NONE: Re: Junk email or quality information?
Re: Junk email or quality information?
Peter Hartley (hartley_at_shop.hartley.on.ca)
Sat, 06 Jul 1996 12:12:47 -0400
Hello everyone.
I am new to this list so if I am stepping out of line here please be gentle
with your repremands... If my spelling is strange, I tell you now that this
is written by an Englishman, now living in Canada, trying to write in
American after living 25 years in Australia - and my finger dyslexia is
getting worse...
At 10:43 AM 06-07-96 -0400, 75264.1630_at_compuserve.com wrote:
>Donna,
>
>>And I don't even mind unsolicited ad e-mail if 1.it's short and 2.it's
>>something I'm interested in (junk mail = ad mail for something I don't
>>want)
>
>I have to admit that I've been considering using E-mail advertising,
>even though I don't care for it and many people feel the same way.
>However, the economy (and ecology) of it is almost too great to
>ignore. After reading your post and the others, I'm thinking that I
>might go ahead and do it, keeping it a short message as you suggest.
>
>>
>>A problem with some (many?> people who use bulk e-mail advertising is that
>>they don't target the way they would with a paper mailing.
>>
>>Another problem (mentioned above) is the length of the message. Some people
>>put the equivalent of a direct mail letter and brochure in an e-mail
>>message.
>
>Actually this was my original idea, thinking I had one chance for then to
>read it (since many wouldn't reply if they were only _mildly_ interested),
>and I wanted to give them all the information I could for them to make a
>purchase decision. But like I said, I'm re-thinking this now...
>
>>A third problem is more subjective, but perhaps at least some of us who
>>have been getting and sending e-mail for a long time tend to think of
>>e-mail as somehow more personal than paper mail, and therefore find ad
>>e-mail very upsetting.
>
>This is a tough issue -- but I think ad E-mail is getting common enough now
>that most people are putting up with it better (OK, you all can yell at me
>now <g>)
>
Perhaps my recent experiments with "junk mail" might be of interest. By way
of background I am a computer programmer and professional consultant on
information engineering, primarily handling obscure data-base design work
for quasi-autonomous semi-government agencies - usually related to medical
research programs. I have been a dabbler in marketing and advertising
related issues for over twenty years.
When I recently decided to branch out and launch an "el cheapo" public
autoresponder service on the net I decided to kick the beast into life with
a direct e-mail shot at what I guestimated would be my most likely market -
the people who generate most of the junk mail already - the promoters of
MLMs and other "opportunity marketers". I had already developed one of
those nasty pieces of software that generate mailing lists from
newsgroup/usenet postings.
People have a natural hatred for these software machines - but, as has been
stated before, the key to success is careful selection. Using only five
newsgroups my software selected just under 800 target e-mail addresses. The
letter I sent was not especially short - about 80 lines of copy. It did not
apologise for any intrusion - I "assumed" that my targeting would be pretty
good, because I had taken the trouble to make sure that the source of those
addresses was properly selected.
14% of the addresses were undeliverable - mainly becuase fo fake addresses
in the original postings (donald_at_disney.com etc). The initial response rate
was over the expected 3% less than 4 hours after the mailing was completed,
and was over 30% with in excess of 100 sales finalised in under 38 hours of
the last email going out. Now, remember that this was my FIRST EFFORT - and
those results verge on the unbelievable.
I received only five complaints, and I would judge that four of these were
from people who wanted ARPANET returning immediately.
When I compare this result with what my auto-responder clients get - and
since they use the auto-responder address as their reply-to address I get
copies of almost all the flak that they should get, there are either some
really poor mailing lists being sold out there, or people using mail-list
generators are not using anything between their ears at the same time.
My perception is that selection of your target is 80% of the key to
successful use of direct e-mail as an advertising tool. The rest is a
mixture of having a product that people really want, at price that they
regard as acceptable, and a letter that does enough selling to get them to
follow up. Using a well thought out Auto Response Letter is the final step
- for this can be as long as you want. The final pointer, of course, comes
right from Salesmanship 101 - your sales letter has to try to close the
deal. If you don't encourage the prospect to make a decision and to DO IT
NOW, then the whole exercise was a waste of electrons.
Comments, criticism and flak welcomed.
Peter Hartley.
aka THE BotMaster
hartley_at_shop.hartley.on.ca
botmaster_at_mars.hartley.on.ca
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