Tobacco brand e-mail: Digital delivery of marketing messages to your inbox

Background: Tobacco companies have for decades sent mailings promoting their products to the homes of customers and potential new users. Within the last 10 years, this form of marketing has expanded to include digital delivery through emails going directly to tobacco users' inboxes.

Methods: This presentation will present a content analysis of emails used by major cigarette, smokeless tobacco, and cigar brands to promote their products and programs and highlight recent e-mail strategy, content, and promotion of other electronic marketing channels. Analysis was guided by review of e-mail and other related tobacco marketing (e.g., website pages) in the Trinkets and Trash Collection, a surveillance system and archive of tobacco promotional materials, and informed by relevant tobacco industry documents and marketing literature.

Results: Like printed mailings, tobacco e-mails serve a number of functions, including promoting new products, reinforcing brand identities, linking to other marketing strategies such as sweepstakes and coupons, soliciting consumer feedback, building relationships, and communicating about “smokers' rights” issues. Emails also advertise and link to other electronic and digital marketing channels including brand websites and, most recently, facilitate access to coupons and other brand messages through smart phones.

Conclusions: Email provides tobacco companies a number of benefits including tracking smokers' message exposure and quickly communicating with target audiences. Overall, tobacco company email marketing is both relevant to today's technology and offers the industry significant advantages, not the least of which is the ability to transmit information under the radar screen of the public health community.