Just like everything in my twenty-four year old, completely ADD mind… things come and go. I have been up on traditional direct mail and then I have hated it. I have loved email marketing and then hated it only to return to love the form again.
I was reading a post by Jason Baer at Convince and Convert about email marketing. He had listed some interesting statistics that came out of a panel discussion at the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer. He has a list of 15 Email Statistics That Are Shaping The Future.
I decided to take the top five out of the post and list them for you. This should help facilitate the discussion around email marketing.
1. 69% of email recipients report email as Spam based solely on the subject line.
2. Email lists with 10% or more unknown users get only 44% of their email delivered by ISPs.
3. 84% of people 18-34 use an email preview pane.
4. 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on promotional email.
5. 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device.
I have always been slightly troubled the way email marketing has been conducted the past two years. With all the talk of pull instead of push marketing it would be assumed that businesses large and small would be making conscious efforts to increase the effectiveness of this online medium.
I have never been a major believer in one hit email marketing. The concept of sending a weekly to monthly email newsletter for marketing purposes seems a little contrite. The majority of the email newsletters I receive are not necessarily marketing efforts as much as they are blog posts within an email. They are announcing a new break through at the company or industry specific news.
There is a big difference between informational email and marketing email. Marketing email should be catered directly to a specific group of people and it should be set up through a drip email campaign. I am a big believer in drip email campaigns because it is measurable and you are constantly changing the message based on the action of the reader.
Sending one email out every month to the same base of subscribers can be a waste of time. Instead of sending out a monthly email why not write a blog? Sign your email list up on your blog subscription email. They will get your blog in their email and you will be killing two birds with one stone (maybe even three or four birds!).
As you can tell by the stats email marketing is still working but what I have seen from small businesses have been less than satisfying. Take some time to reevaluate your email marketing. Should you be doing something different? Maybe you should invest in a measurable system where you can cater specific messages to different users?
In the coming years different forms of more attractive and 1:1 communication mediums will take the place of email. Social Media strategies will be combining (if not replacing) push tactic email marketing.
I would like to think your client or potential customer wants a dialogue… They want communication! An email marketing campaign is a trumped up traditional direct mail strategy with a different method of delivery.
Do something different! Do something unique! Do something noteworthy.
There’s no doubt that email marketing works BUT companies seem to ignore the single largest online advertising venue available: their own regular external emails. Why not use these emails to market the senders company?
You have a website.
You send emails.
WrapMail, without installing anything on any desktop or cell phone facilitates:
Every email becomes a showpiece for the organization.
Every employee becomes a marketer.
No other marketing or advertising medium is as targeted as an email between people that know each other (as opposed to mass emails). These emails are always read and typically kept.
WrapMail turns your everyday email into a branding and research tool (yes, the system reports who is clicking on what and when) for your business at a cost of $5 per user per month. That includes the WrapMaker™ where clients make their own wraps.
And……..WrapMail’s show up WITHOUT the red x and message to download images!
I agree that in the future, email will likely get replaced by something more useful (they’ve been saying that about RSS for years though – still hasn’t happened – not enough people know what an RSS reader is), but not now. I’ll also agree that email marketing is a trumped up version of direct mail
But think you’re missing something. Newsletters can be just as much about branding as they can be about marketing. Monthly newsletter keeps your customers informed of what you’re doing, what’s new, upcoming sales, that you’re still in business, etc.. Say you’re Joe the Painter and you send past clients a monthly email, you are reminding them that you’re still out there, still want their business and to please call him for your next project. If Joe the Painter painted my house 3 years ago and I never hear from him again, the chances of him being forefront in my mind is dramatically reduced.
Blog to email isn’t really acceptable (who wants your email every day?) unless you only post a couple of times a month and say more than the average “This is what I read today and here are my thoughts”.
The success/failure of many email marketing campaigns can’t be measured with open-rates, click-thrus and conversion rates because the goal may not be an immediate sale. Take the Joe the Painter scenerio above. The cost to send me a monthly email for three years is easily recouped with one job of painting my basement for $1500. You can’t connect the dots in a measureable sense, but without email marketing, Joe the Painter lost his advantage over every other painter out there.
Ahhh, Kyle, I have to agree with Brett. Email has still has a place and function! And I don’t think I heard you saying it had none, but your post title… Well, the answer, I think, is yes, REALLY!
What I’d like to know, is how in the Sweet Bippy do you get your leadership on board to do Something Different with email!?!?! I agree with you that many people now do want a dialogue – why can’t we use email as an opening to create a dialogue? An invitation? A starting place to build that relationship? Yes, it has to lead somewhere else! And fine, it can! But there’s no reason to say it can’t start with an email, is there?
And yet, it is also true that some of us are mired in the old push marketing campaigns that yes, are just trumped up traditional DM efforts with a different delivery method. So how do we get the powers-that-be to let us out of that rut?
I don’t think we have to be in it…
Am I making any sense?
[...] Kyle Lacy added an interesting post today on Is Email Marketing REALLY Effective? Really?Here’s a small readingI was reading a post by Jason Baer at Convince and Convert about email marketing. He had listed some interesting statistics that came out of a panel discussion at the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer. He has a list of 15 Email … [...]
[...] Kyle Lacy placed an observative post today on Is Email Marketing REALLY Effective? Really?Here’s a quick excerptSending one email out every month to the same base of subscribers can be a waste of time. Instead of sending out a monthly email why not write a blog? Sign your email list up on your blog subscription email. They will get your blog in … [...]
[...] Kyle Lacy placed an observative post today on Is Email Marketing REALLY Effective? Really?Here’s a quick excerptIn the coming years different forms of more attractive and 1:1 communication mediums will take the place of email. Social Media strategies will be combining (if not replacing) push tactic email marketing. … [...]
[...] Kyle Lacy created an interesting post today on Is Email Marketing REALLY Effective? Really? | Kyle Lacy, Social …Here’s a short outlineIn the coming years different forms of more attractive and 1:1 communication mediums will take the place of email. Social Media strategies will be combining (if not replacing) push tactic email marketing. … [...]
[...] Kyle Lacy placed an interesting blog post on Is Email Marketing REALLY Effective? Really? | Kyle Lacy, Social …Here’s a brief overviewIn the coming years different forms of more attractive and 1:1 communication mediums will take the place of email. Social Media strategies will be combining (if not replacing) push tactic email marketing. … [...]