This is going to get me downvoted, but it needs to be said.
As a marketer, I really wish people behaved logically. If they want to get emails, they opt-in, and they don't want to, they don't opt-in. That's the pervasive belief here based on the comments I've seen so far, and that's really clean right?
However, the truth in my experience is that people don't. This black-and-white segmentation IMHO ignores a middle segment of customers who don't care that much one way or another. They are the ones who don't even see the checkbox, whether it's checked or not, they're just trying to move through a form.
If you don't have opt-in, and when you email them later, some of them do convert. When you move to opt-in, you lose your connection to those customers and your overall re-capture rates go down. You throw the baby out with the bathwater. And the increased engagement from those that are left isn't nearly enough, especially if you have a hard limit on the number of purchases at a time like I did (online financial product).
This is what I know based on the data I've seen in one business. Now if I conjecture, I think opt-in works best for businesses email is your lifeline. Think knowledge-based businesses like I will Teach You to Be Rich - if that guy didn't have email, he'd be screwed. He needs to build trust and he does that through sending you relevant, useful content. So they use opt-in to really make sure their deliverability is top-notch.
Other companies have many channels of acquisition, and send so many emails, that if a few customers click spam, it sucks but it's OK.
So I don't have a great solution. I think the one that works OK is providing prominent unsubscribe options and making it really easy for customers who don't want to receive any more messages to do so. But it's not perfect - we still get spam complaints and people swearing they unsub'd 5 times and still get messages. I don't want to message people who don't want to hear from us, but you need a signal to do so.
> This black-and-white segmentation IMHO ignores a middle segment of customers who don't care that much one way or another.
I think this is very obviously wrong. A middle segment of customers that don't mind getting 47 spam emails per day from dozens of services they've used or businesses they've shopped with in the past (even if it was five years ago and then they just keep getting emails every week forever)? There's no way. Nobody is reading all of that worthless junk. If I didn't aggressively police my inbox from that technically theoretically legally solicited abuse spam, I'd get a thousand plus emails per month of just that. I don't believe for a second that there is anybody on the planet that enjoys that kind of email inbox abuse. Nobody wants to spend their time every day scanning over that and deleting all of it.
I think you and me treat email differently than the average person. I saw my friend's email the other day: 26 thousand unopened emails. And he doesn't mind at all. Sometimes he searches through a few days worth to see if there is anything interesting. I think his use of personal email is much more common than my perfectly organized, and usually 0 unread messages inbox.
Thank you. And yes while 26000 emails would drive me nuts lets not forget there are so many people out there it would not bother that it's actually a big 5 personality trait - conscientiousness. Those who score low or even middle may not police their email or consider inbox zero a worthwhile goal or use of their time.
I personally put in a script that archives all email after 7 days. I figure if I haven't read it in that time period it's not worth while. Keeps my inbox quite small and no policing required :)
I think you need to follow the data and see where it leads you. What happens to your metrics when you implement opt in or double opt in? Not everyone uses or perceives email (or really anything) the same.
Maybe offer them something for opting in? I volunteered for an email list with Travelpro because of the 15% discount. I can't remember another time I've voluntarily subscribed to a company's marketing emails.
My kind of guy right here! I would love to do this. In my industry incentives were kind of challenging to work with (you can get in trouble with regulators for false advertising if you dont dutifully fulfill and audit yourself, discounting the product may be too much risk than business is willing to take on, etc). I will soon be changing industries and can't wait to bring back incentives :)
As a marketer, I really wish people behaved logically. If they want to get emails, they opt-in, and they don't want to, they don't opt-in. That's the pervasive belief here based on the comments I've seen so far, and that's really clean right?
However, the truth in my experience is that people don't. This black-and-white segmentation IMHO ignores a middle segment of customers who don't care that much one way or another. They are the ones who don't even see the checkbox, whether it's checked or not, they're just trying to move through a form.
If you don't have opt-in, and when you email them later, some of them do convert. When you move to opt-in, you lose your connection to those customers and your overall re-capture rates go down. You throw the baby out with the bathwater. And the increased engagement from those that are left isn't nearly enough, especially if you have a hard limit on the number of purchases at a time like I did (online financial product).
This is what I know based on the data I've seen in one business. Now if I conjecture, I think opt-in works best for businesses email is your lifeline. Think knowledge-based businesses like I will Teach You to Be Rich - if that guy didn't have email, he'd be screwed. He needs to build trust and he does that through sending you relevant, useful content. So they use opt-in to really make sure their deliverability is top-notch. Other companies have many channels of acquisition, and send so many emails, that if a few customers click spam, it sucks but it's OK.
So I don't have a great solution. I think the one that works OK is providing prominent unsubscribe options and making it really easy for customers who don't want to receive any more messages to do so. But it's not perfect - we still get spam complaints and people swearing they unsub'd 5 times and still get messages. I don't want to message people who don't want to hear from us, but you need a signal to do so.