For years, I have read the works of Seth Godin and others and bought into the whole ‘permission marketing’ paradigm when it comes to email marketing [especially].

It makes sense, builds trust and creates relationships. Believe me, I am on board.

But.

As much as these guys say that the old rules won’t and don’t work, I can’t help  thinking that it’s restricting thinking – especially at a time when [arguably] small businesses need to be more aggressive with sales.

Yes, there is the ethical debate, and I agree wholeheartedly with privacy, etc. but I also see companies selling data lists, and Direct Mail (electronic and otherwise) still being appropriated in my direction from harvested lists.

So. I thought I’d experiment.

A couple of years ago we bought a database of companies in Hampshire for £150 and it’s been kicking around. What would happen if I just sent a blanket email to the database selling a small business web design proposition?

Is this even spam in the very grey world of email marketing ethics where business is concerned?

I managed to get 4,862 addresses together from the database and sent out a plain text email, stating where the data had come from and what the proposition was (see email text below). These are the results (so far):

• 907 bounces
• 184 unsubscribes
• 6 spam complaints
• 2 sarcastic email replies

Here’s the important stats:

• 100 click-throughs to the landing page (2.06% click through rate)
  
• 7 direct sales leads (7% from landing page / 0.14% from total sent)
  

That’s not a great result in terms of numbers… or is it?

The total cost for the excercise was approx £188, or just less than £27 per lead for a sales prices of roughly £2-3,000. The whole task took approx 3 hours and if we convert one of the seven leads (even on the lower estimation of £2k), you are looking at an ROI of over 900%.

Call me an arse. Refute my understanding of “the first rule of marketing” as someone stated. But you can not knock the actual result. Brand damage? Maybe a tiny drop in a very large ocean that will soon be washed away. It’s not as if I will continue doing this to the same data – but that would be another experiment in itself, so never say never.

In my many years of using e-mail for marketing I have come to understand that even when you do things ‘right’, someone somewhere will say you are doing it wrong. I still get spam complaints from subscribe only list recipients, so go figure individual logic if you can.

My big learning from this email experiment

Never say something won’t work, however smart you think you may be. And, those old forms of advertising and marketing that people say no longer work… does they really not work anymore? In any given situation? At any given time?

Email Transcript: