With the World Cup being played right now, I have been watching more soccer (or futbol, for those non-Americans out there). During the first game, I, like many others, could not figure out what that crazy buzzing sound was. For those of you who are not familiar with it yet, it sounds like a swarm of killer bees. The sound comes from the vuvuzela (pronounced voo-voo-ZAY-luh) horn, and it is part of the South African culture to blow these loud horns during a soccer match.

Many people have complained about the buzzing sound you hear constantly in the background while watching the games on TV. Now remember that the World Cup is the most-watched sporting event in the world -- more than the Olympics or the Super Bowl. Some countries have even decided to show the games with no audio so the viewers don't have to be bothered by it. Personally, I prefer to listen to the commentators so I can learn as much as possible as I am watching the game.

So what does some buzzing sound in the background of a soccer game have to do with email marketing? Well, that is a great question. If you think of your customers as the viewers watching the game, they are most likely getting bombarded with some type of annoying "noise" while they try to access the information they really want.

Think of the vuvuzela as all of the email marketing messages that you receive that you either don't want, didn't sign up for, or is not relevant to you at this time. So if a recipient's inbox is full of a buzzing noise from hordes of unwanted messages, your messages need to be the TV announcer. Playing the role of the TV announcer means that not only are you offering valuable information that your customers want to hear, but it is also worth their time and effort to sort through all the noise to get to your message.

Because I like to listen to the TV commentators to learn more about each of the teams, as well as get a better understanding of each player, I don't mind putting up with the buzzing noise. My wife on the other hand can't stand the constant "swarm of killer bees" (as she calls it) in the background -- so much so that she would rather not watch the game at all.

When you look at the way that both my wife and I handle email in our inboxes, the metaphor continues to play out. Maybe it is because I am in the email marketing space, but it is rare that I don't open a message from a company that I know of or for whose campaigns I have signed up. I will usually continue to give a company the benefit of the doubt for at least six months to a year, even if I open every one of its messages and there is nothing relevant to me in any of them. My wife takes a different approach. If she gets more than two or three emails that she feels are not relevant, she will likely unsubscribe, complain, or just simply delete future messages from that company.

To continue with the soccer analogy, think of ISPs as refs that could throw down a yellow or red card the moment you break email best practice "rules." As I have mentioned before, more and more ISPs are moving toward building reputation systems based on end-user engagement. That means that if your end users decide to delete (or in the new Windows Live Mail -- sweep) your messages before even opening them, you get a yellow card. This is a warning to you that you should be looking at the activity of your users in your database and adjusting your campaigns accordingly. Once an end-user decides to mark your message as spam, you get a red card. This is the equivalent of getting ejected from the game because you no longer have the opportunity to try to reach that customer with relevant messages and win his or her business.

Again, it all comes back to being relevant. Are you making sure that you are sending your customers what they want to hear from you instead of what you want to tell them? Email marketing started out much like direct marketing, where the thought process was more about what the brand wanted to tell the customers, rather than thinking about what the customers wanted to hear.

No longer can we as email marketers think in a one-directional manner. Email marketing is, without question, a bi-directional conversation. If you are not paying attention to what your customers are doing with your email, your campaigns will simply turn into the buzz of the vuvuzela's that fills your customer's ears.

Spencer Kollas is director of delivery services for StrongMail Systems.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.