Let's Talk about Email Marketing
I was recently invited by Roy Wollen to give a talk on Email Marketing to his Northwestern University Medill School for business. Roy is a fantastic professor and I love speaking to his classes, but I was a bit taken aback because during my session I asked if anyone was interested in Email Marketing as part of their career. No one raised their hand.
I get it, email is no longer that "cool" and is sometimes considered a dead medium for marketing. I mean...no one is in their email anymore, right? Well, except for the 4.26 BN users worldwide (statista.com). According to eMarketer, more than half of online shoppers prefer email over SMS, In-App notifications or push to receive promotional information.
So why is email not popular with the up and coming marketing class? It could be generational, very few Gen Z'ers communicate regularly through email. It is also true that email response has dropped off over the past few years. But still, according to Hubspot, email still boasts an impressive 36:1 ROI. Email is certainly not a dead medium.
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It is, however, overlooked and often abused. I'm going to dedicate this week to talking about Email marketing and how to make it a better experience for your end customer. I will touch on my philosphy for email marketing, the origins for the medium and what permission marketing actually means and how best to deploy it. Because it is still an important medium.
Real quick, some interesting statistics from Hubpsot to prove that point.
Email to me will always be a "killer app" of the internet. As for Email Marketing - I don't think SMS will surpass it and I'm not sure anything else can be conjured that would. Email is perfectly balanced on the communication spectrum. Email is the perfect blend of asynchronous. An email can be sent, received, and replied to instantly. Or it can sit for hours, days, weeks, or longer before taking an action. SMS is more synchronous than Email - it's used by users more for real-time conversations. I think this hurts the marketing use case. With Email, recipients use their mailboxes in part, as a coupon drawer. They may not act upon receiving your message, but down the road when they are in need they will seek out your offer. Meanwhile, SMS doesn't have "folders". No one likes scrolling for a thousand miles back in history on their phone to find some short snippet. We've seen all sorts of other communications tools come and go (Google Wave, AOL Instant Messenger, WeChat, WhatsApp, SnapChat) yet none succeed as Email does. While other channels may find some traction for marketing, the primary communication use case for those channels ultimately wins out and I just don't see anything else ever winning over Email.
Sales leader with a track record at building successful teams to improve market share & partnerships. Enterprise sales of financial & marketing technology solutions, business process outsourcing, software/dev't services
10moThis is so interesting Jeff. ROI is still good and coupled with other strategies will yield excellent results. Keep the articles coming.