques. Even small snippets of content help to ensure the messages are relevant for subscribers who aren’t in market to make a purchase at that time, but are still looking for beauty advice and information. In addition, every message includes a link to their “Beauty Talk Community” page where subscribers can submit questions, get expert advice and share comments.
• Collecting preferences and use them. Sephora has a detailed preference center that collects information about everything from a subscriber’s skin type, eye colour, and hair colour and type, to beauty concerns and favourite types of perfume. This information is regularly used to target offers and content. To encourage subscribers to submit their preferences, a triggered message is sent asking for information and explaining why taking the time to enter it will benefit the subscriber’s experience with the brand.

As an email subscriber, I genuinely value the messages I receive from Sephora. I’ve even marked them as “important” in my Gmail Priority Inbox, an action many marketers are increasingly looking for their subscribers to take. As a consultant, I’m impressed with their strategic approach to email marketing. While I don’t know the exact amount of revenue that the email channel generates for Sephora, I would assume it’s pretty substantial. Their subscriber-centric and data-focused approach to email marketing clearly illustrates the value of implementing best-in-class practices, and I consider that to be a beautiful thing.

Google recently announced it is to close the long running Google Friends newsletter. Launching in 1998, whilst Google was still on Stanford’s servers it has been delivered monthly. That is until now. From next month, the newsletter will cease to exist because subscriber numbers had stalled. But a wider look at Google suggests it doesn’t pay much attention to using email as a channel to communicate with its users.

First, lets take a quick look at the Google Friends newsletter.

Google outgrew this newsletter a long time ago. Each month, the newsletter provided a mix of tips and news across Google’s vast array of products. One month it was Google Toolbar, a Daily puzzle, Google Docs, Earth Day and a power tip for Google Map Maker. Another month it was a power tip on Google Voice and news on Google Places, Youtube, Google Translate and a Doodle for Google contest.

Unless you were interested in everything Google, this newsletter was not for you.

There are perhaps a small niche of people that might like the vast array of news updates across the whole of Google. Given the size of Google, and Larry Page’s new more autonomous business unit approach. Collating and combining these centrally may just have become too expensive versus the benefits. Of course these are their most ardent fans, so ignoring them is an interesting approach.

Overall though, Google’s approach to email is scattered and unorganised at best.

Google pushes out a huge amount of information, highly targeted not just by product but also by country. You can find the full list here, it is truly impressive in scale. You can subscribe to receive this information via Twitter, Facebook, RSS and (of course) Google Buzz! Surprisingly there is no mention of email at all. Given the scale of email (3.1 billion email accounts – click for more stats), its ability to remind users of your products/features and persistently store your message so you can come back to it, not promoting email subscriptions seems like a lost opportunity. Sure, it can be misused but so can all channels.

Relying on Twitter or Facebook for Google updates can easily lead to missed updates as unless I spend all day watching for their updates (not likely!) or proactively remember to visit their profiles on these network, Google is merely hoping I catch their updates in my newsfeeds.  Further you cannot search the Facebook newsfeed at all and searching  Twitter only results in tweets going back a few days.

Subscribing via RSS is an option for me as I am a heavy RSS user, but the usage numbers are low generally especially with a mainstream audience. So low in fact, that the last metric I can find on RSS numbers is from 2005. A rather tiny 275m wordwide.

Finally there is Google Buzz! Is anyone still using Google Buzz?

So where is email? It is there, but to find it you have to click through on some of the blog links where you will sometimes bring up the option of subscribing via email. There is obviously no standardised approach to this. The Blogger buzz blog had it in the right sidebar, the Google Analytics blog doesn’t have it anywhere. It is hit and miss based on the template used.

Email is different.
Different channels offer different benefits. Twitter and Facebook are great for offering casual connections to brands. Brands you really want to hear from? Not so good. For those situations, email is the right tool for the job.

If you are spending all that time creating content, getting in front of as many people who want to read it would seem to be a good thing. People can always unsubscribe. Google even provides that service inside Gmail.