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Phishing scams have consumers wary of clicking e-mail links

If you’ve ever waited and wondered whether there is a correlation between e-mail marketing efforts and pay-per-click marketing, your wait is over.  Substantial sample sizes indicate that a growing and significant percentage of consumers canvassed with e-mail marketing such as newsletters or promos are foregoing the easy click through.  That’s good news and bad news for online marketers, here’s why…

Traditionally, e-mail marketing was fairly straightforward.  If you send e-mail to consumers or potential customers, you want them to click through to your landing pages and convert through a purchase, registration, or some other action.  More recently, consumers have been bombarded with phishing scams, viruses, and the usual viagara, cialis, or enlargement spam.

Analytics research indicates that the tide is turning in consumer security awareness, with many consumers opting to replicate links in e-mail, rather than click through to an unknown location.  Obvious trends in traffic indicate consumers:

• Typing brand or company names into search engines rather than clicking through e-mail links.
• Requesting landing pages directly through their address bar (if an obvious URL be indicated in the e-mail)
• Increased call or physical visit volume when correspondence goes out, for companies with physical locations or call centers.

That comes as a mixed bag of good and bad news for online marketers.  The bad news is, e-mail newsletters go out without any tracking files attached.  Unlike analytics code on a website, your e-mail program doesn’t drop cookies in the user’s machine, so tracking direct request or search engine traffic originating from your e-mail campaign isn’t straightforward.

There are ways online marketers can define web and e-mail savvy consumers that forego the click through on e-mail correspondence.  Here are a few “can’t miss” strategies to help decipher indirect traffic resulting from e-mail marketing:

• Don’t disguise e-mail text links with any fancy code, if you want to track click through, send people to a custom landing page only that segment of visitors should know about.  The downside of this is some users will prefer and convert better through fancy links, linked graphics, etc.
• Tie your newsletter or direct marketing piece to a public promotion on your homepage.  The downside is the effectiveness of the e-mail is harder to track.
• Offer a promo code, coupon code, or other cut and paste option that easily ties into your shopping cart, making click through numbers unnecessary.  The downside is users may forget to input coupon codes and become upset they didn’t get the offer or discount they were promised.
• Use a unique catch phrase people can use to search for landing pages that are targeted through pay-per-click ads.  Those people that don’t click through, are rewarded with finding what they wanted, and marketers are awarded with a very low cost per click on highly accurate and unique keywords.

E-mail marketing is a whole ‘nother ball game from pay-per-click, but search marketers have to be wary that many marketing departments will hit users with multiple programs and media.  Recognizing and coordinating efforts across the enterprise is critical in truing up traffic and conversion numbers for pay-per-click, e-mail marketing, and even offline campaigns.

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