This is the third instalment of Fear and Self-loathing in Email Marketing, Dela Quist’s iconoclastic take on the industry to which he’s devoted over 20 years of his career.

Read it now: The myth of inbox overload

In the last chapter, Dela lamented the corrosive effect that unfounded fears about being seen as a spammer have had on the legitimate email marketing industry. An excessively cautious attitude has led to unnecessarily stringent self-policing about send frequencies and many missed opportunities in terms of revenue and campaign development.

Hand in hand with spam paranoia goes the myth of inbox overload, subject of this month’s chapter.

Dela argues that those who predict that the world’s citizens are about to riot because they’re being bombarded with too much email, fail to notice that an inbox is made up of many different kinds of mail. Subscribers see these different categories of email very differently, and are remarkably proficient at sorting their electronic mail. Much of that mail is essential to recipients, most of the unwanted stuff never gets seen, and legitimate marketing emails are only a tiny fraction of the whole.

Last updated: Oct 17, 2016  admin  

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