They call it Bacn (pronounced Bacon) and it’s starting to play a familiar part in our lives. It’s essence is that it is unwanted, usually repeated, emails from organisations that you have had some contact with in the past. You might have subscribed to a search on eBay who then sends you daily emails for 6 months, telling you the nice shiny luggage rack you wanted for your motorbike is available now on ebay - except you don’t need it now so rather than change the settings for the email or unsubscribe from the process you mentally check the item off.
So, has it any value? Well I think it does, it’s a bit of branding and if the emails are sent often enough that you recognise seeing one last week then you might delete the current one safe in the knowledge that another will come along next week. They make great bookmarks as you’ve done the hard work finding the product/service in the first place and now they are pinging you - it’s great. As someone said,” Bac(o)n is better than spam but not as good as steak”.
Officially Bacn came into existence just a few weeks ago and already the concept is starting to spread, probably via some Bacn method. Now, how to better leverage the value of Bacn? How about Company A sending an Outlook rule with the first Bacn transmission - this rule creates a specific folder and all the Bacn email from Company A gets dropped into that folder.
If you worry about the long-term survival of email under the deluge of spam then this just might give you an edge as a marketer. Still, if you are a marketer then there is a good chance you’d rather be blanket dropping inserts into the Croydon Daily Shopper but that’s another story.