I have been using email for the last 10 years and am often amazed that email does not get more recognition from larger companies and their high powered executives. The Rate of Return on email is the highest of any mode of communication but always seems to end up last on the budget listing.
Many different experts have spent an abundance of time proposing reasons for the lack of respect given to email. The real answer may be more fundamental than anyone has proposed. Perhaps the real reason is that we just don’t speak the same language. The languages of “email†and “business†are truly very different. Business clients may have difficulty understanding exactly what email can provide because the terminology is so foreign to their business model.
An Example:
* E-mail “What?” 1: CAN-SPAM. When explaining to a client about needing to include an unsubscribe link to a CAN-SPAM complaint, we got this in return: “If they opted in themselves, how is that spam? Doesn’t CAN-SPAM trash unrequested e-mail?”
(Imagine a confused look.)
* E-mail “What?” 2: Click to open. When demonstrating a report showing trends in click-to-open percentages, I got another confused look. “What is this “click to open†thing?” I launched into an explanation of hard to track open rates and that click through rates differ by industry so we have now changed over to general tracking of the click to open rates. (Imagine a blank stare.) Still obviously confused, “But that’s the whole point of e-mail? You click it to open it?”
Both examples quickly showed me that our selling points were critical in the success of the clients email programs. These critical selling points needed client buy in to be implemented and to make the necessary changes in their future email messages for successful communication. The phrases I was using to describe these critical selling points actually made the whole process more confusing to my client and became a liability to the success of my marketing pitch. I was lucky enough to have two clients that did not have a problem admitting that I was speaking Swahili to them and I was able to clarify what we had to offer.
For email professionals this should be a wakeup call. Feel free to speak “email†all you want to the professionals and our peers in the industry, but remember to adopt standard business speak when you are bringing concepts and ideas to your clients. Common business language will get you further faster and could revolutionize your business.
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