Haute Prospect

From Opt-out to COI – have times really changed that much?

We know a few ‘pseudo marketers’ who long for the days where they’d mail out fresh coregs, optouts or even unsubscribes. Over the years we’ve seen the transition from optouts through optins, double optins to the latest – confirmed opt-in. Whatever you call it – it’s always been about quality of the list and total user experience.

Maybe the times have changed and many ESPs won’t even take you on now without an autoresponder permission proof on every record. We believe in fundamentals however, and there is one constant in road to glory now and before – user experience counts. It always has. Just that in the past the complaints couldn’t be heard. They demonstrated themselves in falling opens, clickthrough and convertions – triggering marketers to mail out more volume and with higher frequency.

These days – the powerful ’spam button’ has forced those less knowledgeable marketers to sweat over complaint rates; but those of us who were always about mailing smarter by understanding the data feel rewarded. It feels good when comparing the numbers between RFM and behavioral/contextual/out-of-the-box targetting models you can’t avoid the one simple conclusion – quality wins over quantity.