Brands 'risk poor image' through irrelevant email

by Hugh Filman, Direct Response 05-Oct-07

Marketers using email need to learn to make messages relevant to recipients or risk having customers turn off their brands and opt out of future communications, the head of a leading e-marketing solutions provider has said.

Simone Barratt, managing director of e-Dialog in the UK, explained that clients need to be aware of the business risks they take in sending out large-volume blasts of poorly targeted marketing messages.

"Because they make so much money out of the blasting, it's difficult to get them to understand: 'This isn't going to last, guys.'," she said.

Barratt added that e-Dialog has launched a strategic planning methodology, The Relevance Trajectory, aimed at helping clients to better understand how relevant their emails are and measure this factor using a benchmarking formula that assigns a relevance score to email campaigns. The system takes into account factors such as segmentation, the customers' stage in the marketing lifecycle, personalisation, and the potential for interaction.

"We see crimes against relevance all the time," said Barratt. "We wanted a methodology that focused our clients' minds."

She said email with poor relevance could damage reputation while more relevant messages boost return on investment.