Targeted Opt-Out is the New "Opt-in"

A Marketing Sherpa survey of the email habits of business people shows that if the email message is irrelevant, a majority will click the SPAM button -- even if the email comes from a known source.That’s a lesson we all need to understand.  When we communicate via email, we have to send relevant, targeted information. Simply put, we have to create value for the recipient through the email transaction.

Educational Content

An exciting category of B2B communication is educational content and messaging. That is, educating the recipient about how they can do their job more effectively, reduce costs, do business better. Arming them with the latest research and benchmarking available provides credibility and ideally, trust- critical for a buyer-seller relationship.

Examples of this content include webinars, whitepapers, survey results, research, and virtual conferences- even newsletters of the ‘tips and tricks’ kind. In all cases, the best performing seems to be content based on real world results with insights layered over the top. The email survey also shows that a majority of business people don’t consider an email to be SPAM if it is from an unrecognized source -- if the message is relevant and well targeted.  Now that is really interesting. 

Relevance trumps permission.

If you’re very targeted and relevant with your email, you have about the same odds even if you’re not using an opt-in list.  Why is this?  Well, beyond the issue of relevance, I contend we all sign up for so many services, registrations and trials that none of us can remember whose opt-in list we’re on, especially, if that organization then sells access to its opt-in lists, like most online and print publishers do.

I’d rather find something value to help me navigate my business towards success, than maintain a tenuous relationship with the trail of websites I leave in my wake.

Buying targeted lists is OK.

Contrary to some thinking, buying lists is OK. Remember the CAN SPAM act never mentions the words “opt-in” at all.  That’s because CAN SPAM deals specifically with how to conduct opt-out campaigns that are in compliance with the law.  There has often been confusion in this area, confusing “opt-in” with CAN SPAM.  (I wonder who pulled off that positioning triumph? Maybe the folks who own the opt-in lists?)

Can you afford not to?

The fact is, the B2B world is changing, and companies who get creative are staying on top. Complacency has just left the building with the last round of lay-offs.  Sales and marketing managers and senior management are turning over all the rocks and looking for low cost/high impact ideas to put at the top of their action list.  

Over the past 3 months, we have noticed a significant swing to outbound email marketing in the Fortune 1000 and specifically in the area of email. Several large companies have switched their opt-in email policies in favor of opt-out. Times are too hard for a misguided set of “etiquette rules”, especially if those participating ensure the communication is valuable to both sender and recipient.

Valuable means relevant, useful, timely, engaging.

The future of SPAM

Does this mean we are going to be seeing more communication sent from vendors?  Is your own company talking to more potential customers, trying to counter the negative effects of this economy?  Of course the answer is yes to both.  The key issue is that SPAM filters are going to continue to improve the blocking of emails that noone is interested in. 

Recipients of email -- particularly users of consumer services like Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail -- are pretty brutal in marking those vendors who bore them as SPAM, thus lowering sender reputations (which can harm your email deliverability rate in the future). 

Senders will gain good or bad reputations as a result, and all the facets of SPAM technology will continue to force email communication in the right direction, towards maintaining a level of real value.  The good will survive; the bad will be cast aside.  

In the broadest sense, electronic communication in the business to business world is not going away.  It will very likely increase over the next 10 years. But the dinosaurs large and small will increasingly find it difficult to survive unless they also evolve into more agile creatures, capable of adapting to new business conditions, and the ever-rising standards of their consumers.

What are your thoughts?

-Gary Halliwell

Chief Executive Officer
NetProspex Inc.
Millions of People in Business to do Business

www.netprospex.com