E-mail in Guerrilla Marketing

E-mail, or electronic mail, is a way of sending and receiving messages between users on a network (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2007). According to conducted secondary research, e-mail became one of the most important business communication channels. As the research shows people are used to receive and send emails on daily basis. 

More than 90% of Internet users between 18 and 72 said they send and receive email, making it the top online activity just ahead of search engines, according to the non-profit research group. (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2007-2009).

Interesting opportunity for guerrilla marketing comes with a fact that people have got used to check emails in standardised format (HTML/TXT) format containing mostly plain text or formatted text with pictures). There is only limited number of usual formats of emails as follows:

• Personal email
• Junk mail or spam
• Meeting invitations (from a group scheduling system)
• One-way information push, e.g., from production systems, list servers, or discussion groups
• Other business email

(Ferris Research, 2009)

E-mail marketing is widely used part of online media mix that is getting to be more important when online technology and software are improving rapidly. There can be identified two new types of emails that may be very important for innovative marketers and guerrilla marketing campaigns:

Audio E-mails

Audio adverts can play automatically once the email is opened. It creates a strong impression in the most important first three seconds; it is different to the advertisements that people are used to receive in format of static e-mail with large number of graphics and photos.  Business shows focus on innovation and creativity by using relatively new e-mail format not still commonly used for neither personal nor business purposes. Statistics show, according to  (Duffy, 2009) that people are often put off marketing emails when they have to use quite a lot of time and effort accessing different links and reading more than necessary. 

Having an email sent that announces its purpose with so little user time and activity is certainly seen to be considerate and up to date. However, a marketer has to be aware of the fact that sound coming from the emails may not be played on every computer or it can even disturb the receiver while listening music, working in office or using laptop in public places. Sound advert designers should also consider commonly respected accessibility guidelines for technological optimization and receivers´ comfort and safety. However, the potential benefit of using audio e-mails for marketing purpose can be assumed as relative high when principles of guerrilla marketing are respected and the campaign also provide customer benefit which will clearly differentiate such e-mail campaign from bulk email.

Video E-mails

Based on the secondary research can be expected that e-mails containing streamed videos will get more importance following years due to rapid increase of fast internet access (DSL access) and broaden technological improvements of optimizing video files for internet usage. Video e-mails may be currently used only as a message that contains a link to external file (a website) with video player. Therefore a marketer has to work on such a tactic that will assure sufficient number of conversions - meaning a percentage of people that click on the link and get to the video file online. 
Consumers find videos more interesting than static emails.  Encouraging research has shown that measured response rates (opens and clicks) can sometimes be up to ten times higher than for static emails (Duffy, 2009).

Guerrilla marketing online, properly using benefits of all guerrilla marketing principles, gets high importance for using video emails, which may attract unusual attraction only by new e-mail format and the message that will contain. Video emails may be send out by mailing systems with following objectives:

• Providing discounts or limited offer for loyal customers
• Communicating new product offer for current customers
• Presenting unusual product feature presentation to potential customers
• Inviting to a business event

Guerrilla marketing techniques can be applied in video email marketing by using creative idea and marketing message that increase attention and build desire to go to a destination website where video content is provided. Video email marketing may include characteristics of viral marketing, ambush marketing, alternative marketing and experiential marketing depending on the creative concept and marketing objectives.

Creative concept #3

Personal email to loyal customer with video invitation

Objective: Static email with an YouTube video print screen as a link to personal invitation on a company website for Young Professionals Forum (YPF), the networking organisations based in Prague, Czech Republic. Personal e-mail contains welcome words and graphical link to a You Tube video invitation on the YPF website.

Image 13 Video email - a print screen of a page containing You Tube video invitation from the co-organizer of the YPF event, created by Vit Horky

Image 14 Video email - a web page of YPF containing YouTube video invitation to an upcoming event, created by Vit Horky

Entertaining personal e-mails

Personal e-mails sent out only for purpose to entertain and make a fun with friends, family or even with work colleagues has become popular form of sparing leisure time on PC not only in our personal time. Personal e-mails containing entertaining content are usually examples of viral e-mail messages that are spread to high number of recipients by process of forwarding messages from one recipient to another based on their own personal willingness to forward something by which one had a good time.

Eighty-eight percent of respondents reported forwarding jokes or cartoons. (Sharpe Partners, 2006)

According to (Heathfield, 2009) employees spend between one and three hours a day surfing the Web on personal business at work. Therefore it can be assumed that guerrilla marketers have the opportunity to catch attraction of customers during the all day time and it is basically up to the marketing strategy which kind of message and techniques will be used. Usual types of personal entertaining emails may contain:

• a joke or funny story in a static text format
• a funny image or photo in an e-mail attachment
• a link to YouTube video
• a PowerPoint slideshow of photos or text as an attachment

E-mails that appear to be usual personal e-mails sent from one person to another with goal to entertain are examples of either Ambient marketing, Undercover marketing or Astroturfing when the email messages were originally created with marketing objectives. Viral spread of the messages when recipients forward them to their relatives and friends is attribute of typical viral marketing. Using this form of email marketing by applying guerrilla marketing principles properly enables marketers to create considerably cost-effective campaign with high impact on target audience. However, limitations and negative factors of virally spread message with no possible control of the initial author has to considered by the businesses when the campaign has been planned.

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