Views From The Hills of Kentucky :: E-Mail Research and Selling in a Supermarket

Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

E-Mail Research and Selling in a Supermarket

While I was going through my e-mail this morning, I was hit with the comparison of how e-mail research and selling of a product in the supermarket are quite similar. I just happened to have three screens of e-mails, just a little more than usual. As usual, most of the e-mail was what I consider to be junk mail. That is, political messages, credit card applications, travel tips, jokes, employment opportunities, recipes, ads for seminars, investment advice and what I hate most, "Out of the Office Announcements." I get more junk e-mail than I get junk snail mail. I must admit that it is easier to eliminate the junk e-mail than the junk snail mail. The "delete" key works overtime. But what does all this have to do with E-Mail Research? Well, normally I will answer all questionnaires if they will take my responses; meaning that I am eligible. But today, faced with so much mail, I found that my willingness to participate in a research questionnaire was at a low ebb. So I used the delete key and moved on.

Is the above an indication of the future? That is, more and more junk mail on the internet? If true, we will need to approach our internet research in much the same way we sell brands in the supermarket.

That is:

The potential respondents must know who we are.
They must want to participate.
They must look for us in their e-mail.
They must be able to find us easily and in a timely fashion.
They must open our mail.
They must be motivated to do the task.
They must do the task in a timely manner.
They must want to do another task for us in the future.

It does look to me like the same problems that face a manufacturer selling a brand. A major problem is that in the store I have a lot of latitude in designing the appearance of my brand on the store shelf but my e-mail has its limitations.

Another analogy worth considering is that of a bank and e-testing. To put money into the bank, you need an account number. I think that we should have account numbers (passwords) for anyone putting data into our data bank. We don't want just anybody in the household depositing data in our bank.