Why Email Marketers Need to Build Trust
If you're an email marketer, you're probably wondering how you're going to make your budget numbers this year, what with financial-market turbulence, credit crunches and gloomy holiday spending predictions.
If you think the answer is just to shoot out more email to your list and hope something sticks, you probably should see some data from Silverpop's new survey measuring consumer attitudes toward spam:
- When asked how they define spam, over half said it meant email they didn't sign up for, while 40 percent said it was any email they didn't want to get, and 35 percent said it was email from any commercial entity, presumably even from companies whose brands they otherwise trusted.
- More than 75 percent said they limit the number of emails they subscribe to, even from companies they trust, in order not to get more spam.
- Three in 10 clicked the "report spam" button on email they didn't want because they didn't trust the unsubscribe link.
In a recent Email Insider column, I talk about why building trust is so important for email marketers no matter what condition the economy is in, but especially now, when email users are likely to become more particular about which sender they choose to do business with.
I also list five touchpoints in your program where you can build trust with your recipients or make them more distrustful of you and your messages, along with seven questions that test your trustworthiness. How well can you answer them?
Did I leave out any trust-building opportunities or trust-measuring questions? Post your comments below.
