I receive important marketing emails every day. I know you do, too. Of course, none of these marketing messages are important to us.
They are not even of interest to us.
The vast majority are not even relevant to us.
They are only important to the people sending them.
I’m referring to the special offers that aren’t even remotely special. The poorly targeted offers, which are totally irrelevant to you and your needs. And the outright spam from strangers.
Whilst sending unwanted information via email requires a very small publishing investment, the cost to the sender’s reputation is far higher.
An unsustainable, short-sighted approach
There’s a limit to the number of times a business can pester their prospective customers, before it hurts the business commercially.
For example, if enough of their marketplace consider them pests, their reputation will take a damaging hit. That’s really bad for business. If enough people block their email addresses or report the emails as spam, the sender will find their emails start getting stuck in junk email filters, including legitimately important emails.
An effective and proven way forward
We know from the ongoing, outstanding results enjoyed by successful businesses, that there is a far better alternative.
It’s simply this: We should wait until we have something to say, which is worth listening to. Then share it with people who have given us permission to contact them. People who are interested. People who will have a potential requirement. The kind of people we had in mind, when we decided to offer the product or service in the first place.
Pestering people with unwanted email is cheap (in every sense of the word), easy and only takes a matter of minutes. However, an interesting message, sent to people who want to hear from us, is vastly more effective than a selfish request from a stranger.