The Myth of Email Marketing

I just got an email from someone (don't know who; it was spam) with the title "The Power of Email Marketing." Power... hmmm. Interesting word.

Yeah, power all right. The power to be ignored by major groups of people. The power of email servers to filter out your emails for no reason whatsoever. Now that's power.

I tried email marketing... for YEARS!

I got one list going, spent hour upon hour at it, day in and day out. I built that list up to over 70,000 opt-ins (notice we never call them "people," but "opt-ins"... why is that, I wonder?). Then, one day -- ONE DAY -- it was suddenly wiped out. Why? Well, the day was January 1, 2006. And, apparently legislation had taken effect that allowed the email servers to, basically, do whatever they wanted, regardless of both sender OR recipient.

Suddenly, I went from marketing to a packed house (as it were), to hearing crickets in the dark.

I thought, erroneously, that it must be my auto-responder. Perhaps they hadn't been doing their job of policing themselves and had gotten a bad reputation. So I made the further mistake of taking my list (because I always kept a copy of each "opt-in" offline, just in case there was ever a question) to a new auto-responder.

It was then I discovered that auto-responders, in their earnest desire to a responsible job, don't take kindly to huge imported lists, no matter how much you swear that these people really did opt in and double opt-in somewhere else. Some will only let you import about 1,000-1,500 per day... usually it's less than that. Okay... so I had over 2 months of work ahead of me (give or take depending on how many opt-ins I continued to get each day). So I got busy.

Three months later... I was frustrated to discover that I STILL was not getting the kind of response from my list that I had before. So I ran a test, asking my opt-ins to re-confirm their participation. What do you think the response rate was? 20%? 10%?

Even 1% would be 700. Well, of the over 70,000 members of my list, less than 100 opted in again. LESS than 100. In fact, about .1%.

I also found, to my further dismay, that quite a few people that had actually gone out of their way to subscribe to my (then) newsletter, wrote to ask why they hadn't received it. Why it suddenly stopped coming. Because I wrote it regularly, every Thursday. I was writing it; I was sending it. No one was getting it.

The email servers were sending it to la-la land. Even those who had opted in and opened it and read it. That didn't matter. Heck, why should the choice of the people matter? The email servers all know better. THEY know what's good for us, right?

You see... email servers are nothing like the USPS, which is governed by laws. The USPS (and most governmental postal agencies throughout the world) are not ALLOWED to decide which mail we want and which we don't. The email servers are not bound by those laws. They can do anything they want-- they're providing a service, many times for free or at their own discretion as an add-on to another service (ISP's especially). They don't have to do it at all. They could just shut down and no one can do a thing about it.

So, if they decide that all emails containing the words "money" or "business" or "free" should be filtered out because, after all, they don't want to have their servers clogged up with a bunch of spammers sending emails to people who don't want them. Never mind that you sent a private email asking to borrow some "money" from your aunt to start an apple pie making "business" and you want to see if she's "free" next week to discuss it... She didn't ignore your email. She never got it. (Ahhh... now you know what happened to all those emails that never arrived... you made the mistake of adding one of the thousands (literally) of 'trigger' words... words like "no" (I swear) or 'new' or-- oh, the list goes on and on.)

Yeah... email servers pretty much suck. In fact...

It doesn't escape MY attention that the email servers that are the most vigilant about filters are ALSO run by huge corportions... the kind of corporations who don't like the idea of small businesses thriving... of a bunch of up-start independents making a living on their own. So, gee, if they can thwart it any way they see fit... well. They're just being (dare I say it?) like a BIG BROTHER, aren't they? Looking out for our 'best' interests.

I mean, if we all go off and make our own money from each other, where does that leave them?

They've lost half their employees (who were underpaid in order for the top levels to get those obscene salaries), and they lost half of their customer base (because we're all buying from each other instead of them). But they're not motivated to do anything that would intrude on independent business men... why should they?

Just like, since at least 2006, Micro-soft has NOT been adding 'security' software to all the computers (millions of them) that block out ALL advertising banners and buttons on all pages. Yeah, all those nasty banners are so very "dangerous"-- oooh. I'm shaking.

And they are dangerous-- to corporations. Because 99% of those banners are from reputable, independent businesses, that are working hard to earn enough to live. In fact, I'd say it's more like 100% because scammers and hackers don't bother to place viruses there. And, as already mentioned, that is a threat to corporations. And they will do whatever it takes to stop it, even going so far as to filter out OPTED-IN emails and block out perfectly legitimate banners. (Unless you know to look through your security set-up, you'd never know they were there.)

But, what really, really gets me is all the marketers who still buy in to the whole "email marketing myth." Anyone who had an established list prior to 2005 is probably safe. But, to tell people that email marketing is the way to go TODAY-- is just leading them down a blind alley. I'll tell you the truth: for anyone new to marketing, email marketing is the biggest waste of time there is.

You will spend hundreds of hours and dollars-- and most of your emails will be filtered out, even when they're sent ONLY to those who voluntarily opt-in on their own.