See how the Mail "forced" the user

Translator Note: Marketing mail is not unfamiliar to us, perhaps everyone's mailbox is still lying a lot of QQ group purchase, Xun, public comments and other emails, perhaps many times you will not open to take a look at, perhaps you also have a headache to deal with these messages ... This article from many angles to refine the voice of the user, the point of view, especially worthy of the electrical business children's shoes for reference and learning.

Original address: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/02/11/how-email-alienate-users/

Spam! Maybe only Monty Python will like it, we're not so sure. What is spam? Have you ever sent a lot of spam to your users, too? Is there a place where email marketing can work?

Many of us have a pain in the mail and love it, which has become an unavoidable part of life. There's nothing that bothers us more than spam when it comes to our relationship with email.

First, it's hard to define exactly what spam is. Google defines this:

"Send the same information to a large number of recipients on the Internet without distinction. ”

What does that mean? The reality is that the same message, which some people can accept, is extremely annoying to others.

The lack of a clear definition of what forms are recognised and what is difficult to accept will make email marketing more and more alienating to users, rather than winning them over.

Are we completely abandoning the marketing tool for email?

The advantages of email marketing

If applied properly, email marketing is a very useful tool for you and your subscribers.

Email marketing does not have to always "force" the user to complete an operation, although this is very effective. It also allows your users to remember your brand, so that when the service they provide is needed, the user will be the first to think of you, not your competitor.

e-mail communication is an effective way to establish a lasting and stable relationship. Compared with the general website, Mail communication has more personalized interaction. You can ask questions, encourage users to discuss, collect suggestions, feedback, and more. A successful email marketing should be a conversation, not a monologue.

Good email marketing does not only benefit the sender, but also the interests of subscribers. It should help users solve problems, keep them abreast of the latest information, and provide practical value. And that's what they were expecting when they subscribed.

The problem is that users do not consciously subscribe to emails at first, and they do not want to receive them.

"Why did I receive this email?" ”

Let's say you've got a certain amount of permission from the user, but you shouldn't send a message to a user without asking for permission. The "unsolicited" here can be interpreted in many ways, and you may well be unaware that you have strayed into a gray area.

First of all, let me be clear: buying a mailing list that is collected by a third party, which in my opinion (which I myself very much doubt) is an unsolicited message. If you don't want to scare away your users, don't use this path.

In addition, if a user simply registers the service you provide, it does not mean they are willing to receive your email.

There is a crucial distinction here. In the process of registering, you may have told the user that you would send them an email, even if you offered them a fallback option. However, if the user does not notice this, then you still offend them, although you have not done anything wrong, but in their eyes this is still your unsolicited mail to them.

When I bought a app for Stardock, I didn't remember when I agreed to subscribe to it, but I received a regular email from the company.

The growing popularity of news announcements is another example of this gray area.

"I don't want to be reminded!" ”

On the surface, the notification message seems to be completely harmless. If my friend is enrolled in the same service as me, I want to know there is some truth in it. Similarly, this is also useful if you know someone is commenting on my things by email.

For users, however, these emails are becoming less practical, and they are always urging them to tap into them again.

When someone registers or uses your site, service, or application, keep in mind that if you want to send them a notice, make them clear and give them the right to choose not to receive them.

It is also important to know what you want to do with the notification message that you added later. Recently, Twitter has started to push messages from Twitter to users via email. I guess Twitter may think this is a very effective way to encourage users to use their services more aggressively. But what it does is alienate the user.

I would like to unsubscribe from the Titter summary, but I can not return, because I forgot my login information.

The unsubscribe function should be as easy as clicking a link. Using other tricks can only make subscribers more upset.

Of course, your most wanted users don't click Cancel at the start. A good way to avoid such a problem is to tighten the content topic.

"It's not at all what I subscribe to!" ”

If the user is interested in subscribing to the mail, there must be a certain expectation, and if you do not want to let them lose the middle, it is very important to meet the user expectations.

Maintain a unified expression in all channels of communication with the user. If you are using a more formal, conservative tone of communication on your site, and the expression in your email is very colloquial, the contrast will confuse users. And the narrative in the novel is consistent with the role of the characters, in social media, mail and your site should maintain the expression of the singleness of tone and the consistency of information.

In addition, users are concerned not only with how you communicate with them, but also what content you can provide.

For example, users who subscribe to my newsletter expect to see the latest news related to web design, which I told them to be able to get in the first place, which is what I have to offer. If I start to push web design ads and so on, they will feel cheated, and the result will be the people who leave me.

Keep in mind that few users are willing to subscribe to emails that are purely promotional. To be sure, they all have other expectations, and there is no point in advertising.

Users do not want to subscribe to email just for endless promotional promotions.

Most of the time, users subscribe to your mailing list to make an agreement with you. Users will be willing to tell you their personal contact information, so that they can get something valuable. They can tolerate a certain degree of deviation from the subject of the sales ads, but it is easy to grasp the wrong way.

What they can't bear is to keep urging them to do something in the mail.

If a user subscribes to a charity-related newsletter, the newsletter should provide more than regular appeals to users for donations. such as telling stories about success, educating users, or offering some value sharing.

The RSPCA animal charity newsletter is a case of a good combination of donations and rich content.

Providing valuable content is important not just because it keeps the user involved, but also because you always put the needs of subscribers first.

"You obviously don't care about me!" ”

Many mailing list managers are so busy coping with their agendas and maximizing the rate of clicks and conversions that they rarely get to pay attention to their subscribers.

Their emails only spread a pang of information, and I spent a lot of time and energy every week writing emails to make it clear to my recipients that this email was written only for him.

To retain users, we need to treat them as a living individual, not as a statistic of the amount of mail read and the conversion rate.

This can be analyzed from two aspects. First of all, our emails should avoid marketing terminology and should be read as personal emails written specifically for each other. Maybe your level of marketing email is very good, but you will never write emails to your friends in this style.

Rigid marketing copies and no personalization differences do make a subscriber feel completely out of focus.

Second, the message is a two-way media, so we subscribe to the message should be the case, which means that to allow users to reply, do not send a message like "no-reply@company-name.com" address.

We should also actively engage users in discussions, ask their opinions, encourage comments and, if necessary, initiate opinion polls.

Of course, it all depends on whether they are willing to read our emails.

"It can't be read at all!" ”

Mailing list operators are eager to increase the conversion rate of mail, so they pursue more complex and excessive e-mail design. Counterproductive, this often leads to difficult to read messages, and allows the recipient to immediately want to point to the push-back button, or, worse, to hit the spam label directly.

Unlike many web designers think, I think there is nothing wrong with HTML-formatted mail. It can be counted to generate a higher conversion rate, and there is no omission. Of course, HTML messages want to operate very precisely, or require rigorous testing.

The focus on mobile devices complicates the problem. There are now a very large percentage of users using mobile devices to receive mail, but the reading experience of HTML-formatted messages is not too friendly on the mail clients of these devices.

Many HTML messages do not test the mobile device, resulting in no lookup.

Fortunately, companies like MailChimp have developed tools that allow HTML messages to be used well, and do not require you to understand programming knowledge

Of course, if all the ways are invalidated, at least a plain text version can be provided for those who need it.

"I just want to get a little more respect!" ”

Ultimately, the trick to not let your users leave you is simple: respect them!

If you follow that old proverb, you won't go too far, "How do you treat others when you want to be treated?" If you don't like to force you to sign up without your permission, to sell you their goods, and not be able to easily unsubscribe, others will feel the same way about the subscription service you offer.

No matter how important your email is, it may not be any different for your subscribers.