Hey Guys,

I have a rather large number of customer emails through their orders, but only a small number of opt-in newsletter subscribers.

When announcing a new, related product, do you believe it to be inappropiate to send a brief announcement to all of your customers?

While opt-in is truly the best way to go, it seems that your current customers would be interested in a related product.

What do you think?

Alex

A pretty grey (or is it gray?) area there...

Reflecting on my own experience, if I were a customer, and I did not opt-in to receive e-mail announcements, I would expect NOT to receive them...

On the other hand, I'm sure there are a percentage of customers out there who wouldn't mind... But in this day of spammers run-amok, I would play it safe and only send to those who specifically give their okay..

But it's a tough call...

Good luck,

Chaster

This isn't a tough call at all. Definitely email your customers regularly, especially when you release a new game. They'll be happy to hear about it!

We've been doing this for years, and the reaction is overwhelmingly positive. I'm pretty sure this one simple technique has generated six figures in sales for us by now. That's a lot of money to just leave on the table.... money that can be used to grow the business and serve even more customers.

Some people consider this an ethical issue, and there is indeed an ethical component here. If you don't believe your products offer any real value, then you are certainly spamming your customers and wasting their time. People will be annoyed (and rightfully so) if you try to push junk on them.

But if you believe in the benefits of your products, then you are ethically obligated to tell your customers about them. Otherwise, you're intentionally depriving them of a valuable benefit. If you offer people something of value to them, they won't be annoyed -- they'll be grateful.

I write all our customer emailings, and when I write them, I always adopt the latter attitude. And customers respond very positively to that, both in terms of feedback and sales. I'm pretty sure though that if you write customer emailings from the attitude that you're spamming them, you can expect a negative response in return. If you don't genuinely believe you're offering your customers something worthwhile and beneficial to them, then you are merely spamming them. But if that's the case, then why are you even in business?

I've had good luck by adding the customer's e-mail to my list at the time of purchase, and offering an opt-out in each mailing. The first newsletter a customer receives includes tidbits on free add-ons, so it's particularly relevant to his purchase. With this approach, I find that few (<1%) unsubscribe; and I have yet to receive a complaint.

Of course, whether or not the unsubscribers are silently fuming when they opt out is unknown to me. :)

Some reasons why people find unsolicited email/spam unethical. Some of them are also reasons why it is so effective.

It is pushing information into a private space. ie a persons mailing box. The person did not ask for it, thus it can be considered an intrusion into their private space.

Some people do not know how to filter their email. Making their email useless, as spam fills up their mail boxes. Meaning people they want to talk with can not get messages through, and they give up on email entirely. Luckily email software is becomming good at weeding out spam. I know a number of non technical friends and family who this has happened to.

That said I personally don't mind UCE if it is something I am interested in, and very infrequent(like once a month), and not large images or attachments.

A job pimp once sent me a couple of spams with one megabyte word docs attached. This was after months of sending me useless information, and ignoring my requests for them to stop sending me stuff that I did not ask for in the first place. My email account tipped over the edge(only had a few megabytes of space in total), and I lost legitimate email. Seemed the only way to get them to remove me was to complain to their network providers, and anyone I could find affiliated with them.

If enough people complain to your billing processor you could be shut down. So if you want to be safe follow the suggestions of Dexterity, as well as make sure your remove links work, and use double opt in.

There are also various laws for sending unsolicited email in various countries/states. So make sure you are up to date on all of those.

Why not put a news button/section in your game? Then you can send your customers messages whenever you want.


Have fun!

I do my best to promote the newsletter on the purchase form, in the games, and on the site and gather as many addresses as I can. I don't send mail to people who ask to be removed or don't explicitely sign up. I think a lot of people who remove themselves or who don't sign up are missing out though because often I release significant updates to products they've purchased. I often get letters like "Oh i just noticed there's version 2.3 out and it has what I wanted? How long has that been around" My answer is always the same. Join the mailing list. I try to put good content, free stuff, and interesting articles in my mailing to bring out more of what makes the games interesting and to reduce the number of people who sign out. My newsletters aren't just advertising for new games etc...

There's a side benefit to that which is that the articles then get incporporated into the website and act as draws for searches on the net and count towards how favorably the site is looked apon. For instance the November newsletter had an article about "Mahjongg Strategy" which conveniently uses one of our mahjongg games for the examples. The keyphrase above comes up number one in google. So anyone typing "Mahjongg Strategy" into google finds my page, my game AND what they happen to be looking for. It might not be the strongest keyword, but as time goes on and the newsletters progress every little bit helps.

Uhh, Steve's comment scares me. I appreciate the point of view, and certainly if you are writing a newsletter then you need to be thinking positively as you do it (see, I learn a great idea on these forums every day).

It only takes one person to complain though, and you can be in serious trouble. If you can prove that they did agree to receive mailings from you, and your unsubscribe options work, then you should be okay. If your proof is that "they bought a product from me in the past" then that isn't really enough (I believe UK spam laws specifically state this), and your web provider could shut down your website overnight.

The simple solution is - get permission to email them when they purchase! All you need is a single check-box in the purchase process, then send them a confirmation link to click on to confirm their permission. It's simple for them, and then you can relax too.

Another way to look at it - if you believe your products offer real value to your customers (and they do, right?), and that you would be depriving the world if you didn't offer your services, then how can you risk your entire business this way? How many people would you be depriving if you went out of business? Get explicit permission, keep the proof, and then you can keep providing value to your customers.

Remember, spam is unsolicited (bulk) commercial email. If the customer didn't ask for it, and it has a commercial intent... well...

Steve's position does seem to be the usual. I get advertising from most places I buy from without purposely subscribing to a list. The key is to keep it useful and not that often. Amazon emails me every couple weeks with some offer - usually something I'm interested in - I like hearing from them. OTOH Buy.com seemed to send me stuff all the time and not targeted at all - they annoyed me and I unsubscribed.

Jack