Remember email marketing? Collecting addresses and sending out notices about your businesses happenings via email now seems such a sentimental practice when you look at our reliance on the ease of micro-blogging and social media. And yet the practice of email marketing has endured. I often envision it as being pounded out conveyor belt-style while those on the receiving end use their ninja-like reflexes to press the delete button. Much like that flyer that gets crammed in your mailbox for a suspicious Thai restaurant you are never going to try, email marketing continues despite serious reservations about its efficacy.
A bounty of articles addressing the state of email marketing has surfaced online in recent days. Many are saying the marketing technique needs tweaking. For starters, the big trend in email marketing seems to be tailoring our emailed messages and newsletters to fit the needs and demographics of our readers. Much like how search engines “magically know” what to advertise and to whom it should be advertised, company-produced emails look to reach clients with customized content. Relying on high-tech metrics is another trick we can expect email marketers to employ. Big-time retailers and marketers will leave no stone unturned as they rely on metrics to comb everything from e-commerce to social media in order to learn more about their customers. The travel industry, for one, now is looking for new ways to reinvent the marketing crutch they’ve so heavily relied on in the past. Network television, on the other hand, reportedly is scaling back its emphasis on email marketing in favor of aggressive social media campaigns.
But what do you guys think? Is email marketing still an effective tool? What are some of your email marketing triumphs and failures? And what company email do you actually love seeing in your inbox? Sound off below!
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