Inbox #1: What Executives Need to Know about Online Reputation
Author: Des Cahill
Today's online businesses face the challenge of a slowing economy against the backdrop of a growing number of online security threats. This environment places a premium on a brand's ability to effectively develop stronger customer trust and loyalty to counter weakening consumer confidence.
The right online reputation management strategy can help executives and their marketing teams address these challenges and develop a strong online consumer experience across all customer touch points.
Because e-mail offers a unique marketing channel for personalized communications and boasts the strongest return on direct marketing investments, the quality of the consumer experience in the e-mail inbox is arguably the most important customer touch point for fostering revenue growth in these hard times—now more than ever!
To develop and enhance this consumer experience, organizations must establish best practices in online reputation management that allow their businesses to reach a consumer’s most trusted e-mail account, or “Inbox #1.”
The E-mail Insecurity Factor
A recent study commissioned by Habeas and conducted by research firm Ipsos, Inc. found that while consumers are more dependent on e-mail communications than ever before, the growing inconvenience of spam, a variety of online security threats and a lack of confidence in traditional solutions to these annoyances have led to significant levels of consumer insecurity around e-mail communications.
About 62% of respondents acknowledged concerns about becoming victims of fraud or other kinds of cyber crimes and nearly 60% agree that spam is becoming worse. Another 64% reported that the e-mails they intended to receive have never arrived or have ended up in their spam folder.
Given this "e-mail insecurity factor" and the perceived lack of solutions to these e-mail problems, individuals are taking protective measures into their own hands. The study suggests a majority of respondents are creating multiple accounts for different kinds of e-mails based on the levels of trust they place in the senders.
The multiple account phenomenon illustrates how fragile online relationships and the interactions that enable them really are. Sending and receiving e-mails has essentially become an issue of navigating a landscape of inboxes—#1 through #X—set up on the basis of trust, and this presents a challenge to a variety of online marketing efforts.
Marketing must reach customers in “inbox #1” with the information they need to make informed decisions. Businesses must be able to provide customers, employees, investors and other audiences with the capabilities, including transactional features, which allow them to nurture relationships with these audiences. Online communities such as MySpace and Facebook must develop and maintain the critical interactive nature that heightens the flow of information between members—the flow of information that is the lifeblood of their Web 2.0 existence.
The value of having your organization's e-mail appear where it should, based on customer preferences, priorities and levels of trust is therefore a critical business necessity that cannot be overstated.
