One of the geniuses of internet marketing is a fellow named Glen Livingston. Not a super celebrity of internet marketing but none the less very good at what he does. Glen was responsible for coming up with Nextel’s name amongst other things.
When he first burst onto the scene it was because of his ability to understand the conversation behind the keyword. Glen can tell you in painstaking detail the difference between a person who types in guinea pig vs guinea pigs into Google. (singlular – usually wants to know what one is. Plural wants to know how to take care of them cos they were about to buy some.)
What he was able to do with this research was tailor his ads to boost click throughs. He was also able to construct long and elaborate relationship building marketing sequences through the use of auto responders.
Now the thing that always amazed him was that two years after someone opted-in he would often get a phone call from them and this person would be talking to him as if he knew them.
Now I can tell you that you can shorten that cycle.
It’s been our experience at Newsletter Marketing Systems that it takes 6-9 months to build a relationship using printed newsletters. There are a bunch of reasons.
Firstly for all intents and purposes 99% of the mail is delivered. I think internet marketing guru Ryan Deiss says email has a 60% deliverability rate, A quick Google of the subject says 75%. Email has an open rate of between 9 and 11% . Send 100 emails, 75 of them arrive, if 11% are opened then you’ve gotten through to 7.5 people –call it 8.
According to Australia Post the open rate for commercial mail is 73% and they are talking about bills from banks and power companies as well as flyers from hardware stores. Send 100 letters, 99 arrive 72 are read. You need to send 9 times the emails in order to be as effective as with mail.
That’s the math behind the statement.
Secondly, there is the increased emotional processing that occurs when you receive something tangible. Check out Bangor University’s study using “Neuroscience to Understand the Role of Direct Mail.” Send the same message electronically and in the mail and in the mail it will be processed by the recipients’ brain in a completely different way. With direct mail being processed more deeply hence the better relationship building qualities.
Thirdly, people like getting mail. 82% of Australians check their mail daily. And 82% of people read their mail the day it is received.
Conversely, 65% of people receive too many emails in a day to read them all.
All of this adds up to the phenomena Ben and I see over and over again – people who have never met us think we are their friends and want to buy from us in under a year. Vs 2 years to achieve the same relationship with email.