Internet Marketing Minneapolis, SEO, Web Design

Is Email Marketing Dead? Hardly…

May 17, 2010 in EMail Marketing by Robb

Some in the online marketing community have been rushing to dig a grave for e-mail marketing. There are some good reasons for that. Overly aggressive spam filters trap not only spam, but also permission-based email messages – stuff the recipient has requested. Messages that hit the in-box get deleted unread a lot of the time, as the sheer quantity of mail in the in-box increases. And anyway, it’s all about Twitter now, right?

Not so fast. Email marketing may indeed have become more challenging, but the ROI continues to be great – the best, say most reports. And even those who say it’s dead will admit on closer questioning that they’ve clicked through to see the new Threadless T-shirt or Amazon special offer.

The truth is, e-mail marketing isn’t dead, but you do have to be savvier about it.

• Your e-mail marketing has to be opt-in. Sending your marketing message to people you don’t know is spamming. Send your messages to your subscribers, your customers, clients, and friends. Put a subscription button prominently on your website and offer that service to people in your physical shop. And make sure that it’s easy for the recipients of your messages to cancel their subscriptions. This way, you’re only sending your messages to people who really want them.
• Your e-mail marketing has to be valuable. Not just to you, but to the reader. If you’re sending people interesting information, a heads-up about new products they’re going to love, or announcements of bargains they’ll want to know about, then they’re going to be interested. Not every day, probably, but at reasonable intervals. Try to get some of that value into your subject line, too. If your customer gets the word that you’ve got new products, but isn’t ready to order and deletes without opening, he’ll still have gotten the message that you have new products. Next time, he’ll be more likely to take advantage of the offer. A few seconds to delete doesn’t feel intrusive to most of us, but you’ve gotten your message out there and reminded your customer of your existence.
• Your e-mail marketing has to be interesting. This is different from the previous point: you may have lots of useful information to share, but if it’s boring, your reader won’t wade through your dull introduction to find the nuggets of good stuff. So it has to be well-written, and visually attractive is good (especially if it’s attractive on mobile devices as well). But there’s another component of “interesting” for most readers.  Most of your readers, at any given moment, are going to be thinking of themselves, not of you. So your email should be about them – their benefits from your special offer, their needs which you can fulfill, their special qualities which your product will highlight – and not about you.

Test your email thoroughly, segment your list and send the right people the right stuff, and you can benefit from email marketing as so many others do.