I receive tons of emails with dozens of offers each day. And this is not a spam. It is what I get after spam filters block 90% of unwanted emails.
These are the emails I had subscribed to one day. It takes extra traffic, additional time and all for no good. I do not read them. Legally and formally it is not classical “by interruption” marketing that proven not to be working anymore. It is rather “by permission” because I subscribed to the list one day. But in reality I do not remember when and why and I could have very well lost the interest to the subject. And of course I am lazy to unsubscribe. So companies consider me active subscriber while I am not. What if 90% of the guys they talk to are like me? It means their marketing is rather ineffective.
Isn’t it why ratios and conversions like 1% considered standard in the industry? As long as sending the e-mails costs virtually nothing people will send them. With almost zero effectiveness, of course. How you can find out the number of subscribers in your database who care at least to read what you wrote (not to mention take an action)?
Well, try to publish your very next newsletter on the web and mail only a link. Use Google Analytics code there. And make sure you use WordPress or similar for publishing. So people can discuss the newsletter. And add the options to share this information or link.
The benefits as I see them (for companies and readers):
- More content
- Less mail traffic
- Clean inboxes
- Easy to assess the number of active customers in your database
- Content can be reused. That is not dies in the Deleted items but lives on the web
- Continuous marketing
- Subscribers share the information
Of course, Subject will be the most critical determinant whether the link will be clicked on.
