Email marketing is highly criticized by people. They feel rather often that they are spammed. Ideas out of a box is the only way to boost that mere average 3% response rate . Lots of tricks of the trade can be found on the net. Consumers are bombarded so heavily that they develop skills to just ignore anything intrusive. How “witty†a marketer should be to still be able to deliver a message to those who want it and not to harm own brand in the eyes of distant ones? Do you know any stories about how email marketing campaign drastically improved the perception of a consumer on the company? Any stories how badly done campaign just ruined reputation? P.S. Usually email activity usually go hand in hand with other initiatives and it is rather hard to separate results but still .....
If I remember correctly, the response rate from an e-mail marketing campaign is about 3%. So if you send out 10,000 emails, you'll 300 responses. That's actually not too bad. If you've got fancy bot doing all the work for you - that is, finding these email addresses, preparing a personalized message and them cataloging the results - that's pretty sweet. The trouble is the loss of face that accompanies an email marketing campaign. Users and business clients see it as a lazy marketing intiative, and they're right. Good marketers make things happen, they don't watch things happen. I'd rather not post tips and tricks on how to optimize one's email marketing campaign, suffice to say that it should never, ever be one's sole marketing initiative. At worst, it should be a compliment to another, more dynamic approach. At best, it should be a redundant after-thought whose consequential sales, of any, are considered a bonus. With social media, UGC and the general aptitude & ability of online marketers increasing, there's no shortage of options and tactics available to the budding business. Viral marketing is a much stronger (and often more fun) method of increasing sales and definitely, definitely is more sustainable. I deplore you users of email marketing! Write a blog! Send out press releases! Posts on forums! Be active! Love the fact that you're born in the Web 2.0 era and maximize it as best you can! Today is not a dress rehearsal SearchAnyway PPC Program - searchanyway.com SearchAnyway SEO / SEM Blog - blog.searchanyway.com SearchAnyway Affiliate Forum - forum.searchanyway.com
I suppose it depends how you do it: if you try to "lure" people into your mailing list (and not giving them option to leave whenever they want) and start bombarding them with useless ads... then you have a problem. If on the other hand you can provide information that readers really want, then your ads can be helpful - and soon you'll end up having a good system.
Depends on your product, relationship with recipient, and your messaging. One of my niches has a kick ass 10% conversion, other crap ones .05 Yes, cash in it.
We all should be careful on this one - 3% response rate. Exactly what is the 'response' that you speak of? Is it a click on the link in the e'mail? Is it an actual sale? If it's just a click on link, then you have to further the conversion, and to be safe, use only 1%. So 1% of that 300 is only 3 actual sales. Take the profit from those sales and subtract the cost of the e'mail campaign (assuming purchased). Not very good numbers, I'm guessing.
It really depends on the list and a few other points, like how active the list owner writes, types of emails they send and quality content within email. I've launched a few successful membership campaigns via email. Both launched from the same person. Combined, I made $24,000 in 24 hour period because of the email he sent to his list. That isn't too shabby. The list owner had about 40,000 people in his list. Do I think email marketing is fading? Definitely not. I know tons of marketers that have tripled my numbers only with email marketing. Like I said, it depends on the list.
Email marketing costs almost nothing. As long as at least one person responds, it is likely a profit will be made. Until this changes, spam will keep flowing.
It is not good to send SPAM to e-mails. Maybe in 1-2 years 0% of SPAM messages will reach the mailbox of a user.
Well, email marketing is surely not dying. Infact it's improving with more robust technologies coming in to get rid of spam. I would say, a better option is to use both RSS and email for deeper penetration and a wider reach.
well I do not think it is dying because readers or users have to opt in - it is their choice to opt in to receive the newsletter, mail blasting is another such where it is an issue - and no one should be mail blasting
Agree. Email marketing is the best way to get visitors and profits. Probably, nothing can be compared to it (your list is your NICHE to make profits). BTW, you need to have a good list...and people believing in what you say them.
Email marketing and mail marketing aren't dying. Because they were never alive. Never was it a success. More annoying than anything but customers would not take that into their shopping patterns. It did not increase or decrease revenue it just made people pissed when they saw their letterbox full with catalogues.
alot of people are abusing mail marketing lately. its not dying but maybe in near feature it will probally come to end.
I manage e-mail marketing/sales campaigns for a company with an 8 figure/year e-commerce site with almost 1 million opt-in subscribers. It costs us about $200 in bandwidth and overhead to blast a single e-mail (we send 4 per week) and each return $30,000 - 40,000. There is NOTHING that comes that close in terms of ROI for our company not direct mail, definately not direct sales and telemarketing is the only thing even close. Viral marketing can possibly yield better return, but more times than not you get nothing and it is certainly not something you can count on. I have seen our company's budgets for Direct Mail, Direct Sales, T.V. and Radio be cut due to high costs and lack of return while expanding on e-mail and list building efforts. As long as companies like mine continue to see nearly 100% ROI on e-mail as a sales tool it wont be going anywhere. I agree that there are spammers, and some that abuse their lists. However there are companies who use e-mail responsibly and comply with "can spam" etc. who build effective relationships with their customers through e-mail. The unfortunate side effect with e-mail being so cost effective and having nearly a 100% return on investment is that everyone wants to use it, and is why our in-box's are bombarded with so many different offers. Those of us that are responsible, follow the rules, keep our IP's whitelisted and communicate with email providers will continue to see results...There are 2 things you can do if you don't want spam 1. Use quality spam filters 2. Don't opt-in