E-mail marketing is one of the most popular tools used by businesses for promotional purposes. Yet, it is one of the most abused forms of digital marketing.
Due to lack of ethical considerations or lack of knowledge, practitioners inundate our e-mail inboxes with lots of messages which, most often, are unsolicited and not relevant to our interests.
Besides the need to be ethical, the e-mail marketer needs to understand how potential customers react to the various cues present in an e-mail. To better understand the consumer’s behaviour towards e-mail marketing, a study was conducted among employees at the University of Malta from various age groups and job positions.
Most of the findings were interpreted using a mean rating score whereby one corresponds to ‘strongly disagree’ and five corresponds to ‘strongly agree’, with a mean rating score of 3.78 respondents agreeing that e-mail is an effective way to be kept updated on a company’s offers.
Besides the need to be ethical, the e-mail marketer needs to understand how customers react to various cues
On the other hand, with a mean rating score of 4.4, respondents agreed that unsolicited emails are intrusive. In addition, a mean rating score of 3.92 was obtained to show that companies that obtain permission to include a person in a marketing list are more likely to get a reply.
When respondents were asked if frequent e-mail increase their loyalty towards a company, the mean rating score was that of 2.6, which shows that they rather disagree with the statement.
In all, 89.5 per cent of respondents replied that they would unsubscribe if they cannot handle the amount of e-mails that a company sends.
The study tried to quantify respondents’ tolerance towards the frequency of e-mails: 62.4 per cent of respondents would not tolerate a company that sends more than one e-mail a week. An e-mail a month was considered as the best option, as only 3.3 per cent of respondents said they would get annoyed by such frequency.
Some findings show strong evidence that variance exists between people with different job positions. For instance, 77.3 per cent of respondents who claimed to read most of their e-mails from a mobile phone or tablet were academic staff, hence people who have the least access to their office.
Therefore, when targeting people with job positions that require them to spend more time away from the office, the marketer should consider how an e-mail is seen on a mobile phone.
Variance also exists between people of different ages. When targeting an older audience, the marketer should avoid putting crucial information in embedded images, as these are not likely to be downloaded when blocked. While for the 16- to 25-year-olds, a mean of 3.25 would be discouraged from downloading blocked images, the mean rating score of 56+ year-olds is 4.06. This shows how important it is for practitioners to adapt their e-mail according to the target audience.
E-mail marketers need to respect e-mail account holders, as besides the fact that spamming is against the law and annoying, it can cause a person to misplace or ignore important messages.
Even legitimate e-mails may be perceived as a nuisance when the recipient is under pressure thus making the legitimate marketers’ efforts go down the drain. For this reason, marketers also need to respect fellow practitioners who are ethical and rely on the use of the e-mail, such as small enterprises that might not have the necessary resources to invest in more costly tools.
Improper use of e-mail will not only damage a company’s reputation but also diminish the effectiveness of such an advantageous marketing tool.
The research in this publication was partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship (Malta). This scholarship is part-financed by the EU – European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, ‘Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality Of Life’.