Josh Nason, one of our good friends at SendLabs (check these guys out) recently wrote a post about inbox exhaustion. Josh defined inbox exhaustion as "you send to your list way too much, wearing them out and causing them to unsubscribe or worse, file a spam complaint." If you haven't read their post, check it out!
Why is this whole concept of inbox exhaustion important to understand? One word: TRUST. Especially if you're a small business. These days, people expect to get bombarded by the big box stores with deals and offers. Most customers don't have a personal relationship with these businesses. They (customers) just want the next great discount from a place like Kohl's.
Small businesses, on the other hand, work very hard on a daily basis to build relationships with their customers to gain trust. Once you have a customer's trust, you work even harder to maintain that trust. You nurture that trust like you would nurture your own child. So avoiding inbox exhaustion in your small business email marketing strategy is all about nurturing your subscribers' trust to continue winning their business.
So, how can you tell if you're creating inbox exhaustion? And, more importantly, how can you mount a coordinated effort to stop it? Josh touched on these, but we want to drill them home. Here are 3 signs you've created inbox exhaustion and 3 strategies to combat this "disease".
3 Signs You've Created Inbox Exhaustion
- Steep decline in open rates - Many email marketers would argue that open rates are not a good KPI (key performance indicator) by which to measure email marketing success. Quite the contrary, especially when you're trying to determine if you've created inbox exhaustion. Keep a vigilant watch over your open rates for each campaign you send. If you've built your email marketing list organically (signup box at checkout, website signup, etc.), then it's reasonable, based on our experience working with clients, to expect to see open rates that exceed the "industry standard" of 15-20%. If you notice a steep decline in open rates across 2-3 email campaigns, that should be an immediate red flag that you've started to create inbox exhaustion.
- Steep increase in unsubscribe rates - This is as obvious as the nose on your face. If your subscribers are opting out faster than a cat runs away from water, you need to immediately stop sending campaigns on the "schedule" you've developed.
- Steep increase in spam complaints - Spam complaints are death in email marketing. The more spam complaints you get from subscribers, the quicker you will end up on the ISP (internet service provider) Black List. Once you've hit this list, you have a bigger fight on your hands than you can handle. You'll need to work with your ESP (email software provider) to work with the ISPs to get off the list. But, you can avoid this "near-death sentence" if you exercise good judgment from the start of your email communication efforts.
Ok, now you've identified inbox exhaustion in your email marketing strategy. Now, what can you do to start combating this disease? Here are 3 strategies you can deploy stat.
3 Email Marketing Strategies to Combat Inbox Exhaustion
- Focus on rebuilding your list - As people start to unsubscribe, you start seeing your database decrease in size. You're reaching less people with your email messages. All hands on deck. You need to develop a list building strategy to acquire new subscribers who are interested in your business/products/services. Check out our blog post for 3 easy tips to start collecting email addresses.
- Less IS more - First, stop sending email campaigns for a month. It's crazy, and some would argue it's a waste of time. Use the down time to regroup and create a schedule of when you're going to send your campaigns. We would recommend no more than 2 emails per month, one at the beginning and one at the end of the month.
- Shock & Awe - Finally, do something that will get your unengaged subscribers' attention. We recently did something like this with a client and provided the details of the effort in a blog post. Check it out. Don't be afraid to give something away. Something big. Remember, you're trying to get someone's attention that is ignoring you and immediately deleting every single email campaign you send. Start with the subject line and work from there.
What other signs have you experienced that you're creating inbox exhaustion? What other ideas do you have for combating this dreaded disease in the email channel? We'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas!
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There's been a ton of media attention, both mainstream and online, about the changes Facebook recently made to their privacy settings and policies. It seems that Mashable has at least one article about Facebook privacy almost every day. Time Magazine is bringing Facebook privacy to its readers as a front page story. The flurry of media attention seems to be mostly negative with no ray of hope anywhere in the near future for Facebook.
One topic that's been overshadowed by the larger privacy issues is a Wall Street Journal report that Facebook, along with other social networks, was caught sending user data to advertisers. According to the WSJ article, the information that Facebook, and other social networks, have been sending "could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details." While this practice has been defended by these companies, it should raise some serious concerns for the companies' subscribers. First, it strengthens the case for those consumers who are hesitant to embrace social networking sites because they don't want the entire world to have access to their personal information. Second, it opens subscribers' information to a larger group of companies and individuals who, while they may have the best of business intentions, could abuse the subscribers' information and flood them with irrelevant content. Finally, it could scare subscribers so much that they actually start a mass exodus from these social networking sites. In fact, this last point is highlighted further by several studies that show people are considering this option.
This practice, in our opinion, could spell the end of Facebook's Project Titan before it even launches. In February, TechCrunch ran an article that highlighted Facebook's Project Titan, which is being tabbed "a full featured webmail product." Subsequent articles related to this development focused on how this project COULD be the end of email marketing, as well as how to prepare for the potential of such a solution. The recent revelations brought to the forefront by the Wall Street Journal could doom Project Titan for 3 simple reasons.
- There are already multiple full featured webmail products available to consumers. Many of these consumers use multiple products to try and avoid the flurry of spam that is still received via email despite the Can-Spam Act. While Facebook would have an inside track to consumers' information, and ultimately greater control over who has access to that information, the practice of sending user names and ID numbers to third party advertisers could allow these outside parties the opportunity to sell pseudo Facebook email lists to list houses for a pretty penny.
- While Facebook, and other social networking sites, will defend the practice highlighted in the WSJ article; it still raises serious concerns about subscribers' privacy for Project Titan. If Facebook simply uses vanity URLs as the basis for creating email addresses as some have speculated, list houses and spammers could very easily build their own Facebook email databases and start sending spam email to Facebook users. By the way, my Facebook email if Project Titan launches could be chrissstone@facebook.com. If Facebook is sharing subscribers' user names and IDs, as is reported, what's to stop them from selling their email database to these same third-party advertisers?
- Despite users' love of Facebook, and other social networking sites, they still want to keep their personal information private. Hence, the recent backlash from mainstream and online media outlets. Users are generally willing to deal with advertisements because they can teach themselves to block out the messages, just as they have with traditional forms of advertising. If, and I stress if, Facebook continues the practice of sending user information to third parties, users could look at a Facebook email address as another source of spam email. If a Facebook email address is viewed as a "spam catcher", Project Titan could surely be irrelevant within a short period of time.
At the end of the day, no one knows exactly how Facebook will amend its recent privacy changes. As this post is written, Facebook is briefing Congressional staffers on the changes to the changes it's already made in light of the media attention and subsequent public outcry. Project Titan has probably been put on the very back burner until Facebook can overcome all the negative media attention. This is a good thing for an email marketing agency because it's one less potential opponent to the overall success of their email marketing efforts.