Let’s Stop The Madness
Sep 19 2007
Here we are at the start of one of the busiest seasons for email marketing. With the holiday and end-of-year rush about to hit not only marketers but consumers on October 15th, the segmentation, development, design and behavioral elves are busy in workshops across not only the US, but the entire world. So why do we keep reading that email marketing is dead or dying?
The reason is other marketing media — direct mail, search, blog, PR, new 2.0 media, viral, broadcast and print — are all changing. These industries are trying, in essence, to lobby against each other to place themselves at the top or portray themselves as leading, or at least not losing, prominence in the minds of their audiences. It is the fight for dollars in the advertising business.
In truth, media are shifting. Not dying. Preferences on how people are reached are changing and we all need to change with them. We still watch TV, just in a different way in some households. We still read the papers, but they are not our go-to source of immediate information. We still subscribe to magazines and listen to the radio but for reasons other than our evolving desire of connectedness and immediate gratification. In a sense not only we have shifted this measurement as an audience, but marketers like yourselves have assisted with this always on mentality.
So what do we do? Trash one medium over another? Write studies claiming that one is dying while the other we are passionate about is thriving? Seems this is what many are doing.
We are here to let you know that yes advertising and marketing are changing, but one still does not kill off the other. They are interdependent. We actually, not sure if you noticed with all the summer events and daily noise in your own inbox, have not sent this ”monthly” newsletter since May, and here we are in September. Why? Well summer has been incredibly busy not only for us at eROI and our clients, but felt that everyone needed a little break. Is this close to what you thought it would be? Is email dead? Read some of the other articles to understand that it is only evolving right now to a medium that is working better due to marketers and companies taking it more seriously and doing it right by listening to their subscribers, customers and competition.
Long live media and strive to do better.
Stop lurking on the blogs and start interacting, leave your thoughts around this topic as a comment on this blog. If you want to share but don’t want them published, let us know in your comments and we will keep them hidden. (Thought I would spell that one out for you Ken)
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Sensibly thought and written, Dylan…we are truly part of the changing media landscape - and ain’t it grand?!?! There has always been competition among traditional media. We can assume there will be competition among future media. Somehow we’ve figured out how to co-exist.
There is a maddening increase in the amount of email. I’m not speaking of eROI mail but email in general. You’re right about this “monthly” mail - but I get the weekly mail - so the lines are blurred. There seems to be at least some relevance associated with each missive. This is nothing new but THAT is our current challenge - relevance. In addition, standardization of measurement across email (eec and DMA are making great strides). My feeling is next steps include monetization standards, roi that makes sense and improved spam filtering. Email is still growing…if it dies - as some claim - there will be a rebirth. Heck, for all we know that’s email’s destiny - a death and rebirth cycle.
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thanks bob - I live for the rebirth of advertising and media. We are living in a time where we are seeing so many things change and many are so hard to keep up with and do right. I often feel that people are jumping on the next band wagon before they get the basics down. Yet, opportunity drives this industry and all industries so let’s all pledge to do our best and as Google says … do no evil.
September 20th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Good post.
It’s more like the Death of “The Death of Email” :)
Most of those other marketing media require an email to register. Even Facebook is using email more and more.
Email is the only way to uniquely identify an account and reach out to the most people across various devices, so it’s not going to die.
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I agree. In a “print” article I read on the flight out this weekend I saw a Datran study citing “Most Important Advertising Tactics for 2007″. This study showed email as an 83.2% belief in importance for advertising techniques. Search fell to 61.7% while print (19.1%) and RSS (4.3%) brought up the rear. But… all the mediums are still part of the mix.
September 24th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I really like your blog, but these posts telling us how e-mail is not dying are getting a little tiresome. We are your peers, not your clients - you don’t need to sell us on the medium! We are visiting a blog dedicated to e-mail marketing after all :)
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Sorry man. It is just rehashed over and over again. I sat through some panels here at OMMA this week which email was reinforced over and over again. I try to balance the meters on topics, strategy, creative, isp and news, so from time to time you might get my late night rant. Bear with me. And from our metrics and subscribers we see people on all levels of marketing, many of them new to it and without telling them that it is alive and well, they might actually listen to one of these idiots out there.