Is it just me who is slightly euphoric at the thought of having around 50 or so less emails in my inbox every day?
Today sees the introduction of GDPR which has sent the fear of god into most marketing teams judging by the amount of emails I’ve received over the last few weeks begging me to re-confirm my subscription. As our long forgotten subscriptions start to rear their head, you might find yourself thinking ‘When did I sign up to that!’ It also begs the questions, whether some companies are using GDPR as a last ditched attempt to get new sign-ups. I’ve had an influx, both personally and business wise, of emails from organisations that I have never heard of persuading me to keep in contact.
There’s never been a better time to take stock and purge all the irrelevant marketing mailers that are clogging up our inboxes. Now don’t get me wrong because as a keen marketeer, I do encourage my team to continue sending the relevant and high-quality material that we are known for, but unless its stand out and is from a contact you know, let’s face it, most of the stuff we receive just gets deleted, wasting hours of our valuable time every day. The more I get, the less I want to open; it’s the equivalent of digital dishwater and I can’t wait to pull the plug!
If people have done their homework, they will know that this mostly effects B2C verses B2B. The last minute raft of emails is a bit sad really and seems to be having more of a detrimental effect. It’s encouraging you to ignore the dirge in the hope that you will be taken off these lists as of Saturday. I think this legislation could actually be a hugely positive move in the right direction. From a marketing perspective, let’s look at this as an opportunity for us to place quality over quantity. If your product or service is relevant to the customer they will want to hear from you, conversely if your data list looks a bit depleted maybe the content just wasn’t that valuable in the first place.
Narrow-cast is the future of communications and marketers are going to have to up the quality of their messaging and tailor their approach if they want to remain relevant. Once the plug has been pulled; less is definitely more.