There’s no doubt that most people have little patience for the strikers and can be unsympathetic to their cause, but the postal strike has ignited quite a bit of debate from some unexpected areas.

The retail industry has had a torrid time of late with the economic downturn; yet online shopping has continued to be the shining light as customers shift their spending habits towards the Internet. The last thing anyone needed was a reason for people to consider not shopping online for their Christmas presents.

Email marketing is heavily driven by the retailers, making the fourth quarter crucial for many email service providers (ESP’s). Whilst the announcement of the strikes sent shivers through many of our clients, it left us wondering if this would be a good thing or a bad thing for email marketing.

Many senders have been urgently preparing additional email campaigns to provide latest information about the strike and effect on deliveries, yet again demonstrating the power of email marketing to communicate with customers at all levels and of course bringing additional turnover to the ESPs. But surely anything that is deterring people from shopping online is only going to be bad news for email marketing in the long run? A few extra pounds from mail-outs this year will be lost if targets aren’t met for gross demand.

In other areas the strike has helped to highlight new methods of shopping ‘online’. The check and reserve model introduced by Argos a number of years ago and now followed by many other high street brands has seen increased popularity and provided a great alternative for people not confident in the postal system. Many companies have been using email marketing programmes to promote this service as an alternative.

But the real case in point for me is that this strike highlights the benefits of using email itself as a real alternative to the postal system. MBNA (now rebranded Bank of America), one of our long standing clients here at eCircle, has been switching its customers to receiving their statements online. Email marketing plays a crucial role in this process, not just through the process of encouraging customers to switch over, but also in alerting them to the arrival of their latest statement. Whilst this process is not only saving huge amounts of money for our banks (no booing please), it’s also increasing customer satisfaction for a more web savvy public who are starting to move their day to day activities online.

Security concerns and the impact of phishing emails have long been sighted as the reason not to use email marketing as a way of sending statement information. Recent events have provided an excellent counter to this argument and will serve to increase the possibilities for email marketing in the years to come.

Simon Bowker
Managing Director
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