One of our customers recently made an insightful comment about how she uses Sendio’s Opt-Inbox™ feature that struck me as really savvy. A marketing person herself, she had a level of knowledge about the marketing-email process that most of us don’t have. Her assessment about a benefit she has from using Sendio was clear, compelling, and something I had never considered. Therefore I thought I would share it.
Here’s a little background for those of you who aren’t familiar with the tricks-of-the-trade of today’s marketing email campaigns.
First, marketing emails are like ants a picnic. You see one ant, ignore it, and 30 minutes later ants are all over the unattended desert at the end of the table. I remember, from some Discovery Channel show no doubt, that the first ant -the scout -leaves a chemical tracer to let the other ants know the route to the half-eaten cookie it found.
Marketing emails are very similar. A machine generated email is sent to email addresses. Once the email is opened, a tracer is left on the computer (known commonly as a cookie) and from that tracer marketers start learning about you. At that point more emails start showing up like the ants at a picnic.
It sounds a little diabolic and somewhat scary. You are communicating your preferences without your knowledge. For the most part it’s harmless and sometimes even helpful to you. The problem is that almost every marketing email you receive is doing this. It either deposits a cookie or updates your marketing profile based on the cookie it found. It is a widespread practice.
What this means to you is that every time you open a marketing email from your in-box, perhaps a newsletter or a friendly little e-guide, you are acknowledging that 1) your email address is active and 2) that you may have an interest in the topic of the email.
Have you ever thought “why do they keep sending me email? I’m never going to buy anything from them!” Well, the reason is you keep opening their emails and teasing them into thinking you are interested. Or, perhaps it only looks like you opened it. For instance do you use your reading pane preview? Even if you don’t click on an email to open it, when it displays in the reading pane it results in the cookie being set.
How to Reduce Cookies and Junk Email Simultaneously
OK, so enough background. Here’s the clever thing that a customer pointed out to us: First, and we did know this, when Opt-Inbox™ is used it keeps unwanted email out of your in-box which lowers the number of cookies on your machine. This is a big benefit. However, you also can review email from the Opt-Inbox™ application. Our Sendio Queue gives you the ability to read an email without “formally” receiving it. The value with this is that you may review an email to decide if it is something you want or if it’s from someone you would like to add to your community (see this link for more information on communities http://www.sendio.com/support/product-training-video/). The interesting thing is that reviewing an email from Sendio’s application does not deposit a cookie on your computer. While this benefit was not in our minds when building Sendio, it turns out to be a valuable feature. You will reduce junk mail sent to you by choosing to review some email in the application as opposed to your email client.
Of course, Sendio is at heart a solution that puts only the email you want in your inbox. You can choose to never accept an email from anyone or hold it in the queue and release only those specific emails you care to have in your inbox. The choice is yours alone. Whatever makes you more efficient and less frustrated is the criteria. And as always we have our intensely loyal customers to thank for that!
To learn about Sendio and the great benefits of a pleasant email experience please contact us.
//