Hi my name is Grenville Clark. I’m the internet marketing specialist with Ottawakiosk.com. Today I’m going to talk about direct marketing versus email newsletters. I’ve worked in the marketing space for 10 years as well as working construction and working the restaurant industry—and almost everything in between. What I found, though, is that there’s a lot of good stuff to know about marketing within all of these industries, and they’re different.
All of these industries specifically may or may not take advantage of sending you information to your email inbox. This could come in the form of direct mail, which you’re not subscribed for, it’s something that will probably have to do with you, they know that. Or subscribed information that maybe you’ve been at a trade show, maybe you’ve entered a contest and you now get an email newsletter.
Well let’s look at how both of those work really quickly. Direct email will—they’ll send you information. If it’s come into your home, which would be your home email address, the likelihood is it’s going to be information that you might want to apply in that space, so it could be flooring, it could be windows, and we all see it come in. This information often has to do with us fairly directly with our home and it’s offering some kind of deal, it might be a coupon.
But how do we accept that? Do we want this information, it’s been pushed on us, it’s been given to us. A lot of us feel, maybe a little bit disdained towards this information. Some people accept it willingly. It depends on really the personality. It also depends on what you’re doing at that time. If you’re renovating, getting some information about decks or about painting might be a great idea. If that’s not what you’re doing, maybe you’re going to be hitting the delete button.
On the other hand, there’s some subscribed information that comes to you. It might come in the form of email newsletter, and it’s often around the topic that you’re interested in. I know I get a golf email newsletter, and it’s about information that I want to know. Yes, of course, there’s going to be subscriptions that go along with that, or there might be deals on playing golf, you know, with friends or they’ll include a card or coupons of some sort. But for the most part, I don’t mind getting that email. Just because you start getting email newsletter, it’s because you’ve subscribed to, doesn’t mean you necessarily want to keep getting it. In that case, most companies will make the unsubscribe feature fairly clear. People want to know that easily they can get rid of this or they could stop getting it because maybe it’s getting on their nerves. Some types of email newsletters are fairly general, and it’s about events or calendar events that might be happening at certain geographic region, here in Ottawa, maybe elsewhere. Some place that you’re interested in. And in that case, what you find the demographic is families, maybe mothers, good incomes that want to stay busy. This is very typical of the type of information that’s coming in, these generalized events and some kind of contest newsletter. In both cases, you have to decide what’s working for you, whether as a consumer, you want information to come in; you don’t mind keeping some of this stuff.
And if you’re a merchant or doing marketing, how do you want your information to be perceived? You know, if you’re sending direct mail, you got to understand that you are, in a certain sense, imposing or encroaching on somebody’s space or time, or basically just filling up their email box. How much do we like that? Did somebody subscribe to your email newsletter and you want to keep those subscriptions going, you got to keep your content relevant, you got to include something that you can give back, like coupons or contests, and you got to keep the information lively and relevant.
