What is “Graymail” (and What Enrollment Marketers Need to Know to Protect the Email Efforts)?

Earlier this fall, Hotmail declared war on graymail with a new set of filtering features and enrollment marketers need to take notice.

What Hotmail is categorizing as graymail are the messages that technically recipients have subscribed to (think Facebook alerts, Groupon notices, etc), but aren’t engaging with. Perhaps the message content isn’t compelling or their inboxes are being flooded. Whatever the reason, the reality is that they are not engaging with the message.

Earlier this fall, Dick Craddick, Hotmail group program manager, shared that a startlingly low 14% of email messages are actually person-to-person messages that we highly value. The rest? The gray area…containing all of those messages that we “requested” at some point, but may or may not value now.

What Hotmail Is Doing

According to Mike Hotz at ClickZ, there are several new features Hotmail has rolled out that will help users address the graymail issue:

1. Schedule Cleanup – Users will be able to set up batch deletions (automatic, everything other than the most recent newsletter, messages over a week old, and the like).

2. Advanced folder organization – users can automate the movement of messages from a sender en masse to a specified folder.

3. Flagging the top contenders – Messages can be flagged as important and will stay at the top of the inbox.

This is just one more step in the direction the ISPs began taking last fall with Gmail and Yahoo’s automatic sorting features.

What’s an Enrollment Marketer to Do?

According to new adult learner communication preferences research to be released at the 2011 UPCEA Marketing Seminar by DemandEngine, adult learners continue to prefer email as the top communication channel to learn about colleges and universities they are considering.

So, they want to receive email. How do we keep ours from falling into that non-engaged-with graymail category? Keep the following in mind:

Build a relationship – Email marketing success lies in the relationships you build, not just the feature set of your sending platform. Marketers that work to understand their prospective students and then deliver segmented, highly-relevant content to them are going to win the relationship race in the long run.

What works? For adult learners, consider content that updates them on the industry in which you know they either currently work or want to work. What’s the job market like? How can they prepare themselves to advance their careers?

For example, a private university in the Midwest marketing online healthcare programs has used a career guide for healthcare professionals to initiate and then cultivate relationships with prospective students. The email series focuses on the value of additional credentials in select healthcare careers, the reality that many healthcare systems either are or will be requiring this in the near future, and what salary projections look like post-credential.

Blatantly remind them why they are hearing from you – More and more, savvy email marketers are using the space above their messages to overtly remind the recipient why they are receiving their message. And many are also using that space to allow recipients to either manage their preferences or completely unsubscribe.

If they are receiving your message because they previously enrolled in part of your certificate program, tell them. If they are someone who recently expressed interest in your program and this is part of your follow up, tell them. Simple statements like, “You’re receiving this message because you recently expressed interest in our Project Management Certificate program,” can go a long way at capturing their attention, reminding them why you are contacting them, and increasing the likelihood they engage with your message.

Monitor engagement… and act on it– Use your email analytics to understand who is (and who is not) engaging with your messages.

Often, marketers focus only on those that are engaging and just keep sending the same content to those that are not in the hopes that they’ll come back around. Instead of hoping, take a more proactive approach.

What can you do? For starters, identify contacts who have not opened anything you’ve sent in the past six months. Email them and ask if they want to continue receiving emails from you. Give them an opportunity manage their preferences (i.e. alter frequency of your message or even unsubscribe). If they don’t engage at that point, consider removing them from your list.

The Take Away

At the end of the day, marketers must focus on valuable interactions that build relationship. Too often, the focus is on the latest technology or a cool feature that’s available. Quality relationships will trump quantity of pushed-out-messages any day.