eMarketing Meets Social

Dear Email Marketers,

You’re beginning to hit that threshold that I am not sure that I can handle. I noticed it starting in mid-October as Halloween came around but I paid little attention to it, since I’m also an online marketer and like to see what you folks have up your sleeve.

By mid-November I was one-click away from unsubscribing from half of my email marketing communications – when in-walked this huge online retail giant and started emailing me snoozeworthy discount deals every few hours, and made me forget about the other guys. As I monitored my email I received “Free Shipping” offers – but this particular site’s shipping is always only $2.95 so I wasn’t too impressed.

I told myself to stay subscribed to all of my marketing fodder at least until “Cyber Monday” to see what types of deals online retailers might be offering, but after a lackluster day of lame discounts and barraging my inbox –you’re all getting dangerously close to being out of my life (and inbox) completely.

Today I received a “10% off” email from that large retailer (that’s all you got?) and an email from a trendy airline that offered me double flight points for shopping at a bunch of other retailers (including the aforementioned online retail giant) – but made no mention of the “Secret Sale” that I knew was going on in my very city that day only and would have been far more intriguing to me.

In fact, the only 2 worthwhile emails I’ve received in my personal inbox this Cyber Monday have been a newsletter from TraderJoe’s with a cheery “Forward to a Friend” Norwhale Image – and the triggered responses from my credit card company that have welcomed me to a their email alerts and given me some valuable (but not hijack-able) info about using my account. At least these two emails had a degree of cleverness (TJ’s) and personalization (credit card).

So here are my 2 Thoughts for Email Marketing on Cyber Monday and Throughout the Holidays!

-Don’t Dilute the Day with Mediocre Savings: To most people, the “Cyber Monday” in the headline isn’t worth clicking– the discounts are insignificant and/or usually require jumping through a lot of hoops to get. Why not start off with a truly great offer or discount and let that be a catalyst for the rest of the season?

-Retain your everyday subscribers by making holiday emails “worth it”: seriously, stick to some great basic deals and don’t bombard your customers. Or better yet, customize your emails to their inbox. It’ll be a lot harder to reach out to your subscribers after the New Year if they’re not on your list anymore!