Trick or Treating, Email-style

Saturday is Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. It’s a day for dressing up in costume, being someone else for a change, and of course, eating lots of sweets. Looking back on my younger days, whether I went out dressed as Darth Vader or the Incredible Hulk (true stories), I always hoped for Nestlé Crunch bars or Kit Kats — actually, I still prefer those — and was disappointed whenever I’d get a Sugar Daddy or Snickers bar.

Are you thinking about your email marketing like a dressed-up kid thinks about trick-or-treating on Halloween? The most popular house is always the one giving out what everybody wants (in this case, the best candy), and the one with the least traffic is the one giving out something lame that nobody wants. The same holds true for email: The businesses and organizations with the most people on their mailing lists (and the highest click-through rates) are the ones that give their subscribers exactly what they want.

According to the Global Web Index, a consumer study by Lightspeed Research, the most relevant content a business can give to its customers is about a discount offer. (No surprise there, given the difficult economy.) But it also found that the top characteristic consumers want from brands they like is to improve their knowledge — to keep them up to date on topics that were important to them, to entertain them, to become part of a daily routine, and to inform them about the product and the company.

Using the Halloween logic, it might be easy to infer that you should only send customers discount coupons and sale notifications, right? Wrong. The reality is that not everyone likes the same kind of candy — I mean content. You want to give your customers and members what they want, and in your particular case, it may be tips for organizing their life, or quick recipes they can use that night, or advice for using your products more efficiently, or a success story about someone who benefited from your organization’s good work. It may even be profiles of your employees, staff members, and volunteers.

If you’re struggling to find out what your customers and members want, why not ask them in a quick online survey? The results may surprise you. After all, it’s not uncommon for a business or organization to think it knows what customers and members want, but to find something different is true when they ask.

Also, pay attention to your reporting data. If more people are clicking on your articles about industry trends than on your new product announcements, for example, then you know what they’re finding most interesting and relevant.

You can still throw in a special offer from time to time to thank subscribers for being a part of your mailing list, but too many of those will dilute the overall value of your content, and readers will think you’re only trying to sell them something, instead of trying to better their lives. Remember, one of the most important aspects of email marketing is what your customer gets out of the communications you send, not how you benefit.

So, as you’re getting your costume ready, keep in mind that on Halloween and always, it’s good to give people what they want. The more you can do that, the better your chance of developing a reputation as “the cool house” with all the best “candy.” Otherwise, you may just wake up on November 1 to find that your business or organization has been pelted by eggs — metaphorically speaking, of course.