A question for the email evangelists
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on August 02, 2007
The email marketing world has come together swiftly, decisively and accurately to rubbish all the "email is dead" articles that made their annual appearance in recent weeks.But something is bugging me.
Most of the arguments used to defend email run along the lines of "email is not dead, because people still use it, it underpins some of these new competing technologies, it adapts etc. etc."
All true. New communication technologies like social media, instant messaging etc. won't kill email. But they will change the way people perceive and use email.
The fact that email will clearly continue to exist is nice, but largely irrelevant to the marketing discussion.
It's great that MySpace sends emails to new users asking them to confirm their signup. How is that justification that my emails promoting socks will continue to perform as before?
The contention that email adapts and is used in other ways is not answering the important question posed by new communication technologies.
That question is this: how do shifting patterns of email use and perception impact email marketing practices?
Exactly how is email use changing and how should marketers respond to improve their email marketing programs?
I don't have the answers because I'm not that clever. I just know that the knowledge that "people will still use email" is reassuring, but not enough.
Anyone?
Update: Good comments coming in, plus a lengthier response from Tom O'Leary on his blog.
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4 Comments:
Hi Mark,
Your comments make me think of trains vs. cars (at least in the US)... where would a retail business be nowadays if they believed that they'd get more business advertising along a rail line instead of the Interstate?
I'm not sure there's an easy answer to your question, because different groups use email, MySpace, etc. with different goals and with different groups of people.
I might use SMS and MySpace to interact with my friends, for example, but email for business-related communications (including newsletters), because I'm in a certain mindset and have certain goals when I'm in my inbox than when I'm texting.
That's just a scenario, but I think it underscores the need to consider whether your business should use email to drive sales, or to drive people to another part of your marketing media where you can reach them in a way more suited to their mindset and goals (i.e. does a rock band want to market directly through email, or collect addresses at shows and use email to drive people to add them on MySpace or Facebook?).
By 
Justin Premick, on
02 August, 2007
Hi Mark,
I don't profess to have all the answers either, and would love to discuss in a medium where I don't feel pressured to keep my answers short, but I'll try here.
Q: How do shifting patterns of email use and perception impact email marketing practices?
A: Marketers need to recognize these shifts and optimize the opportunity that comes with each. Success will deteriorate over time if we don't adjust our programs.
Think of all the changes and new rules marketers deal with now, Authentication, Rendering, Spam Complaint, etc. Marketers who adapt excel, those who don't have a warehouse full of socks they can't figure out how to sell.
Stefan
By 
stefan, on
02 August, 2007
Justin - excellent. That was exactly what I was looking for. Love that idea of email marketing maybe changing to also include moving people to another medium better suited to their mindset and goals.
I'm assuming that until recently, people used email for a variety of tasks and goals, but these will change as some of those tasks migrate to other media and technologies. And (email) marketing approaches have to recognize that.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
02 August, 2007
Stefan, thanks. Yes, I guess this need to adapt is nothing new given that the environment for email marketing has always been a dynamic one. Good point.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
02 August, 2007
