“Nice” Email Marketers Finish Last: The Arguments Against Limiting Your Email Volume

How often has a high-performing salesperson been criticized for making too many prospecting calls? Most likely: almost never.

More importantly, how often has that same high-performing salesperson criticized themselves for too much prospecting and vowed to change their ways? That one is easy: NEVER.

And yet at EMI, we constantly talk to marketers who insist that they must self-regulate email deployment volume to avoid turning customers off, even if the emails are performing well. The marketers usually make one of the following arguments to justify this self-imposed limitation:

  • “I hate getting too many emails.” This is about marketers projecting their own sensitivity and distaste for receiving too many emails onto customers.
  • “We need to manage our long-term customer relationships.” This is about marketers wanting to be viewed as strategic players, not tactical executors.

Unfortunately, neither of these arguments holds up to scrutiny, leaving marketers to impair the role of emails – like the sales unicorn imagined at the beginning of this article – by curtailing their activity despite strong results. So here are five counter arguments against the case for establishing email volume limits:

  • It’s not based on data. It’s true that some email marketers make a volume limiting decision based on data analysis, though in our experience that is a rare breed – especially in B2B. The chart below shows a sample of the data we’ve collected in our work with clients. As you can see from the chart, it’s almost always the case that when you send more emails, you get more people to click. Setting aside the two arguments above, it should make intuitive sense that more emails delivered means more chances to see your emails and decide to click…and this chart supports that intuition.
  • Your customers don’t actually pay as much attention to your emails as you do. You strategize, design, write, code and test every email that you send and are therefore intimately acquainted with and invested in each one. Your customers? Not so much. Most probably couldn’t accurately state how many emails you send because they get so many emails from so many companies that no one company stands out.
  • People are busy and your emails aren’t really that important to them. You need to believe that every email you send is fantastic – well-written, solution-oriented, delivering valuable insights – and hopefully most are. But just because an email is worthy of attention doesn’t mean it will always get it, even from individuals who might have an interest. Your email is competing with the 1,000 other emails in their inbox, some from managers or customers about urgent business issues that will always take priority. In other words, an Open Rate of less than 100% is not a condemnation of your email quality or your email volume.
  • Most of the time, it’s a question of quality, not quantity. Know when it’s annoying to get a lot of emails? It’s when the emails are a waste of the reader’s time: light on anything helpful or useful or interesting. If you’re sending out good content in well-constructed emails, there’s not much for your audience to complain about.
  • You don’t get rewarded for not sending emails. Just like salespeople would never close a deal by NOT reaching out to a prospect, marketers will never drive awareness, interest or decisions by NOT sending emails. Nor will prospects remember that you haven’t sent them as many emails (see points 2 and 3 above) as your competitors. Mostly what they’ll do is not think about you or the solutions you offer.

The arguments supporting a self-imposed volume limit are seductive and, at their core, have good intentions – treat customers the way you’d want to be treated, respect their time and attention, only communicate when you have something important to say. What volume limits don’t recognize is that no company communicates with customers in a vacuum: every minute of every day marketers are competing for the attention of customers and prospects along with hundreds or thousands of other companies and internal demands. While it may seem like limiting email volume is a noble decision that reflects a customer-first attitude, the harsh reality is that when it comes to email marketing, nice marketers finish last.

“…after they’ve seen Paree”: The challenge for financial marketers post-pandemic

There was a popular song at the end of World War I, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm,” about how soldiers returning to rural America might be restless after having seen the wonders of Paris (“How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree [Paris]”). We believe financial marketers should be feeling a similar anxiety about their customers today, who during the new reality of our social isolation have experienced very different ways of interacting with their financial vendors.

There’s absolutely no question that none of us want to continue living the way we have since mid-March, but customers’ experiences with new ways of conducting business are changing their expectations and needs with respect to financial services companies. Certainly, some of these experiences have been far from positive, but the forced disruption of the status quo has opened people’s eyes to new possibilities and has elevated new and different attributes to important and valuable parts of their financial services relationships. For example:

  • Financial advisors and brokers may not welcome as many wholesalers into their offices after finding that virtual conversations work just fine.
  • Small businesses may set a higher bar for their banks to provide digital support and services after going through the pain of PPP.
  • Middle market companies may not welcome one-on-one conversations with prospective commercial lenders.
  • Consumers may place even more importance on the availability and quality of phone and online customer support — enough to overcome their normal bank-switching inertia.

EMI is currently conducting research, in partnership with The Gramercy Institute, among asset management firm marketing leaders to understand how they are providing support to socially-distanced sales teams. This research has revealed many different approaches (which we’ll share in future blog posts), but a common thread is that these marketing leaders believe that many of the adaptations forced by social isolation are likely to drive greater alignment between marketing and sales. Whether or not rose-colored glasses are playing a part in these assessments, this positive outlook indicates that at least some of the new approaches will carry on even when our world begins to open up.

On the one hand, it’s a good sign that firms may be more inclined to challenge assumptions and “standard operating procedures” in favor of new ideas that could better serve client needs. On the other hand, there is danger in greenlighting even well-intentioned new ideas if they aren’t subject to any more validation of their effectiveness than the old ways of doing things. It is therefore vitally important that financial marketers treat our current reality as a testing opportunity, not just an exercise in making the best of a bad situation. The key to this testing mindset will be analyzing data for answers to questions like:

  • Has the volume of sales opportunities gone up or down?
  • Have salespeople had more or fewer direct interactions with customers and prospects?
  • Has the quantity of inbound inquiries increased or decreased?
  • Have customers and prospects interacted more or less with digital communications?

Many or even most of the new virtual and digital approaches have the virtue of being cheaper than their pre-pandemic equivalents. That is why it is so important for financial marketers to not only “feel” that a new approach has been a success, but also quantify the increases or decreases in sales performance and customer satisfaction. Failing to do this runs the risk of marketers waking up in a world of lower budgets (“you proved that you don’t need to do as many expensive things”) and even more unobtainable objectives. In short, unless marketers can provide an alternative narrative, senior management may easily assume that marketing really can do more with less — and make budget allocation decisions that are disastrous for financial marketers and their companies.

You Complete Me: How Marketing Can Boost Change Management Outcomes

In previous blogs, we highlighted six questions common to successful marketing and change management initiatives and common communication requirements across the five stages of audience journeys in adopting change. Now we want to go into the tactical implications of those communication requirements for change management.

There is a trope in love stories and RomComs of one character professing love for another through the words “you complete me.” Like many clichés, it has currency because it’s grounded in an experienced truth: In successful relationships, each partner possesses attributes that shore up weaknesses in the other so that together they are both stronger. That’s how it is with marketing and change management.

As we discussed previously, the similarity of the audience journey in the ADKAR framework to the customer decision-making journey is in the key communication considerations within each framework. Based on this foundation, marketing can help “complete” change management by offering communication best practices and ideas for each stage.

AWARENESS. Communications must highlight the need, bringing to light the pain that needs to be addressed. To be compelling, communication of that pain must be both credible and empathetic.

Examples of marketing communications at this stage:

  • Emails and presentations that explain the change in terms of its impact on all team members, coming from executive leaders
  • FAQs that capture and provide honest answers to real questions likely on the minds of team members

DESIRE. Communications must define the proposed change as the solution to the need, i.e., the best way to relieve the pain. To be successful, these communications must reach the “heart” and the “mind” of the audience by appealing to emotions and logic.

Examples of marketing communications at this stage:

  • Case studies of early, quick “wins” that highlight the benefits realized through the change
  • Infographics presenting the need for change and its potential benefits in simple, visual terms

KNOWLEDGE. Communications must create a solid understanding of the world after the change, in contrast with the current state. To be effective, these communications must make the case that the future state is close at hand and that the path to get there is very simple.

Example of marketing communications at this stage:

  • How-to videos and one-page quick-reference guides that make the path to implementation seem easy; brevity and visuals take priority over words and detailed use cases

ABILITY. Communications must minimize the perceived effort involved in change and reduce friction to take the first step. Successful communications at this stage offer a helping hand—not condescending but by providing clear, simple guidelines that encourage the audience to move down the path.

Examples of marketing communications at this stage:

  • Training materials and tools that provide comprehensive information about how to accomplish current tasks in the new state and instill confidence that change can be achieved
  • Gamification that turns mundane change into activities that confer status or create excitement for team members

REINFORCEMENT. Last, but definitely not least, communications must continue to celebrate the benefits delivered. Many change initiatives fail because they are thought of as a “one and done” proposition in which a single, intense effort suffices. Instead, the initiatives need to be promoted over an extended time period to bring along laggards and solidify the changes already made by early adopters.

Examples of marketing communications at this stage:

  • Success stories/testimonials highlighting the benefits achieved and improvements gained, not only in quantitative terms but in human, emotional terms
  • Awards to bring attention to change-driven achievements and, in the process, elicit feelings of aspiration and potentially competitiveness

Here’s the bottom line: if you’re not thinking about change management like a marketer and marketing like a change management leader, you probably missing something that could elevate the impact of your efforts.