If I was to tell you that I know a way of encouraging 71% of your subscribers to make more purchases, 61% to recommend you to friends, 41% to join a loyalty program and 40% to write positive reviews comments, you’d either bite my head off to get at it or think it was a con. The good news is that research by Adobe shows it isn’t a con. In fact, it is brilliant news for email marketing.

We spoke of building loyalty in a recent article, explaining that you need to prioritise trust, but Adobe goes a bit further, explaining what we can gain and, scarily, what we could lose if we don’t. We have control over which will be the outcome. All it takes is, as you would expect, hard work and then understanding of what your subscribers want from companies they entrust their data to.

The message is clear for email marketing. We are entrusted with our subscribers’ data and, as so many are more informed, they resent it when our behaviour breaches what they feel is acceptable behaviour.

The three main reasons given as what might break customers’ trust are:

1/ They believe they are being tracked online/via mobile devices and have been sent emails and other communications without the customer giving express permission,

2/ They are being sent too many communications and companies are not being clear about privacy policies and the procedures with regards to their data,

3/ Companies continues sending ads, and other communications, after they had opted out.

What is remarkable about these criticisms and complaints is that sensible internal policies and procedures, especially in email marketing, would have, and obviously should have, negated the majority of these. On the other hand, if some companies are so cavalier about the way they handle data, it means that anyone acting reasonably well will have a distinct advantage, and one that will be apparent in ROI.

To state the obvious, we need to be completely open and transparent as to how we handle the data entrusted to us. Who are these companies which are not clear about privacy policies? Surely they all should know they are taking pointless risks.

A considerable number of consumers want to have their permission asked to use their data, and such usage should be more open and transparent. Informing a subscriber when they sign up to an email marketing list of what we do with their data is probably insufficient to generate trust. Perhaps we need to reinforce it in the welcome email.

The Adobe research, available at https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/11/04/7-in-10-customers-will-buy-more-from-brands-they-trust-uk.html#gs.ftgycm , is at its most useful when deciding on policies with regards to information given to subscribers. Given the quantity of data most email marketing companies are entrusted with, being clear, open and honest with regards to how we handle it seems entirely reasonable, most importantly to our customers.