Should you sneak marketing into your newsletter?
Email marketing is an oldie but goodie. It ties in second place as the second-most popular marketing method in the United States.
It’s popular because it works. As long as you can get your message to the right person, and you can convince them to open it, you’re golden. Of course, getting the message to the recipient has become more difficult over the last few years.
Why it’s getting harder to get your email through
The use of AI in email scanning services has made it a lot harder to get marketing emails through. In fact, they’ve become so effective that we’ve seen a drop in the overall percentage of spam emails. In 2012, 69% of emails were spam. By March of 2019, that figure had dropped to 56%.
The days of spamming clients and hoping for the best are long gone. If that was the only issue marketers faced, it would be bad enough. Unfortunately, they’ve also got to contend with consumers who need to be convinced to open the email.
Why it’s getting harder to convince prospects to open your email
Most of us are extremely busy. We don’t have the energy, time, or inclination to deal with the hundreds of emails that come into our inbox every day. We’re generally tired of having people sell to us all the time. We expect more from the companies that we deal with.
How do we get past this?
The best way to get past a spam filter and to convince people to open your emails is to provide valuable information in the emails. That’s how the idea of the newsletter came into being. It provides companies with a simple way to keep their clients at the top of consumer’s minds.
The newsletter is more likely to be opened as they contain items that the person is interested in. So, the question then becomes, “Can we sneak marketing information into our emails?” The answer is, yes. In fact, it’s now common practice to do so. Should you though?
Should you sneak marketing into your newsletter?
From a business perspective, it makes sense to use every opportunity as presented. We’ve got a slightly different take on the matter. Just take a look at the chart below to see how clients feel about you sneaking marketing messages into your newsletters.
As you’ll see from the chart above, 26.8% of recipients find it very annoying. 24.2% of recipients find it not annoying. The 24.3% who find it “not too annoying” bring our total of people who find advertising in a newsletter annoying to some degree to 75.3%.
It’s enough to make you want to think twice about putting a bunch of ads in your next newsletter, doesn’t it?
To add adverts or not to add adverts? That is the question
Let’s face it, you’re creating these newsletters to add value for your subscriber. Your aim here is more about building a positive brand experience than punting your product. As a result, an outright advert might do more harm than good.
Perhaps a better idea would be to adopt a content marketing approach instead. Introduce the idea behind the product, or explain a core concept related to it. Then, at the bottom of the article, create a link for them to find out more information if they’re interested.
That way, you’re getting the best of both worlds. You’re providing interesting and valuable content without it looking like you’re trying to shove sales down your audience’s throat.
To get more out of your email marketing, take a look at this infographic from EveryCloud featuring great hacks and stats that could inform your email strategy.
Chris Usatenko is a Computer geek, writer, and gamer. He is interested in any aspects of the PC industry and videogames. Freelancer in his nature, he is willing to get experience and knowledge from around the world and implement them in his life.