If you want your permission-based (opt-in) email marketing campaign to pay off, your message to list members must be relevant to their needs, wants and desires.

Seems like a no-brainer to me, but of course there’s nothing like a study to give credibility to what we already know.

The study in question, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that half of all adult email users surveyed said they had made an online purchase as a result of opt-in, promotional email marketing. But, that they are more than willing to revoke their permission to receive emails from companies if the message sent is not relevant to them. The study also found that opt-in promotional emails are second only to customer reviews on a Web site for influencing a purchase.

Here’s the list — in order of percentage — of US adults who made an online purchase based on the following:

• Customer Reviews on the Company Web site
• Promotional Emails
• Search Engine Results Pages
• Ads on their Favorite Web sites
• Third Party Feedback Site
• Ads within Social Network Sites
• Blog Postings

Given the above results, it’s a shame that so many irrelevant, unsolicited spam email messages still get through to consumers (me included) and spoil the party for legitimate marketers.

Tags: Email Marketing, email marketing campaign, opt-in email marketing, permission-based email

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Email Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.