Do you see your customers as “a detriment”?
I guess MediaPost does. This morning’s Email Insider newsletter talked about a panel from last week’s Email Insider summit. Apparently the email marketing industry just made the astounding discovery that both moms (implied: the technologically un-savvy) and college students judge emails based on their usefulness, not on whether or not they opted in.
Neither group distinguished between permission-based marketing and spam if they didn’t want the email.
Let me repeat that, because it’s so obvious that you may not have gotten it. If your email is not useful, customers do not say “Oh, this email isn’t very useful, but I did sign up for it, so that’s okay.”
Are you ready for the best part? Email Insider says:
“What’s clear from all of this is that many consumers don’t know how to use email properly-which is to say that they are a detriment to themselves and to email marketers.”
Wow. Insulting your customers. (I had no idea there was a “right” and a “wrong” way to use email.) Calling them a detriment to themselves and you. (Yeah, in this economy, I can see how you’d have so many customers that they’d be a burden to you.)
Look – your customers not doing what you want is not their problem. It’s your problem.
People drive demand, they pull out the wallets, they buy and use and pretty much insure you have a job (or don’t). If people find your interface confusing, clarify it. If people want to use your product in a different way, embrace it.
If people don’t find your product useful, BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD.
The real lesson here is that customers don’t want email they don’t find useful. The answer isn’t to educate them, it’s to educate yourself. Create value, or get out of their inboxes. Your customers know who the real “detriment” is.
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