The Email Marketing Myth – Part One

'OMG, I've got an email from someone I know!!'

Did I hear you say that e-mail marketing has had its day? We’ve galloped to the land of social media and micro-blogging leaving our burgeoning inboxes behind. Fed up being bombarded with all manner of irrelevant, ill targeted and unwanted stuff in our inboxes we’re spending our evenings and early mornings unsubscribing and deleting with a vengeance.

Well, yes you do have a point.

Charmless, pointless and irritating spam e-mail marketing has had its day. The spam e-mail marketers are in need of permanent deletion. To them you’re just another e-mail address they’ve managed to procure from an unscrupulous list provider and are now chucking enough e-mails at the wall in the hope that some of them will stick. (Here’s an alarming statistic. According to the most recent McAfee Quarterly Threat Report2, while global spam volumes are reducing there are still approximately 1.5 trillion spam email messages being broadcast every day)

But, permission-based e-mail marketing - where subscribers have willingly given their e-mail address provided the content tumbling into their inbox is from businesses they’re genuinely interested in – is very much alive.

And here’s why you should not discount email marketing from your tactical marketing plan.

There’s a limit to what you can say on twitter and although that’s not the case with Facebook your long-winded sales missives will go unappreciated.  Your audience is not sitting in one easy to reach little group on social networks just waiting to grab your concise message neither. As we have discussed in previous blogs, social media is not selling media so you’re likely to get short shrift when you go into full-on-selling mode.

By contrast, with permission-based E-mail marketing you can say quite a lot to your targeted audience provided that what you say is relevant and well written.

Here are a few proven tips to help you plan and implement successful e-mail marketing campaigns with more to follow next month.

Ask Nicely!

There’s no way around it. If you don’t want to infringe data protection legislation and incur the wrath of thousands of folk, doing untold damage to your brand in the process, ensure that your email marketing is permission-based. Have your customers given their consent to receive sales e-mails? If you are renting an e-mail marketing list use a provider registered with the data protection act. Ask if the e-mail addresses they are renting are permission-based and if so, what each person has consented to receive. (Remember behind each e-mail address lies a real person)

Don’t just do – plan!

What are your reasons for including e-mail marketing within your tactical marketing mix? Is it as a precursor to your full on direct mail shot? Do you want to warm the recipients of your e-mail by alerting them to a call from your sales team? Do you want to generate initial awareness of a new product or service? Do you want to promote your new seminar? Do you want to increase the number of targeted visits to your website to download your latest e-book etc? Build email marketing into your tactical plan and your marketing objectives for each group.

Have you given up on email marketing or do you use it regularly?

More next month!