I have been watching the effectiveness of my opt-in email marketing drop dramatically over the past year and have wondered .... Why?

Have the spammers done it? Is the public simply too overloaded with email?

I'm sure both these factors have a part in it, but it didn't satisfactorily explain to me such a rapid drop so fast.

This morning I believe I got the big clue to the answer. It came to me in 2 emails from 2 of the biggest businesses on the web.

The first was an email from a domain registration company that I have a domain registered with. It is a huge company with a highly recognizable name. It contained the ominous subject "Your domain name registered with (company name withheld) ". It was sent to my domain registration address. So, of course, I had to open it.

Inside I found not a word about my domain. Instead it was a full blown sales pitch for some new website of theirs that informed me "you are entitled to free and unlimited access to bla, bla, bla" and gave me a "special bonus" of being able to subscribe to their ezine!

So a well known domain registrar sent me an sales email with a header that followed the rule of the Spammers Bible. "Use a misleading header in order to trick your audience into reading your email".

Next I opened an email from a huge computer magazine publishing conglomerate, another well recognized internet entity. It told me about a new credit card that has no signup fee and no credit checks, and no up-front cash security deposit. This credit card offer was the only thing in the "(company name withheld) Announcement"

Out of curiosity I followed the link. It took me straight to the sign up form. Just "sign up and press enter" was the pitch. Searching the page I found a small link to "terms and conditions". I followed it was floored by what I read.

"A refundable $500 Reservation Fee is payable to XXX in connection with the opening of your account. The Reservation Fee will be charged to your credit card account and will fully utilize your initial $500 credit limit. "

While it is true that there is no "signup fee" as the " (company name withheld) Announcement" claimed, there is a $500 "reservation fee" which they failed to disclose in the email. In plain English what this meant is that everyone who filled out the form found themselves instantly $500 in debt with no available credit on their new card.

Can you see the effect of a respectable, well known company using opt-in email to promote such a product has on all of us?

How many folks do you think will sign up for that card - get their bill for $500 and buy anything from anyone on the internet EVER again? Much less click on an opt-in email link?

My point. The effectiveness of opt-in email marketing is being killed not by the "little guy", but by some of the biggest names in the business.

Trick subject lines. Misleading language in ads such as "no signup fee".

Big businesses are now mimicking the spammer's tactics. And our prospects and customers get these same emails. Think about it.

In my opinion, a few of the very folks who should be the "guiding light" are blindly following the lowest road of email marketing.

There is an old saying about trust "Hard to win, easy to lose". This applies here. Big time.

As the public learns not to trust opt-in email from the big, well known companies, how in the world can they be expected to trust (or even open) an opt-in email from you and I?

Nuff said

Ed Osworth