One side conversation that developed from ask whether email marketing is dead was whether email marketing is a form of interruption marketing.

Personally, I think it is. So let’s begin on the same foot by defining interruption marketing. Basically, interruption marketing is any tactic used to market anything that works only if they (the marketers) interrupt your life to get� your attention. In other words, interruption marketing is just that – it interrupts you and what you’re doing and steals away your time.

If we consider email marketing in that light, how is it not a form of interruption marketing?

Is spam email included, absolutely! Spam is the poster child for interruption marketing. You end up on a spammer’s list and they bombard you with a bunch of stuff you neither want or are interested in. The spam that doesn’t get caught by your spam filter certainly interrupts your life because you, at the very least, have to deal with it.

But let’s leave spam out of the discussion. I’d rather talk about the gray area that exists around ezines, enewsletters, event updates, sales pitches, etc – what’s often called permission marketing – where marketers will ask permission before they send advertisements to prospective customers.

So can permission marketing be interruption marketing?

I certainly think so. And it comes down to the definition above – interruption marketing being any tactic used to advertise that requires interrupting your life to get your attention. Isn’t that what email marketing does?

Think about it, you’re waiting for an email from a client or customer. You’re on the phone and they’ve just sent it. You check your email and you have three messages – the first is spam, the second is from your client and the third is an ezine that you signed up for months back.

Now you’re only looking for one email – that from your client. Yet you get three. The spam, definitely an interruption. The client message – what you’re looking for. The ezine – you may have given your email address to receive, but did you ask it to arrive at this very moment in time? Probably not. That would make it an interruption.

You see, whenever you receive an email that’s marketing something at a time you either don’t want it or don’t expect it, it’s an interruption. If it falls into your inbox, it requires your attention. What you do with it – read it, delete it, file it, leave it – is irrelevant. The fact is you’ve received the ezine at a time you didn’t want or expect to receive it.

Now let’s be clear, I’m not saying is that interruption marketing is bad, wrong, immoral or unethical. Interruption marketing is simply what it is – an interruption in your life to gain your attention.

The question is, do you appreciate your life being interrupted by ezines, enewsletters, sales pitches, early-bird discounts, product releases, event updates, etc?

And if you’re an email marketer (which I am, by the way), how affective is your email marketing strategy for growing your business? Have you noticed any change in how people respond over the past 18 months?

And if you’d like to see a great example of how interruption marketing is making people feel today, take a watch of this video.

(note: image from Sebastiano Pitruzzello (aka gorillaradio) on Flickr)

But what’s the truth? Have we reached a point where we should dump our email lists and find other channels to market through? Or is email marketing still as viable as it always has been?

My own thoughts are that email marketing is still alive and somewhat well. There are lots of business owners today that are making quite a nice living from the revenue they generate from their ezine lists. They continue to get new subscribers weekly, which just reinforces that email marketing is working.

I do think, however, that email marketing is dying – however slowly. And I’m willing to concede that email marketing may just be evolving rather than dying. But of course evolution means a slow death of one so that something new can take its place. And that’s where I feel email marketing is right now.

I mean, let’s face it, we just don’t have the time to read all the stuff that comes to our inbox. So what does come in front of our eyes better either be expected, interesting or useful to my specific needs – whether personal or in business. If I subscribe to an ezine, I’ll likely give it a few issues and if the content isn’t either highly valuable or doesn’t help me solve a specific problem I’m facing, I’ll unsubscribe.

What are your thoughts? Is email marketing dying? Is it evolving? Is it static?

And how effective is your ezine list, if you have one?

(note: image from sean dreilinger on Flickr)

That’s the question I asked the other day which led to an interesting, and in some cases spirited, conversation. I love that we have the space and freedom to openly share our opinions. And I’m grateful that you feel comfortable enough to be open and honest here, in our comment box.

One statement that was made a few times in our conversation is how your newsletter content shouldn’t be separate from your blog content. So should your newsletter articles be different from your blog content?

This is a question that I get asked often. And my answer has evolved over time. At first I thought, “yes, they should be separate.” But now I feel the opposite. Your newsletter subscribers should be able to find your newsletter content on your blog…AND, before they get your newsletter.

Why?

Let’s think about the purpose of an e-newsletter. While it serves many, the main reasons you have a newsletter is to keep in contact with people who have some interest in your business. In doing so you want to give them valuable articles that can help them, build trust and pitch products and services. In other words, your newsletter is about building a relationship.

Yet a newsletter is quite limited in how it does this. Basically, you send it out and it arrives in subscriber’s inbox. They decide to read it or not. And if they do read it, they decide whether they’re going to select one of your offers. That’s pretty much it. The relationship and trust are built through multiple editions and by giving them great content.

But your newsletter can be so much more in building trust and relationship.

Imagine if your newsletter article was only the beginning of a conversation. With it, you simply kicked off an interesting topic that could be discussed, debated and shared easily. You would gain and your readers would as well. And, the conversation would go much further toward building trust with your subscribers.

Well, isn’t that was a blog does?

So forget exclusive content for your newsletter. Your readers likely don’t care if your content is exclusive or not. What they care about is whether the content adds to their life or their business. And if you help them, they’re going to want to get to know you better. And that’s what your blog can do.

Use your newsletter to direct them to the comment box on your blog. Create conversation…build relationships. Let your newsletter become the beginning of an interactive exchange between you and people who are interested in what you offer.

If you’re doing this already, I’d love to hear your experiences. If not, let’s talk about why? And if you’re opposed to publishing all your newsletter content on your blog, I’d love to hear more. So let’s talk…

Mark Brownlow from Email Marketing Reports suggests not. He sites the example of people being afriad to loose numbers from their list. His take is that good lists are not necessarily large ones. Good lists, are those whose members respond to our messages.

I have to agree. There’s so much focus on the size of lists today that people forget about the quality.

Take two clients I have. One has a list of around 10,000 while another has a list of about 3,000. You’d think by sheer numbers the person with the largest list would be getting more business, right?

Wrong. My client with 3,000 has really taken the time to understand how to leverage his list. He write really good articles and makes just the right offers that get people to act. The result is that he gets about 3 times more business through his list than my client with the larger list.

Why, because he’s not obsessed with the size of his list. He’s more interested in the quality of the people on this list. And he understands what they want and need. Much of this is accomplished by his very clear web copy. When you signup for his list, it’s because you really want what he’s offering.

The other client, with the larger list, does great work, but her site and newsletter lack the clarity that my first client has. Her business is flourishing. She’s just not leveraging her list in the same way as my first client is.

Over at Aweber, they’ve written a little follow-up, suggesting that double-opt-in alleviates this problem a bit by weeding out list members. I have to agree to some degree. Yet, I’m still not a fan of double-opt-in lists simply because I know how un-techie many people are. So why penalize them for not being with the game?

My suggestion is focus on the quality of your lists. Whether it’s through double-opt-in or other means.

Imagine, being able to distribute your blog posts to your email list automatically – without having to log into your Aweber account. And if you publish your enewsletter/ezine in your blog, Aweber can deliver it to your list as well.

The setup is pretty simple – just add your RSS feed to your Aweber account. This article lists the integration with Blogger. But it’s really the same process for any blog that has RSS capabilities. I use Aweber to manage the list of people who want to receive my RSS feeds by email instead of in their feed reader.

You can also automate the distribution of your enewsletter/ezine using the same method. This can save quite a bit of time over using the usual broadcast edit option. And if you set your Aweber list to auto send, you don’t even have to que your messages to be sent.

How I do this is I publish all my enewsletters to one category. I then connect my blog to my newsletter list on Aweber using an RSS feed for that category only. Of course, to do this you’ll need to publish your enewsletters/ezines in a blog AND you’ll need to use a blogging solution that lets you place your posts into categories.

Now, creating forms for your website using Aweber’s Web Form Generator just became simpler and more intuitive. And the ‘how-to’ video makes learning easy.

I know that I sometimes respond to my clients quickly and sometimes not. My clients are always impressed when they email me and I reply in minutes. And I know that whenever I have my momentary lapses in email – sometimes a couple of days while I’m heavily working on site development, my clients are less happy – and maybe, at times, feel unheard.

So, I’m going to make a commitment to replying to email on a more regular basis. Instead of checking my inbox twice per day (once in the morning, once in the later afternoon), I’m going to check it every two hours and set aside 10 minutes each time to respond to messages. Let’s see how that changes my client service.

On Discontas I found an interesting post about what customer expect from you when they send an email request.

Recent studies indicate that when customers or potential customers contact an online organisation, 80% prefer communicating by email over phone and over 50% will not do business with a company if they do not receive an adequate response to their email within 24 hours. The average response time to a customer email inquiry is 72 hours.

Most online organisations communicate regularly with customers and clients by email, but few provide a level of email customer service that satisfies their customers.

Interesting. There’s a big gap between 24 and 72 hours. I wonder how much more business we could each land if we were more responsive to email requests? Moreover, if we were really on top of email with our clients, giving them amazing service by quick responses, I wonder how differently they might talk about us to their friends and collegues.

What do you think?