Do you read EDMs?

Electronic Direct Mail. Those pesky emails you receive every other day from that contact lens website you used that one time. You don’t read it, but you also don’t unsubscribe.

Last month before I moved to Sydney, I happened to glance at a friend’s empty inbox. “How could it be? It must be an internet anomaly!” I thought. I asked him where were his ‘opened but not dealt with messages’ and the endless unread mail from ‘newsletters you intend to catch up with one day’. He didn’t have any. He systematically unsubscribes from any emails he doesn’t want to receive.

Now I thought about this…mail I don’t want to receive… Sure, I delete 99% of EDMs I receive without even glancing at the subject title. But the idea of missing out on the potential of one day, missing out on an inkling of information may be of interest to me, really freaked me out. I’d never thought about ‘unsubscribing’ until now.

So what are people like me doing to people who are working hard at trying to market though EDMs?

In our Evaluate Market Performance paper, we talked about the power of amassing a list of email contacts. Email, considered to be more reliable than addresses or phone numbers, is highly valuable as a way to get in touch. But are people like me ruining the point of having a big list of emails in your database?

At my pervious employment, creating daily EDMs was even a part of my job! Just like any other webpage, we were able to analyse how long a person opened the email, whether they then clicked on a link, whether they made a purchase, or browsed our website – or whether it was sent to trash without being opened.

Even so, their purpose is totally lost on me. I can’t speak for others, but the ‘delete’ button is just a bit too convenient. So this battle between the desire for a streamlined inbox and wanting all the information all the time will never be resolved for me.

What I do take away from this realisation is that perhaps it’s not about how big your database is, but rather a database full of people who are not going to simply delete you. Companies now are too focused on tactics that pressure any passing visitor to join their mailing list, and neglecting the fact that not every person on the Internet is their target audience. The electronic age means information is so quickly transferred, but it also is so quickly forgotten.

The benefit of having a very specific database means that your EDMs could become a two-way thing; a portal for communication. When you are dealing with a specific market, there is the opportunity to target that market in ways you would not be able to if you were casting your net wider.

I guess the blame isn’t solely on the companies. We are also the ones who go and sign ourselves up for this in the first place. We, the ‘deleters’ of EDMs, are equally at fault for not understanding and aligning our personal brands with those companies we actually care about.

I have no solid answers to this dilemma. I will keep subscribing, and keep deleting, in the hope that one day my inbox will magically be empty of it all.

Hongi Luo
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

Taco Bell’s Internet Personality

I LOVE Taco Bell. I love them so much; I would take any opportunity to talk with people about how amazing Taco Bell is. All of their marketing efforts have worked on me, and I am a proud advocate for their brand. Which is a bit strange, considering I’ve never even eaten there.

Why all the passion?

Because Taco Bell’s Internet personality is someone I’d like to be best friends with. Sure, they’ve run the regular kinds of monetary driven promotions, donations, fundraisers so on and so forth. But it’s all the little things they do that add up to a quirky sense of humor, and a brand that isn’t afraid to have a little laugh at itself.

If you ever stumble upon Taco Bell’s Twitter or Facebook page, their online teams are often quick to respond – and respond with a bit of delightful tongue-in-cheek. Many service companies find social media hard to deal with because the nature of the forum can lead to disgruntled customers openly tarnishing your good name. Taco Bell is not immune to this, but instead of standard replies, they often respond with personalized solutions. Not only that, it’s obvious that their web team are given the authority to reply to customers with something a little unconventional.

 

So why is this so important in social media? For me, it’s the feeling that I am engaging with more than just a company – that there is a personality behind it all. You can find endless examples, like the one above, of Taco Bell just being a nice guy. And isn’t it much easier to engage with a ‘nice guy’ than a company that sees you as another statistic? Engagement goes both ways, and Taco Bell proves that giving a little back has huge returns.

Although some can argue this is all just a part of the marketing strategy of an emotionless company, when it comes to Social Media, the notion of ‘perception is reality’ rings true. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for other companies to take a leaf out of Taco Bell’s book, and spend some time being a ‘nice guy’ on the Internet (or at least a guy with a sense of humor).

Hongi Luo
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School