 Consider the subject line on the latest version of the Nigerian spam email that reached my inbox recently: " Trust and Confidence." I laughed, of course; why would I have trust and confidence in an unsolicited email from a stranger asking me to wire him thousands of dollars? But legitimate online marketers often forget that just saying "trust me" isn't enough to inspire email subscribers to have enough confidence in your email to open and act on it the way you want.
What's worse, the triple whammy of spam, viruses, and fraud that has eroded consumer trust in email marketing now shows signs of spreading to mobile and social channels, as hackers and spammers become savvier in reaching new media.
Sending messages across more than one communication channel has its benefits: You reach a wider audience, have more ways to interact with your customers, and can amplify your message beyond a single channel. So, with customers on their guard and more cautious about incoming messages, how do you differentiate to build a relationship of customer trust across all channels?
Trust-building and trust-maintenance rules still apply as you expand your email campaigns into social and mobile media. Even more importantly, make sure that email, social, and mobile messages sing the same tune.
As a marketer, you would hate to lose a valued email customer over a bad search experience or misdirected mobile message. These strategies help you tell a cohesive, and ultimately more trustworthy, story:
1. Start building trust with email marketing.
A trustworthy email marketing program tells subscribers that receiving your email is an informed choice they've actively made, not a mistake they got tricked into.
Begin with a transparent opt-in process. Sell your email program and website registration in the most glowing terms, but give prospects the final say-so whether to sign up. A trustworthy opt-in program has these hallmarks:
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No prechecked box on the opt-in form
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Clear statements about content, format, and frequency
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Welcome email sent on confirmation, restating subscription details, link to privacy policy or TOS, and detailed contact information
Next, assess your email design and functionality. Surveys show email consumers feel pretty confident that they can tell the difference between spam and legit email right in the inbox. If your email campaigns routinely generate enough spam complaints to affect deliverability, it's time to redesign.
These elements build trust in your email:
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Instant inbox recognition, with the brand, company, or newsletter name in the "from" field (never a person's name or email address) or the subject line, or both
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No "red X" images or single large image that's likely to be blocked
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No bad code or broken links, especially the unsubscribe link
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Detailed contact information, with names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and postal addresses
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Subscription-management information including the subscribed email address
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Effective monitoring of all mailboxes associated with your email marketing program for questions, comments, criticisms, and unsubscribes sent to "unofficial" addresses
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Prompt response to email subscribers
2. Extend trust to mobile devices.
Build trust by giving subscribers a choice as to how they want to be contacted -- email or SMS. If you haven't thought about having a mobile component, now's the time. The credibility you've earned with other channels translates to results with the handheld:
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Post your opt-in mobile SMS text on your landing pages to grow your mobile prospects.
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Use short, targeted SMS texts to reach wider audiences and those on the go.
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Use personalized short codes for SMS text replies.
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Keep messages highly relevant and concise.
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Update content regularly based on response rates.
3. Establish credibility with social networking to spread your messages and spot trust breakdowns.
When even your mom "friends" you on Facebook, you know social networking has reached critical mass. Add in Twitter, and you find yourself in constant conversation, which can build credibility for your brand and extend customer-service efforts. Consider these initiatives to ensure that the trust you built through email marketing translates to more viral online channels:
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Establish official pages on major social networking sites, using company logos and other design elements to distinguish them from individual fan pages.
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Post your contact information, such as your Twitter account name and URLs to your social network pages, prominently on your website and in your email messages.
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Update network pages frequently, with content that reflects your current email campaigns (offers, links to online version of articles, etc.).
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Use search programs to monitor conversations involving your company on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.
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Respond immediately to public and private comments, questions, or criticisms that indicate a trust problem.
4. Build trust with search, email, and Web analytics to streamline design, function, navigation, and results.
Email, mobile, and social media marketing aren't isolated from your other online marketing programs. Integrate them all with Web analytics data and search marketing, and help your marketing department optimize landing pages and conversion funnels.
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Ensure email and search links take clickers directly to the landing page for the article or offer, not to the home page or another unrelated topic.
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Review progress through your conversion funnel and compare the progress of general visitors, search visitors, and email visitors. If email visitors or search drop out with greater frequency than others, make sure your copy is setting the right expectations.
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Double check pages linked to external sources such as email and third-party sites that have long lives, which reduces the number of "Page Not Found" errors.
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Match site contact information to contact info in your email.
Web analytics can reveal problems in trust, such as high bounce rates off landing pages from search or high numbers of visits to your privacy or TOS pages. Using this actionable data from your Web analytics can help drive new initiatives to improve the ROI of your online marketing campaigns.
Trust builds slowly, but it's worth the effort. The time you take to shore up your credibility and demonstrate that you deserve your customers' trust will pay for itself many times over.
Trust me on this!
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About the Author
Wendy Roth is senior manager of training services for Lyris. She works closely with marketing professionals to help them use Lyris' solutions to achieve their highest online marketing objectives, and she collaborates with product development to ensure Lyris' products are based on marketers' changing needs. This article was originally published on iMedia Connection.
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