A survey in Asia-Pacific(Epsilon/Return Path 2008 Consumer E-mail Survey) has found that four out of ten respondents would report legitimate email communications (emails that they have originally subscribed to) as spam to their email provider. If email communications get reported as spam, all future emails from that sender could be blocked by the email account provider (hotmail, googlemail, ect).

It appears that relevancy is the issue; half of the respondents would use email coupons sent to them and seven out of ten had made direct purchases from receiving relevant promotional emails. Two thirds of the respondents’ said they would provide more personal information if this would increase the relevancy of the emails they received. Search Engines are based on providing relevant search results; it’s becoming a standard of what people expect online.

Consumers are willing to provide more personal information to get relevant emails; this means that organisations should step up their efforts and invest more resources into their email marketing activities. Organisations that take this action will reap the benefits.

Another finding highlighted the trend of rewarding existing customers as a tactic that is welcomed, instead of the tired approach of only providing heavy discounts for new consumers. Organisations that offer discounts and promotions to their existing consumers will develop long standing relationships and should be able to profile their customer base more effectively from repeat purchases and increased interaction. Using the additional data captured, more relevant bespoke deals and promotions can be sent. This will develop long term relationships between consumers and their favourite e-commerce websites. Amazon’s e-mail communications are a good example of this, but even Amazon could still improve their consumer segmentation.

Smaller brands need to work out cost effective ways to employ the same tactics. Email is a medium that needs to be continually improved and developed. Although savings can be made more money should be invested to improve customer retention, instead of simply viewing email marketing as a cheap alternative.

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