Stop the Zzz-mails

There’s an e-mail ad from Amazon.com in my box. I haven’t opened it, but

I know what it says. By heart. "Dear Amazon.com customer. As someone who’s

purchased books in the past, you might be interested to learn blah blah blah zzz

zzz."

I’m bored just thinking about it. And it’s not only Amazon. There’s a

lot of caution going on in e-mail marketing these days. Advertisers, hoping not

to offend customers who agree to receive their messages, have retreated to safe

on-line communications: Repetitive scripts. Snoozer subject lines. Uninspiring

offers.

Their slip is showing

Even marketers with off-line moxie get shy in e-mail. On TV,

Victoria’s Secret has a provocative ad showing a scantily clad beauty doing a

chair dance. The concurrent on-line campaign: "Shop now and save on Body by

Victoria." My Sunday coupons have more sex appeal.

Marketers should be worried about my boredom, because I’m

far from alone. Last year, 54% of consumers surveyed by Forrester Research said

e-mail was a great way to find out about new products and services. In 2001,

that number dropped to 43%. Last year, 21% said they deleted most e-mail ads

without reading them. This year, it’s up to 36%, and sales resulting from

e-mail have fallen by half.

A lot of eyeballs are glazing over, says a Forrester analyst

adding that there is room for more creativity. But most marketers don’t get

it. More than 70% of those using e-mail rely primarily on plain text.

Getting personal

A few brave ones are trying to rise above the polite whisper. Take

Reflect.com, an on-line beauty store. Instead of plain-vanilla e-mail, Reflect

customers who abandon items in a virtual shopping cart get a note pushing that

product, or even a picture of it with the shopper’s name on the label. Reflect

has always used e-mail ads. But the personalized e-mail pitches doubled the

company’s conversion rate of shoppers to buyers, says Hannelore Schmidt,

Reflect’s customer relations manager.

Other companies have seen similar responses to e-mail creativity.

Restaurant-guide company Zagat Survey tripled its e-mail ad response rate by

letting customers buy its books via a simple link in the e-mail. Drexel Heritage

sent out a message with high-quality photography of its furniture and reaped a

click-through rate of 21%–far better than the industry average of 5%. Other

tactics might include interactive games or surveys, says Don Peppers, founding

partner of customer relationship consultancy Peppers & Rogers Group.

"You want to encourage a response, an interaction," he says.

"Most companies are not scratching the surface of what’s possible."

Advertisers should be careful to avoid overloading customers’

computers and Net connections. The Direct Marketing Association, a trade group

for catalog companies, wandered into that minefield. The group sent out an

e-mail promotion featuring music and full-motion video. Some recipients

complained that the message set off security warnings and then crashed before

delivering all of its information. Such experiences keep other lively e-mail on

the drawing boards.

A fine line

Fairytale Brownies, a gourmet food seller, did an e-mail

promotion linked to the hit movie Shrek. While the food company considered

animation in the campaign, it settled for a still photo of the main character

out of fear that it might annoy customers with older equipment, says President

Eileen Spitalny. "We worry over the e-mails quite a bit. These are our best

customers." You need to be careful, she says.

But not paralyzed. E-mail marketing is close to stalling in a

state of dullness. You may have a great offer, a great message, a great product,

but you won’t get a nibble if your ad campaign is a snooze. Consumers will

read intriguing e-mail. Marketers, though, shouldn’t expect much from a safe,

boring message. Don’t be afraid to get our attention. It’s better than a

lullaby.

By Ellen Neuborne in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2001 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc