Question: What do you do when you receive 3,4,5 or more emails, campaigns or SMS from an organisation in a month ?

a.) Disengage from future communications.

b.) Lose trust & respect for the sender of the messages.

c.) Become wary of any subscriber forms.

d.) All of the above.

Answer: Our research says that more than 75% of internet subscribers would chose option d.) All of the above.

The three key factors that have contributed to the wasteful and excessive use of messaging are:

1.) The perception that email and SMS is cheap and therefore cost was no longer a factor when compared to a letter or direct mail campaign. The targeting and thought that went into direct mail was sophisticated and well planned however as perceptions changed the focus on the message, the audience and the relationship has become non-existent.

2.) When Unlimited emails became popular the charging model was based upon the number of subscribers, the more subscriber the more you paid. This often included an unlimited number of emails to your entire list. This pricing model has done the most damage because the software providers such as MailChimp and Campaign Monitor penalised customer “list” growth but said it’s ok to send as many emails to your list as you want as often as you can.

3.) Last but most certainly not least is comes marketing automation, auto-responders or drip marketing. Let’s see, we already have unlimited all you can send systems that were a breeding ground for Phishing, SPAM, Junk and SPOOF and now we want to automate it so that a subscribers can receive another email within X hours, days etc. 

Email is more expensive than ever to deliver with managing IP address blocks, domain reputation, creating and storing huge amounts of data for analytics, negotiating with postmasters, managing FBL (Feedback Loops) etc.

We have been steadfast with our charging model (Good Pricing) because we believe in the principles of engagement, meaningful communication and responsible being  global citizens who do not encourage waste through irresponsible pricing.

Our Tribe works tirelessly to help educate and deliver better results for our users and partner networks. We hope if you have read this far (even if you choose not to sign-up with us) then you will think about taking up the mantra of responsible marketers and not engage via sending excessive/needless emails and messages.