Do you have a BACON problem?
Posted by: admin in conversation marketing, advertising on Mar 23, 2011
The internet is obsessed with bacon. In about 15 minutes of research (delicious, mouth-watering research) I found recipes for Bacon Cupcakes, Bacon Salt Caramels and even Bacon Jam! Unfortunately, just as Spam became SPAM when the word came to refer to unsolicited email, bacon is transforming into BACON: unwanted, but legitimate email, sent by legitimate senders. Do you have a BACON problem?
Think about your inbox. How many mailing lists are you on? Every day you probably see deals, updates, newsletters and coupons from a huge variety of businesses: Amazon, Chapters, Godiva, The Gap, Atlus, Groupon, Expedia, Apple, Sephora, American Apparel… and those are just the ones that just pop up in my inbox that I can think of off the top of my head. You could probably add 10 more without trying.
The popularity of BACON is staggering. You might even get more BACON than you do actual email, considering over 27 billion BACON emails were sent last year - that’s 4 emails every day for every person on the planet! We know BACON has grown almost exponentially, but why?
Well, first of all, email marketing is cheap. It costs at most, a few cents to send an email. Secondly, BACON is effective. I like Sephora’s makeup, that’s why I signed up for their mailing list. When they send me a coupon for a product I want, of course I’m going to go out of my way to go to the store and buy it. Chances are you do as well. Yes, we are contributing to the BACON problem. According to Unsubscribe.com, in 2009 the ROI for BACON was $43.52 for every $1.00 in costs, and generated online sales of over $26 billion!
That said, people are getting very sick of BACON. 61% of BACON is immediately deleted. Most people don’t even bother to unsubscribe because they find it to be a hassle. So where does leave you if you’re a business that sends out BACON? It means that you’re wasting money – your message isn’t being heard and you’re not even getting the feedback of seeing people unsubscribe from your mailings. BACON has turned email marketing into an activity somewhat akin to tossing leaflets into the air while blindfolded. You’ll blanket an area, but you don’t know why the people who don’t pick up your leaflets aren’t interested.
So how can we combat BACON fatigue? People do want email marketing. But they need more targeted email marketing. Instead of sending every communication and deal to your entire customer base, why not try more specifically targeting your mailings? Not every customer you have will be interested in every product you offer, so why send them information they don’t want that will train them to be numb to your emails?
Good solutions include asking people to indicate what kind of content they’d be interested in receiving from you when they sign up, simple and easy to follow unsubscribing options, and a lot more work on the BACON sender’s end to target communications.
In the end, we can save BACON from becoming the new SPAM, but we’ll have to do a little work to make sure that when we talk to our customers, we’re only telling them what they want to hear.
