The Email Wars

Sure you have worked hard to build a list. You have plans and goals to grow that list by massive amounts. You have plans on how in 2009 you are going to segment more, get more relevant, look at your offers and frequency so that you perform at top levels. 

But what about your subscribers being a catalyst to your plans? Have you taken into consideration how they pass emails to others? How they share opportunities with the click of a Forward button to their own distribution list? We all see it and do it ourselves, but what makes it work? How do you incent this action? 

What has emerged at minimum levels at first has now jumped the shark (a thing or program gaining mass market appeal) to become one of the fast growing programs in retail email this year. We have seen the emergence of the “Friends and Family” sales, the employee discount programs, the shop with a friend programs, and the leverage this discount on and offline programs. All of them are great ideas and stand alone work. But what happens when everyone in your brand universe and target markets begin to use them as well? Is there a value or loss of value in these programs? 

I think that with so many brands using this technique in their email marketing this year that it actually is conditioning the consumer to wait to get a better deal, or even more expect to get something better tomorrow. We are building in a mind set of discounting. I can tell this not only from the early pushes of these types of programs in email, but also in the online and offline sales traffic waiting longer in the holiday retail season for a better deal. 

Maybe we are creating the discounting ourselves that could cannibalize our own sales goals. I know that this is a hard season due to economic factors but wouldn’t bundling and value add programs work just as well? If you see your comp using this technique and you jump on the band wagon of Walmart-esque price and deal matching you are just swimming in the same pool now and not creating a value statement for the consumer to shop with you.

After all so many brands have spent years crafting a brand story, building loyal customers and are now just following the crowd in order to stay afloat. I will not mention some brands that are taking the other route as I do see that it is negatively impacting sales this holiday season, but in the end they might come out on top when they are not a Target/Walmart brand in the pricing game. This is a downturn, but how are you going to reshape programs in the upturn when you have created this expectation in your email marketing? 

It is not an easy question to answer, as I have seen some positive impact in the sales with these programs this season, but the road will be harder later down the line. 

Your subscriber base can be a viral source of your email marketing programs and help you with the simple share this, send to a friend, but when you continue to only drive this behavior with discounting you might not see the same performance in the long term. 

My words of advice are to use this now as a tactic, but have a plan of bring them back around as 2009 moves forward. Design programs like this but use other methods to make them valuable enough to pass on. Digging yourself out of a behavioral hole could be trickier than you think, even when you have short term gains to make now.