Critical insights lost through ‘no-reply’ emails

Critical insights lost through ‘no-reply’ emails I have long debated with some marketers and clients that we can’t just rely on a plain simple emailer or 1-directional email push for our marketing efforts. It is because most people would react to an emailer be it either in the good way or in the bad way.

If we filter the “responsive in a good way“ audiences, I felt it would definitely deter responses if they have to “click” on the eDM and then read more on the website or participate in a game before they can say “I want a manager to approach me now” as some might wish to make their purchase immediately. True that they can just pickup the phone and get it done and over with but how does this contribute to the hard work that the campaign manager has put in? It doesn’t.

On the contrary the “responsive in a bad way” audiences, I felt it would mean that something is really biting them on the emailer that you have sent which usually means we need to address them in an ASAP manner. How does it help with such a ‘no-reply’ email? It doesn’t which my experiences tells me these audience will probably start “torching” your endeavour and your brand over social medias and word-of-mouth. This is pretty disastrous scenario that every brand or campaign manager will least want to end up with.

According to www.thewisemarketer.com (Free subscription), it only makes sense if 29% of consumers want to converse back over the emailer.

“According to data from Forrester’s ‘Winning Email in a Down Economy’ study, 29% of consumers want the ability to write back to marketers who send them e-mail messages. However, only 11% said they want to use e-mail more like they use social networks.”

Therefore it really makes a lot of sense to implement ways to allow audiences to interact in response to the emailers. For companies that design their emailer architectures from scratch it will be easy to implement this but for some others who are using external services for this, I believe the simple solution is to include a link or button in the emailer such as “Feedback your thoughts” as such as it will be sufficient.

The difficult part will be on implementing the policy or the challenges of the campaign managers will be facing in the replying possibly thousands of emails. IMHO believe a little more resources increased here could potentially expand the horizon of marketing and customer loyalty. What’s your take on this?

Cross posted from Macchiato.
http://macchiato.getitcomms.com