More Evidence Of Email Going MIA for Customer Service

Following on the heels of our study, (Return to Sender - Most Companies Receive Failing Grade in Responding to Their Email Campaigns), Talisma, when reviewing eretailers email response during customer service, discovered some abysmal results of their own.

Their study found "despite this communication channel being one of the most favored by Internet users, 34 percent of email queries went unanswered."

Our findings (which covered other online companies besides retailers) revealed companies performed even poorer when replying to email questions, concerns and other inquiries:

-only 15% of companies that sent opt-in email messages over the span of a week answered subscriber responses to their own emails
-63% failed to reply at all
-15% of the replies immediately bounced as the sender did not have a valid return email address.
-The remaining 7% of email messages had an automated message that said they did not accept email messages.

Wake up, folks. Just because it is cheaper than answering the phone doesn't mean you can ignore it.

File Under "Companies that make permission emailers crazy"

Actually, the headline on TechCrunch where I read about this company sums it up perfectly How To Lose All Your Friends Immediately, In Real Time.

Trumpia - a social communicator, is doomed to get press although I imagine it will be mainly skeptical and negative. This sort of business model would fly in 1999 but I hope it doesn't catch on as it makes the work of all of us legitimate email marketers that much harder.

Anyone in the email space, will know what to expect upon seeing Blast as their main value proposition and product name.

Some of their marketing fodder:
-Blast is the perfect tool for people that need to communicate and coordinate things in real-time with a group of people, but cannot rely solely on email to do so. After all, email is old!

-Blast people on their mobile phones, instant messaging and emails at the same time so you can contact everyone in real time no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing…Once you are signed up for Trumpia you can start blasting your friends right away, even if they haven’t signed up.

Nice best practices.

As TechCrunch notes, "the only way to make the madness stop is to sign up for the service and tell it not to contact you any more."

Monkey Business

MailChimp's Live Chat With a King

Pretty funny stuff and bold that MailChimp posted this dialogue. However, it seems true to their irreverent brand/positioning.

Return to Sender

I won't go into details here but my latest iMedia article revealed one of, if not the number one, biggest issue that I believe email marketing professionals face. That is that most campaigns and the strategy driving them is a one way street. What I mean is that companies spend a great deal of time on the look, the wordsmithing, the offer and other parts of the email messaging but they fail to see the big picture. I could go a lot of different ways with this blog entry but the aspect that I want to address is the glaring absence of a full circle email campaign. The first half of the campaign is the creation and send of the email message.

The second half is the tracking and responses that the sender gets. The tracking goes beyond opens, clicks, ROI etc. Most tools track replies. Where those replies go seems to be another story.

Our informal study found on how companies reply to their email campaigns revealed only 15% of companies that sent opt-in email messages over the span of a week answered subscriber responses to their own emails; 63% failed to reply at all and 15% of the replies immediately bounced as the sender did not have a valid return email address. The remaining 7% of email messages had an automated message that said they did not accept email messages.

To hear me rant some more, check out this brief podcast or press release on this topic.

How to decrease your email list

No, this isn't a post about what not to do. This is about a bold move by the folks at CBS Sportsline who want quality not quantity when it comes to their email program. Read about it in an article by Ken Magill for Direct that for some reason doesn't include his signature no hold barred approach but is still a good read.

Behind CBSSports.com’s Massive E-mail Cleanup

How to Write a perfect email

Wired shares thoughts on proper email correspondence. This is geared towards personal email writing tips but one could use these tips for any type of email, whether it is a greeting to a former colleague, sales inquiry or newsletter to 5,000 opt in subscribers.

Among the tips:
Brevity
Context
Something to act on
A deadline

Sounds like a good email marketing campaign as well, right?

Off Topic Plug

But it is for my wife, so it is OK. SepiaPress.com is her online stationery store and is pretty impressive, I must say. She built the site herself and had had a great deal of initial success and feedback.

Check it out if you are in the market for Monogrammed Correspondence, Gift Enclosures, Birth Announcements or other clever personalized Gift Ideas.

Of course, she has an opt in email sign up as well in the event you were wondering.

Email Marketers with Opinions - Step Inside

The First Annual EmailStatCenter.com State of Email Metrics Survey has just gone live. You can't miss it on the home page.

If you are an email marketing professional, your thoughts count. As an added bonus, if you participate and opt in, you will receive the preview findings before they are released.

Check it out and share it with other email pros as this will hopefully provide some great insight to our industry on how we use metrics and what other issues we are battling in the fight for the perfect inbox.

Click here - it should only take 2 minutes of your time.