What are the Advantages of Letting the Customer Choose How They Want to Receive Marketing Messages? (mobile, email, etc)

Although social networking has definitely stolen some of its luster, email remains as one of the most widely used and effective communication platforms known to man.  Today, it is more versatile than ever, available on your PCs, Macs, smart phones, and other mobile devices.  As an email marketer, you have a nice range of delivery platforms for your marketing message, and ultimately, the choice is up to you.  However, there are advantages to be reaped from leaving these decisions in the hands of your customers. 

While honoring your customers’ preferences may sound like the right thing to do right off the bat, you would be surprised at the number of marketers that do not even consider giving them a choice.  This is often done because they already have a good idea of what platforms their audience is using.  Realizing that most of their customers check their email on a desktop or laptop computer, they deploy their marketing campaigns for those platforms and neglect to plan for options like mobile.  This is a fair assessment, but smart phones are becoming very common and email is already one of its most used features.  Giving your customers the power of choice could be a move that helps you strengthen the relationship you already built by allowing them to decide how they receive your message. 

Leaving the decision in your customers’ hands not only relates to delivery platforms, but the format in which your message is delivered as well.  This brings us to the debate of HTML vs. plaintext email.  Statistics show that most recipients prefer HTML over plaintext, and that emails formatted in this manner also have significantly higher click through and conversion rates. 
Still, you should never automatically assume and make these sort of decisions for your customers.  Believe it or not, but there are some people who actually prefer text.  They may be small in numbers, but there are users with email programs that are not capable of rendering HTML, or simply enjoy the simplicity of plaintext.  Whatever your audience chooses, allowing them to make the decision is the kind of gesture that just might get them to trust you more and become repeat customers. 

Forcing customers to digest marketing your way is one of the worst things you can do.  It shows that you are calling all the shots and are not willing to make a sacrifice in spite of the support they have given.  You have to think that even if your clients and prospects are tethered to the computer now, the chances of many of them venturing out to mobile are very high.  Once they upgrade to other platforms, they might start ignoring your marketing message or unsubscribe altogether.  Giving them the choice helps you keep them happy, and keep them around.  All marketers are bound to lose some customers every now and then, but why lose them by taking risks you don’t have to take?