Email Marketing Temptation and Guilt: Happy or Unhappy to Hear From Us, Read Here
Sooner or later, everyone faces the 'opt in or opt out' dilemma. Here is our first person account of how Content-wire is torn between temptation and guilt.
3 April 2001
Content-wire has been live for over a month.
Yesterday we received with gratitude our first award, the 'Golden Web Award' by the Association of Webmasters and Designers, for content, creativity and integrity.
Not bad for a first month.
Traffic is picking up, readers started signing up for the editorial digests, press releases are coming in and most feedback is positive.
Of course just a start, no dollars and lots of development work ahead but everything, so far, looks promising.
Time to do our first mailout, and to tell everybody who has been in touch what we are up to, and invite them to join our editorial community.
Technically, that would be doing the 'opt in' thing, as 'opt out' is increasingly receiving the bad press.
But we have so many contacts and so little time that we are very tempted to just sign everybody up and ask them to unsubscribe if they do not want to hear from us.
Would that be real bad?
I'd better consult the specialists.
Anne Holland, Publisher of Marketingsherpa.com, has the last word on these matters. A great advocate of ethics and privacy in marketing, she is happy to give her advice.
I confess to her my planned scheme to sign up to the headlines everybody in my professional contacts who has expressed interest in my work over the past few months.
She leaves no doubt about what she thinks of it.
"I love your stuff " she said " but you can't do opt-out. People have to opt-in. Since you have a personal connection to most of the names, you can email them personally and ask them to opt-in. You can also ask them to tell their friends to opt-in. But if you just start sending them stuff, you're in BIG massive trouble. Both because people hate getting mail they didn't opt-in for, and also because ISPs will shut you down if they think you are sending non-requested email. Nope, you can't get around it."
Uhm. I don’t have the time to mail everyone I know. My mail client in its simplest form could not do that either. "Thanks, I'll come up with some alternative then" I lied a little, pretending I had the situation under control.
I certainly do not want to come across as a spammer, being in turn the target of spam I know how insulting and annoying it can be.
On the other hand, with limited time and resources we want to make sure every potential reader gets the news.
Plus, we don't sell anything, and our editorial product is rather premium stuff.
Perhaps the definitions of 'opt in' and 'spam' can be interpreted.
Maybe I can find a loose enough definition of either to justify my 'grand total mailout' without offending anyone, I said to my cheeky self.
A definition that I found reads: "with an *opt-in*subscription, e-mail recipients have asked to hear from you. With an *opt-out* subscription, you unilaterally subscribe recipients and require them to take action to remove themselves from the list, running the risk of generating ill will against your company, which is counter to the purpose of the program." (X-scribe)
On the other hand, emailing those who have expressed an interest in our work, could not be spamming at all, some argue.
SPAM, according to most, is unsolicited commercial email sent to a recipient has not provided their email address directly to the sender, or an email sent to a recipient who would not have a reasonable expectation of receiving email from the sender.
But email notifications sent by an organization about a topic which the recipient had previously requested information about, provided that the removal mechanism for recipients is clear and simple, are not spam.
Responsible email marketing works
ClicZ, also top specialists in online marketing affairs, published a case study that was very much symbolising my dilemma.
Thomas Cook succeeded in their online marketing campaign by taking the 'step by step' approach. They sent the invitation to
'opt in' to all their email addresses, and forgot about those who did not respond. Fewer more loyal subscribers are far more valuable.
But what about those potentially very interested readers who are too busy, too lazy or too tired to either subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tough. We don't want readers who are too lazy to subscribe to our online products anyway.
Doing it both ways
So, on the eve of our first mailout, I take a look at the difference in numbers:
a few hundreds of solitary subscribers to my opt in list,
and thousands in my opt out.
Anne, forgive me. I'll only take part of your advice this time.
As we gear up to produce increasingly valuable content, we are confident that you'll consider this email a bonus.
If you are reading this story it's because you have personally expressed a clear interest in the topics we cover, and we have signed you up.
How to change your subscription
If you don't do anything, a headlines digest of our main stories and initiatives will reach you once a week, or so.
We have a clear privacy policy, and do not share our list with anyone.
It is easy to unsubscribe, just follow the link at the bottom of the message.
Apologies in advance if you are on this list by mistake, and don't want to be.
If you subscribe to our 'opt in' list by entering your details and ticking the relevant box in the newsletter section, you will also automatically subscribe to the Knowledge Base and share with content-wire 'premium' information and research that we will be producing over the next few months.
If you are subscribed to both 'opt in' and 'opt out' you might receive some duplicate messages, so update your entry as appropriate.
If you have difficulties unsubscribing so some of the preferences, just delete yourself complete following the instructions at the bottom of the newsletter subscription page on the site, and re-enter as appropriate.
This is as complicated as it will ever get, promise.
The Knowledge Base section opens officially this week, with a brief research note about Syndication Trends.
We have a lots of interesting papers in the works.
We hope we are making the right move, to maximize our initial impact without losing any of our precious, loyal readers, and without
annoying everybody else too much either.
Do not forget to send us your news, and advertise with content-wire.com
Looking forward to your sustained readership.
Paola Di Maio
Analyst and Editor
Content-wire.com
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