ComCorp, Inc. Articles

Failure on Email Marketing and Lessons behind It

Aside from online advertising and search engine tools that promote business products and services, email media and marketing had become popular as a means to provide subscription services especially for the media industry. However, email marketing can be a controversial marketing means as it has its share of failures due to security features.

Natmag has experienced such tragedy on its product launch on Jellyfish magazine when it was withdrawn after a 20 week trial. The magazine’s marketing niche was teenage girls aging from 11-19 and was delivered through email as a digital magazine. However, there was a problem on the delivery with the Hotmail because not all deliveries were received by the subscriber. The spam filter in Hotmail blocked incoming Jellyfish subscriptions even though the receiver was expecting such mail. Consequently, the product did not reach it due receiver which concluded the withdrawal of the product.

This incident shows that delivery failure of certain products directly affects the success of the product in the market. Whether online or direct deliveries, distribution is indeed one of the most important factors in marketing. The difference in this case, is that technology is expected to do better in distribution because of its speed and accessibility to more markets. Now it posed a question to the industry: where did it go wrong?

There are many possibilities of how Jellyfish’s distribution system failed. One could be the failure of ESP that Natmag chooses. Another could be the design of the product that is significantly similar to spam mails. Or perhaps it’s the choice of the distribution system itself, whether the emailing system is a good subscription avenue or not. Still, maybe because there was a huge market that cannot be accommodated by such media.

Whatever the reason was behind the Jellyfish failure, we cannot deny the fact that there were other magazine that succeeded in email marketing and subscription such as Dennis Monkey Magazine. So if this is the case, perhaps this has really something to do with the ESP or the pre launching strategy itself.

We cannot set aside the fact that there were negative impacts on the business and the interrelated components of the product failure. It is obvious that the bottom line for this was the deliverability of the product which determined the failure itself. First there was an issue on the choice of the ESP and email facility. It indeed gives the provider and email facility a bad image. Second, there was a lost confidence from the consumer on the ability of the company to deliver the product effectively. Finally, the cost allotted to the project was wasted, which is a big concern on company’s profitability.

We can only hope that before utilizing email marketing as a tool for distribution, the company must ensure a proper pre-launch testing of the product that involves all the players of the distribution process: from the product, to the ESP, to the email facility and its security measure, and to the market itself giving proper information on the testing stage and evaluating and monitoring the effectiveness of the delivery.