What is ethical email marketing?
You're not the first one scratching their head, trying to understand what this term is all about.
Let's start with the 3 pillars of ethical email marketing:
Transparency
Has different meanings for different brands, which is fantastic.
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As long as you're having a conversation about it, you're already a few steps ahead of the competition.
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Transparency for one brand can look like the founder's shower thoughts. Or you can share the BTS of your new product. Or you can decide that you're sharing very little on your personal life, and a lot about the strategy of your business.
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Keep this in mind:
- transparency increases empathy
- empathy increases connection
- and connection increases conversions.
Storytelling
As human beings, we're wired to tell and consume stories. That's been the case since the dawn of time.
Want to get scientific about it? There you go - we remember stories 22 times more than we remember hard-core facts (try to remember this one, though!).
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Your subscribers are way more likely to know, like and trust your brand after they read a good, valuable story from you.
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... And trust is the #1 currency we're dealing with here. Without it, your subscriber won't invest in your solution.
Consent
An inseparable part of winning and regaining your subscribers' trust.
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It's something to apply in your email marketing from the moment you welcome a new subscriber into your list and all throughout their customer journey.
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In a (soon to be) cookieless world, it's your responsibility to collect zero-party data from your subscribers with their explicit consent. That's the only way you can send them highly relevant, highly
Plus, consent is hella sexy!
So what does it actually look like in the wild?
Your subscribers are smart.
They've had a few trips around the sun and have been exposed to marketing materials and tactics - thousands of them, actually, every single day.
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So they can't be fooled. And you can't allow yourself to fool them either.
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(Remember? Trust is the #1 currency you're dealing with?)
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Here are some of the tactics that your subscribers are no longer falling for, and you don't want to use either:
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A "limited-time offer" that magically reappears a few weeks later.
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"Surprise! We've extended the sale for you" - who are you kidding?
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Buying/renting email lists, and making it impossible to unsubscribe from them.
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Email subject lines that trick subscribers into opening them - the "re:" or "fwd:" tactic is a common one.
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Flashing a bigger discount toward the end of a sales campaign, right after some of your subscribers buy from you at a smaller discount.
And these are just some of the tactics that make your customers cringe when they debate whether or not to give their email addresses and phone numbers to get promotional information from your brand.
Not all of them would be convinced by the popular 10% off or free shipping on their first order in exchange for having their inboxes or messages bombarded (well, some of them will, but you definitely want to do better than "bombarding" your subscribers either way).
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It's not only a matter of how you get people in the door, but how you treat them once they're in.
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You've already developed such a unique solution to change your customers' lives for the better. Don't you think your emails need to reflect that experience and sell your solution for you?
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