Email marketing is dead. Or is it? Savvy customers, email filters, and new online platforms made it seem like email marketing was no longer effective or worth the time/cost investment. But recent reports indicate that email marketing is actually trending upwards. Here’s how this marketing strategy cheated death — and why it continues to flourish.
Accounts of email’s death were greatly exaggerated.
A few years ago, I started to see articles with titles like Proof Email Marketing is Dead and Email Marketing is Dead. The authors pointed to open rates dropping to 12% and then to 9%. People received too many emails to read, they said. Customers only opted in to newsletters to look for deals and then ignored them or unsubscribed. Glitchy filters were catching too many messages and sending them to the dreaded spam folder.
At the same time, Google Plus had just arrived, threatening to become a major social network (yes, we really believed that). Pinterest and Instagram seemed to come out of nowhere and were grabbing the attention of customers and job-seekers. Mobile phones started to outnumber desktops, taking people away from their inboxes. Above it all, Facebook was achieving dominance through its offsite “like” button and Messenger app. Who needed email when there were all these new ways to reach people?
Now it’s early 2015 there are even more mobile devices. There are new social sites like Swarm and Ello and new messaging apps like Kik and Yik Yak. Gmail now features a “Promotions” folder that automatically hides marketing emails and forces recipients to actively look for them. Inbox “cleanup” apps like Unroll.me and Mailstrom condense or delay how customers receive marketing communications. And guess what? Open rates are around 30%.
Believe it or not, email marketing is still big — and getting bigger.
66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a direct result of a marketing email, according to the Direct Marketing Association. The DMA also claims that every $1 spent in email marketing has an ROI of about $45. Forrester Research recently found that 19% of consumers read every email newsletter they receive to see if it includes a discount offer. Exact Target says that 70% of consumers always open emails from their favorite companies, while only 18% say they never open commercial emails. Email marketing is projected to $2.5 billion in 2016; not bad for a strategy that’s supposed to be dying.
So what happened?
Best practices make email marketing the best.
Innovative brands, firms, and agencies have created email strategies that reach customers wherever they happen to be, and are too engaging or personal to ignore.
For example, many brands offer an “opt down” choice along with “opt out.” Opting out means that customer is gone for good. But opting down lets people customize their messages and their schedules, allowing them to only receive offers for a certain product or service, or condensing multiple emails into a weekly or monthly digest.
Clever marketers also create more specialized email lists, allowing for more personal and target emails. It’s tempting to create one great email and send it to everyone, but a married mother of three in Topeka shouldn’t get the same language as a single Millennial male in Brooklyn. A Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report found that brands using email list segmentation experienced a 39% increase in open rates and a 28% decrease in unsubscribes.
Email services like Constant Contact make this easy, and you can even do A/B testing, determining the best words, calls-to-action, and subject lines in a matter of weeks. My agency’s own monthly newsletter has seen its open rate climb as we’ve better targeted our content to our customers and improved our subject lines.
And all those mobile users? They require emails that are mobile-friendly, with concise copy and easy-to-click buttons. Charts and lists are out; simple graphics and close-up photos are in.
No marketer has to go it alone. Plenty of firms, like MailChimp, have conducted studies on topics like sending frequency.
Email marketing requires a strategy.
Despite all the predictions four or five years ago, email marketing didn’t go extinct. Instead, it adapted and remains one of the most efficient forms of marketing because it doesn’t require much in the way of start-up costs: just an email service and a list. But though the bar of entry remains low- make no mistake- email marketing has evolved into a science based on real data, and and only effective when executed based on strategy and accompanied by compelling copy and eye-catching art.
My agency, Brandemix, has led a number of email campaigns for marketing, branding, and recruiting, and we use email to market our own services, events, and webinars. I’d love to help your email marketing efforts come back from the dead. If you’d like to learn more, contact me and we’ll talk.
Jody Ordioni is President of Brandemix.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
