A quick glance into my ‘Junk’ mail folder and I can see countless examples of unsolicited emails. These are emails with the sole purpose of persuading me to click a link, a link that could potentially send my laptop into the oblivion and my personal details to some unusually quiet, highly intelligent person in a dark room looking to push me closer to my student overdraft limit. Scary, I know. But scariest of all is how clever these emails are getting. Let me give you an example:
Source: Compiled by author (2015)
Above is a seemingly innocent email from Facebook, trying to entice me to view some notifications. BUT…it isn’t from Facebook at all! If it was not for my unhealthy addiction to Facebook and sharp attention to detail, I would have willingly followed this link to learn what my friend had to say. The branding is identical to Facebook’s, the sender-address had been titled ‘Facebook+Support’, they’ve even personalised the email with my name (nice touch) and added a link to unsubscribe.
Source: Compiled by author (2015)
When compared with a genuine Facebook email (above) we can see clear differences. To begin with the genuine email contains information, which is specific to my account. This level of detail is something a scammer wouldn’t be able to reproduce on a mass-sending basis without access to Facebook’s data. The phishing email contains a grammatical errors and the subject line “Sophie K 1 messages waiting to be read freezers” makes no sense. Further, although the scammer has attempted to use personalisation, they have evidently extracted my name from my email address “Sophie_K” which doesn’t look professional enough to be convincing. The genuine email is addressed from Facebook, lists the address of the HQ at the bottom and has perfect spelling and grammar throughout.
Pavlov, Melville & Plice (2008) suggest that the rise in unsolicited email means that email marketing is becoming less effective and more costly for a business. With the vast amount of emails landing in the average users inbox, and 15% of this being spam (Radcati Group, 2015) it’s understandable that recipients would be more cautious.
However, with email generating nearly two times the return on investment relative to other marketing communication channels (The Direct Marketing Association, 2012), perhaps email isn’t becoming less effective as a tool, perhaps it’s how firms use it that’s becoming less effective?
Micheaux (2011) suggests that email response rates for firms are decreasing due to them sending low-cost mass-sent emails as oppose to sending targeted emails with thorough testing. Yes we can see spam is getting more intelligent, but so is email marketing as a tool. Firms need to learn to utilise data to target content tailored to specific segments and personalise effectively rather than bombarding everyone with every message, even if it’s irrelevant. It is imperative that firms are strategic when using email as a marketing communication tool to reach the distinct audiences with relevant content (Acquino, 2012). Email platforms should be used to test the email rigorously If we refer back to my Facebook example, I didn’t ignore the genuine email because I had received spam in the past; I followed the link and read the comment on my profile, but it made me more cautious and therefore more aware of the properties to look out for in a spam email.
So in summary email marketing isn’t less effective due to spam, it just takes more thought and attention to detail than it used to. There are many platforms available to ensure your emails are well tested and targeted.
So how do you avoid producing an email that looks like spam?
- Avoid grammatical errors – Often spammers don’t care about the content of the email enough for it to make sense, so ensure your email has perfect detail.
- Test the email – Ensure the email displays right, not doing so could compromise your branding and make the recipient question the authenticity of the email.
- Domain name – Create a professional and appropriate domain name to send your emails from. Anyone can access a free email service (and spammers often do).
- Don’t ask for personal information – Being too pushy in an email can set the customers’ alarm bells ringing.
- Messy hyperlinks – Long hyperlinks, unformatted and pasted in an email looks suspect. Create a simple email template with a bold call-to-action button that is hyperlinked.
- Personalise effectively – Only personalise if you trust your data is correct and of a good standard. Any attempts at personalisation in which the name is wrong or only the first initial comes up could make the recipient question whether you know who you’re sending the email to, or if it’s just another mass sent phishing scam.
- Demonstrate your relationship with the recipient – Send emails that are relevant to the recipient and give enough information to demonstrate you know the consumer and what they want, content personalisation can facilitate this, and generate the company better returns at the same time.
- Get permission – Don’t send emails unless you have permission to send them, not only are there laws surrounding this but the recipient will soon mark your email as junk if it’s not relevant or they don’t recognise it.
Read more:
- For an insight into how you can avoid spam filters, view Mail Chimps Top tips.
- For more tips on how to avoid sending email marketing that looks like spam, check out this article on Comm100.
References:
Aquino, J. (2012). Avoid the Spam folder. CRM Magazine. Vol 16, Issue 9, pp24-28
Direct Marketing Association (2012) DMA National Client Email Report 2012. London: Direct Marketing Association
Mail Chimp (2015) Resources: How to avoid spam filters [Online] <http://bit.ly/1o9LJPP> [accessed 18th April 2015]
Micheaux, A.L. (2011) Managing E-mail Advertising Frequency From the Consumer Perspective. Journal of Advertising. Vol 40, Issue 4, pp45-65.
Pavlov, O.V., Melville, N. & Plice, R.K. (2007) Toward a sustainable e-mail marketing infrastructure. Journal of Business research. Vol 61, Issue 11, pp1191–1199
Radicati Group (2014) Email Statistics Report, 2014-2018. The Radicati Group inc. California
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