Email marketing gets a bad rap. It is not as sexy of a topic as social media and other innovative ways of communicating. Plus, in-bins continue to get hammered with more and more emails, making many too easily conclude that this communications tool is no longer working.
In attending the DigitalSummit in Boston, it was pointed out that email marketing is not dead. In fact, evidence shows that marketers are seeing it as the clear winner of all marketing channels when it comes to the best return on investment. For most, it is still the top of their marketing spend.
Here are 10 pieces of advice shared in a four-hour session focusing on getting “email from zero to hero”:
1. The Main Preference
When people self-select how they want a brand to communicate with them, more than half of them pick email over all channels. Michael Barber, founder of barber&hewitt, said, that the mindset of people is, ‘If you are going to communicate to me as a brand, that is how I want you to do it.’ Especially “transactional confirmations.” He believes recipients think ‘That is where I want it.’
He explained that email is growing. There are currently 3.2 billion email accounts across the globe and that is going to grow past 5 billion by 2020.
2. More Than An Email Address
“Email delivers the most ROI for marketers,” said Barber. Not only does it get responses, but it also assists other channels. He clarified that the email address becomes the ID, which is the database profile for customers. This allows for the merging of channels with third-party data.
Before email marketers only had the relationship with an email. Now the data profiles utilize the email, whether they are opted in or out. “You can target people out of email,” said Barber.
He showed how retargeting people with advertising after they open the email makes them 22 percent more likely to purchase the product. In other words, first-party data can be taken and uploaded to other platforms to increase revenue.