There is a Simpsons cartoon which shows Homer struggling with whether to choose the immediate gratification of a tasty snack or a winning lottery ticket. It will come as no surprise to know he chose the former. The attractions of instant gratification trump delayed advantage. Don’t laugh. How many times have you left a website that took a few seconds too long to load?
It’s a relief to know that, seemingly simple as the desire for instant gratification is, we need to know the intricacies in order to exploit it in our email marketing campaigns. People generally want ‘stuff’ as quickly as possible. It evidently massages certain areas of the brain, generating a pleasure response by supplying what the person wants as near instantly as possible without any of that tedious anticipation.
Many companies exploit the desire for the immediate by the promise of, more or less, ‘next day delivery’, albeit a conditional one. We all know that the actual delivery times will be identified at the time the product is ordered, and might not be ‘next day’, but the headline is still persuasive.
Prompt, let’s say, delivery is only possible through clever and involved organisation it’s also very expensive. It is, probably, out of reach of most SMEs. Should we just accept the inevitable?
It is probable most of us need to chase these customers, especially in the post-Covid market. Email marketing will continue to be a highly competitive market, one that rewards those who are organised enough to compete against the multinationals, even if we can’t out-invest them. There are limits to what improved efficiency can deliver though.
We all know that emotion trumps logic, and the promise of short-term pleasure can struggle against longer-term benefits. It’s up to us to trigger alternative emotions. Show them that buying your product will increase their self-satisfaction through having a better one than their colleague who lacks self-control. It can change people’s minds. You see this in action in TV adverts daily.
There’s only one answer to the question, ‘What do you want, instant coffee or freshly ground?’ In other words, delayed satisfaction is a daily occurrence. Why? In the case of coffee, the product is much tastier and more satisfying and, in addition, who doesn’t want to class themselves in the sophisticated mould of George Clooney by sipping a Tassimo-produced latte. Your next email marketing campaign needs to latch onto similar emotional responses, albeit without a superstar.
Instead of a rather unspecific ‘rapid delivery’ your customers might be convinced by a ‘delivery at a time convenient to you’ promise, and while a link of ‘buy now’ is still, more or less, an essential, so is pushing the benefits of your particular product, and the emotional positives your subscribers will get from buying it. Logic just can’t compete.
If the figures for market share of the big online retailers are correct, we need to push the advantages we have. Mention local, personal, sophistication, and the undoubted, but needing to be specified, benefits of not going with the crowd. Massage their emotions.
