This blog post has been influenced by the research of Bellman et al. (2001) in which they investigate why people sign up to permission based e-mails. From this, I will explore the advantages and disadvantages of permission based emails and why it is important not to trick users into signing up, as other companies do.
I receive multiple permission based e-mails daily and sometimes wonder, when did I sign up to these?
In a survey conducted by Bellman et al. (2001) 134 respondents were asked whether they wished to receive more health surveys by either an opt-in or an opt-out statement.
The way the question is asked clearly makes a difference to the response of the user as 48.2% of respondents were willing to receive more surveys from the opt-in statement whereas only 3.7% were as willing from the opt-out statement.
Interesting, so it seems the more positive the question is worded the more likely someone is to opt-in!
So what are some different examples of how companies get users to sign up to receive extra content…
Skype use a opt-in statement so the customer can decide if they wish to be e-mailed and if they do, to just tick the box.
With Vouchercloud, the tick box is also an opt-in statement, thus showing how companies use opt-in statements to convince users to sign up.
Easyjet, on the other hand, use an opt-out statement, which I personally find more negative so would therefore prefer an opt-in statement! I would also then be more likely to sign up to the e-mails.
Think carefully about the wording of your opt-in or out statements as this could be the difference between someone like myself clicking YES or NO!
So this leads onto some of the advantages and disadvantages of direct e-mail marketing:
Advantages
– Comparing to other methods of digital marketing, most people only skim blogs and skip through social media posts whereas e-mails wait in the user’s inbox
– Committed users have to actually sign up to permission based e-mails
– According to McCormick (2015) the cost of e-mail marketing is relatively low as there are no printing of mailing costs
– E-mail marketing allows tracking so the effectiveness of the campaign can be measured
Disadvantages
– Some users view permission based e-mails as spam and be unresponsive (Benchmark, 2015)
– There are often delivery failures where the e-mail does not reach the customer’s mailbox
Overall, I’d say the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and especially for small firms, it is an excellent opportunity to market product information at a lower cost.
Further reading can be found in research by Mohammadi et al. (2013) on e-mail marketing as a popular type of small business advertisement.
References
Bellman, S., Johnson, E. J. & Lohse, G. L., 2001. On site: to opt-in or opt-out?: It depends on the question. Communications of the ACM, 44(2), pp. 25-27.
Benchmark, 2015. Opt-In Email Marketing Vs. Bulk Email Spam. [Online]
Available at: http://bit.ly/1FnbTH5
[Accessed 09 April 2015].
McCormick, M., 2015. Advantages & Disadvantages of Email Marketing. [Online]
Available at: http://bit.ly/1Fr8CBh
[Accessed 9 April 2015].
Mohammadi, M., Malekian, K., Nosrati, M. & Karimi, R., 2013. Email Marketing as a Popular Type of Small Business Advertisement: A Short Review. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences , 7(4), pp. 786-790.