Getting it together for now and the future

I sense some exasperation in the email marketing community.

1. Exasperation that despite the wealth of advice out there, most people are still making basic mistakes.

Stefan Pollard, for example, uses this How to Ruin Deliverability in 10 Easy Steps article to make the point and urge people to take the action that will boost their bottom line.

And Rob Fitzgerald reminds us that email has its own rules, offering some basic design guidelines and describing how traditional advertising material doesn't always transfer so easily to this medium.

2. Exasperation that the value of email to the business is still underestimated. Doug Marshall uses today's iMediaConnection to explain and demonstrate how email supports other channels, for example by integrating with direct mail campaigns or helping gain information on customers.

3. Exasperation that email is not dead, however much vendors of alternatives would like it to be so. Yesterday, Loren McDonald gave a cogent explanation of how email, text messages, IM and other forms of communication address different communication needs and situations. Sometimes competing, more often complementing each other. Email not dying, but changing.

Here's hoping for more settled times in future.

More on deliverability and strategy | Tags: email marketing

Permalink | August 02, 2007 | 2 comment(s)
Get posts like this: as an RSS feed | biweekly email | via Twitter

2 Comments:

Mark - great post...and I've been thinking about this a lot lately...many of us in the industry seem to be writing articles in defense of email marketing - as if it was being attacked, is dying, etc. In come corners there have been articles saying email was so last decade...but I think the current sentiment goes deeper than that. On one hand I think many of us are tired of writing about rendering and how to write a better subject line. On the other, I think the email industry has a bunch of adult, grizzled veterans who love the channel and feel passionate about its continued growth and image in the world of marketing.
By Loren McDonald, on 03 August, 2007

Yep. I wonder if email just isn't sexy-sounding enough for the cutting edge crowd, so is always going to be a target for those worshiping the next big thing. Interesting times, anyway...!
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on 03 August, 2007

Comments closed for this post