In traditional marketing, we measure exposures; in general, more exposure – to an offer, to a product, to a promotion – translates into greater awareness and greater propensity to purchase. Thus, TV commercials are recurring, repeatedly advising us of the benefits of a certain product.
In general, since such ‘exposures’ can be costly, merchandisers are more concerned about not enough exposures rather than too many. They balance the normally declining value of incremental exposures with the cost.
In eMarketing the cost of sending one or more offers, or sending a standard offer to one more person, is low. So potential customers are barraged with email communication from certain e-retailers.
In fact, some e-tailers send daily messages to their distribution lists. But, even more than with traditional marketing exposures, e-merchandisers can more easily measure the impact of an incremental e-exposure to an individual customer.
Certainly, as with other marketing, greater emarketing exposures generally translate into more sales. The second exposure may not be as valuable as the first but it is still highly positive. And the third is also positive.
However, for many e-merchandisers, there is a point when an incremental exposure may be extremely negative, actually undoing the benefit of the previous exposures. Customer fatigue – a normal response to too-many emarketing offers – is deadly for e-merchandisers! Customers may opt out of all future communications or simply begin to associate the merchandiser with an annoyance.
Thus, e-merchandisers need to determine how to avoid customer fatigue. Here are some examples of how to do this:
1. Monitor/manage # of exposures
E-merchandisers need to monitor and manage the number of offers they send out. They need to carefully measure the incremental value of an offer and seek to identify the threshold for fatigue.
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