The Email Wars

Bill McCloskey is concerned about email marketing. Why?

It is a hard thing to do to look at what the industry is doing financially as a whole? Services, Agency, Analytics, and other systems that make email campaigns successful. And how much revenue are the campaigns generating. What is the REAL impact financially of email marketing? Some studies show 10-15% of all online revenue is driven by email. BUT we need to get the CEOs reading this type of news.

The attention that email gets is easily pulled away from whatever is hot or sexy this week, month or quarter. Why aren’t we getting the story out there, defining the industry and growing the people in this industry? It needs to all be done. The EEC is driving alot of this, but we need to all drive it in 2008.

David Baker:
Vendor Management needs to be key. How do you
thinks the revenue that is reported in the email industry is grossly under reported.
Need to get the C-level execs understanding the process, the revenue, the impact and the opportunity. If they are to see the data in a visual manner at a high level it might get by. All they see is reports on how spam is so high, customers hate spam, it is pushing email down… etc etc, but what they really don’t know is how many consumers love email and buy from email, grow a brand relationship from email….

Stephanie Miller:
The “F” Words don’t count. The “R” word is all that counts, relevancy. None of the F’s matter unless you are creating amazing and tailored email customer experiences. If we stay the same and expect the same results we will start to fail more often. List fatigue is growing more and more today if you cannot be relevant. this does not mean that you are always creating one to one, but more relevant one to many email campaigns.

Loren McDonald:
More optomistic. This conference is great. It has been about friends old and new in the industry. The family is getting bigger and the email marketers are getting closer and sharing more. We are getting on the same collective page….
the industry has shown it’s flexibility around all these new media tools has really shown how email is thriving and surviving in some many ways. It is not this one simple tool, but a system that can work, power, and interact with everything else going on.
Email is at the forefront of the online industries. We know that permissions are critical and that the consumer is REALLY in control. Email is finally in control of all the desparate groups across companies.

Jeanniey Mullen:
how many of you think that email is a hard and challenging job (many raise hands). How many think that it has gotten easier over the past 5 years (no hands). It is a really complex system. It is one of the most challenging and complex jobs out there. Timing, Reach, Frequency, Deliverability, Personalization, Reputation, etc, Try to find that in other marketing channels.

2008: Two things that happen
the way that we measure and analyze emails will change. It won’t be just open and CTRs. it will be things like email assisted revenue and not email driven email.
Email is going to start crossing with mobile. The lines are starting to blur, so we are all going to need to start learning about mobile more and more. It is going to be a significant shift and make things great, but also harder.

CLOSING:
It was an amazing event and we are all looking forward to seeing you at the next one. And in between (Here is my plug) come see us in February at the EEC conference in San Diego.