Global Email Marketing: 5 Important Considerations
As the world's economy globalizes before our very eyes, so does the reach of email marketing. This means that at some point, your email newsletter becomes less about who you can reach in your neighborhood, but more about who you reach across the planet. To succeed at email marketing in this ever-shrinking world, you must consider the following things:
International Legislation - Both the United States and the European Union are on the cusp of introducing incongruent and conflicting legislation exercising dominion over a staggering portion of your relationship to your email subscriber, and backing their new laws up with supersized fines applicable to each and every violation.
Now is the time to examine the geographical location of each of your subscribers and segment them out by country. Obtain all the in-depth information available regarding the online commerce legislation which applies in each of these nations, and then ensure that you adhere not just to the spirit, but to the letter of their laws.
Cultural Sensitivity - Some friendly, slang-y, hip email content possibly containing a double-entendre or two could be very successful with a young, urban, American audience. It would also offend to the core any orthodox citizen of the Middle East and most of Asia. Cultural marketing differences can be extremely pronounced from one country to the next, and the rules of proper international email communication etiquette would fill an encyclopedia.
Customers in much of Asia tend to prefer more indirect and collectively harmonious communications thus exaltations to take individual action "against the grain" and any other form of hard sell are likely going to fail. When marketing to most of Asia, you're well advised to consider the prototypical "rugged American individualism" approach and take the diametric opposite.
Localized English - "When you seek timepass and want to get out of station, there is a cent per cent redressal to achieving holiday entertainment. Thus you must do the needful and" No, that's not English put through a food processor, it's a series of fairly common phrases in India. The type of English you use should be keyed in to the nationality of the reader.
Your British subscribers know a car hood and trunk as a bonnet and a boot; your Jamaican readers call $1,000 a Manley; and only your Australian customers will use fair dinkum. You might be surprised to learn that the majority of the world's English speakers do so in a British form rather than an American one. Even within the USA your emails should confront many regional linguistic quirks: Otherwise your Maine customers will think your emails are gawmy and your Hawaiian subscribers will think they're lolo.
Multicultural Backend Support - Not only does the local English phrasing vary widely around the world, but the pronunciation can reach such extremes that many Americans have to struggle to comprehend the English spoken by (among others) Belizeans, Sri Lankans, Malays, or New Zealanders.
As the British Empire spread around the world, numerous nations integrated English into their own cultures with some rather extreme results. Your backend support structure should be able to communicate adequately with your international customers, otherwise countless sales will be lost in a cacophony of "What? Huh? Repeat, please.
Global Timezones - It should be obvious that you should take world time zones into consideration when sending emails. Keep in mind that noon in Los Angeles is midnight in Dubai, and most Muslim countries take Friday off. If you are sending time sensitive email campaigns, custom tailor them to the reader's time of day and the cultural observations of the Sabbath and other holy days.
