Consumer Behavior Toward Email Marketing

As technology developing, people are now indulging in a multimedia world with thousands of advertisements each day. They can have any form like flyers, videos, and emails. As a marketing major student, I want to further investigate how people react to email marketing.
With a large amount of advertising, how people will react to it? About this question, Chang (2013) and his colleague took 221 volunteers in Taiwan and conduct a survey about their attitude toward email marketing. The result is that people are more willing to accept the advertisement once the email which contains the advertisement is permitted to send to the receiver’s mailbox. While other emails which regarded as spam mail would have a negative influence on the product and the company. People generally will be annoyed once they receive something that they do not really care or have less interested in. Deren (2017) mentioned an example about his colleague who signed up for a company’s email list which acknowledges that she will receive more information. However, it appears that she did not only get more information but also get a lot of GIFs and visual puns that are not funny at all. So, under such condition, a consumer will lower his or her royalty toward this brand and the company. Similarly, Paulson’s book Email Marketing Demystified (2015) he also mentioned that a key element for a company to gain successive in the email marketing competition is to keep your messages out of the spam folder. To achieve that, the company need not only attractive information but personalizing emails (Kentico, 2013).
In order to find out the targeting customers and program the right email marketing strategy, the company set out many tips and consumer behavior-based analyzation. According to Deren Baker’s (2017) tips about email marketing, the company should use email to find and encourage potential loyal customers. In order to achieve that, the company will use click rates analyzing tools. To better targeting your consumer, the company need to understand their cultural backgrounds and preference. For example, Deren mentioned that consumers who watched Santa Clarita Diet which is a horror-comedy will more likely to purchase CeraVe skincare products 20 times than normal customers. So, companies really dig into their consumer to find out which part of the population should they be targeted at. So, as a consumer, once they receive such email which totally understands their preference and make the suggestion about certain products, they would really likely to purchase that product. Paulson (2015) suggest a success email marketing strategy which begins with the massive email list and then use compelling messages to engage your customers then further refine your recipients and kept them in touch through emails.
The key takeaway is that in order to let customer accept your email advertisement, the company need to know what they want. The key elements within email marketing are analyzing your customers. As mentioned in the video What Email Marketing is & How to Use It? (2013), the speaker also takes an example about the banana, for the company to generate the maximize profits, they need to target those banana lovers, not haters. Segmenting consumer is a crucial process, integrating email marketing tools need to cross out those who did not have any interest in certain products.
As customers’ perspective, protect personal information while filling websites or other servers’ questionnaires. To avoid getting spam emails, we as consumers should definitely acknowledge our information security every time. And also keep in mind that advertising is nearly inevitable. We could set up some spam list to avoid some email advertisements we do not wish to receive any more. Also, evaluating the value of the product several times. Sometimes, people are motivated by the appealing information like limited edition and limited sales. But those are strategies that the company want you to buy things and sometimes those things are unnecessary for you. So carefully evaluating the items before you make a purchase could lowering your impulsive buying actions. Last but not least, pay attention to some strategies that the company will use by browsing some business-related websites. Customers need to have some understanding in order to prevent being “tricked” by companies. As customers, we could check out some business websites like Entrepreneur which provided a lot of tips for companies. Just spend a couple of minutes browsing some related information would be good for us to understand the marketing environment and prevent being directed by companies.

Reference

Hsin Chang, Hamid Rizal, Hanudin Amin, (2013) “The determinants of consumer behavior towards email advertisement”, Internet Research, Vol. 23 Issue: 3, pp.316-337, https://doi.org/10.1108/10662241311331754

  • The strengthens are credible, related and practical. Since this article have been published and cited many times, also well exemplifies my topic and conducting real experiments to get understanding.
  • The weakness is out of dated, research limitations and not representative. Since this article was written in 2013 which is pretty far away from now and also the writer recognized several research limitations within the survey. Finally, the research only conducts in China which lacks people from other regional representability.

Baker, D. (2017). Want to Conquer ‘Email Fatigue’? Figure out Your Customers’ Viewing Behavior. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/300511

  • The strengths are related, relatively new and practical. It was published on a business professional website and also relatively up-to-date.
  • The weakness would be the lack of academic credibility. Since this article is a similar form as Twitter which could miss peer-reviewed hence lack some academic credibility.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/

  • A business related website which contains a lot of useful information since I am a business major student.
  • Contains a lot of unrelated information since the whole websites contain a lot of business information. Users might feel frustrated by the large quantity of information.

Kentico. (2013). What Email Marketing is & How to Use It? [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bmS8j-qtOk

  • Simple and clear to understand. Using visual images and informal languages to provide viewers a better understanding of digital marketing
  • Lack of in-depth thoughts and ideas about the point. The source credibility needs further investigate. And the published date is relatively old.

Paulson, M. (2015). Email marketing demystified. American Consumer News, LLC.

  • Reliable, detailed information and useful technologies. Relatively recently published. And also the book listed its abstract on the front page. Based on the above information it matches the 4 Ws within the 5W.
  • Takes a long time to process all that information and extract what we need.
  • https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41wKZx51sKL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg